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Hi! It's been quite some time since I've written a proper dev blog post here, huh? I can't even remember the last thing I said publicly, so I'll just regurgitate some information I've thrown around recently. Sorry if that's old news! Well, this version is a special version where nearly everything I show is a spoiler, so showing stuff has been really hard-- But I want people to know that development is going quite well! Here are the avg percentages for Paragon (Renegade has not been worked on yet.) Part 1: 90% Completed Part 2: 45% Completed Part 3: 90% Completed. So as you can see, a lot has happened in nearly a year since .5's release (Jesus christ, it's been that long?) I feel like I could've been farther along, but unfortunately I've hit some irl snags, as we all do. My childhood cat Jupiter, who was 16, passed away. That was rouugh. Then other personal things I won't get into really bogged me down... Fortunately, I can feel my productivity coming back bit by bit. Besides that sappy stuff, I do have SOME stuff to show you. Just a collection of screenshots I had on my twitter, and some things I had on patreon. But before that, here's a big one. Reldin Island got a glow up! There's a whole other section to this place, but I'm gonna keep that a secret for now :3. Various other stuff that don't matter lol: But yeah, that's pretty much it for now. Please know that even though updates will still be a bit scarce, I am doing my best to get this done ASAP. Conversely, I am also taking my itty bitty time with things because I want this version to be good lol. From what I've made, I think it will be. Very packed with content. Also did I say Gen 9 was being implemented for v14? if not then surprise ! I'll be back... in a month or two or something. idk. Anyways yaaaaaaa

Seems like my last post was done sometime in... July? What? Time goes by SO quickly. Anyway, I just wanted to crawl out my grave and actually show that yes, I'm doing science and I'm still alive. Before I continue, I did upload a bit of a preview back in November! You can view that here if you missed it: So, besides that, what's going on in the rejuv world? It's been a year! You said this time it wouldn't take as long! Well, I was wrong as usual. Life comes at you fast. To the people who thought the game would drop the february after v13.5 dropped... Uh, no. This game takes time and I will take my time. I still plan on being 60 and playing Pokemon and that's just a fact we're all going to have to live with. That being said, update! Where am I now? Well, Paragon is in its final stages! (Besides one big thing but that's something i need to work on over time, even during Renegade's development.) I'm in the final new area and I'm working on finishin up the story. One event takes me a day. Maybe more sometimes. I wanted Paragon to be done by the New Year, but I always forget that December is my suffering month (aka holidays), so that never gets done. And then I remember January is my annual I'm so fucking burned out from life month. So progress has been a bit slow now, too. But then February rolls around and I'm like hold on I'm a beast? Also, I know I'm going to be asked this. Q: "Will you release Paragon once it's finished, or will you release that when Renegade is finished?" A: I will not release Paragon once it's finished. Paragon and Renegade are meant to coexist together. Even if it means I hold onto a finished Paragon for a year, it is what I've decided. ty. And yes, I did say Renegade probably won't take as long, and that's PROBABLY still true but please don't hold that as a promise. Nothing is a promise. Except for the things I'm going to promise right now. Gearen Laboratory I didn't expect the lab changing to look more sleek was going to be such a contentious topic. Though, I am willing to give some context on the decision. Whether or not you like it is up to you. (Spoilers for v13 story. I can never remember the chapter number/plot correlation.) During the expo drop, it was revealed that Celine went to Reborn City to learn more about their league process and how it was done. Inspired by the way the league is run in that region, she chose to emulate that process and as such, the Gearen Lab (The PUBLIC league HQ) was meant to look more like the Grand Hall. But that in of itself isn't the main issue. People found problems with the way you get your starter. Calling it boring and less exciting than previous versions. I do agree. However, the intent was to streamline the first few moments so that you get your starter as fast as possible. And as of this moment, I'm still quite happy with that. There was another reason for this change, though. Gen 9 was coming out and I knew I wanted to include it. Which means more events taking up space in the mini biomes. tl:dr i was running out of space and expanding the biomes took a lot more technical work than expected and thus just defaulted to tables i could just perma extend. Regardless, I understand that the more personal way of obtaining your starter is important to some people. Especially those who like to create OC's. I hear you, and I understand you. Which is why I plan on creating two versions of this experience! Express Version: Is exactly how it is now in game. You go up to the table and adopt your gerbil. Standard Version: Amanda will take you downstairs into an enlarged biome where you can walk around and find your starter and pick it. Older rejuv versions did have this. But it was removed due to the maps being ugly lol. Now, this is not promised for v14. I would much rather work on new content than spend energy working on this rn. However! I am promising that this will come eventually. It may even come in v14 if I finish things up early! Or who knows, I may gain inspiration randomly during a testing period or whatever and knock it out in a day. These things happen. I have ADHD. It is what it is. Prologue Intro: Everyone knows the intro with lil Maria walking around her house and then somehow finds herself in some horror game! Well, the quality of the intro has been bugging me for several years now. When I take a break from a release, I usually do something fun to unwind and shake off the rust. This cycle, I finally went back and used my current skills to update the intro. Yes, with the Pangoro story still present, if not a bit changed. Old intro: New Intro: (These gifs/images are a quite a bit old as I've shown these off on my patreon like a year ago, but theyre still like 99% relevant minus some polish and detail.) There's also a few new secrets to be found in the intro, so you definitely want to keep an eye out for those :). And also no it is not necessary to play the entire damn game again just for the intro. It's neat! but not necessary. Uhhh, what else do I got to say? I guess I can dump some stuff I posted on my discord? There's not much this time around. but ye. Yeah, that was kind of a bad showcase, rip. Everything is very hush-hush. under wraps. CIA. FBI. Uhhh idk 9/11... never forgetti spaghetti whatever. idc. I do care, but also I'll leave you with one thing. A word to have you prepare a lil better. But. [Image ID: Image of a mysterious room with a Zygarde statue at the very back of it."] You better start collecting those cells.

