Boss Fight and News (Patreon)

Warning: minor spoilers in the video!

Now that that’s out of the way: greetings! I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that the release isn’t done yet. I’m not sure if I’ll be done before the end of the month, but honestly it’s looking like probably not at this point. I want to reiterate that anyone who’s been a supporter of the appropriate tier at any time from December onward will get the release - either mailed in a PM, or by request if I miss you somehow. I’m very sorry for the delays, I was pretty certain it would have been done by now.

I don’t want this post to be a downer for you, though - and I’m trying not to let how bad I feel about not being done make me less effective at actually getting it done - so let’s talk about some of the good news! And… well, there’s not a ton of it, other than the fact that stuff is getting done and we’re moving closer to actually releasing this thing.

That’s pretty vague, so I thought it might be helpful to share a few of the things I’ve been working on lately. This is a pretty long post, but I figure I owe you some explanation of what I’ve been up to and what’s coming.

The Dungeon and Boss Fight

The first thing I’ve been working on is the dungeon for the main quest, in which Alex and the others try to get the assistance of The Hell, that PvP guild in Ogremarsh. On playing through the rough draft of the dungeon and the boss fight, it became clear that it needed a lot of work. I’d like to think the boss fights in this game thus far have been sort of interesting… maybe even fun! And this one wasn’t really either, so I went back to the drawing board.

— Warning! Minor spoilers ahead! —

(They’re pretty minor.) During the course of the quest, you, Ana and Emily end up with The Hell in a dungeon. In the original iteration of the boss fight, The Hell held off a bunch of baddies while you and your allies fight the boss. After all, it wouldn’t be much fun to just watch them do it, would it?

In looking for ways to improve the encounter, I hit upon the idea of making two bosses, one for each of your groups. But rather than just them doing their thing with their boss and you doing yours, I thought it’d be neat if the two of “halves” of the fight interacted somehow.

I’m no expert on game design, but it seems like one way to make an encounter interesting (and maybe fun) is to give you constraints you have to manage - maybe even competing constraints. In the revised fight, each boss has an ability that does more damage each time it strikes you. The blue boss' ability doesn’t make you take more damage from the gold boss (and vice versa,) but if you spend too long around one boss, you will get fried. That’s one constraint. The other is that their ability also makes you do more damage to them. And just like with their damage to you, the increase in your damage to them stacks. So, part of you wants to run away - that is, switch bosses with The Hell - to avoid getting blown up, but you also want to hang around and keep smacking the crap out of the boss.

The bosses also get stronger each time you switch - and they have a lot of HP - so if you’re too cautious you’ll probably get overwhelmed. But if you’re too reckless you’ll get blown up spectacularly!

I’m pretty pleased with how the fight turned out. You have to understand this mechanic to really enjoy it, but the trash mobs in the dungeon help prepare you for it (they have a much more limited form of the same ability.) It’s sorta fun seeing those big numbers after you get a few stacks going, and the temptation to stay longer than you should is real. So, I’ve included a video of it - it may not be that fun to watch, but hopefully you’ll enjoy playing it! (Note: I’ve tweaked the stats a little since that video, but nothing else has changed.)

— End Spoilers —

So, one of the things I’ve been doing is thinking up ways to improve the dungeon/boss fight and then implementing them. Another has to do with rewards.

Reward Systems

Related to the boss fight is how you’re supposed to get rewarded for playing the game. Since there’s a dungeon, you should get rewarded for clearing it, right? For most games, the answer is gold, xp (experience points) or both. In order to keep you from having to engage in repetitive, boring combat (grinding) to advance, I’ve set it up so that there are no levels and gold isn’t especially useful. But that still leaves the question of how to properly reward players.

In 0.9, I addressed that by expanding the number of equipment slots available to pretty much all characters. The answer was going to be: give you equipment as a reward! And that’s still good, and I’m glad I did it, but it’s not enough. If you switch out gear a lot, the gear begins to feel cheap and meaningless. And what about items with sentimental value? If you liked Elian and Celie, the two old adventurers you met when you first arrived in Zameroth, you probably wouldn’t be too keen on packing away the Azure Robes Celie gave you just to replace it with some loincloth you inexplicably found on a bat. ("Sure it’s got fleas, but dammit, it gives me +2 defense!")

