So. Well since I'm actually logged in for once I guess I'll fill you all in on what's happening with Volta these days. The short answer is "not much". Luckily I've got a longer one that can better explain the situation.
As you should know by now I'm a relatively lazy hacker who also is in college (though that part doesn't have any bearing on hack dev.). I spend more time actually playing games than hacking because I'm still as a relative crossroads concerning graphics. Of course if I weren't so lazy about it and didn't see the lack of graphics as an excuse to not have to work on the hack, I'm sure I'd be much further along in development. But this isn't the case so Volta has been sitting stagnant for a few good months now.
However, things are possibly going to change soon. A few weeks ago I was thinking seriously about the project and I came up with a plan of sorts as to how I'm going to get myself out of this non-hacking rut I'm in and actually make some progress. I first decided to talk to GF_Kennon about graphics because I knew he had offered assistance, plus he was usually on when I'd make mini-rants on IRC about lack of graphics and whatnot. So I'm going to work with him to get some graphics finally and update some of the old tilesets with more detail and just make them better-looking overall. The second thing i decided that I'm going to do was transfer everything in the rom to a clean rom. Everything. THe main reason for doing this is that when I applied DSO's graphics relocation patch months ago, I had to haphazardly throw all of my moved level data to new banks since his patch overwrote the banks I was using. Because of this I just threw data all over the place. This has led to great annoyances in regards to roomspace. I'm not running out of anything, it's just very inefficient. And if I want to update old rooms with added graphical detail from what GF_Kennon and I work up, I'll need the freespace, something a lot of my moved data rooms are lacking. So the plan is to move things to a new rom one room at a time and update the rooms graphically as I do so. Once I'm satisfied with the room's added detail, I make note of where it ends in the rom and do the next room. This way I'll be more organized and efficient in the movement of room data.
Of course this process is not going to be fun, as there's a couple asm hacks I'll need to add in again, along with a new one, all sorts of scrolls and PLMs to change, PLM values, tiletables, palettes, graphics, and more. This will likely take a fair amount of time to do, in which I won't be making any new progress on the game (like there's been any recently) but this will hopefully lead to me being even more organized in how I tackle world-building and will also likely get me back in the hacking groove that I've fallen so far out of. And seeing how M2K2 isn't really hacking focused anymore, I guess I'll be showing my face around here more often. I've been out of the loop for too long, it's time for me to attempt to get my way back in because I know that for some reason you guys are still looking forward to Volta even after nearly a two and a half year development time. Dunno what you guys see in my damn hack but if someone wants to still play it that's nearly enough motivation to get me to finish. The other part of the motivation comes from me wanting to finish the damn thing. I've invested way too much time over the years to give up on it now. So one day, no matter how long it takes, Volta will see the light of day.
And I hope it will be great.
Jesus I sound like some sort of college graduation speaker.
