Refinement

December 20th, 2014 marked an momentous day for any fans of Cave Story out there-
The 10th anniversary of the game being released!
While this blog update coming  5 days late, (By the way, Merry Christmas, and sorry for the delay) I have still have the usual updates to list off and explain here, so I may as well play all my cards here.
First off, with the time it's taking to adjust to the new engine, I can absolutely guarentee that there will be no fully playable demo able to be released during this year at all. My unfortunate worries that this engine would significantly delay the release of the demo turned out to be true after all.
Coupled with some technical difficulties involving computer region and missing files on my end, I've recently had to acquire another version of the development tools altogether, so needless to say things are a bit rough when it comes to adjusting.
Though, being that it's the season of giving right now, what better way to *mildy interest audiences* by showcasing some new info on the game ready to be published in this update.

First off, a preview to how the surface world is structured.
Gradually progressing furthur downwards, with multiple branching paths, the surface world is anything but the island in temrs of structure and progression. While much of the time only a limited amount of enterable paths open up as the player goes furthur into the story, there are far fewer limitations on where the player can go to as dictated by the plot.

Expect to see something along the lines of this. (Credit: Geobox staff affiliate)

In the case of the story, the aformentioned villain replacing the role of General Jiro will will not be fully revealed until the furthur notice, but as of now, his role, backstory, motivations, characterization and design are all fleshed out. In a way, he acts as General Jiro's equivalent of Doctor Date for Quote, with a relation and motive driven by hatred and resentment for past transgressions.

Again, since updates from this point onwards are all based on signifcant levels of progress rather than a monthly interval system, I can't say when the next update will be, let alone even estimate a release date for the demo by this point. 

Downtime

This is not a legitimate update for the blog, just a quick notification.

Due to the fact that this week and the preceeding 2 weeks were almost completely consumed by preparing for and taking miterm exams, very little if any progress was able to be made in the developmental and familiarization process with the new GeoBox engine.
As a result, updates will be able to resume by at least Saturday, the 20th of December.

In addition, full on updates to the blog will no longer be based on monthly intervals, but rather on the frequency of noteworthy progression. This is to ensure we don't end up with any sort of updates where we go over miscellaneous technical information that, in all honesty, no one ever read or cared about anyway.

Thank you for your patience.

Overhaul

By this point in time, I'm really glad I waited until this day to post the update, otherwise the news would've probably come across as far more...grim.
Up until 3 days ago, the situation was looking rather bleak for the entire development process.

Our programmer, having used GameMaker to create the engine we've been sing up until that time, made the decision to ultimately quit using the software and language altogether, due to the limiting nature of GML and the software alike. We had an engine, but with no competent programmer willing to take on the job, there really wasn't much point in trying to continue what something none of us had much of an idea on how to use.

But strange things can happen. Convenient, perfect strange things that can change the direction of a situation.
Within the past week, our team's been given permission to use an upcoming new Cave Story-esque engine, which you can see a preview of here:

The good news to this:
We have a much more open-ended and efficient engine than when the project was using GML.
The bad news?
The engine's not yet competed yet. Nearing completion, but not quite there yet. As a result, it may take some time before we can use the engine, and even then, adapting to its scripting language may take some more time. Luckily this has no effect on non-programming related parts of the project, so art, sprites, and music are still continuing normally.

The script, in turn will also be getting some major core changes, but for an audience that has been told little of the actual plot, this shouldn't concern any of you too much. A key thing that has been changed, however is the role of General Jiro, who will no longer be a villain in the main story, rather a supporting character in a sense.

Going deeper into specifics would be over-complicating things b this point, so I'll end this post here.
It's been a while since any update, and it's been good finally having a reason to post something positive.