Hello.

I would like to make a public update about my gamedev "update posts" and something that's just been bothering me about them.

It doesn't feel right to have a handful of them up in my page anymore.

It mainly has to do with the fact I used sprites that weren't my own that are for a character that isn't my own as placeholders for the player character:

I think I would've felt fine if the fact was for the very first post where I did so, hell I even made some silly art for the ocassion, but after a couple of months of developing it like this and specially sharing it like this, I just feel like I should've never shown this to anyone at the state where it was in the first place, not out of embarassment but just out of it feeling extremely unprofessional for a project that means so much to me.

The posts are off my newgrounds page but because I don't always like deleting stuff off the internet forever, I put snapshots of the pages in the internet archive and I'm not deleting any links to them that I might've shared on social media.

Development of the game will continue as stated on the latest post: slow and steady, not a complete hiatus but not making as much progress I would like to be doing because of personal reasons.

And to reiterate on the latest post (because it's not easily accesible anymore): update posts from this year on won't be seasonal and will happen as major developments are made or just when it feels like a lot of time has passed, it will remain as update post #9.

Thanks for sticking around, see you then.

Okay, I'm making this quick post to address some stuff, nothing "serious" but just technical issues that prevented me from doing stuff I said I would do.

I'm too tired to write a concrete news post so here's a list of all the things that happened from november to january regarding everything ACT 0

-I said that Preview 2 would come out in December which ended up not happening.

-Preview 2's estimated release was possible if no technical difficulties were present

-Technical difficulties were present

-One of the main plugins I used randomly stopped working on Godot 3.5

-Game needed porting from Godot 3.5 to 4.2

-Porting caused my save file system to break completely, needing a COMPLETE REWORK (still being worked on)

-While this was happening important gameplay mechanics were either missing or not yet implemented.

-All of these things combined caused me to announce that Preview 2 wasn't coming out in december and that it was just gonna be shadowdropped

-It is January 14th 6:00am

-Porting is close to being finished and regular development can go through as (not but almost) planned.

As I am writing this my break ends tomorrow and I have 6 day school weeks now! Shit!

Yo Bro Why Are You Doing That!!

ACT 0 Ain't Drop Yet Bruh!!

Don't Worry PREVIEW 2 Drops December!!

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HELLO EVERYONE!!! I got a lot to say in this post, I'm not exactly sure when this will be uploaded, I am insanely busy in these next few weeks so i decided to get this over with as soon as possible and also I haven't had internet for maybe 6 hours now (IT HAS BEEN 3 DAYS AND COUNTING SINCE POSTING), I don't think they're gonna fix it soon (THEY HAVEN'T).

The news for these past few months are plentiful!! we got a new game in the works and many plans for it, I hope you all absolutely love it, I'm separating these in sections of development because it's been a surprisingly active couple of months, here it goes:

Another game?:

The idea started when I was in a very long car ride and i thought "what if..." and it was only that until I was on my way home and actually thought of it being a viable thing I could do. So then, the next morning i started sketching characters I had in my head, building the game slowly but surely in godot, it was going REALLY well. That night i looked for a musician who could help me with music for the game because i suck major balls at music, after days of work i got ScullRoy (check his stuff out, it's really good) to make two tracks for the game based on stuff i had made.

In about THREE DAYS i had everything i needed to build the game i wanted to make, with them i made a teaser video with the first few minutes of the game, i could make the whole game... slowly but surely... but I wasn't yet pleased... it was looking too easy so of course I HAD to add more stuff to it... I messed it up...

But, what's the game about?:

Alright, before I actually go ahead and tell you what happened after those surprisingly active 3 days, I gotta tell you a brief summary of the game, right? how else are you supposed to be interested?

This game takes place in the same universe as VOID, and is closely related to that game's storyline too! The idea originally started as a maybe 10 to 15 minute playtime small game to get people excited for VOID but you know me, it's a lot bigger of a project now than it was when i started it three months ago, I called it a "prologue" and it's original name was "VOID: PROLOGUE" (how original), then I wasn't even sure if it could be considered a prologue so I called it "ACT 0" or "VOID: ACT 0" if you still wanted to keep it as closely related to VOID as possible.

