Rurouni Kenshin: Soul and Sword: What about us?

Hey people, how are you?
It's been a while since I've made a post here, the last one was about the lastest build of our project.
2018 was very difficult in my personal life with some things happening... But, well, in a way it was helpful to me in relation to the project. I have improved my skills with pixel art and last weekend I discovered some tools to help with our project.

Some people have been asking about new characters and / or bug fixes, and the answer is very simple. There is no forecast. Who cares for this part is Aoshi24 and I do not know when he will return or if he will return. Some of you may be thinking that I could start learning coding. On this, it is also very simple, will not happen. Developing pixel art skills takes a lot of time, and I've never been interested in learning codes. Who knows with things flowing, I get help from some other coder who is interested in the project.

Assuming Aoshi24 does not come back, does that mean the project is dead? Not necessarily. As I said, in addition to the possibility of someone new to help in the project, the game still has a lot to improve. New screenpack, new lifebar, new stages, improve the sprites of the characters ... and this is within my reach. I'm wanting to start working on new scenarios, and as I said above I got a tool to work on it. And I want to start updating the sprites of the characters, not like the Enishi's, but something more radical. Below you can see this with Okita and a new stage (you recognize it, right?). I want to start with Okita because he's a minor character, so giving him a little attention is a matter of justice. (LOL)

But it's not just a change in style, but his sprites will be resized as well. Currently the sprites are resized through the code. This is not good because some details are lost, moreover, it does not make sense to update the sprites and still have to resize them with code. As you can see, it will have color separation and this will allow for more interesting color palette options. If you know how to edit palettes, you'll have fun making your own versions.

I also want to implement the hyper portraits in pixel art, as you can see, they change according to the palette of characters.

Some comments on facebook page and inbox messages ask about a Steam version to buy and consequently help us. This is something that I have answered a few times myself, but I will make it very clear here. Rurouni Kenshin is a registered trademark without having a license we can not sell. So, unfortunately, this is not going to happen.

But a lot of work has been done so far, many hours invested, so if you really want to contribute some help, I would be very grateful if you could do a donation through paypal. If you want to encourage this project, it has a link in navbar of the blog (or you can click here), any amount is welcome. In 2019 I plan to post more
often, so you can follow it more closely.

I will leave below some art concepts and a bonus.