Dev log 28 (Patreon)

Hey hey a month passed an it's time to do a progress report.

First I will address the elephant in the room, "Why update inst out yet, you promised it a while ago". Just like last previous big update with catacombs we've being humbled in our overly optimistic view on workload and our capabilities. What we did before was much more linear and much simpler quest structure, much less text, much less of everything really so all together it added up very complex situation. And all of this extra load was put into single member of our team who is already busy with engine code but now also has to go thru fuckton of scripting which created a bit of bottleneck. We will try to solve this issue in the following, much smaller, update by shifting some responsibilities on other members and making the scripting process easier by putting some editor tools it in the game, similar dialogue editor. Aaaand I should organize design docs a bit better, whoops. But current update we finish in our old routine to not extend it any more. Sorry if it all sound like rookie mistakes but we are pr much rookie team making essentially our first game.

So whats left? Quest structure is finished, art assets are finished and only last minute additions are made, in case if it's fast to add or is important, writing same to art assets. We are currently bug hunting in internal testing, polishing rough edges, adding\balancing enemies on the map and minor flavor\guidance additions to the questline.

In other news, since our art team is more or less done with this update we can start working art assets for following one in advance. We will try to keep scale of the future updates down to keep more consistent flow and not force everyone to wait for months.

In the next update we are planning to add our last recruitable companion Osh'To, an ex-mercenary ogress. Her quest would be middleground between Scylla and first companions recruitment quest in terms of length\content. New update is planned to have 6 new minor locations, 1 big and 2 old locations will get a facelift. We aren't reworking existing location from ground up, that would be wasting time we don't have atm, but adding details and replacing a building or two which didn't fit very well. Half of the location work is essentially done already, and just need a finishing run from me and ported into the game.

(locations lack foliage due not being in the engine and some locations are wips nearing completion).

We tried to add more color to the game to slightly mix up our main warm sandy-brown palette without changing geometry of the level too much. And on top of this new update will introduce new type of npc\enemy Kyots. Those will be a fantasy race of previously subterrain originated sentient dwellers who only recently (on a historical level) resurfaced and try to find their place in their world.

A race with mixed reputation among elves\humans\lizardfolk due to their habits and occasional anti-social behavior, their small settlements can be found around the world. Adapted to be excellent diggers and swimmers they prefer to either settle near shorelines\lakes or have fully or semi underground villages. A very common practice for big towns is to make arrangements with Kyot tribes to settle in sewer for maintenance, protection from troglodyte infestation in exchange for food and things chitinous bastards find valuable.

And last not least, We also made an addition to our combat, now our system supports on world-map combat!

It acts and looks like regular combat but for us still somehow an exciting addition.

So that should be all for now. We are currently pushing towards closed beta test, and once the version is deemed stable and bug-free(enough) we will publish it here. We are planning to give patreon version to our supporters from previous months too, but we not sure how logistics of that would work yet so uhh lets hope it will work out. - Arbuz