Development Update: September 25th, 2023

Coding, Art, Things of that Nature!

I did a lot of useful, good, very important stuff in the backend. In addition to cleaning up bugs, I made it possible to embed effects in the ability script and to auto-generate prediction prototypes based on the act data. You can still override predictions if you want, such as for tutorial abilities.

All of that is nonsense to most players but it’s really useful stuff to modders, and to me (I make the game, hello) because it will cut down on those errors where the prediction shows a different value than the actual because I tweaked the balance later on.

I will be fixing up the remaining bugs in chapter 1 and getting all the engine upgrades and requests for mod features this week. Hopefully I can start on the new stuff for chapter 1 then.

Meanwhile, Giga was sick for a bit but is BACK and is working on the TF sequence for Wisphags. We got a new format this time I think you’ll all like. Urimas is making sprites and Koops has delivered the enemy concepts we’ll be using in chapter 1 and chapter 2.

Concept Art! Again!

Remember last week when you got to see concepts for two noble houses? Well this week you get to see concepts for two noble houses, but not the same ones. Contain your shock.

Here we have the members of House Insiati. Until very recently the families making up the great House were associations of guilds, rather than strict families, but the invention of a neurological-mechanical interface and steam power caused a rapid change. Over the last 40 years, Insiati went from the richest house to the most productive house, made up of industrialists, factory owners, inventors, and scientists. Getting your hands dirty is a badge of honor, and many promising students have their educations covered if they are prepared to apply to join the great House.

Once thought to be the clear frontrunner among the great Houses, the recent war and conquest of the city has brought their rise into question.

And lastly we have House Artezzi, owners of the city’s merchant and combat navy. In addition to their estates within the city, they have control over the assorted islands in the harbour area, own all the major shipyards, and are in a fraught alliance with House Insiati in hopes of getting at their steamship technology.

Being the House of the sea means they were the least affected when the city was conquered, and may well be able to survive entirely off their overseas possessions. Their House does have a serious problem, though. The elder members are clinging to power despite being well past retirement, and the youth want to change the ways of the House. The impasse has brought a flagging of their fortunes recently, with many younger members leaving in frustration, while others plot to have the elders “taken care of”.

Big thanks to BlueLily for doing these. Next week we’ll start seeing some of the named characters of the houses and possibly getting hints at their storylines.

Fine, Poll Time

GOT YOU, IT WAS A SURPRISE DMITRI.

One of the things I wanted to avoid in RoP was the reliance on bad ends because I think getting to keep playing as a new form is cool and fun. A lot of games have bad ends because that, too, is fun, and people really enjoyed the “Latex Drone Christine” thing from chapter 5. I think I will add some of those non-canon bad ends to the game, as dream sequences or future vision. I do want to keep the keep-playing format of the game as much as possible, but clearly the audience wants some bad end stuff. Not a lot, but 36% is a sizeable minority.

Every now and then you lunatics really surprise me. The dragon bad end ties with the werewolf ending? The dragon bad end! That was one of the ones I put the least effort into, having done a rewrite right before it was implemented. Alraune got the hate it deserves, but dragon…

Anyway, the reclaimed ending also got a surprisingly strong following. I don’t know exactly what to make of these results because there’s no clear pattern (HOW DID SKELETON SCORE SO LOW ARRGGH) which is not what I expected at all.

I was worried the bonus bosses were too tough but it seems the playerbase rose to the challenge. Next time they will be bullshit.

So while the price point was about correct, some people thought it was a teeny bit too expensive. This is actually expected because gamers tend to underestimate what the cost of something ought to be. 15 bucks is a real bargain, in my opinion, but it is what it is.

Another very interesting result, not least of which because 5 players were in those time chambers from Dragon Ball Z that exist as a narrative device to power up a character in a “satisfying” way despite all the power levels being made up anyway because it’s a work of fiction.

While nobody blasted the game down in 5 hours, a decent chunk did it in 10. Our testers estimated 15 was the expected play time, so you’re ahead of the curve. Stop being so good at games. I was expecting a bigger block to be sitting at 15 and very few at >20 but there’s a big block at the 20 hour mark. It’s a bimodal distribution!

Unfortunately, the Steam statistics do show me an average playtime but they don’t specify if the player beat the game or not, so I can’t really use that and the value would skew low.

Our musician did a great job and everyone thinks he shouldn’t be fired and fed to the camel spiders.

I wanted to do crafting in WHI both as a way to make the game less-linear (you choose who gets what upgrade when) while increasing the focus on combat, and apparently I achieved that goal. Fixed placements can add a lot when a chest has a good item in it, but a lot of them are chaff or consumables. WHI instead makes every chest slightly important, where you almost always get something useful but rarely get anything profound (except the Omega equipment).

The fact that a lot of people like it means it’s a strong candidate to appear in a future game.

If I do make another project in he future, a smaller number of more consequential TFs is the easy winner. I love battle TF games but there’s not much of a way to increase the consequence of each transformation and still maintain the 20 TFs that WHI has. Also Chic would probably kill me if I did that again.

People loved the art, what can I say. Look I’ll try to convince her to work for Bottled Starlight but she’s very fiercely independent.

Pretty stroke here for putting in-battle voices to RoP. I’ve already asked the VAs for some auditions. If you’re the kind of maniac who wants to voice a video game, here’s the audition document for chapter 1.

FUCK YEAH! OR to put it another way, yeah people want to see more of these characters. The DLC will happen if/when the game sells 10,000 copies so that will be some time. Chic is open to doing a sequel but obviously not right now, and I gotta focus on RoP for a while. Will the sequel focus on Izana? Caelyn? Cyrano? Or will it be a prequel?

Yeah it’ll be a prequel and it’ll be about Heron, the dog, and his adventures. Triple platinum best seller, baby.

Curious Cat