You will get new gear sometimes, but the answer I’ve gone with - again taking inspiration from WoW - is to enhance the gear you already have. To that end, this release will reward the things you’ll need to apply gems and enchantments to gear. I thought about naming them something else so that they wouldn’t parallel WoW so closely - like maybe runes or something - but decided that was probably silly. Gems and enchantments are exactly the sort of thing you’d expect to see on magical gear, right?

Different pieces of gear will have different capacities to enchant or load up with gems. Some will have a lot of slots, and some will have none at all. Many pieces of gear you already own (like the Azure Robes) will have slots as well. Unlike gems and enchantments in WoW, you’ll be able to remove both from a piece of gear so that you can apply them to another if you so desire. The plan is for gems to offer stat boosts, while enchantments add abilities - resistances, procs (like Alex’s insight, though probably less powerful) that do useful things, etc.

Canny observers will note that this is really just another form of currency, and that’s true. But unlike gold or something, you won’t be able to grind for them. You’ll only get a set number of them, so you’ll have to think carefully about how you want to use them.

While this release will give you the materials you’ll need to get gems and enchantments, it won’t actually implement those systems. You shouldn’t have to wait that long to actually use them, though, because gems and enchantments are coming in the first supplement to Chapter 10, Chapter 10.1.

The Chapter System

I’ve talked a little about this in the Discord, but the plan once this release is out is to stop doing big, monolithic releases that take forever and instead do smaller, more frequent releases. There’s two main goals here: to keep me productive and to keep players engaged. There are also some other benefits, like getting timely feedback on game mechanics while there’s still time to do something about them, but the aforementioned ones are the biggest goals.

I like the “chapter-based” approach, where each release sort of feels like its own chapter in a book, but the problem with them is that they’re big projects. There’s a lot to do, a lot of different kinds of things to do, and only one me to do it all. This alone would make it take a long time, but what makes it worse is that when the projects are big, it’s easy to get lost in them. You do things, but because there’s so much to do, it never really feels like you’re getting any closer to your goal. And you stop working on Thing A for a while so you can get some work done on Thing B, and by the time you get back to Thing A you’ve sort of forgotten what you were trying to do. And then, of course, the feeling that you’re never really accomplishing anything makes you less productive, which means you get even less done, etc.

So, to help remedy these problems, after Chapter 10 is out, the project will be switching to incremental releases. Each incremental release - 10.1, 10.2, etc. - will consist of one or a small number of finished content chunks and/or features. One quest, or one H-scene, or a new area opening up, etc. The intent is for each quest or what have you to be complete and polished - I’m still going to uphold the same standards I always have, it’s just that the content will be spread out over many small releases instead of dropping in one massive block very infrequently.

On your end, this means new things to see and do more regularly. Since if you’re reading this you’re probably a supporter, my hope is that this will make you feel less like you’re throwing money out the window. On my end, instead of having this massive list of things to do before feeling like I’ve accomplished something, I’ll have just one or two fairly well-defined little projects. For example: complete this quest. Or: finish this H-scene. My hope is that focusing on small, manageable tasks rather than big, complicated, multilayered projects will make me more productive overall.

Why call them “chapters” then? Well, I still like the “chapter” idea, and I still want each group of incremental releases to fit together and feel coherent. Planning will still be done one chapter at a time, it’s just that execution will now be done in bite-sized pieces. Big parts of the story will align with “chapter end” releases, and for the best experience (or for busy people) I suggest waiting for completed chapters to play. The next “chapter end” release will be Chapter 11.

There’s more to say about this, and I plan on making a public post explaining this once Chapter 10 is out, but I just wanted to give you all a heads-up on it. My intent is also to be a lot more transparent in my planning and progress, although that’s more of a “show me, don’t tell me” kind of thing.

Tempering Expectations

I’m a little concerned that because this release has taken so long, expectations for it are going to be extremely high. If you’ve enjoyed the game thus far, I think you’ll like this release, but it’s not the greatest thing since sliced bread. What I’ve seen so far is good, but it’s not going to totally change your perspective on life or make you decide to be an astronaut or something (although if you feel like it, you totally should.) There will be more to say about it after I’ve done the final playthrough, but just don’t expect too much and you won’t be disappointed.

Conclusion

I’m still revising, finishing parts I apparently forgot to finish, and polishing. I don’t know precisely when it’ll be done, but I do know it’s getting closer every day. I know that’s probably not the answer you wanted to hear, and I’m very sorry for the delays. I’m also sorry for the tl;dr post, but hopefully this gives you a better idea of what’s going on with the project. Thank you very much for your support!