Well, Wata wanted me to make a new blog post for forever, and I made a really nice post in my game's near-dead forum, so since it's so full of awesome and kind of is what's on my mind right now anyway I'm gonna post it here.

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Once again, I'm here to remind everyone that this game is not dead, nor will it be in the forseeable future. Despite how much Wata and I, and/or anyone else who may be aiding us, may get lost, confused, feel like we're too inexperienced to go through with such a high-end BYOND RPG, get in fights or arguments, take breaks, think about making other, simpler games first, take time off from the game to study code or ask for help, temporarily aid other games (such as how right now I'm helping map one), etc...

Lufia WILL NOT DIE, it WILL NOT be given up on, it WILL NOT EVER, EVER be allowed by me to fall into the pit of 'BYOND games that would have ruled, that should have been made, but didn't, and weren't'. BYOND needs more good games. It needs more RPGs that don't suck and aren't given up on/stopped being hosted/tossed aroudn between owners and more or less hit the trash bin. It needs more good fangames that live up to their namesakes, and more unique ones based on series more people shold have played than who actually did, such as Lufia. It needs people striving for more advanced games with higher-end graphics and fancier systems nd a sense of 'well-madeness' rather than the contrary. It needs more games that aren't based on other games' code completely. It needs more fun games that aren't either completely too old or full of jerkish/ill-mannered administrative teams.

Lufia - New Generation hopes, even after all these snags and temporary stops, to yet become a great game, and as the creators learn more and more about DM, and get more help and support, will take less and shorter 'hiatus's and be made at a faster and faster pace. Lufia NG hopes to become a game REALLY worth playing, with a fun and addictive turnbased battle system but not in the same Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy worlds you're all used to seeing. It hopes to become a quite long game, boasting the entireity of Lufia and the Fortress of Doom as far as maps as wellas many bonus areas. It hopes to have the balance of classes that many such games lack, with just enough customization and randomness in chracter look and growth to keep things interesting. It hopes to have many spells and skills, a ton of equipment and items, lots of enemies to fight, bosses to conquer, an encouraged party system but with soloing still possible, sidequests and extra areas, and tons of stuff to do. It hopes to finally give old-school Japanese turnbased RPG fans what they've truly been waiting for on BYOND, give Lufia fans their verty first true online experience, and overall just be a great game for BYOND users to play anytime, and hang out on. Lufia - New Generation hopes to be, for once, a /truly/ good game.

Some people say not to announce what you hope to do with a project until after you've already done it. Well, screw that. It might be good advice for some people, but for me, it's too difficult to silently get things done if I hope to please many people with it, and support from an interested populace is enough to get me to seriously work much harder. What I've said in this post, even if it takes a long time and a lot of patience and many hardships to overcome, I plan on going through with. Even if the main two people working on this game are a guy with plenty of determination and little DM knowledge and a guy with decent DM knowledge but less time and more of a life to focus completely on this game, we WILL, somehow, some way, get through with it. Any and all REAL, HONEST help is appreciated, whether it's a simple 'go!' or a huge explanation on how to refine turnbased battle systems. We don't need iconnists, musicmakers, mappers, etc at the time being, though, but if we do, we'll say so.

But anyway, enough of that. As far as the real news is concerned, Wata and I have finally picked back up the game after many weeks of bickering and barely doing anything to it. We're ready to seriously give a big push in the game's development now, finally opting to begin things by using pop-up menus for saving, shops, menus, etc. so we can actually have a fun, playable game going, before we work on the real Lufia-like ingame menus and such. With a system like this, saving, shops, items, battles, menus, levelling, (yes I said battles), etc. should ALL be ready in due time. We're hoping that by Christmas of this year, Lufia - New Generation will have at least SOME form of gameplay. And of course, it'll always function great as a place to hang out and chat, and enjoy the Super NES-quality graphics. We'll be working hard--drop us a line (BreakmanDX/Uber Soldier are our keys) if you want to offer any help or support.

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Yeah. That's what's going on.
I might still be, even after months of messing around with things and learning a good deal, more or less a newb to DM. But I'm not gonna let that keep me any longer than I've already taken to make a good game. No offense, but some of the stuff that's been getting on Published recently is a bit 'iffy'... and BYOND as a whole, each day, seems to be becoming more and more ridden with poorly-coded or ripped DBZ/Naruto/etc games, seemingly quickly-made RPGs, nowhere-near-finished games that never make it past alpha or beta, and REALLY GOOD games, or potentially good ones, that become given up on or thrown away. Some of my favorites even have mysteriously disappeared off the hub, perhaps whoever originally had the host files stopped hosting/caring about the game and never gave anyone else said files (Dragon Warrior Mythology being one example).

I don't care how difficult it is, we've already come a long way with this game; it's miles ahead of anything any of us has done before and already looks great. It looks like a game that could undoubtebly go places if the creators put much into it at all. And that's what we're planning on doing.

*cough* [/blog]