Love of Magic News

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I like to keep the PC busy, and have gotten into the habit of having an animation set up each night for it to chew on while I'm sleeping.

Most of that goes into Book 3, where I'm splitting my time between rendering new content (Act XIV+ is now content complete, ending with the biggest and most complex sex scene so far), and working on end of game content (which, like in Book 2, is going to be heavy on both video and music).

As the inspiration strikes I occasionally go back and tinker with Book 1; in this case doing a quick typo pass and adding a couple of new animations. Most of them are for Molly, connected to her getting Chosen (3 new animations there, and one new email triggering day 80+). I can't really show any of them in a SFW update, though, since in most of them she's just wearing a choker :)

I was inspired to do this little video clip by some work I did for the end of Book 3, featuring cloud simulations. It's from Day 100, called The Last of the First. Here's a quick breakdown for those of you who're interested in the development side of things.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Book 3's coming along well; with Act XIV+ done, I've only got three more releases to go before it's done (Act XV: The Return, XV+ and XVI: Eternal Summer). After spending pretty much every free hour on this game for three years now it's a strange, and slightly melancholy feeling to know that it's ending soon... but all good things must finish.

If you haven't already, please give Book 3 a wishlist; it's hugely important at launch.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1992770/Love_of_Magic_Book_3_The_Return/


Full changelog:

1.3.3
- New looping handstand video for the Chosen ceremony
- New email, day 80+
- Tweaked probability of Starcucks random encounters

1.3.2
- three new animations for Molly, at her Chosen ceremony

1.3.1
- New video for Chloe day 100

1.3.0d
- Added some guards on day 80+ to help ensure players complete the Crowley upgrade
- Day 86, if the pub isn't upgraded, the morning wakeup will include a hint that it's something you should be doing.
- Day 80+, if the pub isn't updated, entering a treasure site will give you 5 special ingredients and tell you to hand them to chloe.

1.3.0c
- Restored call of the chosen video clip

1.3.0b
- Transcoded all videos to deal with a video potentially not playing on some systems

I recently upgraded my PC, including getting a new 3090 gfx card (yeah, I know, the 4090's out, but sadly I still need the other kidney). I started developing Love of Magic with a lonely 1080 graphics card, so it's certainly been a boost to productivity.

The early days of Love of Magic didn't have much in the way of animations, since they were mostly a full day thing to set up and render, but now things are a bit faster. Book 3's getting a lot of animations, obviously, but I decided I might as well go back and spice up Book 1 a little; especially the opening act.

This update adds 5 new animations (1 for day 2 introduction, 1 for first homework, 2 for second homework, and 1 for the first date). It also cleans up the localization interface, adds support for voice-overs (one of my fans is working on doing a full set of VOs), and adds various little bug-fixes and typos corrected.

Apart from that, work continues on Book 3. I'm a bit more than halfway done, right now working on a sandbox expansion for Edinburgh. Once that's done, in a couple of weeks, I'll get started on the penultimate act of the game, The Return, then the last full act of the game, Eternal Summer.

If you haven't wishlisted it yet, it's an awesome way to help it (Steam considers wishlists a way to judge if a game is real, or just a lazy asset flip... at around 6,000 wishlists you're considered a "real" game and, you get a boost at launch).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1992770/Love_of_Magic_Book_3_The_Return/



Full changelog:

1.3.0a
- Fixed missing addressables

1.3.0
- Cleaned up the localization UI
- Typo pass
- Added new animations to Act I

1.2.10
- Updated localization files and interface.

1.2.9
- Support for Voice Over

1.2.8
- Typo fixes

1.2.7
- Fixed an incorrect image
- Added guards for avoiding two additional combats that doesn't have an early out
- typos fixed up
- Fixed an issue where some characters were incorrectly dressed

1.2.6
- Fixed a bug that could derail the dialog if you used a character before the story-dialog triggered
- Fixed a bug where the Minotaur card background could fail to trigger
- Fixed a bug where people who continued play from a non-steam build could fail to trigger some achievements

What's new?
- Purely book 2 changes, getting it up to the final release build
- Various typos and spellchecking pass (thanks to all the testers on Discord for those!)
- Fixed an issue where loading a Game+ from Book 1 would give an incorrect save dialog
- You can now use the Keypad keys for controlling dialog, allies and cards.

This build contains various small bug-fix issues:

1.2.6
- Fixed a bug that could derail the dialog if you used a character before the story-dialog triggered
- Fixed a bug where the Minotaur card background could fail to trigger
- Fixed a bug where people who continued play from a non-steam build could fail to trigger some achievements

1.2.5b
- Adds a hard guard to Dragon fight for people who somehow miss it

1.2.5
- Streamer mode now gets an image/background
- Streamer mode now handles censoring attachments and emails
- Fixed a couple of small typos / bugs

Book 2 of the Love of Magic is complete, and is going up for sale tomorrow (31st May) at a 20% launch discount. As such I'm putting Book 1 on sale, since they two of them are designed to be played back to back.

Book 1 (The Crown) takes the player from day 1 of the game to Day 115 (New Year's Eve). Book 2 (The War) continues with the player waking up on Day 116, and plays onwards from there.



Where Book 1 starts as a slice of life romance, gradually building towards an epic Urban Fantasy, book 2 incorporates elements of military scifi/fantasy, kingdom building, being able to upgrade the King's Dragon, and a large number of optional side quests. It's also darker and more moody; the days of being innocent and young are over... the war has begun.



Like with Book 1's development branch I'll be developing and sharing Book 3 on Book 2's development and Beta branch. Beta branch will have latest (stable) act, so it's suitable for people who just wants to play the latest content and see how it works. Development branch is what I test on (and what the Discord test gang uses), so it'll have the very latest content... but it's not yet content complete, and I may decide to edit events, add flags or logic I missed out on, or add content out of sequence. Don't play it with a savegame you treasure.

Book 3's right now at day 202 on the Development Branch of Book 2, so once you grab it you can see what I'm up to. Hopefully you've enjoyed the journey through Love of Magic, and will stick with me until Book 3 (The Return) completes the trilogy.