LordArioch
patreon
News From the Six Realms #62 - The Road Ahead
🕑 Added 2021-04-18 19:43:17 +0000 UTCHello everyone and welcome to this month’s update,
I’m only going to be talking about one thing today, and that is what remains on the path to completion for Act I. There’s been some chatter about how there’s not a lot being done on the game, which is demonstrably false (with the addition of Exagie, releases are larger than they have ever been) with a cursory running of lint, however it is easy to see why some people think this is the case. Yes, the main story for Act I is pretty much done now, bar the epilogue that follows the fall of Rastedel, so the game has not been expanding in a linear fashion. There is still a lot that needs doing though to both improve the experience of playing the game, and to wrap up the side stories moving in the next arc.
So, we’ll start with content. The main things that need doing in this area are the remaining NPC arcs, the fae narrative arc, the Rastedel epilogue, and the goblin recruitment quest. As things stand, only Cliohna and Greyhide have complete arcs, with Shaya and X’zaratl having substantial work done on theirs. Most of the castle staff, including the twins, need plot arcs of similar, or in some case, larger, size, and while these have been split between the writers, they are going to take some time. The above also includes Alexia, who needs clear arcs for all of her job events. Hooky has already started reworking the Fae events and will continue over the next few months, leading to the end of the Fae arc for Act I. That just leaves the epilogue and the goblin quest, both of which are important parts of the main plotline, and will require quite a bit of work. We are also looking at reworking the prologue in order to improve it.
Moving on to programming, large chunks of the skill rework have now been done, but Dragoon still needs to implement the changes to Cla-Min’s shop, the spy system, as well as code the new systems of battle readiness and chaos incursions. While he is doing that, Rein and I have to recode and test all the Ruler, Orciad, and Rastedel events that used code (such as skill checks) that is now obsolete.
On the art side, as mentioned in the past we have almost caught up with the backlog, and Sommy has now tackled the lion’s share of reworking the CGs into a more consistent style. Once he has finished with those, he will work on revising the castle and background art, before moving on to adding more variants and animation.
Please take note these icons are placeholders
Finally, we also have to continue to add QoL features, and polish the game. This means sourcing and adding new music and sound/video effects, add transitions, hunt down bugs and typos, and add missing features like the scene replay gallery.
So, as you can see, while the game looks close to completion, there is still quite a lot of work to be done before we get over that final hurdle. As always though, we will continue to work hard to get new releases out on time until all of the above tasks are complete and we move on to Act II. Speaking of releases, the next one will be May 30th, and I’ll be talking about what it will entail in the next News for the Six Realms. In the meantime though, I hope you all have a better idea of what we are working towards now, and are looking forward to what is to come.
Comments
Hey You're doing good work I'm am so hooked on this game. Wanted to know if you would be willing to add the game version into the name of new events on the dev version so I can go straight to new scenes as they come out. Soooooo fcking hyped and hooked on this game keep it up.
Hey just thought I'd chime in seeing as I asked about how long until the game is completed. I didn't mean to imply that you guys weren't working hard on the game, I do think you are working hard on the game. It's just that personally as an observer I would kinda prefer to see the main plot as the focus with the sort of side content like those random events on the map and character arcs on the back burner until the main plot is finished. But can I surmise from what you've written above that when you finish Act I it will be totally finished and you won't need to add anymore content to it? Also, the last time I sort of played through, I tend to put it on skip mode and only properly read the new scenes/those that pique my interest, I didn't encounter some scenes, for example any scenes with the fairy twink (I'm blanking on his name), is that because it is on the fae narrative and it's been taken out of cycle while it is being worked on or something? Also I don't know if this was a bug but I could access the Orc camp from 2 locations one where it normally is in the north-west corner of the map and one sort of north of Arthdale. Finally, as a gay man, who is really into the high fantasy setting, I really appreciate the gay content in this game and was wondering if you had ever thought of doing a game either where you don't start out in a relationship and can have that freedom of choice or one that is straight up gay? Cheers, thanks for all the hard work guys.
that's amazing
Art~
I was getting the feeling while playing that there are a lot of loose ends which just feel very awkward. So I am glad to hear you are expanding the current act before continuing the story. Keep up the great work!
TCoffin
Deal
Requiem
Aw, that's to bad. I think if you were able to make that effort, SoC would become far more popular, just like Fen and Savin's games. But I have also been known to be overly optimistic...
EarlGrayAddict
Dude, there have been TONS of coding, art and rewrites happening for a while and for good reason. That all takes time and makes the game sooo much better! You all are doing a fantastic job!! 😊👍
Catherine13
That would be great.
Lord Arioch
It is unlikely there will be much more for her with Rowan, but I assume she'll have some scenes with Alexia in the library job arc.
Catherine13
Thank you for your hard work. The new game mechanics look really promising! Regarding the NPC side-stories, I just hope that Cliohna gets some more CGs. Despite having a finished character arc, she has much less art than Greyhide.
Lord Arioch
We probably aren't going to do permanent transformation stuff, it is a lot of hassle to account for in every scene and then redraw all the CGs. It works for Fen and Savin because they don't have art for sex scenes like we do, despite earning far, far more.
Requiem
The effort you have put into this is definitely showing. The only game I support other than yours is Fenoxo's Corruption of Champions series. Having played both, I only wish you could share some game creation elements. I love how SoC has multiple NPCs like Alexia that have their own storyline which you can manipulate. CoC2 does not have that. CoC2 though allows repeatable events with different outcomes based on how far you have allowed your character to fall or be changed. I know with the soon to be added Transformation Chamber this may happen. I'm just hoping that when it does, the kind of options you can find for transformations in CoC will also be found here, and that the drawings and sprites will be able to show that. But if not, I will definitely still love SoC. Honestly, I wish I knew more about game programming so I could help you finish the masterpiece that SoC will become.
Lord Arioch
Sure, if people want it I'll write the new event names in the dev release post from now on. (I apologize about the original comment, I'm very tired and I thought there was a tone here there probably isn't, so that is on me)
Khaz
I haven't seen the noted comments but I would say that being a high level backer it is often hard to find the new elements in the game between the overlong release windows. I watch my credit card billed $70 CDN between releases and for that I know there is new content but I fumble around to try and actually locate it. Perhaps it would help, at that high level, to name the additions as it's noted in the event log, that way we don't have to que every event to try and find the 5-6 new things in the hundreds of existing content that frankly cost as much as a triple A title is to buy complete. I'm not complaining, I signed up to pay that, but it would help to make it easier to find what that expense gets me. Saying there are 4 new Shaya events is not as easy as finding said events that often have naming conventions which are not always obvious. Just my observations. At this point having paid two years at $35/month, that's $840 in support. It's hard to see what that has gotten, especially since there are less supportive ways of achieving those same ends.
Lord Arioch
Three thousand dollars 😏
TCoffin
I want to buy Cla-Min's bath water.
