Dev diary: March progress (sieges and animations) (Patreon)

New animations

Recently we've found we had a bit of a production bottleneck. We've got plenty of good art coming through the pipeline, but it's too much for our animator to handle solo for us. We can't really show those scenes until they're animated!

Therefore I've been talking to some new animators who will be adding to our production queue. It's a little more expensive to commission multiple people at once, but I'm confident in the skill and professionalism of the animators I've been talking to and we've already got so much for them to work on that you'll be seeing the results fairly soon.

Recruitment is difficult and draining work, but when it pays off with good people coming on board it's really worth it.

Siege mode

Next month, in addition to further developing the Az'ea blow job scene from last month, we're going to be adding the siege system.

I always felt that if you're going to have a game about rebuilding a castle, you sort of have to have some kind of military threat. After all, that's the most important thing castles are for. Still, I didn't want it to be some big, clumsy, boring new system that would distract you from what you're really playing the game for, or something that would take a huge amount of effort to implement.

Therefore I spent a long time figuring out how to do it and eventually developed a system that we're currently implementing. Effectively the sieges will last one day; in the morning you have a chance to do things like assign the maids to the battlements, cast spells to help or upgrade your defences. Then in the afternoon the attack comes and this plays out as a new, additional decision phase just like when you're holding court. There are a bunch of new events that will be specifically only cropping up for the siege phase and most of them depend on the type of siege you're getting.

This way, things are nice and familiar to how the game already plays. It's easier to implement, but more importantly it should feel like a natural extension of the current gameplay.

The four types of sieges, in increasing order of difficulty, are:

• Peasant rebellions (if you run out of food)

• Goblin raiders (if your security drops too low)

• The Earl's armies (if you don't pay him)

• Demons (if the portal gets too powerful)

So now there will be consequences to letting things get out of control! But don't worry - sieges aren't a game over, even if you lose. And if you win, there might even be some side benefits. The intention is that you'll try to avoid them, but you're not going to want to load the game if you do get one.