Hey Guys! It's me, your friendly temporary lead postman delivering you the latest news regarding Desolation’s development. In this blog post… we’re back in business. (Insert “wooo” sound effect here) I’ll be going into a bit more details regarding what this means for us moving forward, alongside what we have been up to, a little teaser, and some more goodies! So let’s get cracking. Reigniting the Passion In the last development blog, I mentioned how we would be going on an “indefinite hiatus” until further notice as without Caz at the helm, development couldn’t continue in its current state. Since then, after a brief discussion with the man himself who at the time of writing this, is still absent from the team, we as a team will now be continuing development of the overall story until he returns. So what does this mean? When it comes down to developing Desolation, like with other story-heavy fangames, the lead dev will know the story like the back of their hand, whereas the team will have a good understanding of course, but not the full picture. This was one of the main reasons why we went on a hiatus as progressing with the game without a clear indication of the story would lead to something that wasn’t in line with the original vision. But after a brief conversation, myself and the rest of the Desolation Crew will be developing the story with our current knowledge. Don’t worry, we know how the main story will play out, and we are confident that we can deliver. With this in mind, even though we are “back”, development will be a bit on the slower side, so please bear with us! The creative heads are working in unison here at Deso HQ, putting our own thoughts and ideas into the game, so we look forward to sharing more details with you all soon enough! With that said, as mentioned in previous development blogs (a little reminder for those who forgot), you will begin your travels in EP7 exploring the mysteries of the Chryseum Canyon, located north of Fairbale Town, which is currently blocked off by some darn logs. You will encounter some familiar faces, as well as some new faces… Who are these faces? Is it Jarred making a return?? You’ll have to wait and find out! Chryseum Canyon has been something we as a team have been extremely excited to work on for a long time now, even way back during EP5 development. The different areas and landscapes you will be exploring throughout EP7 will be some of the most ambitious places we have worked on to date. Lots of time, effort and thought have and will be put into this area, and like Chef Quackington once said… “Quack. Quack!” (If you can somehow translate Psyduckian then congrats but he basically said “A storm is being cooked as we speak”). With the Canyon being the main focus of current development, what have some of the other members of the team been up to? Well moving onto this next section, Yumil has some details he wants to share with you all regarding some updates that have been made to the Battle Logger found in the Cellia Manor! Logging the Battles Dear Diary, Caz still hasn’t come back well after a year. Although I understand his circumstances, I find it hard to continue being invested in this project. Nevertheless, the team has resolved to make an earnest attempt at pulling it off ourselves, and I’m going to see it through. Today I’m going to talk about the Battle Simulator. You may remember that computer in the Cellia Manor that let you refight some past trainers. This thing? I also don’t blame you if you forgot about it. It’s okay. I think it’s fair to say the thing as it is currently is a neat novelty that is quickly forgotten because, well, there’s not much of a point. Trainers were fought on a neutral field so it’s rarely a good recreation of their battle. Not every major story trainer was available. In fact, not even all of the Gym Leaders were in there! Well, Tristan has an excuse. Sort of. I think? Reeve’s not in there, Rosetta’s not in there either... Though, we think Caz had a reason about that, but since he’s not around to ask him again, I’m officially going to run with the idea Rosetta simply didn’t want her challengers to lab her before officially fighting her. I’m sorry that y’all live in a world where I get more involved with writing. It's actually quite a bit of busywork for Posty to keep the Sim up to date. First is that it would ideally need to be updated every episode to include level-updated teams and all the new trainers. That’s annoying to do once, but doing it every episode for something that doesn’t currently have much of a point just eventually slides out of the priority list. The other reason is that it was also an eventing nightmare. Every iteration of the Battle Sim was a 500+ lines abomination of an RPGMaker event. Note the emphasis on the past tense. I took a hatchet to the whole thing and reworked the thing from the ground up to be far easier to work with, more interesting to use, and more rewarding. First up, the Battle Sim now automatically scales up the trainers to the current level cap. Bam, that’s a lot less teams for Posty to duplicate. (hi Posty here, thank god) Hi Rudolph, everyone say hello to an old friend now at the exact level cap Second, the Battle Sim now actually recreates a field fitting for the Trainer you’re fighting. The objective is to recreate the various boss fights of the game brought up to the current level. And lastly… the rewards. We’re gonna need to take a little detour for this. Some of you might know I wrote some code to make the NPCs able to comment on how your battle with them went. I, uh, I think this is technically advertised on the page for the game? Truth be told, I’m not super happy with how it got implemented in EP6. Felt very underbaked and surface level compared to all the things I wrote it to be able to do. I mean, I get it. This was all around beneath every other priority for EP6, which were something along the lines of, rework pre-EP5 content, make sure EP6 content is good, and, uh, make sure the migration to the new scripts hasn’t set the entire game on fire. Or frozen over the entire game. While still having Flash Fire as its ability. I’m getting side tracked. Still. One of the things that did take off quite a bit about the feature was the 6-0. The thing where you manage to beat a major trainer without having a single one of your Mons fainting, and while using no items from the bag. I didn’t exactly make the feature to be an unconventional challenge mode, but hey, might as well lean into it. We had plans in EP6 to have some rewards for managing to 6-0 the Gym Leaders, but we couldn’t figure out something good for it, so we just made a bunch of switches to keep track of your achievements and put it on the backburner. It's the good old dilemma of “We should probably give something neat enough to get some people interested in it, but it can’t be anything genuinely good either because it’d be missable content.” Enter This Guy What sweet deal do you have for us? This Guy’s taken up residence in the Cellia manor. His name is Luke and he’s going to be monitoring the data of the Battle Sim. For every trainer in there that you manage to 6-0, he will have a reward for you. And if you managed to 6-0 them back in the story? That’s okay. He knows. He’ll have your rewards waiting for you. The idea I want for those is to reward the players who put in the extra efforts with some cool shit early. We’ll probably make those rewards available in other places in the game later, but if you managed to 6-0 the final boss of EP5 back in the story, well, you deserve to go and do some crimes early. And if you didn’t, well, maybe your EP7 team can actually win more easily now? That’s cool by me. Well. There’s just a teeny tiny issue that I fucked up the way I register battle data in your saves and it basically compares the opponent’s fainted team against, uh, your current team… yeah Listen, this was the first thing I ever made for Ruby (The coding language, not our artist) and I didn’t know what a shallow copy was. Anyway, It’ll be fixed for fresh saves, and I’ve figured a workaround for EP6 saves. I hope this little thing will add some spice to the game. It’s an opportunity for us to give you more things without creeping up the scope of the game too much, to be a neat side-activity, and to encourage some of the challenges the community seems to enjoy. That’s all I got for you for today. I’ve got more things I hope to do, maybe I’ll get to talk about them again in another Dev Blog. I wanna try my hand at doing some bits of writing here and there, I hope y’all will like it if it comes to be. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I hope this is quite appealing for those who enjoy a bit of a challenge! Yumil has been working hard on adding some additional features to the game, despite being close to complete burnout with the project, so I do hope that you all look forward to and enjoy the content he is creating! I wanted to add a few things in regard to the Battle Sim. Firstly, when it comes down to certain trainers, I will be adjusting teams specifically for the Sim. What this means is like, do you really want to keep fighting Amelia on Forest Field? I don’t either. Some teams will be slightly altered compared to the story while others will be exactly as they were when you faced them. Secondly, the rewards. We don’t just plan on them being items that are either given a bit earlier, maybe you will receive some “trophies” that can be displayed? If we all learnt something from the Lockdown Days of playing Animal Crossing, we love having the ability to get optional decor for our islands. Rebuilding the Homes Over in the artist department here at Deso HQ, our artists have been getting back into the groove of development. A lot of the content that has been produced/in the process of being worked on is sadly spoiler territory which we may cover in a future post, but for now there are a few things I can share with you all. Recently, Ruby looked at some of the houses that the local residents on Amaria and thought “hmm, makeover time.” and she did just that! Below are a few things she has been working on, revamping and bringing new life into areas such as Redcliff Town and Addenfall Town! No, this does not mean door animations are making a return. (I'm not sorry) Even a certain Gym Leader got a brand new home makeover! She has also been working on a new area coming to EP7… Kanzen Temple. This is something we revealed in one of our development blogs last year, having major links and ties to the history of Chryseum Canyon, but we aren’t ready yet to showcase this to you, but maybe sometime down the line? You’ll have to keep an eye on our blogs to find out! Setting the Mood Story and gameplay aside, our musician man of many talents, Darius, has been working on some new tracks for EP7! Having him join us during EP6 has really elevated major scenes throughout the game and helped grasp different types of atmospheres to fully immerse the player in the world of Desolation. We thought that we would treat you all to a little teaser of a new track that’ll be played somewhere during EP7, you hopefully will get a feel and understanding of the sort of tension that you may experience as you continue the story. EP7 Teaser Snippet Fade.mp3 Yeah that's all you're getting, lucky you! You may be treated to more little snippets here and there, or even fully blown tracks, who knows? It depends on how generous I am feeling… Filing the Cabinet Before I conclude this post, I have one more thing to share with you all. We recently decided that we wanted to properly create some “official” artwork for our unique Megas and Forms, though our artists are not the biggest fans of drawing pocket monsters, so what do we do? Who do we call? No, not ghostbusters, god. We called upon a fellow artist who you might recognise in the community and commission their services, we’re talking about aGoodCabinet! Over the next few development blogs, I will adding a little spice by posting them one by one, in which they will be added to our Art Gallery down the line. For this post, meet our cute little meech but in their Mega form! Thanks again to aGoodCabinet for creating these for us! If you wish to see more of their work, please check them out below, his commissions are also currently open! Twitter Instagram Closing the Blog out Before I close this development blog out, there are a few things I wanted to note. Firstly, our Patreon page was nuked a couple months ago! We don’t know how this happened, might be due to inactivity, but for the time being it is down and we will currently not be putting it back up anytime soon. This is due to two main reasons, one being that it was run by Caz who is currently missing in action and the other is that, it was on pause for a while anyways due to lack of development, and until we are all back together, it will still be on pause until then. Apologies to those who may have been looking to support us through our Patreon, we will hopefully have it back up later on down the line. Secondly, despite us returning to development, Development Blogs will currently not be returning to a monthly format, we will look to post content when we have content ready to post. A lot of stuff we have been working on and will be working on is extremely spoiler heavy, so even if you don’t hear from us for a little bit, we are back to actively working on the game. I look forward to sharing more with you all soon enough! Until next time folks! Posty

