Welcome back! 🎉

Hope everyone's been enjoying the build that's out presently. I've been hard at work behind the scenes working on various large-scope projects for To Ash and Ember this winter break. Many of these were waiting for that first build to go up and, now that that's done, I'm in production on them.

If you've been following me along on SubscribeStar, of course, little of this will be news to you but I won't be going deep here as I do on there.

So what's new in The City?

1. A Sparkling New Dungeon
   1. Though Dungeons are in the available build that is out right now, I felt that they were a bit too nebulous and difficult to grasp. Considering my limited available time and budget, I've found new ways to present the Dungeons of To Ash and Ember as well as how to navigate within them. Instead of Cards -- we shall have a navigable map! Look forward to that in the next build!
   2. I'm also finally expanding Dungeons to the point they'll be given their own locations rather than all of them sharing the Hospital's layout and card deck. The Sewers will be in the next build for your testing enjoyment and the Hospital will finally get its long-awaited event pass to flesh it out some.
   3. In addition to the above, I've also remastered the soundtrack to dungeons. Dungeons now have a more 'ambient' feel to them in their soundtrack, allowing me then the freedom to play various mixed sounds and musics 'above' them when you visit particular regions in the Dungeons. This should result in helping Dungeons feel even more alive.
2. The Big GameBus Refactor
   1. With a project that has so many moving parts, it sometimes can get a bit unwieldy to work with unless you have a 'master directory' you can pull and push information from and to. The new GameBus dramatically simplifies a wide swath of tasks throughout the project while also unifying them, making the project generally even more stable as a result.
3. A Fairer Presentation of Dice
   1. In the next version of the game the 'background rolls' you've been hearing will take the forefront. This should help harmonize and synchronize a bunch of UI and gameplay mechanics and concepts and help 'firm' some of the game's tutorialization gaps ('what am I rolling; what is a success or failure').

Please enjoy the sneak-peek footage below which would normally only be available to those subscribed to my project updates on SubscribeStar (where I also delve a lot deeper into my thoughts and work on the game).