State of Decay #14 (November 2025): Small updates + Overview of website improvements.

I suppose it’s back to the normal swing of things now, no more worthwhile or important dates to distract these posts anymore - Not that I didn’t appreciate the distractions of course (it’s not like I had anything much *else* to write about for the past few months; haven't been working on many ‘show-offable’ things). But now I’ll actually have to come up with some things to write about - Fortunate that development is starting to shift back into the meat and potatoes after months of finishing up things here and there.

If that paragraph didn't make any sense, basically, it’s business as usual for the most part (^^; I’m starting to realise that a large amount of these opening parts are kind of rambly and directionless but that’s fine! (I think).

Anyway, what happened this last month? Well as it turns out, a few decent little pushes here and there! First (well not first but the actual thing I did first is the main focus of this post) I finished the enemy sprites (again). Last month I decided that some old ones needed respriting or giving more frames, and I thought that I might as well add a bunch more enemies while I’m at it, and now I’m done with that. Funnily enough I ended up scrapping the three enemies that I wanted to resprite, basically the idea I had to rework them would've ended up quite awkward since I didn’t plan the stage rosters with such complicated enemies; so the new versions would've taken up a decent chunk of a stages’ roster for just one appearance each, if that makes any sense…

Another thing that happened was finishing all of the boss sprites (again). Basically, while I was making the enemy sprites I came to the realisation that two midbosses didn’t make much sense while also being located in places where using an already existing character didn’t make sense either, so I made two more characters and swore to myself that I was *done adding characters,* no more I say! Then I added another a few weeks later… What happened there was that I was making a stage enemy and then fell in love with the design before I’d even made all the frames; I then frantically searched for where I could squeeze in just *one* more midboss and found a minor plothole that didn’t need fixing: perfect! Of course, this led onto finishing all of the player sprites (again) due to there, y’know, being three more characters; still haven’t made bombs or options for them (in fact, a few characters are missing them beyond the new guys) but I’m waiting to work on that stuff as I actually add shots to the game now; that makes slightly more sense in my head.

Otherwise, I’m pretty sure there were some small things here and there (as well as things I have yet to do considering I’m writing this on the 25th), but that was the main highlights; there’s honestly not much spritework to do now: portraits, backgrounds and some things for the menus now, all of those take a while but it’s at a point where it’s possible to clearly see what has and hasn’t been done - exiting! Even more exciting is that drawing is what I’m spending most of my time on right now, once the last few things for demo 0 are drawn, all this drawing time will be firmly shifted to some *real* effort on the game itself (probably).

Anyway, website time! If you’ve been on the website in the past you’ve probably already noticed some of the changes (there’s a pretty obvious absence to the left of this text), but I’ll go through all of the changes I can remember/spot because that’s perfect filler for a SoD where I’d otherwise have nothing much to say.

I started working on the website again because over the past year of it existing, I’ve obviously used it a whole lot, which means I’ve noticed all of the little things that bugged me or needed changing *or* were never supposed to be like how they were, but I was just too inexperienced to do anything else when I first made the site. While there still are some things I’d like to change (read: minor annoyances that only affect one page), I’ll work away at those as they annoy me, on the whole, I’m now happy with the website - I’d like more images, but that can wait.

Anyway, anyway, the list:

Header is smaller and aligned with itself: This one had bugged me to no end, seriously, the second row of the header not being aligned with the top one was the only thing about the site that outright irked me. After a bit of reading I learned how tables work and after a bit of fanagaling, aligned them both. The only unfortunate thing is that now it’s misaligned on mobile… well, less *misaligned* and more like some of the words are too big to fit in their part of the table, none of them overlap so it’s fine. Also the header was made smaller as part of a general effort to reduce deadspace, the whole site ended up looking a lot cleaner thanks to doing this wherever I could.

Sidebar and body have less deadspace either side of text: Just explained that, next!

Added links on pieces of news: This can be seen way better on the news page, but it’s visible to me right now, so I’ll talk about it; I just thought it kind of made sense, right? If you see something you want to know about, just click the link and it’ll take you right to said piece of news, convenient!

Footer is smaller and has return to top button: The return to top button was added because it’s just handy and not much of an effort to add, also, even though the footer has another line to it, it’s still smaller than the old one; it used to have so much deadspace…

Index page has an image and was slightly rewritten: The image was just to give the mostly boring index page some flair (totally not because it’s what Neocities uses as the thumbnail for your site); it’s also a place to put some information, so I made it about tFRT, I’ll update it once demo 0 comes out and such, make it clickable too, all that good stuff~ Also, a lot of pages here and there got a minor rewrite, but I’ll only mention it here.

Added some missing dates to news page: As it turns out, some of the dates with ‘??/??/??’ were very easy to figure out, so that was an easy fix, shuffled some things around a bit though.

Relevant pages have indexes to take you to specific sections of them: This one’s handy and wasn't needed initially since there was so little on the website, but after a year some pages have gotten a little out of hand. For example, on news you have a list of the years, click a year and you’ll be taken to it, simple.

Organised games, music and stories pages: Exactly what it says on the tin, I could see in the future these pages getting messy fast; they still might actually, but for now they’re fine, I’ll probably make the individual sections their own pages in the future, but that’s not for a *while.*

Sidebar removed on some pages: This is what should be pretty obviously missing from the left side of this text, the sidebar is gone, why? Well I thought that the sidebar was taking up a lot of space but I didn’t want to scrap the whole thing, so I removed it from pages that can’t be accessed from the navbar; logic being that you’d have to see the sidebar on your way to any pages within pages so you’d have already seen it, if that makes sense.

Sidebar replaced with quick links section on some pages: On the pages for multichapter stories and the ‘old posts’ section of the blog, the sidebar gains a new purpose to find what you’re looking for without all of the fluff; should make navigation easier, more options never hurt anybody~

Multichapter works have navigation links on individual chapters: Another one that does what it says on the tin, the only reason this didn’t already exist is because it’s currently useless; thought I might as well add it while I was updating the rest of the site… I wonder how long it’ll take for these buttons to gain a purpose (^^;

Blog page completely reorganised: This page was starting to become a complete mess so I changed it completely! Now there’s a section that only shows the five most recent posts; older posts can be accessed on their own pages which separate them by year to avoid one huge page that’s a nightmare to navigate. Also the text size for the post titles is smaller, reduces clutter and the like, it looks a bit nicer I think.

FAQ now has question index: Just a big list of the questions at the start of the page, honestly not that helpful compared to just scrolling though; this page still feels like a mess but I’m not really sure how I’d fix it.

Download page has a new look: I know it’s not on *this* website, but I did update it alongside this site; instead of being a sad imitation of the main site, now it’s got its own look specifically designed for itch.io’s ridiculous limitations on page customization. It also matches the pages I made for MoWS and tFRT. It doesn’t have the ‘vaguely old internet with modern design sensibilities’ look that this site (hopefully) has, but it still has just a touch of personality to it~

There you go, a lot of words and nothing much else. No clue what I’ll be doing next month for SoD, but I’ll maybe have something to show, maybe? I’m hoping to keep a certain something on a vague schedule but if it doesn’t, I don’t mind too much; not like anyone’s actually reading it hint, hint.

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This month’s crystal ball grazing: Things that take effort can often seem difficult, but sometimes it’s only difficult to overcome preconceived notions.