Chryseum Canyon, one of the many attractions Arcanius and the whole of Ayrith has to offer. A famous landmark that serves as the main trade route for farmers and locals between Fairbale and Astraciel, it is a place that contains a lot of history and mysteries… Hey everyone! Postyman Pat here, once again to deliver the latest development news from the team here at Desolation Corp™. This one has been a long time coming, and we are excited to finally share one of the main areas you will be venturing through in Episode 7; Chryseum Canyon! As one of the areas we have been the most excited about working on since coming back to active development with Episode 5, a lot of time went into concepts and coming to a finalised design. From the layout to the choice of colours, the Canyon presents a sense of tranquillity. Once a river flowing all the way through that eroded the cliffs, now a bright and colourful forest path has grown in its place, with the remnants of the river still present in a stream that passes through the cliff sides instead. Those who look to export goods between the two towns make their way through a path littered with cherry blossoms, taking in the landscape surrounding them. With the locals from both Fairbale and Astraciel working together to maintain the trade route to ensure there is always a safe path to travel along, numerous repairs have been made to the main bridge over the years. On a long, tiring journey, it’s good to take a step back and take in the scenery you find yourself in. When the forest path is undergoing repairs, travellers will have to venture through one of the two mountain paths if they wish to make their way to Astraciel. With one path a little more dangerous and longer than the other, it’s important to take extra caution when proceeding through the mountain caves. The water currents from the stream are especially dangerous. Despite the dangers that may lurk taking one of these paths, the caves within the canyons are spectacles to behold! Filled to the brim with crystals and unique rocks, anyone looking for a hike will not be disappointed venturing through the cliff sides. As you progress through these mountain paths, you’ll notice a change in the landscape, the colours of the caves will reflect how far you have travelled, helping to be a clear indicator for those who begin to find themselves lost. One of these paths connects directly to Kanzen Cliffs, an area in which you will look to explore if you want to find and check out the famous Kanzen Temple! A well-known place of worship amongst the locals who make the trek to go and pay their respects. This is something we revealed in a previous development blog, if you haven’t checked it out yet then you can find out more here! Make sure to watch your step! Chryseum Canyon is a place of a lot of wonders and also hidden secrets, maybe there is more than meets the eye? You’ll have to explore and find out in Episode 7! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Well, how does it look? We’re incredibly happy to finally be able to showcase this to you all and we look forward to seeing you all eventually explore the vast terrain that Chryseum Canyon has to offer! Before I close out this blog, I just wanted to be transparent regarding development as a whole. We know that this development cycle as a whole has been… a lot slower than we would have ever imagined and hoped, a good amount of mapping has now been completed for Episode 7 but we are still a long way from being even remotely done. Which is why there hasn’t been any form of those “Percentage of Completion” updates from us this cycle thus far, because we do not want to get hopes up with the current state of things. But just know that we are still chugging along and have been making adjustments that have helped improve development for Desolation as a whole. We have a lot of exciting things in the works right now, and we can’t wait to slowly showcase that to you all. Until next time folks! Posty

Hi all! Surprised to see me here instead of The Postman™, huh? Well he’s slid this devblog over to me to talk about a certain something mentioned before. Besides that, Caz still isn’t around, but that’s alright. At least in the art department there isn’t anything to worry about since he almost always let me do whatever I thought looked nice LMAO But firstly, how’re you all doing? We’ve mentioned to the moon and back how we’ve been busy with this and that, but I recently graduated and got my Bachelors degree! As of posting this I still have a month left in my internship, but it’s pretty smooth sailing now lol. Besides life, I’ve actually been doing a ton of work for Deso on the side. And I mean, a ton. Unfortunately, most of which I can’t really show due to spoilers, but today, we’ll be talking about… Kanzen Temple Ya girl has started mapping. Be afraid. Jokes aside, in EP6 I was just starting to learn how to map properly. It was mostly indoor rooms and just some reskins of older tiles to get the hang of it. Kanzen Temple has been entirely my baby, as are a few other Large areas of EP7. To give a small progress update on my side of map things, for example, I finished the Kanzen Temple map, as well as Astraciel Town, another area you will be exploring in EP7! and I’m currently working on another bigger area that’s around half done~ That’s not even to mention all the non-map stuff that’s being worked on! There’s so much stuff done now that I’m starting to run out of things to do. help So don’t worry, progress is still being made! Dev blogs are kinda inconsistent lately due to the spoilery nature of everything right now, so we’re trying okie As long as I’m alive on this planet, Deso will continue until the end >:) But moving on, let’s actually show you something lmao I hope the trees didn’t spook you! The layout in the Kanzen Temple area is fairly straightforward hehe. The main entrance of the Temple is what greets you at the top of the mountain. Pretty scenic, huh? A courtyard! Though it’s looking mad empty right now since we haven’t put NPC’s down yet ^^; An exit leading to further up. Kanzen Temple is a major tourist destination in Arcanius, so it’s a bit more than just a Temple now. And here’s one of the indoor areas. This isn’t the Temple, but one of the buildings surrounding the area. Currently devoid of any life besides one of our protagonists I had a lot of fun working on this area! It’s a place with a Temple (woah shocker), so I tried to keep the vibes serene and breezy. I also kept the palette warm and comfortable with the soft pastels, so I hope you enjoy exploring the area! It was reference image hell while working on this tho, but what’s an artist without references and hell haha. Even though I’ve been doing a lot of mapping lately, I’m still at baby level lol. There’s still some minor adjustments I’ll make to the maps later on down the line, but you get the jist of it! Whenever EP7 comes out, I hope you enjoy all the new things I and the team have worked on! <3 Since I’m feeling particularly Silly today, I’ll end my segment off with the silhouette of a new character you’ll meet in EP7~ Filing the Cabinet: Season 2 If you’ve read the past dev blog, you probably already know what this means. A while ago we commissioned some art of our custom megas for Desolation (because i’m not a fan of drawing pokémon. what am I doing here. anyway,) aGoodCabinet has nailed the Sugimori style for his pokémon art and we were familiar with him being in the fangame spaces, so it was a no brainer. He was open to it, too! So here’s more official art of one of our custom megas! Thanks to aGoodCabinet for taking on these commissions for us! Speaking of his comms, they’re still open, so feel free to check out his socials! Twitter Instagram Ko-fi ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Now onto our final segment for today! We take a turn to go from Kanzen Temple alllll the way down to Keneph Beach, where our musician is taking a little break and breaking out the tunes for the area as well! He also has some words about it~ Descend from the Mountain Hey Guys! Darius here, I had a lot of fun writing this theme! Keneph Beach is a super relaxing location in Deso where every player gets to see its transformation from the wastelands of the opening scenes to the new Resort! This theme took a lot of back and forth with the team before we got it sounding the way we like, and it takes a lot from Jazz harmony especially, surprisingly, gospel choir. Hope you enjoy! Kenneph_Beach_Snippit.mp3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ That sure does sound like a lovely stroll down the beach, doesn’t it? Makes me want to go outside and touch some grass………………..…… moving on! Darius has been going crazy lately with all the themes he’s churning out for us! Looking forward to what you all think of the custom soundtracks he’s made for EP7! Since they’re… haha… music to my ears >:) Idk what to call this closing segment so it’ll be called this instead of anything good As said in our previous development blog, we mentioned our Patreon being down. We are looking into bringing it back soon enough, so keep an eye out for an announcement regarding that. It’s been a tricky situation, especially without the man himself… We’ve had occasional contact with him here and there so I hope… I hope!!!!!! he’ll come back to continue working on this with us eventually! I miss him :( But we have to make do with whatever situation we’ve been dealt. Thanks for sticking around with us so far! Ruby

