March 14 Update (Patreon)
Content
Most likely, work on OEA won't stop abruptly, it will taper off over a period of time. There are also a number of things I don't want to do, like get screenshots, update the Steam page, and see about a trailer. The plan was to taper the final OEA work out over a longer period while work on TLS 0.56.0 ramped up as my main focus.
That's still the plan, but I'm disappointed it didn't start this past week. The level of feedback has been a lot heavier than I expected, and I'm still anticipating some really long emails. That said, hopefully we're moving away from knotty problems to issues of polish, so I hope the tapering will begin sooner rather than later. This has been a joy to finally finish, but I'm creatively ready to shift gears.
One thing I'm disappointed about was that the game got pirated so early. It had an immediate negative affect on Steam wishlists, and it also meant I got exposed to a lot of tiring opinions. Brought up some past things I'd put behind me. It seems it was a mistake to give this version all the art, but nothing to do except keep moving forward and shrug it off.
Meanwhile, please provide feedback on the maps, if you have any thoughts! I have some of my own for this set:
- Overgrown Sample: This one is trying to mix in some ruins to make this Tale more memorable, but I don't think all the tiles actually fit together. Won't mention exactly which ones, but let me know what you think.
- Innocent Sample: This one is breaking our previous rules by having all the trees fall into a grid pattern, along with some of the smiling flowers. This is intended to show the creepy uniformity of the Tale, and this deep into the game I hope players will understand, but both I and the mapper were unsure if this was too far or not far enough.
- Grimmton Samples: Two this time! Both show the new tiles and dead figures, but they have different styles of shadows. The spiky one is far more work, but I want to do whatever looks best, even if it's something different from either of these.
- New Canisan Slum + Frozen Clearing: Both of these are finished maps.
Anyway, I'll just keep my nose to the grindstone and work on everything. I suppose if people want to be extra helpful they could contribute screenshots, but this is something I fully intend to do myself, eventually.