Update on the update

I am not dead. I secured a job, so won't be homeless yet. (Knock on wood.) Althogh I secretly fantasize about having no choice but to go walking through the woods living in a godly fashiuon with the birbs, like a weird wandering wizard hermit guy, and grow a big long shaggy beard for animals to live in.

First of all before update news, a big thank you to everyone who has bought A Fool's Art Gallery, it was a kind of risky game to build and launch because it doesn't really fit into any catagories. There was some self doubt along the way about the whole thing, but the communities reaction to it has assauged any irrational fears I had about this all. The few refunds that have come in were due to performance issues, being offended, and being bored; all of which have been and are being further addressed, other than the offended one, because I can't help them with that, that's their problem... lol.

The update is coming along very well, and despite getting completely out of hand, has managed to get even more completely out of hand. One thing leads to another, you know how it is. What started out as "adding some space whales" has turned into 4 levels/areas to experience, a spa/lounge area, outer space with the planets, a bunch of their moons, and some space ships, for the space whales to fly around, a level of oceanic relaxation, and a level where you can go see God.

The lounge music is the toughest part of all this, with real instruments it's fairly straight forward to bring an idea in my head out into the physical world, but with the digital tools I am working with, doing so is proving tricky; I have used digital tools to make tons of music, but those were all songs that grew out of the tools themselves, never songs I had in my head that I tried to transpose into the digital format. I am happy with what I have got so far for it, but might change things up a bit before release. No, I don't want to "Get AI to do it" or "Use Fiver". My games are made by me. Every part of them. Every single pixel, bit, byte, etc is a reflection and birthed of myself and my experience. From my brain into the realm of the physical. I don't care if "Michelangelo used assistance".

Also in this update is the replacement of all voxel models with polygon models for increased performance, the shrinkage of sprites for freeing up VRAM and increasing frame rates on ultra low end systems, more relaxing pictures to look at, and a couple weird new NPCs that have nothing to do with Space Whales or Oceanic Atmospheres.

This update will bring A Fool's Art Gallery from "An Art Gallery with some psychedelic elements" to "An Art Gallery With Digital Psychedelic Experiences", crafted by a guy who has had plenty of them, for anyone who would like to get an idea of what these experiences are like.

The GZDOOM engine is proving to be the perfect little work horse for what I am doing, thankfully the Doom engine was one of my favorite things to play around with as a kid, as I have never been able to get the hang of Unity or Unreal, despite having no problems switching to the Quake 2 and Half Life engines way back in the day when that was a thing, even back then I couldn't get into