Zumi

hi!!!!!!!!! mom said it's my turn on the dev blog It's been roughly a month since testing has begun, so I figured this would be as good a time as any to post an update on the goings-on with the game right now. We've all been hard at work to get stuff finished up and are excited for people to see all the new stuff! But of course, keeping radio silence on here isn't the way to go or ppl will start sending me asks on tumblr again asking why there hasn't been a dev blog post yet and being very sad about it so let's get into it all, shall we? The current state of testing First up, Jan will be leaving on a holiday for roughly a week starting this weekend! He's taking a well deserved break before all hell breaks loose later this year LOL. However, that doesn't mean stuff in regards to testing will come to a standstill. A good couple of our dev members are actively involved with fixing bugs we come across (both scripts and events!), so testing will continue as usual. Speaking of which, we're still on internal testing! This is mostly because we want to be reaaaally thorough with the game ourselves this time around (unlike what happened with V13), so we can catch as many issues as possible ourselves before moving on to alpha testing. As of right now, a lot of us are on testing Chapter 11, and ACT 1 is completed by almost everyone! There's only a tiiiny bit of event work left for the update as a whole, which is expected to be feature complete shortly after Jan is back from his trip and he's able to work on it again. Most of the graphics are done now as well with only a few sprites left on the backlog, which should all be done before alpha starts. Weeee, progress! That being said, the plan was to actually start on ACT 2 testing sooner than we did, but Jan spent a good amount of time polishing a bunch of the content in ACT 2 to be more enjoyable as well. Sometimes a part of the game/story needs a little extra ~*Pizazz™*~ and that's ok. Especially considering it means the experience for you guys will be better! We'll probably be stuck on GDC for a little while anyways because that place is Beeg™ and therefore the amount of bugs that have been discovered is also Beeg™. There's also the fact that we've got a Quest Log now and that we have to update/add it as we go through the game ourselves. Jan has been doing main story + major sidequests which is honestly Quite The Task. I've been doing the sidequests that were missed/hadn't been updated properly yet to even have a log, so he doesn't have to do everything himself, but I can definitely tell you that it's a lot of work for a game as big as Rejuvenation dflkjsdflksdfllasjdalsk Oh, and for those wondering about the opinions so far on Terajuma considering that place got a massive overhaul... It was a huge success! The team really really enjoyed all the changes, and it really turned a weak arc into a very very strong one. I really highly recommend checking out the place in a new run or going back after you're done going through the new stuff in .5. Unfortunately it's not all fun and games with testing. Aside from the usual game-crashing stuff where there's a typo in a script somewhere that can be fixed rather easily, we've ran into a pretty concerning bug that we haven't been able to fix that will ever so rarely straight up crash your game out of nowhere, no warning/error popup or anything— and with barely any rhyme or reason to it happening. This is not to cause a panic because Haru's doing their utmost to find a solution for the problem (EDIT 4-8-2023): which is looking to possibly be caused by MKXP-Z having upgraded to Ruby 3.1. The chances of it happening at all are pretty low as well, with most of us having ran into it only once or twice—aside from Alex, who is Game Crash Georg, gets 10000 crashes a day, is a statistical outlier and should not be counted— but there is a chance that we won't have a fix for this by the time the update comes out considering that downgrading back to an older version of Ruby is currently broken. All we can do right now is give the advice in advance that you save often when .5 is out so in the case it does happen, you won't lose a lot of progress and you'll also know that this is a known issue. think of it as working with any software that is unstable, for example after effects. i speak from experience. that shit will crash for no fucking reason so you gotta hit save often!!!!!!! treat it like that!!!!!!!! be vigilant!!!!!!!!!!!! In all seriousness, we'll keep you guys posted about this problem. If the bug persists into public release, we'll put a warning alongside the download/update post to make sure people are aware of it, but we'll keep trying our best to fix the issue before it even gets to that. please send haru your thoughts and prayers. To wrap this segment up on a happier note however, here's some more OOC stuff from during testing. There's already some funny stuff in the column next to the dev blog, but why not share a little more? We're all taking this very seriously I promise. Beans! ok moving on. Last minute sprite updates! Because I just can't help myself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sowwy. Speaks for itself, here's a couple of VS portraits I've updated recently! I showed a few on twitter before (which are included in here in case you missed them), but there's a couple that I hadn't posted publicly in here yet as well. I know some of these changes might be quite drastic and may take some getting used to (particularly Ana and Ren from what I've heard so far), but I'm trying to bring the sprites