~ Excerpts from Patreon ~ It’s that time of the month again, hey everyone! Posty here once again to deliver you your monthly updates regarding all things Desolation! So let’s get into it shall we? Before I jump into the main focus of this blog, if you haven’t had the chance to check it out yet, last month we made a detailed development blog regarding Chryseum Canyon! You can find that here. The amount of engagement and reactions we received on that blog post and recently in general has been amazing to see, so thank you all! It really helps us to weigh up how you, the players, feel about the work we are producing, and keeps us motivated to continue developing Desolation. As I mentioned at the end of our previous blog, development as a whole has been improving a lot, given that I have a little bit more free time as of right now, I’ve been able to dedicate a lot more time to the project as a whole, so Episode 7 is progressing at a better pace than it was a couple months back. With that said, we will hopefully be able to share a bit more than just new areas. It might mean that future blogs will be a bit shorter, but we will cross that bridge when we get to it. But firstly, how about a new location reveal? (I’m such a joker). Today’s development blog will be highlighting the town that’s north of Chryseum Canyon; Astraciel! Arcanius is truly an island with many wonders, from the farming town that’s known as Fairbale, to a vibrant remote town, home to mushrooms that grow to the size of trees, Astraciel is a must visit! If… you don’t mind mushrooms that is. It appears that there is a Gym situated in this town as well? During your visit to Astraciel, you will meet a brand new character coming to Episode 7, but who are they? Well you might have heard of them already during your adventures. However, we will save the reveal for another time, but feel free to take your guesses (we will not confirm nor deny…). --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like I mentioned at the start, the upcoming blog posts will be highlighting other aspects of development that are not just new locations coming to Episode 7. Recently over on our Patreon, we hosted our first development stream in a good while, which gave our Patrons an exclusive first look into a questline that I was working on before I took over as temporary lead of the project. Spoiler alert! This will be the focus of next month’s development blog. In light of this, I have been thinking about hosting a public development stream sometime near the end of the year. If this is something people would be interested in then let us know, and we can then look to decide on a time and date! And with that, I bid you adieu. Posty

HEY Though it's for something very different this time around! For people who have browsed the Rejuvenation Club before, they might be aware of a Q&A thread we did back in 2019, and a tiny bit more recently there was a Q&A stream that Jan and I hosted after V13's initial release in 2021. We haven't done one in serious capacity since then (if you don't count the impromptu one Jan did on his tumblr a couple of months ago), so why not bring it back? We're not going to be able to post many updates about the game itself, but we still don't want to have complete radio silence on our end, so we're doing a Q&A with the entire team again! To give a quick rundown of the team so you know who could potentially answer specific questions: Writing: Jan (also does tilesets and overworld sprites) Art: Crim, Nym, Soulja, Dallas, Winter, Zumi (also involved with writing and music) Programming: Haru, Falirion, Sardines, Cass Balancing: Alex, Azery (also does some programming) QA: Ramiru, Dream, IceCreamSandWitch, Autumn (also does some of the move animations) I can't guarantee all of us are available or willing to answer, but I know at least some members of the team will be happy to pop in and reply. And it could be about just anything! It could be about the story, but also about the game's development as a whole if you're curious. Or just about how the devs have been experiencing Rejuvenation from a developer's point of view! The world of questions is your oyster and you can do whatever with it... Well, as long as you stick to the rules. Please stay courteous with the questions! Crude questions in regards to us or the characters of the game (i.e. "can you kill off this character bc they suck", stuff like that) will be ignored and/or removed. We will not give answers to questions that are obviously veering into spoiler territory for future content. For your own sakes as to not drive yourself nuts over theories, please do not treat our unwillingness to answer certain questions as confirmation/de-confirmation either. It'll do nothing but cause confusion LMAO Please don't ask about adding romance options for the MC. The answer is still no— it's even been mentioned in the old 2019 Q&A post that they won't be added and that has not changed. There's a whole list of reasons (narratively, technical and personal) for this decision, but the tl;dr is that it's just plain not worth it. We're asking in the nicest way possible to please respect our decision on the matter and to not press it any further, we will ignore/remove your question if you do. (That's not to say we disapprove of any ships entirely! We simply instead encourage you to dabble in making fan content of your favorite ships yourselves through writing, art or other means. Just don't bother us to indulge you on the matter in official capacity, that's all.) We'll keep the Q&A running for a week and will be answering questions as the week progresses before closing it off. If you've read all of that and agree to be nice, then fire away! Have fun! o7

Hello there! Posty here. Today’s post will be on the shorter side of things but still quite important as we have an announcement and some progress to share. So let’s just get straight to the main point. The Patreon is Back! That’s right, after some internal discussions with the development team, we have decided to officially bring back the Patreon. We are extremely grateful for all the support you all have given us, and if you wish to support us on Patreon, then now you can! again. Some of you would have already known this as it's been back for about 3 weeks now, but nothing was mentioned completely publicly outside of the Reborn Server. With that said, there are a few things I would like to note. Firstly, when Caz officially comes back to active development, then the Patreon will most likely look to move back to him to host, that is if he wants to continue it on his end. Currently, Darius is kind enough to host it for us (Thanks Darius!), so this is a bridge we will cross once we get there. We ended up having to make a brand new one since the previous one is currently unpublished on the site. Secondly, until Caz does come back, Crown Tier will not be available for purchase. This is just mainly due to the additional work we are taking on while he is away, and we will not be able to properly commit to the main perks of that tier until we are a full team again. We hope to bring this back in the future though so keep an eye out for that announcement! And finally, even though Darius will be hosting it, unless specified I will be the one mainly writing up the posts, similar to these development blogs, so if you want to see the sort of shenanigans we get up to, then check out our Patreon below! There will be exclusive content that is only shared there, in which will be cut from our development blogs, including this one! Patreon Okay, announcement done! Now let's talk about progress. ~ Excerpts from Patreon ~ The Canyon As mentioned in several development blogs, in EP7 you will be heading north of Fairbale towards the Chryseum Canyon. This is an area in which Caz was going to be taking on while I focused on Keneph Resort, but as you can imagine, these plans have changed. This has now become my main focus point for development while working on other things in the background (if you’ve seen the sidebar, then you could tell I’ve been losing it a bit). As something we as a team have been really excited about developing, the overall progress on it has been slower than I would have liked. Why is this? A couple of reasons really, one being job hunting! As many of you are aware, I have been trying to secure full-time employment for a long time now, interviews here and there but no major breakthroughs. For those who don’t really know me outside of Deso, I do a lot of creative stuff as a whole, from Photography, Social Media and Digital Marketing, and getting into that industry is… hell. So a lot of my focus most days is on getting a bloody job. Another reason is as a creative, I work on a few other projects as well, so as you can imagine, trying to juggle and balance multiple projects, and my personal life, can be a bit much. … So… I wrote this for Patreon two weeks ago, and in those two weeks I finally managed to land a job! Hilarious how life works sometimes. Now I can stress less on that and get organised into a routine to get cracking more with Deso. And with that said, the next blog post will be a big update regarding the Canyon. That is a promise. On the brighter side, the rest of the team has really been hard at work discussing and working on other elements of the game, some you have already seen in the previous development blogs. One of those things… is something that we have shared on our Patreon. A new Mega Evolution coming to EP7! We mentioned about a new Mega on a previous development blog, but didn't specify what it is... And that is something that will stay exclusive for Patreon eyes only for the time being. We may look to reveal this later publicly in a future development blog... as a treat. So keep an eye out! Although we can not publicly share this with you at this current time, we can instead share with you this! The Music Corner As we have been doing with a lot of our blogs lately, we have another snippet of a track Darius has been whipping up for EP7, our soundtrack is only getting better and better, check this out! Kanzen_Temple_2.mp3 Working with Darius over the last few years has really helped elevate the sound design for Desolation to a whole new level. Like with EP6, EP7 will continue to add to our original soundtrack, we have a lot in the works in the music department, and it's been fun to be able to share little extracts with you all! Filing the Cabinet: Season 3? Another post, another official art reveal! Once again, thank you to aGoodCabinet for working on these. As normal, here are his links, so please do go check them out! Twitter Instagram Ko-fi ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cheers for sticking with us during this quite difficult period as a whole, things are starting to be a lot more smooth sailing now moving forward. And with the Patreon now up and running, expect monthly blogs to return! I look forward to sharing more with you all next month! Posty

