Here we are again, cool cats. We're kicking off the new Cloudflash year with the standard "it's a new year" obligatory news post. As we all saw, nothing really happened last year, but I've got a good feeling about this year... maybe! My trashed property is coming along at uh... some sort of pace. I'm hoping I can live in it within 1-2 more months. When it's done, that'll be one less thing I have to worry about and/or spend time on, which will bring me closer to being able to work on Cloudflash again. But wait, there's more! I've got a 2-for-1 bargain on goals here - I finally got a job as an electrician apprentice. It was many years ago that I went for that pre-employment electrician schooling. Quite frankly, I nearly gave up on it since I was feeling like I wasn't very employable with my lack of relevant experience and long delay with actively seeking a job. But, I guess all I needed was for my previous job to piss me off enough with its incompetent workplace for me to apply for a new job. My new job seems promising so far, so yeah.

Anyway, back to matters involving my free time. For the uninitiated, I've been working on a 2D isometric MMO project called Re:Spite, which is a game like Endless Online in some regards. It features deep character customization, an open world to explore, artwork and pixel graphics made by your ol' pal Danno, and heaps of potential. It's basically been using up all my creative motivation - I recorded 428 hours spent in 2018 working on art and graphics for the game. I also spend time making maps and designing features, though I don't keep track of the time spent on that. I was originally hoping to just work on the game casually after its public release last year, but I keep finding myself unsatisfied with its present state. Whenever we release an update including new features, new equipment, new areas, new monsters, new artwork - I just look at it and think to myself, "This really isn't enough, is it? The game is still way too basic." That being the case, I've had to keep putting in a somewhat dedicated effort. Well, I say "dedicated", but I barely put in more than 1 hour a day on the game (on average), which really isn't asking that much, is it?

Long story short, I still have a lot of work ahead of me, though I remain hopeful. The game almost has all of the most basic functionality implemented. With our next update, we'll likely have a party system, crafting system, and inn functionality. After that, we'll need to bring in the trading system and weapon equipment, which would be followed by classes and skills. When that's all good, perhaps we can start finetuning the combat system to at least make it slightly interesting, then I think we'll be in a good position to work a little more casually and to bring more creativity to the game.

Here's a little look at the NPCs I've drawn for Re:Spite to date. I gave it my best shot to make clean, good quality artwork, resulting in a journey of self-improvement as an artist. Too bad my newer works make my older ones look a little crappy by comparison. I went back and made some edits to some of the older stuff, but I'm tempted to completely redraw some of them.

Well, here's hoping this is the year I actually redesign Cloudflash. I'd really like to make it less of an eyesore with its extremely outdated HTML coding (which was never even compliant to begin with).