So as I've just alluded to in a post a moment ago, we're coming up with a 14.5 next. For those who haven't been around for our previous .5 releases, as a disclaimer, 14.5 is NOT a content release, sorry. No new story, sidequests or field effects will be added to it, and it will not replace the main E14 download links. But it will be publicly available so we can get some additional help testing out the changes in it.
So what are we changing in 14.5? A lot actually. Our goals for the release are as follows:
ORAS content
Essentials v15 update
Additional anti-lag map adjustments
All moves/items/abilities implemented
So let's go through these.
First, ORAS content. The big thing is sprites. As of now I actually have almost all of the front sprites done, but with just a handful of back sprites and almost no bases for them floating about to work from, these are gonna take some time. ...Seriously, it takes forever. Not even kidding. That said, almost everything else form ORAS i.e actual mega code, moves (in live 14 thanks to Jericho), tutors, etc, is just about good to go.
As of this morning the project has been updated to the new version of Essentials, so check that one off the list. We have a lot of testing to do to make sure it's not nearly as broken as 14, but all circumstances considered (and save one minor AI issue involving wild Pokemon not doing anything half the time, oops (which we fixed)) v15 is looking pretty good. We're getting some fixes to some long-standing issues, like Fling, and some newer ones as well, like Destiny Bond. ...allegedly.
Map adjustments are nothing new. We did them first in 9.5 and we've done them in several episodes since. I might talk about what's going on and how they help in some other post at a different time, but in short it's just minor tweaks to how areas are loaded to help reduce lag. However, making those changes is often fairly meticulous, and a single error can result in a crashed game for lots of players (as has happened in the past), so I want to get these changes in 14.5 to make sure they're secure for E15
Finally, implementation. The Essentials project has not been fully up-to-date basically since its creation back in 3rd gen, and I'm personally very excited to be reaching a point where we can at least say that all the moves/etc at least should be in the game and work. This has been made largely possible by Kurotsune's additional help, so huge thanks to xem for pounding out the code for basically the rest of the unimplemented things. That said, realistically even when implemented, it's not going to work perfectly, which is why I want to make sure the community has time to test these additions before the full episode release.
Overall, this is double-edged. On the one hand, yay updates, and yay future updates being stable! On the other hand, it means we're not even starting to make the content of E15 until we get this update out, and since E15 will be a relatively short episode the development time will feel moderately disproportionate to the content released. That's how it's going to be though. We ask everyone to stick with us in the mean time.