SitRep — July 11, 2024

Hi, I realize that it's been a bit since I last dropped a message from behind the development process, and I wanted to bring everyone up to speed.

This past mid-May, while I was at work, I lost my apartment in a pretty devastating apartment fire that began in the unit next to mine. No one was hurt in the fire, but the damage was sufficient to pretty much have my personal list of worldly possessions reset to pretty much zero. 

Fortunately (relatively speaking), my laptop was with me and all of the files for the game development had been backed up on cloud servers and external drives untouched by the fire. A new, furnished apartment was found and the process of rebuilding begins anew. Once the insurance money comes through, things will get better. 

Okay, all that drama aside, here is the structure of the update schedule in the game:

As we discussed earlier, the first update of the reimagined game will be numbered as v.0.5.1, and will consist of pretty much all of the Willowdale content and the travel from the village of Willowdale through the travel through the wilds of the barony to the next town of Dewberry. After that initial release, we will dig right in on creating the second update, v.0.5.2, will cover the town of Dewberry and the travel to Brexton. The third update, v.0.5.3, will cover as much of the reImagined content of Brexton as it appeared in the previous version. After that, the game updates will feature mostly brand new content. I can’t tell you how excited I am about that.

We are anticipating, barring unforeseen complications, an initial release in early September or October, 2024.

That may seem like a far away point on the calendar, but I assure you it isn’t.

THE SHORT VERSION

Art — 250 renders of a projected 1100— 1200 renders in total, 2 animations of a projected 4-5 for the new version

Writing — 133,000 words of a projected 150,000 words, which includes the reworking of previous content and the expansion of content to include new events and story arcs

Sound — A replacement or reworking of the previous audio content, including 80-90 new sfx, and 6 out of a projected 7-8 original musical pieces that reintroduce the game and to represent each major character’s theme.

Structure — The code has been rebuilt from the ground up with an eye to increasing flexibility so that the game can expand largely bug- and crash-free (knock wood). Special attention was made to allow the Player to manage their resources and time far more easily than before, cutting down on some of the grind while replacing rote tasks with interesting variation. As well,a navigation system using expanding maps is being worked on that will allow the Player to take advantage of the freeroam capabilities well beyond that presented in the previous version of the game. Next on the agenda is to develop the fighting and buy/sell system, and implementation of some minigames to help with the grind and skill development.

THE LONG VERSION

The Art

The initial release of the game will feature between 1100-1200 images, of which approximately 250 have been completed by Steve. Some of those renders will consist of images that include some expanded content as the game becomes a bit more free-roam in nature. There will also be more than a few animations in this first update.

That may seem a little on the low side until you remember that because the content in the initial version used Daz Genesis 3 models, when upgrading the game, all of the models had to be recreated in Genesis 8, as there was no way to recover the initial assets for the characters. Each character took more than a little time to be as faithfully recreated as possible.

The Writing

Speaking of that expanded content, the previous game had upwards of 400,000 words spread across four versions. In this reImagined version, the word count (through editing) will increase just from the content already in place. There are four new events and a dozen new scenes in the Willowdale update alone, which currently add approximately 33,000 extra words. I anticipate that there will be plenty more than that before we’re through.

The Sound

Moving on to Music and Sound, we have replaced and —  I think —  vastly  improved upon both the music and sfx appearing in the game. There are approximately 80-90 new sfx in the game, and 6 out of 7 or 8 new songs (this includes a new prelude and reworked and expanded main theme) The characters that currently have original compositions are Elly, Kelly, Aelrue, Genni and Marika. Marika's is being worked on as I write this. I think Jefferson has hit several home runs with the themes, and we all think they all fit together under the umbrella of the main theme (as they should, to be frank).

The Structure

The coding has been one of the more challenging aspects thus far; We had to basically start from scratch, since the previous code was an interesting mix of different bits and pieces cobbled together. One of the main goals of the new code has been to strip the game of seemingly endless Boolean conditions and long statements. Our coder, Riam, created a new, flexible character system that can grow along with the player (and other characters) as the game progresses. The success of certain actions — very much like in traditional tabletop RPGs — is largely dependent upon a character’s skills and attributes. They can form into parties of variable formations, and interact better with the environment than in the older version.

We also have created a more robust inventory and travel system, which can help the player as they both move between cities and within those cities as well. The questing system has been reworked so as to be both event and time driven in a way that is easy-to-understand and follow; some of the grind of, for instance, harvesting and stocking up for winter is abated by simplifying the efforts and adding variable spoken and event content.

All of the above is to create a more robust, immersive game environment. 

Until next time, my friends.

—  Jack Oh