a bit more in line with the official art and have style be consistent across the board. And stuff is still subject to change even between now and release!! So maybe some will get some minor changes even after I post this. okay but WHAT is with the title of the dev blog. none of this is related to it. wtf Good question! But also stop being hasty or I will CRY and SCREAM and throw you to be PECKED AT BY THE BIRDS. I was just about to get to explaining this. gosh. ugh. Anyways, the title is related to something we teased all the way back in the dev blog from October of last year (GOD IT'S CLOSING IN ON HAVING BEEN A YEAR HELP ME) and has finally been fully realized into a brand new feature to Rejuvenation. In particular, it's related to this smug bastard— Mr. Luck. Don't remember him? Now you do! If you don't, that's fine too. Don't worry about it. Either way, he's a character you can find at the start of the game in East Gearen, in a circus tent! Prior to .5 he 1) did not have a proper design, and 2) only existed for the option for people to switch between difficulty modes. However, what with intense being gone coming next update and with passwords being a thing, this functionality of his has become essentially redundant, and has since been removed. So what are we gonna do with him? We can't just remove him from the game, he's got some (albeit minor) story involvement, so we have to figure out something else to use him for. So clearly, the correct course of answer here is to go all-out with this clown, and have him offer a lot more than just a difficulty swap. Introducing Black Prisms and Prism Pokémon! Before going into what Mr Luck has to do with this, let me explain Prism Pokémon first. When getting a wild encounter, you'll have about an 1-in-100 chance to run into a Pokémon holding a Black Prism, and they look like this! You can recognize them by the rainbow aura around them. This isn't just cosmetic though! Upon entering a battle with one of these, the Prism Pokémon will get a +2 boost on all of its stats thanks to the prism it's holding. If you manage to catch it, you'll be able to take its Black Prism off of it! Not only that, but these Pokémon generally tend to have better stats, so it's worth catching them for that as well. However, putting a prism on one of your Pokémon does not give the +2 omniboost to your own Pokémon. It really only works on the enemy wild encounters you find. Buuuuuuuuut if you want, you can just keep the prism on your mons if you want to keep the rainbow aura purely for cosmetic purposes. every pokémon can celebrate pride now!!!!!!!!!!!!! YEAHHHHH But um... That aside, what does Mr. Luck have to do with these Black Prisms? Well, it's pretty simple. He collects them. He'll offer all sorts of things in trade for the prisms, including contracts that can help you in all sorts of ways! He can increase the odds of running into shinies, make it so that there's a chance that wild Pokémon have egg moves by default, increase the amount of money earned in battle... Or even change your character appearance. Just don't worry about the fine print! ...Or do. There might be some downsides involved, after all. Can't have everything handed to you on a silver platter, now can it? He's got the smarmy businessman look down pat as well, so there's bound to be some fishy stuff involved. But it's funnier if you find out for yourself what those... Er, little snags are. Tread with a small amount of caution! He's also got a cute little assistant called Doxie that you'll see for yourself if you visit him, and will trade you all sorts of useful items if you've got prisms to spare for things that aren't Luck's own contracts. It includes items such as valuables you can sell for big money, cell imprints and even glitter balls! They won't be cheap however, so if you want to get your hands on those, make sure to keep catching those Prism Pokémon if you come across them. ───────────────────────────────────── That about covers it for this dev blog! Hope you're all excited for the new features─ Oh, wait. Just one more thing, as a little ~*Treat™*~. For people on fresh playthroughs, there are a lot of new, hidden things to find. Some things you'll only be able to find/understand on your second playthrough or beyond. Unless, of course, you use a guide on your first playthrough, which is just unfun so booooo if you do. smh Best way to view all these little new things to discover as.... Hm, inconsistencies. Yes, that'll do. Exciting, no? And I'm sure we're not the only ones excited about it. :) That's all I'll spill on the matter though, so hope you'll enjoy looking for all the little secrets when the update comes out! For now, see you next post!!!!!! We're so close!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi all! It's been well over a month since our last dev post and nearly two months since our last proper dev blog in regards to the dev game already??? i swear, time is an illusion and we're all being played for fools by the system. where the HECK did it all go Speaking of time though, Jan's got his hands full, so I'm taking over for this month's post to give you all a bit of an update on what's been going on with development! I'm sure you're all plenty curious since it's been a while since our last substantial update, so let's dive into it shall we? First off, screenshots! Some of these were shown on twitter, but I've included them in the case you missed them. Some are entire reworks, some are simple updates, some are... something else. On top of area updates, Jan's actually been working on