Sorry about all the slow updating. Things are just moving that slow on my end here. Unfortunately, as I predicted, the death of the game's topic really dealt a blow to my motivation, so I'm still on the same dungeon I was last time. Thankfully, I did manage to force myself to design the dungeon's sub-basements, one of the big roadblocks keeping me from completing it. I've also come up with some interesting puzzles to accompany this mysterious dungeon, but I won't spoil those either. One thing I will say for sure is that there are going to be some cool lighting effects going on here, something a bit more sophisticated than "Walk down a flight of stairs and things are suddenly darker." There will actually be spots where the lighting changes as you walk through the room. I've programmed and tested this little bit already, and it really adds to the atmosphere. I still have to add furniture, though.

Also, I've got a lovely screenshot of this strange place right here:

Note that this doesn't include much in the way of furniture (intentionally to avoid spoilers), but it does include a stained-glass window, complete with transparency to the outside—see those clouds? Those were moving when I took the screenshot.

Depending on how ambitious (or OCD) I get, I may make the non-transparent parts of the window translucent… Actually, I probably should…

Just for the record, the next dungeon (and town areas in between) won't take nearly this long, because I can modify some graphics I made for Piraka Mania and they'll work fine. For the second dungeon, though, I really had to make my own chipset because of the sheer scale of it (as you can see). Next time, I'll post a picture of the stair design I came up with. It's brilliant!

Now, I do plan on restarting the topic before Demo II is released, but it won't be just yet. I've decided to go with an idea I had initially been hesitant about: I'm making an updated, mp3 version of the soundtrack for the game. I'll also be making the enhancements myself, so it'll take some time. I'm actually about halfway done with the Demo I soundtrack, though some tracks are a bit trickier to work with (the overworld theme for one). The ones I have now sound really good; the opening story theme now blends much better with the title theme, with some slightly different instrumentation. The game over theme sounds better too. I'll try to release the updated version of the Demo once the soundtrack for it is completely updated, unless I finish Demo II first (not likely).

Once again, sorry about taking so long to post this. Midterms were this week, and between that and a gaming tournament today, I've been rather busy studying and preparing.