I recently launched Weird and Unfortunate Things Are Happening on Steam (click here to see the Steam page) and it's been pretty successful, and I've already gotten people asking about getting some of my other games on Steam.

The problem with Luxaren Allure is that when I made it, I started with a mindset of how I made games back in the old RPG Maker 2k days: while the tilesets were all made for the project, the icons, sounds and animations had a lot of rips from other games, and it wasn't until I was over 50% done with the game that I even started properly tracking where some of the resources were from.

My first impulse was to remake the game in RPG Maker MZ, but after careful consideration, I've scrapped that idea, as what motivates me is making new games; I doubt I could spend the time needed to redo absolutely everything to run in MZ without getting massively burnt-out, and that would also delay Izrand for a long long time, which I'd like to avoid.

So instead I've decided to just revamp the VX Ace version for Steam, by redoing or replacing any resources that I don't know the source of. Unfortunately due to my poor labeling of what I used plus the fact that a lot of places where you could get VX Ace and older resources now being offline, I've had to replace more than I might otherwise have needed.

Most of the icons were from either Dragon Quest or from packs that might have had rips in them, so I've replaced all of them save for ones that were just modified Ace icons or that I made myself.

The sounds were a big hassle, as I originally mixed sounds I got from Freesound.org with several from other games, including Warcraft III and Starcraft and a couple from older RPGs. So unless I could positively identify and credit a sound's source, which was rare, I replaced it, tho I tried to find replacements that sound similar enough. I couldn't even track the source of the original cursor sounds, so I'm using Izrand's for that, which don't 100% sound the same but kinda "feel" in the right ballpark to me.

That leaves the animations, which I'm still working on, but I'm almost done. Again, some from the original are rips and there are a lot of others that I don't know the source and can't find it with google reverse image search. Luckily, about halfway thru the game I started saving any new resources with the creators' name as part of the file name, which makes verifying and crediting those a snap, but the rest, well... Some of the offending animations have just been replaced by new ones drawn by me, some have been replaced by ones I made for Izrand, and some have been replaced by assets that I've bought or from free sites with clear credit/attribution licenses.

You may ask: With so much being replaced, will this still feel like the same darn game, unity? I think it will. The tilesets, monsters, hero sprites, music etc are all the same, and I'm trying hard to keep the new assets very much in spirit of the original game. It's not perfect, and still feels like a bit of a mish-mash, but to be honest that's very true to the original project, with all those animations and sounds from very different sources XD;;;

That leaves the big question of: When will this Steam edition launch? I'm thinking somewhere between March and May of this year; I both need to get the rest of these animations done and I don't want it too soon since W&U launched on Steam earlier this month.

What's going to happen to the original version of Luxaren? At the very least, it'll always be available for download  here on RPG Maker Net. You can still play it as-is without any of the Steam changes if you download it there. I think it's best to preserve it in it's original form alongside with the new Steam version.

As for the itch.io download, I was thinking of putting the new version here as well, as I still get a good amount of downloads here and it'd be cool for people to get the more definitive version.

I apologize to people who have been patiently waiting for Izrand, as this pushes it back slightly further while I fiddle with this, but once I get an idea like this in my head, sometimes I have to do it all before I can move on.

Before I go, here's an awesome Valentine's artwork from Maki of Karuna and Aurelie! :D (click here to go to Maki's twitter!)