Hey all, Dustin here once again with what should be a significantly more upbeat post than last time!

As of yesterday, a new update has been pushed for ViViD Relapse for the first time in nearly 4 years! Before you get too excited - this is a mostly behind-the-scenes update, it is not a content update. However, this was an extremely important update regardless. GameMaker Studio 2.3 (which first released in 2020) made a lot of changes that broke the way several things were done in legacy GameMaker projects, ViViD Relapse included. These sorts of major changes to a development environment will affect every project differently, and many people are lucky and don't run into many when they move a project to a newer version. Relapse has DNA spanning all the way back to the original 2010 version of ViViD, so unfortunately, plenty of functions and other aspects of how the game was put together were completely deprecated. That's also to say nothing of the shaders Relapse uses, which also needed to be updated to work with 2.3 and beyond. 

Needless to say, this was a lot of work, work that had been done in fits and starts over the years, but that I did not fully close the book on until recently. Minor updates to GameMaker since 2.3 would (and will continue to) break their own little things there and there, so as these bigger issues were tackled from the 2.3 changes, additional ones would crop up along the way. But this problem is officially behind us - any other little quirks that come from updates made to GameMaker in the future can be dealt with as they come. With this major hurdle no longer a concern as of version 0.2.0, the other work that's been happening on ViViD Relapse is in a better position to start showing up, and I am happy to announce that the first of many regular content updates on ViViD Relapse will be dropping later this month. 

Along with that announcement, I'd like to take the time to break down a little more thoroughly what my plans are for the next few months in terms of the project and beyond. First things first - there are going to be a significant number of changes made to Phase 1 before things really begin to continue on with Phase 2. There are a lot of complex reasons for this, but to be blunt, it wasn't until after the initial release of Relapse in 2019 that I really fully came to understand what story I was trying to tell with ViViD. The original 2010 version of ViViD is a game Nati and I made in less than a month, during a sprint to try and generate content for a Halloween event for a website and community we shared a very very long time ago. It started as a simple prototype she made even earlier than that, focusing almost entirely on the visual distortions, so a lot of the specifics of the writing didn't come in until I joined the project later for that Halloween sprint. Even then, I was really flying by the seat of my pants, building a narrative road as we were constantly nearly careening off of it.

The early versions of Relapse were made under similar circumstances; during an extended visit where we did have a bit of a time-crunch and deadline looming over us. Despite having had several years to think about it (and believe me, I certainly had) and also being a lot better at developing narrative under pressure, those versions of Relapse still ended up being in a kind of transitionary state, changing from a game that didn't know what it was a game that was starting to find itself. Now, about 4 years later, I can confidently say that the story has found itself, but that is going to necessitate changes.

The first couple of updates from this point on are going to be focused around polishing up various aspects of the game, including the script. I am going to make an effort to make an 'idealized' version of the game as it currently exists before I begin to make major structural changes. Beyond rewriting a few very important scenes for the sake of clarity and better cohesion, this will still be the game that Relapse has been since 2019, and I will keep these builds publicly available for the sake of posterity. Even if there are things I plan on changing and gutting entirely, I do understand that there are plenty of people who do like things as they are, and I have no intention of denying people access to this version of the game. So, to put it simply; June and July's updates will focus on these polishing efforts and rewrites, with only marginal pieces of new content. However, there's going to be quite a bit more going on these next two months than just that.

There are actually 4 ViViD-related game projects of mine that have already been released, most of them for several years now. I don't think most people realize these connections because they're very tenuous and, to be honest, not very well thought out in some ways. But this relationship between the games is very important - back in 2013 when the original ViViD got its final batch of updates, it started to finally get in front of people and gain some traction. Those updates happened almost entirely because of the release of the first of these related games, and the decision to connect them at all, so despite wishing I had done a better job with the connections themselves, I've always considered that a very important part of ViViD's long-term creative process. The protagonist of these 4 games is actually already in Relapse right now; since the very beginning, actually. Who or what this character is in relationship to Burt, their presence in the story of ViViD Relapse, and what they really even are in the world of the game, are all of vital importance. That connection has always been a major part of the plan for Relapse's story, and one of the key things that has persisted unchanged over the years, so, I want to make these connections more overt.

So, over the next couple of months, I will be releasing updates to the following games:

• Cylor vs The Evil Mutant Cats
• Cylor vs The Bullets from Hell
• Cylor vs The Passage of Time

All of these updates will include major new content and features of course, but more importantly, they will also make their connections to ViViD Relapse more overt and provide some key insight into what Cylor is and what role he may have to play in ViViD's future events. Who Cylor is as a character - as a presence - may even answer some questions you might have about the content already available in ViViD Relapse's public builds. I'm really looking forward to being able to share these updates with you, and to see the connections between these games grow more overt in real time.

Now, there's a couple more things to mention with regards to the next couple of months. During this time, I will be releasing another in the series of cryptic ViViD Relapse videos to the WretchWorks YouTube Channel. I've had a lot of fun editing these, especially the most recent one Hijackings, and find they're a really fun way to tease content from the upcoming Phases, so I have no intention of stopping anytime soon.

Beyond ViViD: I've also been hard at work on a couple of other projects. For the last few months, I've been developing a game in Unreal with a friend, mostly as a learning experience for the both of us. It's been a really interesting time - I don't have a ton of experience working in 3D so it's been a series of fun new challenges work through, and it's been very creatively refreshing for me as a result! This project is still several months out at least, so I won't be sharing much from in it in the near future, but it is going to take up some of my time over the next few months, so I feel it's still worth at least mentioning.

More immediately - I'm working on a new small horror game right now with some friends as part of a Game Jam! This will be coming out this month, so I'll be able to share specifics on this one with you all very soon! It's been really nice to develop a completely new story and world for a horror game, entirely separate from ViViD, but it's also been great design practice for some new mechanical aspects of ViViD Relapse I'll be trying to tackle in the future, so, for me it's kind of been the best of both worlds. I get to have fun making a brand new thing with some friends while also getting some insight into how I should do certain things for ViViD Relapse in the future.

So! To Review:

1. A brand-new update for ViViD Relapse has been released, fixing major technical problems that came about due to major engine updates.
2. Another 2 updates will release in both June and July, focusing on polishing and rewrites, before moving on to new/reworked content in future updates.
3. Updates will also be released for the following 3 games over the next 2 months
   1. Cylor vs The Evil Mutant Cats
      
   2. Cylor vs The Bullets from Hell
   3. Cylor vs The Passage of Time
4. A new video providing a cryptic look at upcoming Phase 2/3 details will be released before the end of July.
5. I'm working on another horror game which you should hopefully see released before the end of June.
6. I'm working on another game in Unreal that I hope I can share some details on in the near future.

And that's that! Thank you for taking the time to read through this for me, and I'm looking forward to sharing all this stuff with you over the course of the next couple of months.

Until next time!!