Here's a vague synopsis: Sean, a man made of shadow and darkness, a detective, goes to investigate an abandoned research facility disguised as a shack in the middle of the woods, finds the first ever telescope and evidence of life outside in outer space, as well as his origins being that the only thing he remembers about them is a voice, telling him he has a mission.

Do I have your interest now? Well, if not you could always check out the preview video i made that i don't know how many times i need to mention in this post GO WATCH IT IF YOU HAVEN'T YET. Anyway it's not only Sean who is in this game, there's a few more characters involved, here's three of them only, to avoid as many spoilers as possible:

Sean:

Shadow man, glowing eyes, a smart but cool guy, literally has "hair" that flows/flaps(???) in the wind, works as a private detective in a small wooden shack they call an office, can fight if necessary, works with Cheryl and Alan at the office

Cheryl:

I don't have a physical description for her yet I'm still working on her design, smart and brave, would probably push Sean into a fight before he thinks it's necessary to fight, she gives details to Sean at the start of the game, works with Alan and Sean at the office

Alan:

Accountant.

Intern.

Very competent at his job.

Works with Sean and Cheryl at the office.

Alan is a dog.

You will SEE all of these three characters and a couple more in the game, there's technically one that has spoken already in a public thing i released but you don't know who that is yet.

What happened next?:

After those three days I did a bunch of things that were planned since the beginning, designed a few rooms, wrote more dialogue, questions and scripts, the usual. I then went on a 1 week long trip, I had to bring my brother's laptop for some school stuff to it so I took the opportunity to put the game on github and put the godot project on my brother's laptop as well so i could work on it when I had nothing to do in the trip, on that period of time i mostly worked on a saving system, an options menu, an Inventory and general polish, it was great because all I was doing in the summer break at my house was work on the game NOW I can work on the SAME GAME but i was in someone else's house, it was actually very nice. I started having a bunch more ideas after I got back to high school, when i didn't have as much time to work on the game like I did in summer break, the very least i did in that period of time was imagining myself working on it. Since then it has been a month and i have not touched the godot project since, only sketchbooks, my notes app and art programs, oh! and also VOID, remember that old thing? SHIT I FORGOT TO SAY- VOID is not getting moved to godot 3.5!! (this is good news) turns out I was stupid I figured out a lot of issues since.

What's next?:

Well, finishing the game of course! and that involves a BUNCH of things, most of which are self inflicted and some not really necessary like for example, re-spriting and spanish translation (spanish is my first language so don't worry about it being shit). There's of course A LOT of things I won't address because no one knows about them yet- Are you even sure what genre of game this is? you only know it's a top down so it could be anything, maybe it's a shooter, or a visual novel, what about an RPG? action or turn-based? or maybe an immersive sim? (it's not an immersive sim, DO NOT GET YOUR EXPECTATIONS TOO HIGH), maybe you can't even control the character- HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT ABOUT THAT?.

What's stopping me?:

Two things: Time and school, how are those two different? good question actually- my school is very "active", i have to run around a hot kitchen 4 days a week with a hot suit on, and then on top of that still do regular school stuff, so all I want after getting back home every day is for everyone to give me a fucking break. I still do concepts for the game but most of the times I don't feel really in the mood to open godot and get shit done, which is why the idea machine keeps running and running and running.

I do want to get back to getting shit done soon though, since I am actually running out of ideas, there's a lot of things I gotta add now that I wouldn't have had to in the past month or so, it'll be fun!(hopefully)(please).

One more thing (it's actually two).:

ACT 0 has a twitter account! follow for updates and teasers! they get them sooner than you all do here.

I've mentioned it before but not here, there will be a news post for when this game is about 50% done*, it'll discuss even more details and also will have actual non shown graphics for the game! unlike this post.

*editing this about a month later, it might be a video instead of a post, for the sake of promotion, i could still do both but you know.

