Roadmap Time

I haven't been updating the page enough recently, so I figured I'd sit down and talk a little about progress, plans and milestones.

Love of Magic

I finally had a chance this weekend to sit down and play Love of Book 3 from scratch. It might surprise some of you, but as a dev it's rare to have the chance to play the game as a player. I had an enjoyable time, but it also highlights that there's a fair chunk of work left. Let's break it down in terms of tasks:

Act XV+

XV+ is looking to become something of a monster update, adding content that's playable across Act XI-XV. As I was playing I put down notes on stuff I want to have working before moving on to XVI.

The big systemic content is the Kingdom Events, which are completely truncated now. I've got one... I want ~10. So... that's going to take some elbow grease. The good news is those write pretty quickly once I put my mind to it.

Another big chunk of content I want to add is unique Elsewhere conversations in Book 3. Basically for each companion, there should be the option to sit down and chat with them, find out what makes them tick and share some private time.

I've got some Elsewhere events planned. Most of these are done (new enemies, a set of epic showdowns for the poker lovers, and a number of smaller events that flesh out the world). I've got one more of those to go, the travelling salesman in Elsewhere, who has a story to tell.

Finally I'm going back and inserting a few events into the timeline to fix discontinuities. The big one is Molly's birthday (April 4th) which I... er... forgot. Bad Master. There's another couple of events that, when playing, seem to *belong*, especially in the final days of Act XV. So I'll be adding those.

So. I naively had dreams of finishing the Act *this* weekend. Obviously that's not happening, I've got another week or two of hard work, depending on what real life gets up to. You can check out the latest update on the Development Branch of Book 2/3; if I were to estimate it I'd say it's about 60-70% done at this point.

Act XVI

Once I'm finally done with Act XV+ I'll be turning my attention to XVI: Eternal Summer. This is, in many ways, a fan-service act; the big conflict of the game has been resolved, and now the player will get to enjoy the fruit of his labor. A bunch of threads, and promises, need to be resolved. Act XV ended day 265; Eternal Summer is planned to end day 288 (midsummer night).

Epilogue
The Epilogue will contain a number of smaller cutscenes, exploring how things ended up for a number of characters. The day-by-day nature of Love of Magic means that jumping 5 or 20 years forward is something I'm leaving to the end of the book series to explore. I've actually been quietly working on the Epilogue as I build the rest of the game, so about 1/3 of it is currently done.

Of this, the one that's going to take real time is Companion dialogs, because those require me to see the world from that companions point of view. The Kingdom events (though they look scary, lined up like that) will go quite fast; especially since there's no rendering involved. 

Morningstar: Book of the Fallen

If you check out the Morningstar Branch of Book 3, you'll notice Morningstar's progressing quite nicely. Let's break it down a little.

Like Love of Magic, Morningstar's a Sandbox/VN, meaning there's linear events tied to specific days, optional side-content to engage with, and (eventually) random and replayable events you can chose to grind on if you want.

The Calendar

So far the game is done up to Day 14. End of Act is planned to Day 16, so this part has progressed quite nicely. I've got two more days of content to go through, stopping at a mini-cliff hanger. It's another couple of days of hard work to finish writing and rendering the last 2 days.

Side Content

This part is actually progressing quite well; there's over an hour's worth of side-content, and much of it is good fun. I'm loving both Snowdrop and Lin's content, and there's a lot of small and large events baked into the world to explore and discover.

The Sandbox's also looking healthy, with characters to explore, replayable activities to engage in, and side stories to unlock. I've got one additional character I need to flesh out (Katja, who runs the Caffeine Confessions coffeehouse), but that's about it for Act I. In testing I still haven't run out of side-content by day 40, so I think that's fine for a first release.

What *is* going to require more love is the combat system. It'll be a mix of fixing bugs, adding more attacks, and completing the upgrade system. I'll not be putting in the repeatable combat system (the "Paths of Elsewhere" equivalent, with random monsters) in this release, it can wait for Act II.

This weekend saw a pretty major overhaul of the combat system, and it's looking much more stable, with a proper tutorial. Lots of little bugs were squashed and lots of minor quality of life improvements added.

I made the decision to leave the Gallery App until later; I'll see if I'm feeling spunky enough to add it in before Act I is done. The goal is to have a Patreon preview build that's complete sometime in the next month or so, followed by a public build.

If Morningstar's looking interesting, give it a Wishlist here; it really helps. If you're a Patreon and want to check things out, let me know and I'll pass you a Steam key.

So... that's the roadmap going forward. Was that useful? Is the format too wordy, or missing details? Let me know in the comments!