~ Excerpts from Patreon ~ Happy Year of the Snake folks! Posty here with your monthly installment of “what has the development team been cooking?” And we have been, well, cooking in certain departments to say the least. As I have now taken over as lead for the project, I am the one who is now focusing on tackling the majority of the EP7 eventing. What this means is that some of the areas and questlines that I would have been looking to work on this Episode, are now being delegated to other members on the Deso team to work on. With that said, the main part of this blog will be showcasing some of their work with you all, so let's jump into it shall we? I will not be going fully into details about what this area is and where you can find it (you will have to play EP7 to find out…), but it will be unlockable at some point as you continue your adventures through Ayrith. You are more than welcome to take a guess in the comments down below, but we will not be revealing any information at all (or well, at least for the time being), anyways take a look! Where have we seen crystals like that before A giant rock of crystals? Maybe there’s a puzzle instore for you here? So a quick note, this area has not been finalised and things will be updated as we continue to progress with development (the boulders may be placeholders… or are they? Yes they are placeholders), but this is just a sneak peek of a new area that is coming with EP7, so it’s best to get exploring when it releases! Before I close out this month’s post, our music men have been at it again and have provided you all with a little teaser for another new original track coming with the next update, check it out below! Axel's Theme Patreon Snippit.wav Yes, this is quite a shorter post than normal, the main reason for that is a lot of the content we have been working on lately is quite spoiler heavy, you can probably guess why. We aren’t ready to begin showing off some of the content we have been working on, but down the line you can expect that to be revealed, so stay tuned on that front. Next month’s blog post will be a little bit of fun that I’ve been working on as a little break from EP7 content (and from a recent Patreon Stream), all I will say as a hint is… yeehaw. And with that, I bid you adieu, hope you all have a wonderful year and… don’t get bitten by any snakes, hiss. Posty

God, how is it November already… Hey everyone! Hope you all are keeping warm during these colder months. Today’s blog post will go over some Sidequest content I have been working on during some Development Streams we have been doing over on our Patreon Discord! But before I go over that, I have a couple of announcements to make. Firstly, If you saw our previous dev blog, then you would know that we have been looking to recruit some new members to the team. We had a lot of interest, so thank you to everyone who showed interest, shared the post around and applied! Myself and the rest of the team truly appreciate it. On that note… Please give a warm welcome to our new Team Members! @Dred Twitter @IronicOmens They don't have social media... @Rust_ Twitter Dred and Omens you may recognise from their work on the Overseers Mod for Rejuvenation (which you can find here!), they also have been working on Project Vanguard (you may have already seen some of Omens’ Spritework for Vanguard on Twitter!). They will be joining us in the Mapping and Artwork department, and what they have been cooking up so far has been really exciting to see, and I can’t wait to showcase some of their work to you all soon. Rust on the other hand will be joining us in the Music department. He has expertise in compositions working on projects such as Azure and Garticmon. Working already on tracks alongside Darius in Azure, we are really excited to see what this duo will be able to cook up for our soundtrack for EP7 and future versions, so look forward to some new banger tracks! If I get their permission, I may be able to give you all another little teaser for a track in a future development blog, but we will have to wait and see. Once again, thank you to all that applied, we were impressed with the quality of work people within the community had to offer and ultimately, we were really overjoyed with the interest people have for the project! Moving on, for the second announcement! So if you remember from the previous development blog, I mentioned potentially about hosting a dev stream if there was interest. So with that said, I am happy to announce that we will be looking to host a Public Development Stream on Saturday 7th December at 8:30pm GMT! I will be looking to go live on my Twitch channel, which you can find here below! https://www.twitch.tv/postyhd For a little bit of insight, during this Stream, I will be doing some mapping on a new area coming to EP7, Astraciel Wildwood! So come along and hang out, myself and a bunch of the other developers will be there to chat and have a good time! Also we can do a little Q&A if people have some questions. We are looking forward to it! That’s about it for the announcements, time to move onto the main topic of the dev blog, Keneph Resort! ~ Excerpts from Patreon ~ Ah... Keneph Resort, it’s been a while… You may remember this area being mentioned previously, since we’ve made a few dev blogs about it now, but for a quick rundown if you have forgotten, Keneph Resort was going to be my main focus for EP7 when we begun this development cycle, however due to unforeseen circumstances and becoming temp lead of the project, I decided to put this on the backburner to focus on other aspects of development. This is why there hasn’t been many updates regarding this area from me… until now! I’ve already gone over Keneph Resort in previous dev blogs and hinted at some things which will be coming to the area, but it’s been a good while since then so I think I can mention a couple things I have planned. One thing that Desolation has lacked has been… Move Tutors, guess where they will be going? Might be worth going back to invest into the Resort now during EP7. The resort will also act as a hub for trainers across Ayrith to come down and spend some time to unwind, maybe you will see familiar faces turn up? Maybe even itching for a fight, but there’s a rule about keeping shut about fights. And maybe even some new faces. So with construction beginning in EP7, how do you play a role in the development of the Resort? The construction team is a little bit behind due to the delay of some shipments, you can see where I'm going with this. One part of the quest requires you to head down to Cellia North to try and come to a deal on the materials needed for Keneph Resort, trying to potentially haggle the additional funds needed for one of the shipments. And when I say I was having fun writing this quest… I was having fun Another part of the quest will see you heading down to Sunshell to check up on another shipment of Sandstone. Which you may need to help out the Miners down near Fairbale to gather the remaining materials needed. It’s safe to say you will be working hard to get this Resort up and running! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Before I close out this blog, I will leave you all with one last thing. Our new member Omens has already been hard at work when it comes to graphics and sprite work, and well, I will just drop this here and not elaborate. That wraps up for this month, hope to see you at the Development Stream on the 7th of December! Posty

~ Excerpts from Patreon ~ Yeehaw partners! It’s your local cowboy Posty here with your monthly installment of Desolation development update . Okay you can see the theme of this post, but I will get into that momentarily, first a little life update on my side. Firstly, I have started a new job recently (we don’t talk about what happened to the last one)! If you don’t know, I’ve been really diving into content creation and digital marketing, and that is basically my job lol. It’s been going really well so far and I find myself in a better environment than I was with my previous position. On top of that with this job set up, I have more time to dedicate to Desolation (mainly since I’m not travelling an hour there and back 5 days a week… I’m working 3 days hybrid, happy days) With that said, I’ve been focusing on my job and had other bits to do outside of development, so the last month has been just taking time to adjust from having all the free time in the world, to working a nice little 9-5. Also, I’ve started to dive into other forms of content creation as well, involving TCGs (yes I like shiny cardboard), I started an Instagram for my content so if you wish to see what I’m getting up to outside of Deso, you can check it out here! Anyways, enough about all that side of things, let's get to some Deso content shall we? So today’s post is focused around a little gaff that has spawned outta the blue. We streamed mapping this new place on a recent Patreon Stream, but for more context… Fairbale has gotten a new attraction that the locals can go to spend some time to unwind after a long day of farming, or being run outta town by the Black Foxes. An interesting sign, what’s this place called? Ah, there we go Welcome to Drifblim’s Drinkery! A nice saloon that the locals can swing by, grab a drink and take the time to relax, it’s a hard life being a farmer… or a cowboy… yeehaw. So for a little bit of backstory as to why all of a sudden Fairbale has gained a saloon, uh, yeah. Darius felt like making a track that utilised Drifblim’s cry, I told him to do it, we initially thought about this for another area, but then I said “fudge it we ball, I’m adding a saloon to Fairbale”, so yeah. These things tend to happen on the Desolation team. I have many silly ideas (or others give me silly ideas) and I make them happen… I was given too much power when I was handed over the reins for leading the project. Moving on! The saloon has been closed due to the recent Black Fox attack that took place in Fairbale, but after the cleanup crew got to work, it has now reopened and will be available from the beginning of EP7, but that begs the question, what is so special about this place? There will be a sidequest, wow more sidequests! But more importantly, you will be able to buy a few drinks here. These drinks may come with some special effects, but we will reveal that in a later update. But these effects are unique to the Drinkery, so make sure to check it out! And that’s all I have for you for this monthly instalment of yeehawsolation, I mean Desolation. Things are progressing smoothly and I’ve been getting myself into a new rhythm balancing my new job, content creation and Desolation, and I’m really excited for how things are looking! I hope that you continue to join us on this ride of the EP7 train, coming to you… at some point eventually! But since I only really showed off the Drinkery, I guess I should give you all one more little teaser as a treat, and yes this one is an EP7 story spoiler… More to come in the upcoming months, so stay tuned! Anyways, thanks for reading and I will see you next month. Take care folks! Posty

