HUGE NEWS! There has been more than one devlog post this year! Haha! Okay, the real big news though is that the entire world is now finished. You can walk through every city, traverse every mountain range, and complete every dungeon. This is a huge milestone for the game and for myself. I'm so happy that it's all done and I've reached the peak of the mountain. The work is all downhill from here (in a good way), maybe some bumps along the way but it's very exciting to be over the biggest bump of them all.

My personal goal was to complete this part of the game before the end of the year, so I am already ahead of schedule! I don't have a definitive idea of the deadlines for the next parts because I don't know exactly how long each will take, but I can tell you what those parts are.

First, I am putting treasure chests throughout the dungeons and mountain ranges. I am working now on making a concise table of what types of chest contain what types of items so that every is consistent across the board. I have most of the chests placed, I just need to put stuff in them.

Second, the enemies need to be placed in all of the locations I have made. They already exist in the main story dungeons (the entire main story has been done for some time now) but now the side content needs to the same treatment. It is mostly a matter of copying and pasting enemy graphics with their AI in the maps, because the enemies themselves have already been programmed. The biggest hurdle to overcome with this will be balancing, but I will only know how to better balance things after the beta.

Third, I'll be making all of the NPCs, giving them their schedules, and creating their side quests. These are all on paper, and the NPC sprites are also completely finished. It just needs to be placed into the engine and programmed. The hard part is already done, so it's the long part I'll be doing now.

Fourth, I'll be adding in the voice acting. This is only for the main story, and is optional.

Once all of that is complete, the first beta will be ready to go. I don't know exactly how I'll conduct it yet, but I'm hoping to get to that point in a timely manner. For transparency's sake, as soon as I know generally how much time it takes to add an NPC and create their side quest, I will be placing a deadline and if that deadline is met without all of the NPCs being in the game, they will be cut. As a lot of you know, I have been working on this game for over six years now and it's time for it to be completed. I can't spend forever on it. I hope you can understand!

Well, with all of that said, I hope you all have happy holidays and I'm looking forward to sharing the game with you as well as giving you updates as the above milestones are accomplished!

~Carter Prescott