Good evening degens! This first part is just to let everyone know that I plan on having the update out sometime between the end of January and mid February! There are still going to be incomplete areas and some placeholders but the very core will be done and we'll continue to update those missing pieces as time goes on.

The second part of this is still likely a long ways off but in the event I hit the next subscriber goal I was curious what most people would like me to prioritize with the new funds. I have a few ideas in mind:
1) Hire an artist for backgrounds so I can replace the AI ones.
2) Hire a sound designer and start replacing the royalty free music and character songs with custom made tracks.
3) Hire an action artist. I was thinking of having the action (but not actual turn based combat) scenes in the game done comic book style. So scenes like the bar fight near the start of the game. This would be less detailed image panels, possibly in black and white or very basic color. Honestly I don't even know if this one is realistic or not but if it's something the majority of people think is important I will start looking into it.

Vote in the poll down below which you think is the most important for the next step!

Good morning my furrys, closet furrys, and those still in denial (you will join us soon), it's time for another progress update! Amongst (very justified) growing impatience and skepticism I have decided to include a detailed breakdown of what has been happening since the previous update. So V0.5.0 was first released at the end of February. There was meant to be another update in April that was mostly finished. I decided to delay that update and wrap it up into the next one for a few reasons. First, there was a bug with a new Live2D model that took a lot of scouring to remedy all instances of, second it was a fairly small update to begin with and third I was entering the final stages of a home remodel but most of March and April were spent working on that update. The following months of May and June were spent working on that remodel, moving and actually writing down in detail what would need to be done for the combat system.

Before I progress with the breakdown I want to make it clear that I do not blame any of the below mentioned people for any delays that have happened, shit happens and we are all doing our best. Every one of the freelancers I am about to mention has been nothing but wonderful to work with and the delays are due to no fault of their own.

By the end of June I had finished writing down all of the combat system details (this is a 34 page document so it took quite some time) I then contacted the team that had previously done the GUI design for Broken Sky to inquire about starting work on coding this system for me as it was well above my coding skills. They accepted the task but the member assigned to me was unable to start for about a month and a half due to previous contracts. Once they did begin work on it, they worked for about 2 weeks before personal issues arose that caused them to hand the project off to a different team member (It is not my place to discuss their personal troubles, so I will leave it at that.) The new team member also needed time to finish other projects before they could start on this one so we were waiting again. The next bit of this process took a lot of hammering out details, making tweaks to improve gameplay and so on. When everything was nailed down they started work from scratch and have been working on it since then, but like I said, this is an incredibly complex system so it has taken time. As of now most of the coding will be finished up as early as tomorrow. We are still working on the inventory system but the core systems will be ready. I still have to actually get the files, learn how to use them, and make small tweaks for things that sounded good on paper but didn't work in practice (since instances like that are always inevitable).

Now, rewinding in time a bit, I started looking for a 2D pixel sprite animator around the same time I contacted the coding team. This process took much longer than I was expecting and I was rejected by more than 20 artists over the course of about 2.5 months before I finally found someone willing to work with me. (As it turns out, working on adult content is against Fiverrs ToS so I was kind of looking in the wrong place, my fault.) So the pixel sprite artist did not even get the details of the project until the start of September. As of now, the pixel sprites for this update are supposed to be done by the end of this month. As soon as they are finished, inserting them should be a simple task of just naming the files properly and putting them in since the code currently has place holders for where they will go.

So where does that put us for the next update actually releasing? Well, soon is the answer. I am really really hoping to have it out the first of the year. If the 2D sprites aren't done in time, but everything else is I will simply release it with placeholders and put out a patch when the sprites are done. So the things that could happen to make the release later than that would be game breaking bugs we can't identify, or it taking me a very long time to learn how to use the code that has been written for me. The programmer has done an amazing job of making it very versatile and will be helping me during the learning process but I will be making and balancing every combat encounter by hand (no random encounters in this game). The attacks, attack descriptions, numbers to hit and for damage, NPC stat sheets and so on will still need to be created and uploaded. It's largely busy work since I already have all of these numbers ready to go but putting it all into a system I will be unfamiliar with...I really can't say how long it will take. So for now I am cautiously optimistic about early January.

Now, enough about development woes. Let me officially announce that with the new update we will be adding a much requested feature (well, sort of requested.) I have heard since launch the doms saying the MC's penis is too small and subs wishing it was smaller. You have prayed, and I have answered. With this update you will officially be able to select your characters penis size during character customization with a choice of small and large. This choice will be reflected in all dialogues where applicable in this next update. Graphically, the change will only show in one new scene for now. Ari will be going back and editing the previous scenes to reflect the change while myself and the programmer fix bugs with the combat systems you all might find during initial launch. All future scenes will reflect the change going forward. With this addition, we have now set the ground work for the addition of playable anthro characters as well. Ari and I have learned how to construct scenes from multiple sets of layered images based on variable choices, so one of the new scenes for this update is six frames in length but each frame has a potential of 6 different versions depending on your choices! Doing layered images in this way allows us to make incredibly modular scenes without destroying your computer storage space.

Now for a touch of bad news for several of you. I have officially made the decision to move the female MC variant to a post 1.0 expansion. While adding playable male anthros just requires re-texturing the current human male model and changing a bit of dialogue, adding a female MC requires the creation of entirely new scenes (if I don't want it to feel...cheaply done at least) and entirely new romance routes since the female mc would be able to romance a few characters that male MC cannot and vice versa, in addition to re-texturing all of the scenes that would work as a female. It's simply one stretch too far for only one artist. On that same note, the addition of playable male anthro characters will be coming at the end of Act 1 (of four acts). That is still a very long ways out but it's a sight closer than a full 1.0 release.

I think that's about everything. If I missed something, or you have questions you can post about it in the game discussion channel of the Broken Sky discord! 
https://discord.gg/9YF5W6dE6q

Hello everyone! This is just a very quick announcement to quell any concerns that may have been growing.

First of all, let me just say that if you have sent me a direct message here on Subscribestar and I have not responded, I apologize but I don't get any kind of notification of a new message on here even when I am logged in on the site and completely forgot it had a DM service until recently. 

With that out of the way here's a quick followup on what is going on:
First: No, the game is not abandoned, let's start with that.
Second: It has been so long since the last update because the most recent one was going to be delayed regardless so I decided to group it into the larger upcoming update.
Third: This is taking a very long time as I have had to spend a lot of time in gathering a team to help me with this next update which is a complicated process getting everyone on board. but most everything is settled now and Ari and I have been continuing to work on what we can in the meantime.

So when is the next update then? The honest answer is that I'm not sure at this point. If I don't have a "finished" update in the next few weeks I will start releasing what is done, just know it might have placeholders, missing art assets or gameplay mechanics that are still being developed.

So how big should I expect this next update to be? I want to keep expectations realistic going into this update. It will be a big one but a big update for a solo developer, or in this case a team of free lancers that I'm individually coordinating, is going to be different from a big update from a large game studio. There will be a new story mission for both factions, at least 5 new scenes, a new character, new skills with art assets, an inventory system, character creator and the big part: the combat system with animated pixel sprites. The combat system will feature detailed mechanics loosely based on DnD 5E and classic turn based RPG maker with my own universe twist. This is what has taken the vast majority of the time for this update as we are coding this system from scratch but once it has been created and we have bugs worked out it will be much simpler to add to it and make new combat encounters going forward.

I apologize again for the long delays but we should have some new content for you all soon!