Dev Cycle 5 (Chapter 4) Begins Today!

Following the traditional week off following release, Kent and I are gearing up for the long weekend (Labor Day in the US) to hit the Chapter 4 development cycle like the fist of an angry god.

For those of you who don't know the process, I typically begin with a chapter flowchart built in Scapple, and a scene list.   Before rendering any art, Kent will go searching for the assets he needs to build each scene in the chapter.  This is where we typically identify if we need to send any custom assets to 3D modeling.

I also provide him with a new character list so he can begin crafting the new people who will appear in the story.  These are your security guards, dockworkers, and shady lawyers.

While he's doing that, I begin writing out the chapter, and feed him dialogue one scene at a time so he can craft the art (which I render on my side) that will be included in the story.

While I'm waiting on art, I will likely also put together a final bugfix version of Ch3 that addresses a few minor issues which were not covered by 0.4a.

Check back over the development cycle and in our #previews channel in Discord especially for a sneak peek at what to expect in our next episode.

Tentative Roadmapped Features for 0.4:

• Native Android Version
• Improved Phone App (Can be summoned rather than scripted)
• Improved intro to game with clearer explanation of points
• More clarity on relationship state in End of Chapter Summary

On the business side, it's official.   Kentyrr and I transitioned from an informal partnership into a business (Stone Fox Studios LLC) this week.   No, we're not going all EA on you, we just needed to settle on a consistent tax strategy and have a central way to track expenses for assets, software, licenses, and hardware, and this saves us from losing our houses if some jackwagon says he was inspired to send an unsolicited dick pic by our game.

We did a poll in our Discord about doing an Chapter 3 Release Livestream, and the majority of respondents thought it would be better to wait to the mid-game Chapter 4 release to do a bigger, longer, and uncut one.   

As such, the Youtube channel will have to wait a few more months to hear Kentyrr's dulcet tones again.  That doesn't mean we won't hang out in General Voice Chat on Discord periodically to chat with all comers.

In the meantime, if you enjoy our work, we couldn't recommend our friend Drifty's release of a very personal and heartfelt Leap of Faith: Chapter 6 today more than we do.   His work (as always) is free to the public, but it never hurts to toss a coin to your Witcher, and I know this one always appreciates it.