Twas’ the weekend before Christmas, when all through the woods, not a soul was chirping, not even a mushroom… wait no that’s not how it goes. Happy Holidays folks! Posty here with your monthly dose regarding all things Desolation, so what has happened since last time? First things first, thank you to everyone who swung by to watch the Public Development Stream! It was a lot of fun interacting with a bunch of you, and I hope you all enjoyed it as well. For those who missed out, the VOD for the stream is up on my twitch channel which you can find here! For the stream, I was mapping an area that is found just shy of Astraciel Town, Astraciel Wildwood! So how is it looking? Well, take a look for yourselves. If you’re a fan of pretty colours, and mushrooms, then this is the place to be. Astraciel Wildwood will not be fully unlocked in EP7, however you can still spend some time here exploring and just, vibe y'know? I am looking to stream more again in the New Year (shameless twitch plug), which will mainly not be Deso related, but feel free to pop by and say hi if you’re interested! Would be a good space to answer any questions you all have… (unless I’m in the middle of a Dota match, then you may have to wait until after that’s finished). Secondly, it’s been about a month since we introduced our new team members into the fray, and development as a whole has definitely picked up a good amount! Progress is being made and with some new creative heads at the table, I am happy with how things are going, but what does that mean moving forward? Let’s have a quick little end of Year Q&A shall we. Will you do more Public Development Streams in the future? I would absolutely love to! A lot of the stuff we are currently working on is extreme spoiler territory, so I will need to have a think and look into what we could do, but this will be quite a bit down the line. How is development going for Desolation? Considering how the first half of the year went, the second half has been far more productive as we sat down and discussed how we wanted to progress with the story. When you’re creating your own story, it’s very easy to decide how you want to go about specific elements that lead into a final outcome, but when you’re taking someone else’s story in which you don’t have every single detail to go off, it can be a lot more challenging. This is a hurdle that we as a team have been actively discussing and getting over, and we are hopeful that the end product will showcase that hard work to its fullest. When will EP7 release? As it is coming up to nearly 2 years (how) since we released EP6, if our circumstances were not as they are right now then we would have hoped EP7 to already be in your hands. But as we went on a hiatus due to Caz’ absence and then spending a good amount of time getting back into the groove of development, EP7 release is still a good bit into the future. As of right now, I do not wish to get people’s hopes up and give an estimated time when it will drop. I would love to get it out sometime near the end of next year, but for the time being, we are working hard and it will come when it’s ready! What is a fun fact you can share with us? Omens loves birds. … I wanted to end off this development blog with just an overall thank you to the community for the massive amount of support this year. Our current situation has not been ideal in the slightest, and there have been points throughout the year that I have been frustrated at how things were and feeling unable to do much about it. But the amount of love and support people have given us towards Desolation is a consistent reminder about why myself and the rest of the team are developing the game to begin with. So again, thank you for sticking with us and being patient, we have big things in the pipeline and I can’t wait to showcase more next year. I hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas and are able to spend time with those important to you during the holiday season. And a Happy New Year, from us here on the Desolation Team! And with that, I will see you all next time, have a good one. Posty

i had a joke for the title and forgot it because i already wrote this once hey majors. turn on your lo-fi and kick back cuz we got another coding post after a while. saves yeah so saves were brutal. i actually changed these a while ago but we kinda never spoke about it? those file sizes were awful. especially once we figured out we were saving a lot of map data to the save. like. too much that includes the current map, any neighboring maps, and connected maps, the last like 2 maps you were on, and a bunch of other nonsense. i took that out and we got the nicer numbers you see: ain't that neat. DOH. data object hash. doh. the new pbs files. last time you heard about these they were very in progress. the astute among you might notice rejuv and deso had these. the even more astute of you will realize that the community release has even more changes the even mostest astute of you will realize i'm not cass. hi. different code sorceress here. sup. anyway. we've cleaned up a lot things here and there with the doh files. and i made a lot more changes to the mon doh. you're welcome modders. i'm to blame there but you'll come around when you see them: megas are now form specific. no more hard coded them in the mega code. also. evolutions also now look cleaner. and function better. now they're explained! because i really hated long arrays that don't really explain anything. and also forms. while this is rejuv code, you can now like. add form evolutions. real easily. randomizer yeaaah!! that's the thing i do! so if you read the patch notes you'll see a lot has changed. i did the thing again where i rewrote it from scratch haha ha. i'm not really gonna talk about those changes. i'm gonna talk about the stuff that i have planned and some changes i really like there was this thing where the randomizer didn't work a lot. and couldn't be tested reliably. so i changed it. this is a really cool thing. it lets me read info from your save file, load up the random class for your save, and regenerate your entire data files, using a settings seed if this sounds familiar that's because the regular ol' randomizer for the main games does a similar system. pretty hot right? it gets better. you know that whole random thing. how it changes things. you can read those changes now. that's what i'm talking about. ain't that cool. neat. quirky, or even cool. one last thing fun tool for devs color your console output. very nice. very cool. yeah. that's it for this wednesday. p.s. we did not fire her

Disclaimer: You can consider the initiative still open to new applications even if you’re reading this a long time after posting. This is most likely the last blog post before the 19.5 community release. But in a way it might be the most important one for the future of the game. Since I started working on Reborn I took the initiative on several occasions to put together the new team, set up some workflows and good practices. This time I’m going a step further because this initiative isn’t targeting just the team but the community as well. Let’s see how this goes. Okay, here is a little confession. I’m a big fan of open-source software and have a lot of personal experience with both contributing to and maintaining open-source projects. When I look at this community with 3 different games sharing the same engine and how many mods the community made for these games I can’t help but think that the games could be even better if we involve the community and modders more actively. So today I’m introducing an experiment I proposed to Ame and the team and which we decided to try. No, we aren’t fully going open-source but it’s somewhat close to it. The idea is that we can give the more experienced community members and modders an opportunity to improve the game directly. You can help to fix some annoying bugs, make changes in the base game to make modding easier, and if the dev team likes your idea you can even contribute a new feature. We have a private Discord server for this purpose. The way to get in is to apply by filling our form. The development team will review your applications and decide who to invite. We decided against having the Discord server public in order to keep the discussions productive and avoid having too many random people discussing things without actually being there to contribute themselves. How strict we’ll be when selecting who to invite depends a lot on how many applications we’ll get. But there is no need to be shy to send one! It is also alright to send a new application later if your first was denied and your situation changed since then in some relevant way - for instance you learned new skills, started working on a new mod, joined a team which has other members already part of the initiative and so on. We can reconsider. Next, we have private GitHub repositories for the game and the scripts. Git is a version control system - if you’re not familiar with it, here is a nice introduction video. You don’t necessarily need to have previous Git experience to contribute. You will only need the basics mentioned in the video and a bit about submodules which we will explain. We can help you learn more if it becomes relevant. Our motivation is to invite the authors of the large mods who often need to make many changes to the scripts and tend to add new features or fix bugs that should preferably be made in the base game instead. This is also intended to be the place where we give you some support to update your mods to the new engine and give you tips on how to maintain the mods afterwards in order to make future updates easier. And some good practices to have your mod compatible with online features and such. Challenge runners who often find or hear about a bug and aren’t shy to dig into the code to fix it are also very welcome. This is how Stardust started after all! But the initiative is by no means limited to these cases. If you just want to try and help make the game better, you can. Some examples: We want to make modding easy and who would know better what’s needed than the modders, right? The engine should have Gen 9 battle mechanics implemented for usage by mods even if not by Reborn base game. Rejuvenation or Desolation might also want to add Gen 9 in a future release. Gen 8 dynamic speed mechanic. We still don’t have it implemented in the engine even though Rejuvenation and Desolation are using Gen 8. Reborn doesn’t have a quest log like Rejuv and Deso. But if the community implements one it could become part of the game. Text-to-speech support for blind players doesn’t work for all game screens and features yet. It would really help them to have the rest implemented. We also have other ideas on how to improve their experience. Contributing to graphics and other assets. We could use a few spriters to help out with some work. For instance we’d like to update the overworld player sprites and will need some help to create all the variants (running, bike, surf, mine cart, fishing, riding). Fixing bugs discovered by yourself, the devs or the community. Your own idea which you think might be good for the base game! Even if the feature may not be suitable for all players we might still accept it as a password. And last but certainly not least, this is also a good opportunity for those who would like to join our team as actual developers. If we’re happy with your contributions, it’s a real possibility. Of course not every suggested change will actually appear in the main game. Our team will discuss the ideas with you, review the changes and decide if both the idea and the actual implementation are something we want to include. Application form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfwtMIEZTDqEEdBDHTELuoSawaO2tKPOAP3HAgamS52XgG97w/viewform FAQ: > How demanding is the role? How much time do you expect the applicants to dedicate to this project? You're not applying to become a dev here. There are no big expectations, we do understand ppl are busy and modders already dedicate lot of time to their mods. Occasional contribution is enough. It would be nice to have some regular contributors as well but it doesn't need to be everyone.

