March Update (Patreon)

Greetings! I’ve been continuing work on 10.3, and while it’s been slower than I’d like because of the new job, the checklist for the release has been steadily shrinking. This post talks a bit about how that’s going, teases a bit what’ll be in the Commercial District, reveals the save poll results, and talks some more about computer and 3D stuff. There’s only one picture this time, sadly, but hopefully you’ll find it informative. So let’s begin!

The New Job

Because of time demands from the new job, I haven’t gotten nearly as much as I’d wanted done. That’s beginning to change, fortunately; this past week I’ve had a good bit more free time, and I expect this to continue now that I’m past the “learn everything” phase. Development should be faster from this point on, though unfortunately still not as fast as before I started.

10.3 Progress

Where is 10.3 at, then? I am still, alas, mapping interiors for the Commercial District. As I mentioned last time, it’s actually more than just mapping - I’m brainstorming what I want to happen inside each building, thinking about who might be there, what quests are or could be involved, developing skit ideas, refining all that into a vague plan of what to do with it, and then mapping. Sometimes this makes me go back and take a look at other things - the shops will presumably sell things; from a game design perspective how does this fit into the overall plan for rewards? Or if I know a building will involve a certain character, sometimes I have to go back and re-examine what I want to do with that character. But I’ve still been referring to the whole process as “mapping”. Perhaps I shouldn’t; it just makes me feel bad that it’s taking so long to map a few buildings.

As things stand, the mapping for the district itself and 8 buildings is complete. I’d already decided to put off doing 3 buildings until 10.4, and the last whenever you actually start doing stuff with Bloodfist. According to the original plan this left 9 buildings (!)

Having not done one for a while, I don’t think I realized how valuable writing these posts is; it forces me to think about what I’m doing and what I’ve done, and to communicate that to “stakeholders” (i.e., you) in a way that makes sense. In the course of doing that I often take a harder look at whether what I’m doing does make sense. Checking in from time to time helps keep the project more grounded in what’s important, so I might try to do that a little more often. I wouldn’t expect anything less than 3 weeks for a while, but I think I’m sitting at 5 now, which is definitely too long.

Anyway, as I sat down to write this post a few days ago, I began to wonder why all these buildings were there. When developing the plan for the Commercial District, I realized I’d started with the wrong question. I asked “What would be in Ogremarsh’s Commercial District?" when what I should have asked was: “What would be fun and/or interesting to have in the Commercial District?" A lot of things could and perhaps ought to be in the District, but if they don’t serve a purpose - either by advancing the story or being fun/interesting - they shouldn’t be there.

I immediately decided to cut several buildings that didn’t add much value, thus decreasing the time it would take to get this release out. On thinking about it further, though, I decided to add a few other ones. There are a number of important secondary characters in the game (like the Bunnies) and I thought it would be cool for each of them to have a building associated with them. Maybe you can go there to do something fun with them, get to know them better, or do a quest involving them there later. Val will have the dress shop, but the other characters need something, too!

The upshot of all this is that I now have just as many buildings left to map as when I started, but they should be more meaningful, and lead to a more fun/interesting play experience.

The other thing I realized when stepping back to look at all this is that maybe I bit off more than I could (quickly) chew with the Commercial District. It’s a big place, with a lot of buildings and a lot of people. There’s really no way around this, though; I thought about leaving a bunch of buildings closed in 10.3, but I think that would make the release feel cheap. At least for this game, “iterative development” should mean smallish chunks of mostly complete content, not tiny piles of half-finished stuff. Though I’ve committed to smaller releases at least for Chapter 11, I don’t want to put releases out that I’m not comfortable with or that don’t measure up to my quality standards. I expect the next few releases to come more quickly, but 10.3 is going slow simply because it’s so big.

Mild Spoiler Alert

At the risk of some mild spoilers, here is a rough map of the Commercial District. The actual map looks much better, this is just so you can see what I’m talking about. 4 of these buildings (Giga Slime’s cafe, the comic shop, Madame Travatsky’s place, and Bloodfist’s guild hall) won’t be open in the initial release, but I plan to open all of them up (except Bloodfist’s guild) in 10.4. But that still leaves a nice restaurant (that’d be perfect for dates!) a pet store where maybe you can have fun with Chichi, a dress shop that Val will surely be interested in, other buildings that might be of interest to your companions, and a mysterious building off in the corner...

The Next Few Chapters

Chapter 11 (i.e., the 10.x releases) will probably seem kind of meandering until we get to the dungeon at the end, but there’s a reason for that. Chapter 12 will deal with the dragon, and Chapter 13 will probably be the last Zameroth chapter, so once you finish what you need to do with Bloodfist, things will start happening pretty quick plot-wise. Chapter 11 is really the last chance to play, do fun side quests, and hang out with your companions. Most of this is optional, so if sidequests aren’t your thing you can skip ‘em, but this stuff is important to the experience I want to offer. Chapter 11 will be pretty long, but I expect the next two chapters to be much shorter. So it may seem like we’re not really going anywhere for a while, but hang in there - we will be soon enough.

The Save Poll

I was a little surprised by the results of the poll, but the people have spoken (again.) Combining votes from the two sites, 75% of you voted to keep saves as they are, while only 25% voted to relocate saves to app data.

As you can probably tell, I’d really like to move saves to app data, but a pretty clear majority seems against it. I think it’s probably the best solution for most people, since it would cut down on lost saves. I’ve been trying to think of a frictionless way to accommodate both styles - perhaps the game looks for a save folder in the game files and uses those if it finds them, otherwise defaulting to app data - but I haven’t settled on anything. Whatever I do, though, I’ll keep it painless for those of you who want to manage your saves the old way.

Computer Stuff

As I discussed last time, I’ll be moving back to Windows. The Mac experiment was useful for the situation I was in, but I think I’ll now be able to accommodate a more power-hungry machine. The Mac builds are in a better place now, so there was some value in it. (By the way, a supporter discovered the M1 build I posted was corrupted and didn’t work; I’ve re-uploaded it and it should be good now.)

The Windows laptop I ordered appears to be lost in some FedEx black hole, but once I get it I’ll be able to get back to 3D work, such as making the release promo for 10.3, probably some outfit renders, and so on. In addition to being a bit more powerful, this one’s a 17.3”, which should be much easier to do 3D work on than the 15.6” I was using.

As far as moving on from Daz goes, once the new machine gets here I think I’ll be experimenting with Maya rather than Blender. Hair is a big part of what I’ve been working on, and Maya offers a much better set of tools for that. (And thank you to the supporter who discussed some of this with me.) It’s also just generally a more powerful and feature-rich program than Blender.

For those of you who don’t know, Maya is pretty much the standard 3D software used in film and animation. That’s not why I’m exploring it - I really just want a better way to work on hair and maybe simulations - but it can do some really interesting stuff. I’ll keep you posted on how the experiments turn out :)

Conclusion

The work on 10.3 has been going slower than I’d like, but I’ve still been chipping away at it, and now that my job has settled down I’ll be able to do so a bit faster. No promises, but I may post a little more often in the future; these posts keep you in the loop, and they also serve as sanity checks to help make sure I’m working on the right things. The 3D experiments are on hold for now, but once I get the new laptop they’ll resume - probably in Maya. (And I’ll be able to continue working in Daz until they get good enough.) Thank you for your patience and support!