If you ever stop to ask yourself, "I wonder if Nocti is still being worked on?", the answer is always: YES.

As of right now all of the Nexus characters have gotten new sprites with simple animations, new bases for characters with wildly different body types have been built, and characters/animations for the north path of the nexus are almost completed. Most of the tilesets for this update are done, a few areas need to be re mapped, and events need to be evented. I'm optimistic that this will all be ready by early 2024. I think the hardest thing is going to be eventing as it takes the longest. I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to timing so I spend a lot of time watching things over and over and over.... you get the idea.

I also decided to remake all of the talk sprites for the game. I originally made them straight in Aesprite, but it's been three years now and they feel off model and many don't fit new characterization developments. Now I am doing a slightly convoluted process of drawing the images in CSP at a large size, shrinking them down and running them through pixatool to convert the anti aliasing into the Nocti Palette. The process is fairly quick and does not need a lot of cleanup as long as I'm careful. This is a huge undertaking, and while it's faster than the old method it's still a lot of work. I don't want to delay the release any more than I already have, so only Nocti and any new characters going forward will have the better sprites for version 0.4, and I'll work on the older ones a little bit at a time and add them after release.

This will also apply to the new sprite style for older NPCS. I will add the basic sprites for the Maidens in the hub world but no new animations, and anyone else who isn't in the west Nexus town will be short.

I hope these style inconsistencies do not interrupt your enjoyment of the game. Version 0.4 is going to be the largest update I make, and it's the last one before we get into the real meat of Nocti's story (including stuff that will raise the suggested demographic to 16+). As we get closer and closer to the release I'll be sure to keep you all updated.

Also, before I forget: I  have a musician working on the project possibly!! I want to pay them for a test track and see if it's a good fit for the game, but if it is I'll probably open up a Ko-Fi and all funds from that will go towards giving Nocti a completely original soundtrack!!!! Exciting stuff!

Thank you for reading!