Hey!

1 ½ years since I started the website redesign.
2 years since I started working at Dreaming Door Studios.
2 ½ years since I started working on the Mine Blocks 1.29 update.

It's crazy how long it's been since I've release something big! But it makes sense: I spent a lot of time studying at university, and then when I wasn't at school, I was working full time at Dreaming Door Studios. On top of that, I was working on even more projects at the same time (RettoBot, Spike Tower, Frisbio, a game engine, and more)!

So because of that, early this year I started to direct all of my attention to finish Mine Blocks and the website redesign, so I could release them faster. And they're getting real close!

In this post, I will explain where I'm at with each of the three projects:

As many of you know, I have been redesigning every page of Zanzlanz.com. After I finished redesigning most of the main site, I went on to do the accounts system as well. And that ended up being a pretty big project.

The account settings page, my user profile, and the messaging system.

The accounts system is currently only used by me, friends, and moderators, but eventually I would like to release it for everyone else as well. So I spent a while recreating profile pages, settings, chat, messaging, comments, and login/registration. I vastly improved security, performance, and overall design, which makes me a lot more confident with eventually sharing it with more people!

The latest thing I've been working on for the redesign is the "doodles" page, which is the new home for all of my miscellaneous work, including generative art, digital art, tools, abandoned demos, and other small side projects.

Examples of the doodles page on desktop and mobile. I only made posts up to August 2015 so far, so there are tons still to enter!

So what's left of the redesign?

Well once I'm finished with the doodles pages, all I have left to redesign is the donate page! After that, I just have a short list of tasks to do, like making a "fullscreen" button for games. That stuff shouldn't take too long.

Unfortunately though, I recently found out that I have to switch my sites to a different server completely. I've never done this before, so I'm not sure how complicated it will be to switch servers. I will just have to take my time and make sure it's done properly before I launch the update.

After all that, the last thing I will do is make a video about the redesign, to compare how the pages changed, and explaining the various design decisions I made along the way. I think this will be a great capstone for the project, and a good way to say goodbye to the old design. Interestingly, creating the video is the hardest part left to do!

And don't worry! I didn't forget about Phil.

I'm a full-time programmer at Dreaming Door Studios, helping bring the game Golden Treasure: The Great Green to life.

We're getting really close to the full launch of the game! In fact, we even have a release date: June 17, 2019!

If you can't wait to get your hands on it, definitely play our free demo on Steam! It's a surprisingly large demo, featuring an entire map of unique experiences and hidden secrets to discover.

We're active on Twitter and Facebook, so come say hi and follow our progress as we wrap up the final stages of development.
And if you'd like to get a notification when we go live, wishlist Golden Treasure on Steam:

Dreaming Door has been a big part of my life for the past couple of years. It's insanely cool to be a part of a great team to make a beautiful game happen. So I can't wait to see how the Golden Treasure release will go, and I hope you guys enjoy!

I'm really looking forward to finally releasing Mine Blocks 1.29!
It's been way too long since the last update, and I'm eager to start the increasingly urgent Haxe port of the game.

But that being said... 1.29 is SO close to being done!

I actually only have one last small feature to add before all planned features have been added to the update. There are also around 19 bugs to investigate - these are ones you guys reported to me over the years. These usually don't take too long to get through, thankfully.

Just one of the many ways to hide your secret cake lair! Skin is Luis by Luis.

After those last tasks are done, the update will be pretty much done! I will just need to go through all of the changes to make sure they work as intended without crazy bugs.
And at that point, I will be working on the update video, creating the changelog, and writing posts to get ready for release!

You can probably see why it's hard to give straight release dates - the projects get pretty complicated! So I hope this post gave you a good glimpse of where I'm at with everything.

As a side-note, I'm hoping to launch the Patreon on the month of the website and Mine Blocks releases. So it will be another thing for me to coordinate alongside the other projects. But I'll save that topic for when I have more information about it!

In the meantime, join me on Discord to keep updated on these projects! (And hi everyone who has joined already! You're neat!)

Thanks for reading <3
- Zanz