Goodbye?:

I wanna thank daydreaming for making the development of this game impossible and the fact that i failed three classes TWICE in the last semester of high school for that as well. I'll see you all in the next news post!, hopefully that wretched creature will stop coming over to chew on my internet cable by then.

Hey- you wouldn't forget about watching that preview video I released and told you about a little bit ago, right?.

That's all I have, good night!.

A PREVIEW FOR MY NEXT GAME IS DROPPING IN AN HOUR, GO CHECK IT OUT I WORKED REALLY HARD ON IT.

HEY ALL! It hasn't been much time since the update but I've got something to say! It's about VOID:

I'm announcing something soon about it, i will here when it's ready too but, if you wanna get to see it as fast as possible and also get some quick short and sweet development updates after the announcement then you might want to follow the twitter account i made for it! @V0ID_game

You might ask yourself why it's looking so mysterious right now, well that's because of the announcement obviously, it'll stop being all fun mystery stuff once the "announcement" is out (not really, you'll see).

I can guarantee you that you will not expect what will be announced, like at all.

That's pretty much it! get excited for it! or not! bye-bye!

Hey everyone!! I got some bad, BAD news!! And some GOOD news! Not some “good, GOOD news”, just “GOOD” news!.

As usual I hope everyone is doing well! I've been doing alright, very stressed but i got some time to write this down and feel a lil better about myself, so it’s not that bad.

Alright, let’s talk about VOID:

April, I got some stuff done in April, mainly stuff relating to menus and save files, which I now know how to use! That’s gonna be very handy for some stuff i’ll mention later on (you’ll see this when i get to talk about June), I also posted that over on twitter and Instagram, and now here! Take a look.

That’s footage from exactly April 22nd so the stuff like the options menu being WIP wasn’t true a few days after that (although now incomplete because of some stuff that’ll happen in June so i have to re-do it, I’ll get to that), I also made that music that’s playing in the background, I'm still not sure if I’m going to leave it as is or remake it, knowing me i probably will though.

That’s pretty much it for April, so let’s briefly talk about May, i decided to not do anything in may, I was about to start finals and some other important school stuff. I just decided to halt development until I was less busy.

June, month of big decisions!, so at the start of June I had some ideas. I wasn’t happy with what the game was at that point and I decided to change the whole genre of game I was going to make. At first, VOID was going to be a really simple game about dodging little bullets and just getting to a finish line, to me–at first, thought this was fine for my first game, but then i started to think the idea was boring the more i designed levels, whenever i played around with the player controls it didn’t feel like what i wanted the game to feel like was suited with the style of game i wanted to make, instead of changing the player control i changed the whole genre, it is now a roguelike.

Once I made that decision I started to make mockups and have more ideas than I ever had for this game, so much that the final product might be too long to be- on newgrounds… oops.

So the game grew a little bit more than I ever expected it to grow, which is actually pretty good for me (for some reasons I won't disclose at this point in time), but probably not good for you because you don't get cool game soon… BUT DON'T WORRY! Remember that announcement I said I was going to do a little after this post? Well I'm not doing it after this post, I’m doing it now! Because honestly It’s not that huge of an announcement anyway, here it goes: VOID is getting released on steam when it’s done, but getting an early demo here on newgrounds before it releases. If u have no idea why this is a big deal, here's a brief explanation: VOID is my first game i plan on fully developing, It was planned to be fully a newgrounds exclusive, since it was going to be small game at the start.

I also got some other stuff to say, remember the bad news part? Well, here it goes… I'M GONNA HAVE TO RE-MAKE THE WHOLE GAME FROM THE GROUND UP. Okay so to make it short, i'm having a lot of issues rn with godot 4, so much i’d rather just use godot 3.5, all the tutorials/guides i’ve found for stuff i want to get in the game is 3.5 and is weird to translate to godot 4, I'm not even sure if it’s possible at this point, it’s that bad.

Oh! I also revealed what the player character looks like in a lil art post, check that out if you haven’t!

