I am still alive. :)

If you don't mind, I will give more of an explanation.

I am indeed alive.  I am well.  I do still work on games, but my time has been incredibly short for creative efforts.  And, admittedly, I haven't just been able to be creative for a very long time.

If you follow me on Itch, you probably still notice I release games.  It's mostly game jam style games, very short (or even unfinished!) projects that are created in a short time frame.  That's been the best I've been able to do in a long while.

I don't want to bore or bring you down with all the circumstances of my life, and why I haven't been very creative for a while.  (We'll just say it involves losing people very dear to me, getting married then divorced, COVID, situations that nearly put me on the street, etc.)  Besides I am a private person and I don't like sharing details, so you will just have to take my word when I say it's been a really rough last 7 years for me.

Along with all that, I've always been a very depressive person and it is something I fight with daily.  It's been a rough uphill battle for me to take care of myself in the short term, and so my long-term projects (such as the sequel/remake of Kalevala) have had to take a break.  But I am trying to be more productive and in fact, this is what I want to talk about next.

First, Relic of Kalevala was being written in Unity but after some changes at UT that I wasn't too happy with, I decided to abandon that port back in 2017 and migrate it to Godot, which is an open source game engine.  (Considering what UT has been up to in the last few years, am I glad I made that choice!)

The Godot version has been a blast to work on and I love the game engine.  It also significantly improves the game in a lot of areas, both from its visual style and its responsiveness.  I've also added a lot of new game mechanics, like swappable weapons, inventory management and crafting, and an unfinished rogue-like battle mode.

All that is missing is content.  I still have a lot of levels to finish and only one out of the six planned boss fights are implemented.  So it's still a way from being finished.  But, it's doable, and if I can get myself back on track I could probably have it done within a year.

You can see the state of the game in 2021 in my Godot Show Reel submission from that year.  (Relic didn't make it into the final show Reel, but I was up against a lot of really polished, great looking games!  So nice to see people really using Godot.)

This isn't even the "final form" of the game -- I've added a lot of visual effects since 2021 and I've revamped how the player moves and feels, making the game feel a lot more dynamic.

Now, in the intern, I've been thinking about re-releasing the original Flash game.  I knew there was a Flash emulator out there, but I had no idea it works so well!  You can even play the original Flash game in it, albeit not as well.  It has some issues, such as lack of music and a general slowness.

But I believe I can fix those.  After all I still have all the original source code, and I tested my compile tools -- I can still make the original game compile and run.

So I am considering making a "redux" version which will be mostly the original game but with some minor enhancements.  I haven't worked out all yet what they will be, but I would guarantee at least these:

• The game would work 100%, fixing bugs/problems that are now present in the Flash version being run under the emulator such as lack of music.
• Add the ability to re-map keys and use joysticks/gamepads for buttons.
• Finish and add in the expansion that I promised so long ago, so you can finally see what is behind that locked door. :)
• Address some of the slowness issues with the emulation.
  
  • The game originally ran at a fixed 30 FPS, but I've noticed under emulation it can drop to ~15.
  • I haven't done a deep analysis of the problem but I believe I can fix this by doing some optimization of the game.

I would then sell the release for Windows (and possibly Linux) for a nominal fee.

I hope speaking about all of this candidly will help fans of the original game understand what I've been up to and where the sequel is at.

-David (aka ChainedLupine)