v1.33 is a small maintenance update with very few changes. The primary purpose of this update was to enable the guest key so that the Quick Installer on the new NEStalgia promotional site functions correctly. You can now log into NEStalgia as a guest to try out the game, but will not be able to save your progress.

In other news, Spiff has been working on a solution to NEStalgia's last visible source of slowdown - the character creation process. Without client-side processing, BYOND's built in icon procs are just too slow to handle the current system. I'm excited about what Spiff has come up with, and hopefully we'll have it tested and ready to go soon.

As I mentioned on my blog last week, I decided to reinvest a chunk of the NEStalgia subscription revenue into the purchase of a Wacom drawing tablet. My hope was to be able to get the most out of my limited artistic abilities using the tablet, and so far I've done just that.

I do pretty darn well with tile-based environment graphics and small character sprites pixel-by-pixel. That said, when it comes to drawing NEStalgia's much larger monster sprites I definitely don't have an eye for drawing using proper perspective or proportions using the "Pixel Art" approach. Now with my new tablet that's no longer an issue:



A Fallen One is a monster in an unfinished area of the game you've heard me talk about before called "The Black Sanctum". Using simple colors and large brush strokes I drew the above image of the monster in order to convert it down to something usable within NEStalgia:



Ta-da! Photoshop's built in Pixelate and Posterize filters did the initial conversion for me, then I manually did the shading and image correction as necessary. It's not Monet, but it works well within NEStalgia.

So that's that. Before I end this post today I also want to acknowledge Cable Monkey's continued awesome service as NEStalgia's sole server host. He's always right on top of any issues that pop up and he's a major part of NEStalgia's ongoing success. This game is truly a team effort, and I couldn't hope for a better group of people to be working with on it.








Follow NEStalgia: