A New Year begins
The time for another update post is upon us. Actually that time was yesterday; I'll hope you forgive me for being a day late. Christmas was cancelled for us (COVID; I'm fine now but others somewhat less so), and I'm just now getting on top of things.
Many exciting things happened this year. Perhaps most recognizable was the creation of some new art. The line-fillers and bas-de-page illustrations now give life to what were otherwise blank voids on the pages. Between the text, illuminations, marginalia, and glosses, medieval manuscripts rarely had much empty space, and I wanted to capture that. Here's a before and after for the same event:
The soundtrack was also completed this year. I've linked it before, but in case you've missed it:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
I finished quite a lot of content as well. Events for tournaments, feasts, hunts, various other ways of interacting with your subjects, and more were written. All that totaled hundreds of events: I noticed some time ago that there were more events in some of DGR's subsystems than exist in other narrative games. This isn't a small game.
What I didn't do was launch. I tried to meet an external deadline in May. Missing that hurt financially, but too much was getting cut. I'm happy about not forcing it out the door then, but I am cognizant of the fact that this is taking far too long. My goal in the first part of the year is to "close the loop" so that whole-game testing can begin. All of the events are thoroughly debugged, but sometimes defects won't show up without the sort of interactions full gameplay provides.
To that end, the biggest thing missing that is required to play a full game is marriage and family. Since we start with a quite young king, courtship is necessary as well. Love marriages among the nobility were incredibly rare, especially among high nobility. Love was of course an outcome that was pleasant and desirable, but it was not at all a precondition for matrimony. Thus when I say courtship, I largely mean the identification of good prospects, negotiations regarding the terms of the marriage, and so forth. Alliances, dowry, and other factors all must be taken into consideration. It also might also be prudent to ascertain the personality of the woman in question. She will play a large role in your life going forward, after all. Queens don't cease to exist when you get married — quite the opposite in fact — but more on that at a later date.
This has required a rather lot of work under the hood. Unfortunately this sort of work doesn't show off well in screenshots. A non-exhaustive list of things I've done to support this: added Ireland and more of Scotland to the simulation, ensured that land can be held outside of the realm without breaking things, vastly expanded the character templates used for women, and created family trees of particular special
historical family should you wish to pursue a certain high-risk, high-reward marriage. Hopefully more details on this, with pictures, next time.
While I'm here, I want to thank everyone for following along. I really do appreciate the support shown thus far.
I genuinely expected this to launch in late 2020 or early 2021, but here we are. I know how frustrating it can be to follow something for this long. I'm very focused on finishing the game at present. It still needs a few things before then, but I'm very motivated to get this launched.
2021
Many exciting things happened this year. Perhaps most recognizable was the creation of some new art. The line-fillers and bas-de-page illustrations now give life to what were otherwise blank voids on the pages. Between the text, illuminations, marginalia, and glosses, medieval manuscripts rarely had much empty space, and I wanted to capture that. Here's a before and after for the same event:
The soundtrack was also completed this year. I've linked it before, but in case you've missed it:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
I finished quite a lot of content as well. Events for tournaments, feasts, hunts, various other ways of interacting with your subjects, and more were written. All that totaled hundreds of events: I noticed some time ago that there were more events in some of DGR's subsystems than exist in other narrative games. This isn't a small game.
What I didn't do was launch. I tried to meet an external deadline in May. Missing that hurt financially, but too much was getting cut. I'm happy about not forcing it out the door then, but I am cognizant of the fact that this is taking far too long. My goal in the first part of the year is to "close the loop" so that whole-game testing can begin. All of the events are thoroughly debugged, but sometimes defects won't show up without the sort of interactions full gameplay provides.
Courtship
To that end, the biggest thing missing that is required to play a full game is marriage and family. Since we start with a quite young king, courtship is necessary as well. Love marriages among the nobility were incredibly rare, especially among high nobility. Love was of course an outcome that was pleasant and desirable, but it was not at all a precondition for matrimony. Thus when I say courtship, I largely mean the identification of good prospects, negotiations regarding the terms of the marriage, and so forth. Alliances, dowry, and other factors all must be taken into consideration. It also might also be prudent to ascertain the personality of the woman in question. She will play a large role in your life going forward, after all. Queens don't cease to exist when you get married — quite the opposite in fact — but more on that at a later date.
This has required a rather lot of work under the hood. Unfortunately this sort of work doesn't show off well in screenshots. A non-exhaustive list of things I've done to support this: added Ireland and more of Scotland to the simulation, ensured that land can be held outside of the realm without breaking things, vastly expanded the character templates used for women, and created family trees of particular special
historical family should you wish to pursue a certain high-risk, high-reward marriage. Hopefully more details on this, with pictures, next time.
Thank you
While I'm here, I want to thank everyone for following along. I really do appreciate the support shown thus far.
I genuinely expected this to launch in late 2020 or early 2021, but here we are. I know how frustrating it can be to follow something for this long. I'm very focused on finishing the game at present. It still needs a few things before then, but I'm very motivated to get this launched.