First and foremost, the meat and bones progress of Chronology is going swimmingly. However, I am running into a few snags in terms of the outside overhaul that's been the big news for my game as of late; I need talent.

So here's where I'm at; the music is mostly covered, the facesets and such are covered (Thanks JosephSeraph), and the script and code is by me, and that's fine. What I'm having an issue with is securing talent for two major parts of the overhaul; Tilesets and Character Graphics. As many of you know, securing good talent is tricky, and for various reasons, indie artists can be very tricky; I've seen many cases of indie commissioning collabs that reek of shadiness, unreliability, and unprofessional whatnots.

As anyone who's ever been hired by me can attest, I am none of those things. So I'm having trouble finding good talent, especially good talent for spriting character sets and tilesets that match the general feel of what I already got going.

So with that being said, if you know anyone that might be interested in my project, point them in my direction, or vice versa. I'd be happy to hire you!

The transformation of Chronology continues with the transformation and addition of new custom facesets, courtesy of JosephSeraph!



In an interesting twist, JosephSeraph did such a good job with the last guy that he'd fit perfectly on another character (that wouldn't have a face at all otherwise) and I'm making an extra/other faceset for the last guy.

This is also one of the last instances where some of the facesets resemble the original; with the first few faces, there were some, like the two soldiers, that I liked so much that I wanted an original take on it (with the color scheme I edited in), but something to notice.

And now for some progress gifs.






This will be the last update with just the facesets; the next big update I hope to be able to show off the facesets with brand new bodies.

So as I launch my game into the 'professional, will sell for money' sphere slowly but surely, I'm beginning to think of minor improvements to Chronology. One of those things was an in game codex/encyclopedia, similar to the one in the Mass Effect series. Do you guys think that would be a good idea, and if the plot/narrative is interesting, is it something that you guys can see it being worthwhile that players would read?

Note: This would not significantly impact development time.

Sort of a big announcement, or at least potentially.

Backstory: So I was chatting up my game and going over some design documents with some homies, and the sentiment came up more or less of "You've got a really good thing going on here. You ever think about selling it? on Steam or such?"

And I thought about it, and...yeah. Maybe I should. I think I have a solid plot, mechanical design, framework, and I'm almost done! Putting Chronology on Steam would get the game to a far wider audience and invigorate me as a designer. However, I couldn't. Why? Well...asset wise, it needs a fresh coat of paint. In other words, it needs original assets and not the rips and edits I've been using.

Do not get me wrong, I've been a staunch defender of rips and edits in the hobby design corner for like, ever! They allow a designer to build up something using something else (and this is a thing in the art world utilized by very famous artists, 're-contextualization') and focus on the meat while they free up assets to build it. Also, editing is a lot of fun, I liked doing it for its own sake. It served me well forever. If you're making a game and using rips, and rips are the difference between your game being released or unreleased, use those rips! Either way, that's here nor there and this isn't about the ethics of rips or whatever, so shush.

However, I can't sell it, or more specifically, I can't sell Chronology as its with rips. And even if I didn't sell it, using FFVI assets and the like inherently limits my audience in the wider world.

So I'm announcing that henceforth I'm taking Chronology forward to eventually transition all of its visual assets to original ones. What does this mean for you, the (hopeful) consumer? A few things.

-This pushes the release date back until first quarter 2017 at the earliest, but this does NOT affect the mechanical development. It's still being developed in RM VX Ace, it's still being worked on as is, the plot is still being written and meat and bones of the game are still being chipped away at. In other words, this does not affect me opening up the program and working on the game.

-This is ONLY the visual assets. The music, plot, mechanics, script, etc etc were all original to begin with. This does mean I'll need new tilesets, charactersets, battle animations, and other visual assets. This is a fair amount of work, but I'm not building anything else from scratch.

-While replacing the visual assets will take a fair amount of work/time/some cash, in many cases its more of a one for one swap. Basically, the towns using FFVI chipsets will now be original, the forests using Rudra assets will now be original forests, the character and battle graphics will be similar in scale and appearance, just not FFVI edits, and so on and so forth. I don't have to recreate entire maps from scratch, I 'only' have to edit and fix graphical transition hiccups that comes from importing new assets and exporting the old ones.

-By 'original' I am not willing to accept a drastic decrease in quality. My game WILL be differentiated from the many other VX Ace games, graphically. You're not going to see glossy, Alex, RTP stuff. The visual look and feel of my game won't depart from the one it has now as much as possible.

-This won't be free, but I have some ideas (and some capital) to fund it, and I know of some talented people who I can ask around for to see if anyone is interesting in doing this. However if you know of anyone, please point me in their direction, or vice versa!

-This isn't, nor is selling the game on Steam, absolutely set in stone, but I am leaning towards it heavily. Until then, like I said above, I'll continue to work on the game like I did before!

Whew. That's a lot. Any questions or thoughts?

Let's check out the newspaper to see what's happening in the world of Atlas...



'Mere weeks after the conclusion of the Imperial Civil War and the Homefront Liberation Army's victory over the Alexi imperial family, riots and protests are already breaking out across the Empire in opposition to the crowning of Duke Mikhail as Emperor in the wake of Emperor Cyril Alexi's death at the hands of Loyalist extremists.

Although the Homefront rebel faction was supported by much of Judec's working class and disaffected military, many Loyalist forces remain across the Empire. With mixed reports of civil disturbances, peaceful protests, and violence erupting across the cities of Marzantium, Eskelgrad, and the Imperial Capital Constantine, the Imperial Army (much of which was formerly the rebel forces) find themselves in the ironic position of being on the other side of the same table they sat at just months ago.

Among the most egregious of rumors floating around the Empire are the whispers that Duke Mikhail's ascension is in fact illegitimate, and the former Emperor Cyril was actually murdered by rebel forces, looking to boost the Homefront sympathetic Duke Mikhail onto the Imperial throne.

As tensions with the Alliance rise, it remains to be seen how these developments will impact future events in the continent.'