Yeehaw
patreon
Development plans for January
🕑 Added 2018-01-11 15:36:11 +0000 UTC Greetings, it’s time to announce development plans for January -> February period aside from the usual story update. This time I will focus more on optimizing existing features rather than creating new ones but let’s do it one step at a time:Release date shift. Due to the New Year and holidays we switched release dates from 1 – 5 – 8 – 22 to the current 7 – 11 – 14 – 28 scheme. We’ll stick with it for the future as it fits in all months and some players got confused about the shift itself. Aside from the date switch, all patrons get LoC releases according to their pledges – early access and other benefits stay the same.
Switchable difficulty settings. I tried to make LoC’s gameplay challenging and interesting but not too difficult yet sometimes players had troubles with it. So, 0.2.5 will have a new option almost like PoV select but with 2 choices – easy and normal. Your choice will affect both combat and complex puzzles (like the sound tubes in port’s dungeon). This decision will not be permanent, you can switch between the two and the game will adapt. I want to give players an opportunity to try both styles and pick their favorite.
More companions for your castle and more interaction with your base. In 0.2.0 players could get a new addition to their retinue from the orc’s camp and 0.2.5 will bring more options with various benefits. This includes new events for girl’s affection and corruption systems too. Some opportunities will depend on player’s past choices during quests.
Discord integration. I want to thank Umut Berk Alkan for the idea and support in setting it up. Discord will give players another opportunity to talk directly with LoC's creators – ask about something, give feedback or chat for a bit. I will update Patreon’s page with new tier rewards which will include Discord roles. Integration will take some time but I plan to roll it out during the mid-January period.
The rest of the time will be spent on polishing and optimizing both animation process and existing resources. Doing animated scenes in RPG Maker MV was a rather difficult experience. I have a feeling that I stepped on all the rakes along the way. From drawing and animating to exporting and finally game integration – all steps had some kind of problems. But we did it, now we have a baseline and need to optimize it so creating animated scenes will take less time. I can’t promise that 0.2.5 will have 2 animated scenes, a lot depends on the polishing, but I will try it. Ultimately, my goal is to make it back to 2 scenes per update without a quality hit.
As for existing resources update, the art fairy almost finished with old scenes and will give them a little more shine. This will allow us to finish with art update during January – February period. Just like we planned in the previous version of the development schedule. Setting the art aside, LoC has a lot of old maps with standard RPG Maker’s assets and no parallax. The main plan is simple: work from the starting zones towards the current content. I will also update some indoors zones which players visit several times during quests or for mini-games. Can’t tell the exact amount of maps for 0.2.5 but zone update deadline stays the same – March / April 2018.
I didn’t forget about possible Android version but the current animation routines will make it hard to make a successful port for mobile devices. This stays true until I can change animation logic and there is no way to circumvent it without a plugin. I pay close attention to a very promising RPG Maker add-on, which is not ready yet, and I’m not involved in its development directly so can’t name any dates.
And a small update about Linux version or rather lack of it… I’m still waiting for the official response from RPG Maker’s tech support. Yes, I filled out my ticket about a month ago. All I’ve got is a first line’s response about redirecting my question to their tech guys. A pretty impressive level of customer service... Sometimes it feels like RPG Maker community cares about it more than real developers. Anyways, if I will get an answer from them – you’ll see it in a news post as soon as possible.
Well, looks like this is all. Stay tuned and thanks for your support!
Comments
Offshore - Adult Games Developer
Thanks for info, amazing!
Umut Berk Alkan
Whoa, these all sound amazing! It's my pleasure to support Yeehaw Games on the creation of their Discord server and it's integration to Patreon.
