Hello everyone! It’s been a while since my last post, so I’d like to update you on everything I’ve been working on for Aseanon. It may seem like progress has been slow, and indeed, the update is not ready yet. However, I felt I owed you all a report, which I’ve been delayed in delivering. I can't give you an exact release date because I've encountered a major issue with my PC. The project has grown significantly, and technology keeps advancing, so I need to upgrade my system. My current PC is struggling to keep up; although updating the project to a newer Unity version has helped, opening the project still takes a lot of time, and don’t even get me started on Visual Studio. Additionally, the power supply is failing, and I don’t want to risk losing everything stored on my PC.

Despite the serious PC issues, I want to make one thing clear: I’m not abandoning this project. This work means a lot to me; it’s my dream to complete it and leave it in great condition. If I’m taking longer to release the update, it’s because I want it to be solid and bug-free. With that said, here’s a summary of what I’ve been working on this half of the year:

3D Models
I’ve been working hard on the next major update. Half the year has passed, and a lot has happened. My biggest disappointment so far is that the creator of the 3D models hasn’t published anything in over a year, which has been very discouraging. However, I’ve been exploring ways to overcome these obstacles. One solution was to switch to Koikatsu-generated models. The problem? I would have to remake all the characters, which would take hours, weeks, even months of work, and finding clothes similar to the style I already have proved impossible.

The good news is that I managed to make progress with NPCs, specifically human enemies. It was a fairly simple process; I assembled the characters in VRChat, exported them to Blender, worked on them there, and prepared them for Unity. I still hope to see new content from JoNi.

Story and Main Campaigns
One of the new features in this major update is the addition of the first campaign that will narrate the game’s story. Everything is ready; I just need to add and polish some dialogues. Since the dialogue system is in a visual novel style, I needed PNGs of the characters, which was another process that took time. Fortunately, I now have them all ready, and of course, I’ll expand the range of expressions in the future. I also developed 2D backgrounds for dialogues by capturing scenes in-game and processing them in Photoshop, resulting in high-resolution backgrounds with a unique artistic style. The main goal was to have a visual novel sequence at the beginning and end of each mission.

Scenery Redesign
Another aspect that came up during development was the possibility of creating large (yet limited) scenarios that allow me to set "spawn points" for missions. This way, I could have fewer scenarios but with different locations, saving me the trouble of creating multiple environments. Instead, I can use Unity's terrain tool to shape a single scenario with various areas. For example, I have a scenario ready that represents part of the main city where the story unfolds and where the main character’s adventurer guild is located—the one the player controls. Here are some previews;

Combat System
The combat system was revised and improved. Now everything works as I originally intended, based on percentages. For example, Izumi has 140 ATK, and his basic skill deals 15% of that ATK. The buff and debuff system was also optimized and enhanced, which now allows me to create any kind of effect in the future, no matter how crazy.

User Interface (UI)
Some sections were redesigned, with the main one being the missions, which are now divided into much more accessible and understandable categories.

Gameplay Mechanics
The equipment system was changed to a more compact one. I feel it’s more understandable now, but it’s still not the final version; I need your testing and feedback to refine it.

Shaders
As I mentioned before, I greatly appreciate your donations. Every contribution has been used for the project, including acquiring shaders from the Unity Asset Store. One of the shaders implemented is RealToon, which is powerful and versatile, allowing me to achieve a look similar to what can be seen in Zenless Zone Zero. It’s not an exact copy, but it’s close. Since the equipment system was modified, the equipment items were also updated, with new ones being created and irrelevant ones removed.

These are some shaders I bought;

Progression System
The existing progression system was also improved. The main enhancement was reducing the size of the saved data. In the first version, many unnecessary data were stored for character progression and the game itself. Now that unlockable missions are being implemented, it was necessary to review this, which took me a few days to redesign the code and adjust it to save only what’s needed. This also impacted the redesign of character data, optimizing character creation management.
Additionally, character roles have been redefined as: Attacker, Debuffer, Defender, Healer, and Support.

Engine Version
As technology evolves, I’ve updated the project to the most stable Unity version available today: 2022.3.35f1. This fixed some previous bugs and greatly improved loading times when working with heavy animations or large amounts of data. However, when loading resources, Unity still takes its time, partly due to my current hardware, which is a hard disk drive.

Thank you for reading all the way through! Your support means a lot to me. Another important note is that I’m considering taking out a bank loan to buy a new PC so that everything runs more smoothly and to avoid risking all my projects.

I sincerely appreciate all the support from each of you, and of course, those who have donated, given feedback, and sent well wishes will be credited in the game from this upcoming update onwards. See you soon, and I promise to post updates more regularly!