Hi everyone, today we have a mix of improvements. Most of them come from Lucent but there are some bits from the rest of us too. But let’s start with what Lucent prepared for you! Hey y’all! I’m Lucent (formerly Luke Duke, but feel free to call me whatever you’d like). I was introduced to this game shortly after starting college. A friend was showing me Reborn’s latest gym battle (Episode 17 at the time) on his laptop. It was a double battle that took place in an underwater arena! Needless to say, this game grew on me in an instant and it means a great deal to me today. I was grateful to recently find an opportunity to help contribute to the next update. This post will showcase some of my contributions that I find worth sharing today, as well as some very important features stardust and enu have been hard at work on. Online Play The Online Play experience has been touched up. There were internal refactors to some data structures that warranted updates to the online scripts, and once online functionality was restored, more work was needed to fix some issues that trainers reported over time. I can’t even begin to give enough credit to enu for handling the work for setting up the server environment for development, deployment, and automation. Lots of these improvements aren’t too flashy, but here’s a few to take a peek at. The server has undergone some security improvements. You will need to reregister your account for online play when the update releases. All online battling and trading will attempt to connect you to another trainer with a matching game configuration. For example, if you decide to wonder trade while using a mod with an expanded dex, the server will handle it and set you up to trade with a trainer using the same mod. There are checks to help make sure trades stay legal for the safety of the recipient. Online battle handling has been improved, fixing many graphical and sync issues. The game client no longer accepts battle requests while waiting for a trade, and vice versa. The goals of these improvements are to improve online stability and to allow all future versions of Reborn to safely hop online without any worries about incompatibilities. I hope that these improvements will properly accommodate the already-existing online player base and invite even more to join in on the fun! Battle Inspect Many of you reading this post have likely played Rejuvenation. It has a battle feature that I really appreciate: Inspect! You select a battler and view more detailed information about them! Shoutouts to DemICE for creating this awesome feature. Inspecting is useful when attempting to track everything going on in a battle. How many turns of rain and tailwind are left? Did that Hawlucha activate Unburden? What field is under the one we’re fighting on? Now all of this information will be at your fingertips while playing Reborn. We’ve also changed the control scheme for the inspect feature, utilizing the Q and W keys (that’s L1 and R1 on controller) instead of pressing the S key (Triangle/Y) to pull up the selector. Please give us feedback on this after trying it out. We want to make this feature feel the best it can. (enu’s note: The idea behind using Q / W is to skip the selection steps and get to inspection of any battler with a maximum of two keypresses instead of up to four as Reju has it.) …Have you noticed the button above the text box yet? Field Notes in Battle Here’s something I’m really excited to show off. You will now be able to open up the Field App during battle! Trainers can press the S key to open their app and read notes on the active field if the corresponding readout has been collected. Make sure to find all of the field notes or use the “fieldapp” password to unlock them all. This feature also works with the PULSE Dex, letting you press the D key (Right Stick) to view notes about any foe PULSE machine inhabitants. These features are also programmed with page navigation in case more than one field is in play. That’s all I’ll share for today, but rest assured there’s plenty more to be excited for. I sincerely hope you all enjoy these new features. I’m personally going to love using the inspect feature alongside in-game field notes for my next run of the game. patch directory Hi, stardust here! If you’ve ever modded Reborn before, you’re probably familiar with the old way to install mods: either having an entirely separate copy of the game with the mod (common for bigger mods) or overwriting the game files with the assets/code/data you wanted to change. Script modifications could alternatively go in a Mods folder in the Data folder to allow modders to only work with the functions they needed to modify, but nothing else got that special treatment. This is not the most convenient thing, with one particular issue being that it’s really hard to get rid of any mod that’s not a script mod: either you had the foresight to keep the original files that you ended up overwriting, or you have to reinstall the entire game. Also, modded files might get overwritten when you update the game (which is particularly relevant now that the game is actually updating again). As of v19.5, however, this won’t be the case, because mods now have their own “patch” folder where they can override the base game assets without you actually needing to mess with the main game files! This isn’t technically a new feature we added: mkxp (the engine Reborn runs on) and Joiplay already have this functionality via a patch folder, and it only took a few modifications to our own code to get it working. (As the name might suggest, it was originally meant for dev-released patches, but the in-built updater takes care of that for us. Unfortunately, we can’t change the folder name on Joiplay.) This only works for assets but not scripts. Script mods still work as they used to, except that we moved the directory for mod scripts from Data/Mods to patch/Mods. There will be a text file with more detailed instructions in the game folder when the update is released, but the basic idea is that the files you want to modify/add go in the patch folder, following the same subfolder structure as the base game. Shortcut keys Enu again! I want to share a small improvement I implemented. You remember how I mentioned game controls improvements in one of the previous blog posts? Well this is a little follow-up to that. I implemented an improvement to Party screen and Storage. You can now use keys to quickly perform the most common actions and not go through the menu all the time. You can now use A for the Move / Switch action, S for Item action and D for Summary. Additionally in the PC Storage you can use Q to add/remove a mon from Multi-move selection and W to Store / Withdraw. That’s all for today. We have one more important announcement to make before the release, mainly for the modding community. Stay tuned!