Thanks for reading the VOID section of the update! I will try to make some shorter stuff here before it releases, maybe participate in some game jams? Who knows! I’ve also been thinking of making some devlogs, especially now that i have to re-make the game, I’ll think about it, maybe that can be something in between not wanting to work on the game.

Alright, I'll briefly talk about my personal life because I decided to make these just “SEASONAL UPDATE”s and not “SEASONAL VOID UPDATE”s, u can just skip this whole part if u want lol!!.

School has been very stressful, if u guys dont know, because i live in a different country the way our highschool works is different to what some of u might think, I’m like 80% sure we got as much work as a university student would have while studying at university, so It’s pretty hard to be doing this kinda stuff on the internet while also doing that, i think it’s mostly harder because i think i got adhd or smthn, I'm not sure though, don’t quote me on that. Anywho, i still did bad in school, as bad as I did last semester, I'm kind of ashamed of the fact because i really want to be in school, like– I’d rather not but I'm fine and cool with doing it if It’s the best thing i can do at the moment, I also gotta do more work if i fail classes and idk about u all but i’d rather do my last exam and bail, like- I'm good, y’know.

Recently the heat has been cranking up where I live. I used to have a working AC but it stopped working around the end of summer last year, it wasn’t that hot, I didn't really mind, so we didn’t do much about it, big mistake. As I'm writing this there are two fans running in my room, the ceiling fan and a pedestal fan directly behind me, I am wearing a tank top below my shirt, it helps to not feel the sweat in every inch of my body, I have to sleep downstairs where there is a working AC so i don’t sleep and wake up drenched, tired and dehydrated, I’ve never had to take such drastic measures before and the man that repairs the AC hasn’t showed up the days he’s said he would come over, send help.

For the ppl that decided to stick with me through that rant, I’ll leave you with some stuff I posted on twitter, plus some stuff I've never posted! Don’t tell the other guys but u all are secretly my favorite, shhhh.

I COULDN'T GET GIFS TO WORK FOR SOME REASON HERE SO HAVE THIS

That’s about it! Hope y’all have a good and fun couple of months! Bye-bye! :3c

Hey all! i hope everyone's doing well, happy late clock day from my part, why lie? i missed and forgot it completely!.

As you might notice i've turned these into sort of seasonal updates and that's mostly because i've realized that, there really isn't much to get out of a single month, plus january and february were not only awfully unproductive but also awfully sad! It's kind of fucked up really... So, instead of focusing on how sad an awful a single month was. let's bring more time into the mix to scrub off the bad! im sure nothing can go wrong!.

January was my birth month, im 16 now, i didn't have a good birthday or a good birth month so let's skip January enitrely and go right to February. This month i decided it was time to stop fucking around, i was gonna MAKE something, you can tell i really MADE something because those two words are in italics, bold letters and are highlighted. Anyway, i wanted to make a game for once, i've talked about it before so i really wanted to get my hands in there, and that's what i did.

Instead of making that one game that i "teased" for 2027 (probably 2032 by now) i decided to make a much smaller game for newgrounds! y'know, the place you're reading this from (hopefully), i've already heard many horror stories about gamedevs making their "dream game" as their first one and failing horribly, i wasn't gonna let that happen to me! I'd be devastated!.

I don't wish to go a lot into detail but the game will MOST LIKELY I HOPE IM RIGHT be finished by mid/end of summer (or sooner!), i've been going way too hard on this little game, definetely more than i needed to, so i hope y'all enjoy that when it comes out!.

That's enough of February, i did jack shit on march! I really did NOTHING i mean, ANYTHING, It was amazing though! me and a lot of friends started a minecraft server so we've been playing there like its our fuckin job, i also started playing pizza tower! wich is odd because i literally bought it the day it released, i also experimented with changing names, the one i had was literally picked because a teacher read my email account's name out loud in a zoom class and i panicked, so it's understandable why i've been getting tired of it lmao, i think im comfortable with "Ivy" now, gender neutral, rolls off the tounge, i really like it!. March has been fun but im ready to get back to work.

