And we're back.This thing's on, right? Can everyone hear me? Okay, cool.So I hear you folks have been demanding more blog posts. I can't really blame you. We've been silent going on two and a half months, and that's probably not very reassuring from the outside. Let me assuage any concerns you have: we're still alive, we're still kicking, and we're still making progress.Cards on the table, though – we've lost some people along the way. That may sound like pretty bad news, but we're a tighter, stronger team for it. It's sad to see old faces head out the door, but as we move forward, it's reassuring to know we've pared the team down to our most dedicated, most passionate, most hard-working people. And each loss hardens the resolve of the rest of us.On the flipside, we've also welcomed a lot of new talent on board. TJeffy (aka TonyTwoFingers on the forums), one of our resident fanfickers, has been hard at work putting the rest of the writing team to shame. Not to mention musicbro keviniskool, who isn't exactly a new member, but – as it turns out – is pretty good at basically everything ever, so he's been helping us writers fill in the gaps in the demo content.Then there's three new artists, who I'll be sure to introduce you to in the coming weeks. We've overhauled our approach to sprite production, which again I admit feels like a setback. It is, in a way, but the new system will allow us to get art out faster and in a more consistent style, so in the long run it's better for everyone. We're pretty excited about it.If you're wondering about milestones, Merlyn, Hamadyne, and kevin just put together an internal demo to show off all our resources working together. There's obviously more polish to be done, but this is how we find out what exactly needs work. In terms of future stuff, I plan on having all my writing for the demo finished by very early September. Several writers will be done well before that. Once September rolls around, I'm going to be tearing everything apart, rewriting, and generally making everyone else hate me. I do it because I love them.Yep, that's what we've been up to. Sorry we didn't keep you in the loop, but we're back now. Hush, my darlings. It's all going to be okay.-alabaster