some QOL updates in regards to cutscenes! An excerpt from one of Jan's Patreon posts: "Looking at the pages of events I wanted to work on, the amount of text... was kind of insane. I've cut down on text quite a bit, and I've made things snappier and more involved. Speaking of trimming text, I've also been working on a QOL I think a lot of people will enjoy. Starting from 13.5+, you'll be able to skip entire segments on repeat playthroughs. These segments are usually ones that have a pause from the player's story and give insight elsewhere. It's neat that you can play as Melia in the library and all, but the purpose of this section is to give exposition and push the story forward. But on repeat playthroughs, you've already seen this! You can just skip it. This goes for Lavender's "escape" segment and the Diamond and Pearl segments (And more!). And for those who don't particularly care for the action segments in Marianette's mansion, I'm planning on having those be skippable as well, just maybe not through the same way. Please note that if there are relationship gain/losses in these segments, you will lose out on them. Additionally, this is a QOL that will only affect new save files, as the condition of multiple playthroughs is decided during the intro." Next up are some extra previews of the new CG's I've been working on for the game! Two were previewed in the previous dev blog Jan posted and I've personally previewed two on twitter myself (they are included in here if you missed them!) so here's another small handful of previews. Now as some of you guys probably already are aware of I may be a little unhinged for doing this, but this is only a small handful of them-- the total will amount to roughly 30 new CG's to be used in-game, for both old and new parts of the story. If you want to see all of them, consider starting a new file to see them all in their proper context! or go through the game's graphics folder i guess once .5's out. but what's the fun in that? Next up, in the case people missed it, fan-favourite minor NPC's Piano lady and Truck guy finally got their official art as enough money was raised for charity back in December in order for them to get theirs! The images were posted on twitter & tumblr, but hadn't been posted on the dev blog yet, so here you go. As per usual, all related artwork can be found back in the official art thread if you want to find it back. Finally, we've got some music previews! Plural, because there's two. Both were composed by yours truly! No full loops this time around, just a few snippets- but enjoy them nonetheless :) Won't be telling where exactly they'll be used, but I'm sure you can figure it out from context clues! Maybe. That's all for now! We've still got some work left, but things are slowly but surely coming together. It's shaping up to be pretty exciting, and I hope people are still just as excited about the update as we are! We're also extremely ready to just be done with v13 and .5 as a whole and move on to v14, but we're not gonna rush anything or diminish quality just because we want it to be over and done with, so once again we're asking for everyone's patience for a little while longer. this update is CHUNKY, but it's worth it. thank u guys for bearing with us until next time! o7

Hello everyone, and a happy new year from everyone on the Rejuvenation team! We hope that 2023 will be a splendid year for everyone! 2022 was a wild ride for many of us, wasn't it? Lots of progress on the game-- introducing a couple of new characters, finally addressing some issues with the game on all fronts (technical, visual AND balance-wise), we've got a bunch of new team members who have been pulling some great weight over time, new music, new visuals, new quests, you name it! And while we weren't able to bring out V13.5 in 2022 like we initially hoped, sometimes life just gets in the way or things end up being more work than initially expected. And you know what? That's okay! Sure, things take longer for them to be done, but I do want to reiterate that this update is slated to be the last update that brings major overhauls to older areas to become their finalized versions. It takes time to create quality content, and as we only want to put the best experience for you guys on the table I hope people will remain supportive of the team this year too as we try to polish 13.5 to perfection! As a gift for everyone's support in the past year and to ring in the new year with a bang, Jan & I figured we could give some art as a gift! So here we go; some "new" character artwork. Specifically the interceptor forms for the protagonists, which is something people have been asking for quite a while. Please take a look at their official designs! Aevis (Bravery) Aevia (Tranquility) Axel (Chaos) Ariana (Happiness) Alain (Wrath) Aero (Strength) Ana (Mercy) The artwork for the interceptor forms have been a long time coming, and truth to be told I've already had them done for like uhhhhhhhh..................... literally almost a year now. hence why new was between quotation marks. they're from late january LOL..... It never quite felt like the right time to reveal them though, at least until Jan came up with the idea to show them off as a new year's gift. That being said, that's all there really is to show! As is with just about any other character art; icons, wallpapers and links to the full resolution versions of the artwork can be found in the official art thread! I hope everyone has a wonderful year and I look forward to sharing our work with all of you in 2023 as well! o7