And April has just started but i have done something, i revealed that im makin that game to the public! why? you might ask, well it's because my two week spring break just started and i plan on working HARD. I also did it on April 1st so haha pretty funny, the joke was that it wasn't a joke, very funny me! Anyway, there's a lot of shit comin', so stay tuned!.

The name that the game has attached (not the name of the game itself) was also revealed, my old username! felt like it was meant to be, if i get to work with more people (mostly composers because music isn't my thing) that's probably the name that'll be attached to it, I made a separate twitter account for it and for future projects! a little clue before i say my goodbyes, the way the twitter account is right now is a clue to what the game's name is gonna be. Obviously i will update with more details here every three (or so) months but the updates there should be more frequent wich means they'll be out sooner.

Thanks for reading! i hope everyone is having a good day! and if you're not then do it for me, pwetty pwease 3:

Hey all! It's me again, hopefully you weren't eXpecting anybody else because im the only one around here.

Hope everybody had a nice christmas, hanukkah or whatever you yourself celebrate, i hope you had a good time.

Alright, guess It's time to talk about some stuff i've been up to in the last quarter of november and the rest of december:

Im gonna be honest here, there was supposed to be some big announcement here about something i've been working on the past year but, i really dont think im ready to do so nor do i think i have enough of the product to really make a cool announcement for it so, we'll just leave it at that, im sorry! if i can say something about it though, i think i almost have something to work with, i've been doing this alone for the past year so it's been somewhat frustrating but i feel like i've been getting somewhere lately and that makes me happy. By the way, if you're in a certain discord server i am starting to be very ambigous about it, so idk maybe if u see me around i'll drop some minor stuff about it there.

Anyways onto some boring stuff about my life now:

Remember the stuff i said about finals the last monthly update? Well, it went like shit. I don't wanna get that much into detail but i will say that i did pass the semester and that it wont happen neXt time.

Notice the Xs being randomly capitalized around this post? well, my keyboard is now broken. It's such a weird error though i geniuenely do not know how this could have happened. Having this keyboard broken means that everything is gonna be slow for a few days until i get a new one.

I got a bunch of stress out my system with winter break starting so i just need a break from any kind of work for a while, wich is why there isn't much on this update post, the original plan was the announcement but ofc, i wasn't ready.

I wish you all a good day, a good month and most importantly a good new year because this last one was kinda shitty so hopefully this neXt one is less shitty.

Anyways, pretty mid month bye byeXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX MY KEYBOARD IS STILL BROKEN SHIFT DOES XXXX NOW WHAT THE FUCJ

HELLO0!!! YOU PROBABLY DONT REMEMBER ME AT ALL BUT HERE'S A LIL UPDATE POST FOR ALL OF U

i am going to go through everything that happened while i was gone here on newgroudf

I changed names lol!! (its "Mekbrew" now but i cant change it here on newgounds until i get a newgrounds member thing (or someone gifts me one wink wink nudge nudge (dont (or at least wait until i post some art or something lol!!))).

i got covid (im okay now) and didnt do anything productive while on quarantine wich sucks.

haven't done anything art related lately other than lil notebook sketches but, those aren't finished drawings silly! i gotta post good and complete shit for the newgroud people.

i've been very busy with non internet related shit wich is mainly why i havent had time to sit down and actually do something art (or non art related more on that later) but that's boring and i wont mention it.

been interested in making a game (1 for now) and posting it on newgrounds but ideas have been everywhere and have made A LOT of very early prototypes for a lot of the ideas and havent really decided wich one to continue developing into a thing.

been interested in making music and shit but everything i try and make (even though i've figured a lot of stuff out) i dont like, or dont have any actual good way to continue it, might go back and keep trying when school break starts (in 2 weeks).

That pretty much it!

im not dead

i am planning on going back here once i actually get inspired to do something.

im gonna do a lil bit of a self plug while im in here, i ocassionally stream myself either drawing or playing video james (not a lot of gaming though because wah wah computer trash) on twitch dot tee vee, that's linked in here so go check me out if you can someday.

Bye bye! and remember, if u ever feel safe remember that im out there somewhere, alright?