September 27 Update (Patreon)

Resisting random creativity has paid off: the update is coming next weekend, barring disaster. Everything is in good shape, the core pieces have been reasonably well-tested, and there are no likely obstacles in the remaining work. I'm a bit tired, but there's no need to run myself ragged this time, so it should work out.

This one is going to play shorter than the last, but hopefully the intensity of the update makes up for it. Not a lot of combat, but what's there should have an impact. As usual, final decisions about the exact form of events make huge differences in the feel and work time.

For example, the 5th day event took a lot of time due to the complexity beneath the surface, but it's not actually that complex from the player's perspective. I could have saved days of work by just having the results calculated via a bunch of equations, like many other results. Instead I did something that was a lot more work-intensive, so hopefully the feel of playing the section will be worth it.

By contrast, a major event on the 6th day gives results without player interaction. I judged that it was a sufficient conclusion to many different player choices and segments, but I could have made it more interactive and added a lot more work. In the middle is Simon's event, which I hope feels reasonably paced between the many other types.

So maybe not every element of the update is perfect. But the core story and the new events... these are things I've been building up to for a very long time. I hope everyone enjoys them. ^-^

Meanwhile, regarding OEA: I've found people to fill in for the faceset artist who went MIA. It might actually be an artistic upgrade, though we haven't started work yet. Also, remember the mapper whose work I showed earlier? I've contracted them to do the whole project, so hopefully that can continue in the background for some time.

One of the other new maps is at the top of this post. We're sticking to other parts of Hoodton because we already agreed on the aesthetic for that Tale, hence it doesn't require much bandwidth from me. Once the TLS update is out, however, we'll try to work on other worlds and turn more attention to that project.