Imp and Kitsune chibi reveals + Devlog #129 + Illustration poll #4 is on!

Imp and Kitsune chibis!
Really happy with these, especially both of the fall ones ^^
Futomo's KO pose was a bit tough as well, but turned out really good! I hope you'll like them
I've decided that I'm only going to reveal chibis over the next few months, I've got quite a few to show off. Still going to work on character reveals in the meantime though, of course!

R4 and R5 chibis are available to $10+ patrons!

Chibi BE

A lot of good work was taken care of this month!
First of all, here is a list of all the changes and fixes made to the Optimization update:

- Fixed a crash occuring in two specific dialogues
- Fixed a crash that can occur during fights if an oyon is selected precisely during the frame it falls then selected again
- Prevented autosave from triggering during a specific sequence
- Moving into a room by using the keyboard in the same frame as a grabbed object is released caused a crash > Fixed!
- Using Boomerang (Alt Y) on Nightmare crashes the game > Fixed!
- The price of Terra's incense has been lowered
- Updated the intro screen
- Fixed the Traveler despawn bug
- Mines (Mines Heartpower) are now bumped by using right click instead of left click
- Slightly decreased the hitstun length when destroying a Shape
- Increased the amount of storage pages to 20
- Storage pages can now be flipped using the keyboard
- Optimized BGM loading (greatly decreased memory usage and almost instant loading time at the start of the game!)
- Various other minor bug fixes & changes

The ability bump mines with right click instead of left click means you can now select Oyons, even if a mine is on top! It's a really small change, but this makes the mine heartpower a lot more enjoyable ^^
Though the big one in this list is definitely the optimized BGM loading! If you remember, the game used to take quite a while to load on startup. The wait was reduced in this build, but there were still several seconds of wait. This was because I was loading every single track at once, which was very useful for me since I didn't have to deal with loading and unloading them at the right time (didn't have the enough time for this back then), but this also meant an increased memory usage on top of that initial wait! After some people reported irregular instant crashes (no error log) in this build, And while the autosave system prevents any major progress loss, I figured it might be a memory issue and finally took care of it. Now, I'm not 100% sure this actually was related to these crashes, since as it turns out while Game Maker 2 fixes a lot of the issues I had with GM 1.4, it also introduced a few new ones...!
Namely, the cursor stutter bug and the tab in freeze bug, which are both confirmed to be on Game Maker's side. While only a few are affected and I do have temporary workaround in place listed in the README, I've got no choice but to wait for the LTS version of GM2 I mentioned before, which will hopefully fix these. definitively.
And, because the instant crashes in this new build don't occur in exactly the same way as they did in the previous build, it's unclear whether the optimized memory management will actually fix them, or if this is also a Game Maker issue.
Either way, I'll keep an eye out for more reports on these bugs / News from Yoyo Games. They aren't overly common thankfully, but these are definitely my current main gripes with GM2! And, if you missed my mini annoucement earlier this month, this is the reason why I'm only going to release this public build on itchio for now, alongside the current one (as opposed to replacing it entirely).
So yeah, it's a whole thing which was a bit disheartening to find out about, but I do feel better about it now that I at least have some workaround solutions!

On the art side, more characters have been worked on, and I've been drawing a bunch of chibis! In fact, Futomo's were finished just at the beginning of November ^^
I've also been working on a bit of a special surprise, but that's for later...!

And that's everything, I don't actually have anything else to say this time...
Still working my way through drawing the chibis, with this build out of the way I'll be able to get some good progress done! One of the sets that scares me a bit is Slimegirl, with her height growth mod. That'll definitely require a bit more work that the rest, but I'll get it done ^^
I'll also get back to designing more of the poll Monstergirls, I've actually got less than half to do now, so it'd be a good idea to keep that up. After I'm done with the currently in-game character's chibis, I think it'll be time to go back to coding again to finally implement that new BE feature I mentioned a while back! Then a bunch of QoL and various minor improvements, and the BE update will be ready...! Putting it that way makes the workload seem a bit lighter than it is, but that's the plan!

And now, the poll stuff!

The next illustration poll has begun! The theme this time is [Freeform]!
You can vote in the Discord server if you are a 2$+ patron! Here are the current theme and submissions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Drz4UD09YftgaihcwWq6McqiFTa2l77XJ9oBJ0hfDcoThe
This poll will be divided in 2 rounds, the first one of which will end on the 15th! ^^

And that's all for now!
Thank you for reading! :B