The idea of adding some accessibility features for players with sight handicap has been briefly discussed a few times but there was always one main blocker. There is not much point in that unless there is a TTS (text-to-speech) functionality to let blind players hear the dialogues and menus. Ame linked a library that could be used to send a text to a screen reader called NVDA to read the text out loud. But since it wasn’t a Ruby library, just a DLL, we had no way to actually use it. Encoding the Endians! However during my previous tweaks of mkxp-z I randomly stumbled upon FFI bindings. I had no clue mkxp-z even had this feature but I immediately knew this might become useful. FFI means Foreign Function Interface. It lets you call functions from shared libraries, even if they were written in a completely different programming language than what you’re working with. So I made a note that FFI exists in mkxp-z but didn’t investigate further at the time as I had other priorities like actually fixing the game or onboarding the new team members. Also I just roughly knew what FFI was but never actually used it myself so I didn’t have practical experience with it. Few months later a blind player joined Ame’s Patreon so the topic of accessibility was discussed once more. But once again I thought there is no point without TTS but since I had that hunch that it might be possible with FFI, I went ahead and tried it. And it didn’t work. So I did more research and tried various tweaks but still nothing. Only suddenly, after an hour or so, the library started talking. Except not really. Instead of the text I was feeding it it only read the last letter. Ehm what ??? Of course I had no clue what was going on but thought that the mkxp-z community might have some idea so I asked them. We were brainstorming the issue for a while before the mkxp-z maintainer Splendide Imaginarius had the correct idea that it’s an encoding issue. Here I should make a short note of what an encoding is. Basically an encoding determines how letters and other text symbols are represented in memory and are often language-specific. Ruby comes from linux so it is generally using UTF-8. He had a theory that the library was instead expecting UTF-16. It didn’t work either but after some more trial and error I finally stumbled on a trick that actually fixed it. The library didn’t want just UTF-16 but specifically UTF-16LE where LE stands for Little Endian. See the issue was not just encoding but also endianness. Endianness affects the internal order of bytes in memory. This is an oversimplification but basically Windows is using the reverse order (Little Endian) than most other systems (Big Endian). And since Ruby originates from the Linux world, it is using Big Endian internally. So with explicit UTF-16LE encoding TTS using NVDA finally worked. [image description for blind players: It's a Discord screenshot with AiedailEclipsed saying: "enumag once again destroying everything in his path. great job!"] Of course all of this is windows-only since we didn’t find any equivalents for other platforms but Windows is the most important in this case anyway. The roadmap With that proof of concept, accessibility suddenly became a realistic topic so we started working on it. Accessibility ofc isn’t just about TTS. We also integrated an existing mod from Torre which adds some ambient sounds to help the blind players know the distance from the closest obstacle in each direction. That was still just the first step though. I might have kickstarted it but from here on it was a team work where everyone contributed some parts. For TTS I pretty much just figured out the proof of concept. It was Orsan who did the heavy lifting to add the TTS calls throughout most of the codebase. And there was a lot more than that. Some of the features we implemented because of accessibility made sense for all players - for instance puzzle skipping because even with TTS and other improvements there is no way blind players will be able to solve the puzzles. Text-to-speech Hi! Orsan here. I don’t have a whole lot to say– a lot of what’s happened so far has been fairly simple. Did you know there’s a lot of text in this game, displayed in a lot of different ways? There is! Messages, choices, battle, shop screen, town map, dex, field notes, gear apps, jukebox, tile puzzles… Most of what I’ve done for accessibility has been TTS calls on various pieces of this text– but there’s still a lot to be done. I also implemented a few other accessibility features for blind folks, such as Itemfinder now giving a message, but there’s still a lot to be done in that regard as well. enu’s note: Orsan really spent a lot of time on adding TTS calls to all the core parts of the game like dialogue, choices, battle, bag, move learning and so on. Later on both Lucent Flash and Stardust also made significant contributions for adding TTS support to various menus. If I remember correctly I think Stardust handled the Time & Weather app + Jukebox while Lucent took the most complicated part which was the field notes. Puzzle skips This is a project I (hi, stardust here!) have been working on for quite a while, but became more relevant with the push towards making the game more accessible. If you’re not aware, Reborn has a new game plus (NG+) feature that keeps track of whether you’ve done some specific puzzles/sidequests on previous saves so that you can skip them on future playthroughs. A couple months after Reborn e19 came out, I started work on an NG++ mod that added more puzzle skips, and this mod will be integrated into the base game in 19.5 Reborn. One of the big limitations of this feature is that it only applies to repeat playthroughs: first-timers are out of luck. And while I may consider Reborn’s puzzles a core part of the experience, I (and the rest of the dev team) am aware that not everyone shares that opinion. Especially blind players, for whom many of the puzzles are much more difficult or near-impossible without someone else helping them through. [image description for blind players: Just showing off the "Do you want to skip this tile puzzle?" option you get in Agate Circus with blindstep password] Recently, I went through (hopefully) all of Reborn’s various puzzles, looking at which could and should be skippable to help improve player experiences. The result: as of v19.5, there will be a new password to add to your games: “nopuzzles”, which activates nearly all the NG+ skips (old and new) without needing save data, in addition to a couple minor skips not covered by the NG+ feature. This feature is also activated with the blindstep accessibility password mentioned later. [image description for blind players: Showing passwords menu with active nopuzzles password] There’s also a few additional NG+ puzzle skips that you’ll be able to find scattered around the game. In total, between the existing, new, and password-specific ones, there’s over 40 such skips in the new version. blindstep password Next we needed a way for the blind players to activate the improvements we added for them specifically such as the mod from Torre. This is what the blindstep password is for. It also enables several other things we implemented such as custom item finder by Orsan, separate fly menu because the map was a bit difficult for them and some other things. Then there is the F9 key to get the current map and coordinates read to them for navigation… And of course the password also activates stardust’s puzzle skips. [image description for blind players: Showing the custom fly menu for blindstep password] TTS actually isn’t locked behind this password. It’s enabled by default but for most players it has no effect because they don’t have a screen reader such as NVDA running on their PC. Contextual sounds Enu again although this isn’t just my work. Next we needed to improve the sound effects. For example the bump sounds needed to be different based on what you bump into. So stardust implemented a feature where if you bump into an obstacle the game can detect what you bump into and use a different sound based on if it was an NPC, a strength boulder, an item or like 10 other different things we accounted for. This is an improvement for all players so it’s not restricted to the blindstep password. Next we also needed a way for blind players to know when they’re on a diving spot so the game is now able to play a background sound while you’re in a place where you can dive or resurface. Again no need to restrict this for blindstep password. Then there are sound effects when you jump over the jumping stones - along with a dust animation for sighted players. There is also new debris animation for rock climbs. Both of these improvements were only possible thanks to eevee because doing it all manually would be madness. Also fishing has some sound effects now so that blind players can actually catch their Lanturns. In all cases Amethyst is providing the actual sound effects! Tolk During testing one of the blind players also recommended a library to support more screen readers than just NVDA. There are actually two libraries - Tolk and Universal Speech. I went with Tolk for now but there doesn’t seem to be much difference between them. What it does is that it detects the screen reader you’re using and sends the line to it for TTS. There are still a lot more improvements we can do. Certain menus still don’t have full TTS support, minigames such as game corner or mining need a skip, we should have a way to detect doors, itemfinder should detect non-hidden items, maybe a key to replay the last line, sound effect when activating or deactivating turbo mode… the list goes on. Let us know if you’d like to help with this effort. We’re slowly working on these tasks but we have other features to work on as well so this isn’t our only focus. Any such improvement means a lot to these players.

We are recruiting! Hello hello, Posty here with a little bit of a different post, yes if you have read the title (or saw the post on Twitter), we are looking for new members to join the Desolation Development Team! After having an internal discussion with the other devs, we came to the conclusion that considering the circumstances and changes with some of our current situations, that we could use an extra pair of hands on the team. With that said, we are looking for a Spriter (Primarily Tileset work) and a Mapper (RPG Maker XP experience is required), or someone who can handle both, to work alongside us in developing Desolation. If this is something that you would be interested in, then please look to apply through the application form below! But before you do, like any sort of “application”, please read the following few points. If you are looking to apply for the Spriter position, then do note that we need someone with experience creating tiles for tilesets (Rebornverse Style Graphics), and examples will need to be provided. If you are looking to apply for the Mapper position, then do note that we need someone with experience in RPG Maker XP, as that is the program we currently use (like other fangames) for development, and examples will need to be provided. Please make sure you have the time to actually contribute to Desolation, we understand and appreciate everyone has personal responsibilities, but we need people who are consistently able to help out with development. Periods before Episode Releases and Alpha/Beta Testing will require everyone’s ongoing assistance. Knowledge of Desolation is required (Bonus Points for playing Reborn/Rejuvenation! We love our fellow developer friends) Discord is required, all forms of communication will be done here! I will not be reaching out to everyone who has applied, I will only be looking to reach out to the few that I wish to have a further chat about before making a decision. The deadline is Tuesday 12th November at 8pm GMT, exactly one week from now! So please make sure you get your applications in before then. I may extend the deadline, and if I do then it will be made in the form of a Twitter post to our page, so keep an eye out (I will edit it here as well). Application Form Thank you everyone for the continued support on the project, for those who are looking to apply, myself and the rest of the team look forward to reading through your applications! There will still be a development blog later on this month, in which I will be making an announcement, so stay tuned! Also it’s election day in the US and despite me being a Brit and not American, go vote! It is your right to vote and you should most definitely do it, make the time to go out to the polls and do so, especially as this is probably one of the most important elections in current times. And with that, I bid you adieu. Posty