I’m excited, too!!
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So good news is I have released the update. However, to be honest, there were a lot of things I was hoping to do with this update that I didn’t reach. Its a small to moderate update, weighing in probably somewhere between 20k to 30k words, for those that care about such things. A few of the fandoms got updates, as did some of the real world problems, but not as far as I’d wished on any of it. There also was a good portion of chapter 5 and some minor tweaks to the combat scene. As always, more bugs and typos were hit, but not enough to probably make a ton of diffrence.
For those that wish it, here’s from the changelog:
Summary
Update Version:0.0.25.06.12.1245
-Added in start to chapter 5, which is a dream sequence to remind the protaganist about some of the underlying tensions in our story arc.
-Added in for chapter 2 a scene where the prot has a call from an old friend that moved away. It’s a bit comic and slapstick, but basically the prot will get another chance to game, this time online with their old friend. Also, perhaps eventually the old friend might come to visit someday or something. The game that is hinted at will be “Pathward” which is the alternate universe variant of “Pathfinder”.
-Added in scenes 2 - 6 for the “Witchling” (Alternate Universe version of “Witcher”) tv show fandom. As discussed previously in the forum and hinted at, there are now choice points in the show if the player has selected that they would like this option. Nothing to dramatic, but enough to make it more of a min-game within a game, sort of. Scenes 2 - 6 continue on with the prior “Witchling” scenes and plot line. Note that this is scenes 2-6 as we previously had scenes 0 and 1, as these scenes index first at 0. The same applies to all the fandom scenes.
-Added in a cut scene for chapter 2 where the prot reads a blog with some interesting insights. Hopefully helps set the tone for things to come . . .
-Added in for “Wyrmblock” fandom tv show (the AU Dragonball tv show) scenes 2-4.
-Added in for “Hoard of the King” (the AU variant for “Lord of the Rings”) scenes 2-4.
-Added in a transition scene, which will differ based on which real world problem the prot is dealing with, and a restaurant scene, both for chapter 5. In the restaurant scene a new NPC is introduced.
-Added in various code to help bridge scenes.
-Added in some more content for land lord problem, though much more needs to be added yet to get it working fully and correctly.
-Tweaked combat scene with baby sphinx. By no means 100% done, but hopefully will be marginally better now.
-Fixed various typos and minor errors, though plenty more still needs to be fixed.
On if this update is worth playing vs waiting for another one:
Summary
Now, to be honest, whether this update is worth playing is up to you. While I am very thankful for COGDemos, the current working of that hosting website is that every time I add a new variable, everyone has to play the game from the start. Unless a creator is really pro-planning (which goes against my method, as I like to grow games organically) or the game is really simple and won’t need many vars, it means a lot of games will need to be replayed from the beginning nearly every update. Maybe at some point this will change, or who knows, maybe someday I’ll change my methodology and try for more indepth planning … but neither of those things will be any time soon.
Add to this that there still certainly are some bugs and typos to the update . . . I can understand that waiting for another update might be for some people. Totally fine.
For those that do playtest this update, feel free to let me know what you’d like more of in this game. As usual, while I’m happy to hear about individual instances of spelling errors and such, please do not leave blanket statements about there being to many typos/spelling errors/ etc. as I am aware there are a few and that really doesn’t do much for fixing it.
Now, I should note that I didn’t get time to do a playthrough myself of the new content yet . . . I will, but due to my own personal real world problems and such, wasn’t able too. So there might be bigger problems and such that I am not aware of.
I will say too that some scenes came out a lot sillier than I’d really intended, though, as this is mostly intended as a metafiction comedy piece, I guess I feel that’s fine.
My apologies on that.
Now, as discussed earlier, I won’t even hazard a guess at when there will be another update. Obviously, as long as I’m healthy enough and have enough time, eventually there will be one, but might be a while.
In the meantime, if you’ve enjoyed my work on this game, please feel free to try any of my others. In a casual manner I shall now turn back to working on Sense & Sorcery in the near term, so there will likely be some sort of update on that eventually.
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Gotta say, I haven’t read the update yet but “Hoard of the King” is absolutely brilliant.
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Love the Drizzt references in the character name choices
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Interesting stuff, good luck on Sense and Sorcery!
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Fun update! Just because I’m curious, what’s up with the ascii art? Is that just a placeholder?
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Ha, yeah, I had fun with that one. All of the AU fandoms have been a ton of fun.
Glad to do a hat nod to some of the best classics.
Thank you! I shall need the luck!
Thank you!
A little bit of both. Mostly inspired by nostalgia, I’ll admit, I’m leaning towards eventually having a few different options for these, which the player will be able to select from either in the beginning of the game or the stats menu, someday. Option 1 will be to keep the ASCII images as is, with a notation that there will likely be some errors here and there as they will sadly not display the same on all computers. Option 2, some simple art of the maps and such, once I get around to that – this will bloat the memory a little, but I feel like now adays that probably shouldn’t often be a concern. And Option 3, images of the ASCII images, so it standardizes, more or less. For option 2, I will need to review what map options I can use, but at some point that will be available . . .
Thanks again for trying the game and testing for those that have – overall I’m pretty pleased with what I’m seeing on my own run, though still some fairly alarming bugs and such remaining. Hopefully each run I will clear these out a bit more and continue expanding the game.
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