Love of Magic News

When I started working on Book 2 I removed a lot of the Edinburgh content; it fitted the story of a young mage finding his place in the world, but felt out of place for a young god finding his way through a war. As a result Edinburgh in Book 2 felt quite empty and unloved. With Act VIII+ I decided to change that. So what's new?

[h2]Story content[/h2]
I upgraded the computer, and added a bunch of new things to play with, including outfits for Chloe and Jenny. Jenny, in general, gets a LOT of love in this update if you've finished the Black Rose quest-line in Book 1. I didn't quite intend to make this the Jenny Update, but it sometimes feels like it is.


I also added some replayable content; some new events with Booker at the University, a special new book from Diana, and another from Dylan. There's also a new Kingdom event (Treasure Hunt) with it's own Questline and lore, and new special gems.

[h2]Strategy Gameplay[/h2]

So... the strategy game. I've been mulling on this problem for a bit; I wanted multi-first combat to be visualized. I tried faking it with videos at Malgareth (Day 124) and the end of Act VIII (Day 151), but it felt anti-climactic. So I sat down and started writing an alternative combat system for when MC's facing hordes of enemies. It's still very much in early development, and will remain optional in-game, but hopefully it'll be fun when it's fully done. It's integrated in day 124 and 151, and there's also a little test-menu where I'll be adding more as the Beta advances.

[h2]About book 2 [/h2]

Book 2 is now up on the storefront as 'coming soon'.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1570980/Love_of_Magic_Book_2_The_War/

If it looks interesting, do give it a wishlist; those help Steam knows that it's a real game, and will help it get a better launch.

With Book 2's store-front available, how does that affect Book 1's access to the content? I know the way I put Book 2's beta content available in Book 1 confused some people; as such I'll be removing it from the main line once this Event / sale is over.

It will continue to be available on the Beta branch, including all daily and major updates. Players from other storefronts get to see the game as it's been made, and it doesn't feel right to prevent Steam players from having the same access.

So, that's it for VIII+. Next up is Act IX, which will again advance the timeline. Thanks for the support, and hope everyone enjoys the game!

I continue to work on Book 2, and hope to keep sharing it with all of you here as I do.

Where the heart of Book 1 was a college romance slice of life, Book 2 tries to add themes of military fantasy into the mix, and it's one of the key themes for Act VIII. It adds ~2 hrs of additional story content, new companions, new abilities and several new erotic scenes.



The Love of Magic story is (like all good Fantasy) planned as a trilogy; the Crown, the War and the Return. With Act VIII complete, I'm more or less exactly halfway through the full story, which will end up being 16 or so Acts. Once I'm done with Book 2, it'll go on sale on Steam. So why on earth can you still play Act VII and VIII even though you only bought Book 1? There's a couple of reasons for that.

The first is simply because hearing from happy players who enjoy the game is one of my key motivations. If I'm feeling tired or burnt out I'll often grab a drink and spend some time reading through reviews and posts about the game. The best way to keep players engaged is to keep putting out substantial updates pretty regularly, so that's what I try to do.

When I first started Love of Magic, almost 2 years ago, I planned it purely as a hobby. I shared it for free on a couple of sites, and mostly just enjoyed watching people play and gathering feedback. Because that was the initial approach, interacting with players, hearing their feedback and thoughts has been a key part of my development process, and I'm pretty sure Love of Magic wouldn't be the game it is if it hadn't been for all the amazing players, and the questions they ask.

Then 2020 happened, and our family finances took a tumble; that left me either finding a job flipping code somewhere else, or seeing if I could make money on my hobby. I ended up betting on Love of Magic, set up a Patreon and focused pretty much every free hour I had on the game. I also ended up setting up a Steam page for it, intending to release Book 1 when it was done. Optimistically I planned that for Summer Solstice, but it was almost Winter Solstice before the full book was finally done, and in the store.

Why didn't I just make it Early Access? Well, for starters because I'm dumb. I've had some bad experiences with Early Access myself, and I wanted Book 1 to be *done* before I put it up. I still think that was the right decision, especially for a story-centric game. I could then have just built Book 2 exactly the same way as I did book 1, and put it up on Steam when it was done. But because I wanted to keep letting you guys play Book 2 as I was developing it, I added Book 2's depots to Book 1's Beta and just kept going.

As long as it was just on the Beta branch, people didn't stumble onto it by accident; where it got confusing was where I promoted it to the main branch of the game. Players could now end up playing Book 2 without knowing that it wasn't done, which could be an unhappy experience.

With Act VIII now done, I'll be front-loading the work on Book 2's Steam Page, and get that ready. Once the store page is done and accepted I'll probably shift Book 2 back onto just the beta branch of the game, so people don't accidentally stumble over it. I will continue to update it until the whole of Book 2 is complete, and do the same with Book 3.

So why would anyone buy Book 2, if they already have access to it on Book 1's beta branch? Well, you do get collectibles and achievements that way (both of those have to be tied to a new App ID to work). You also get a cleaner way to launch it, without the weird little menu you've got to use now. And you get to support development, helping keep me supplied with instant noodles.

So... probably a longer update than most of you expected; it's a topic I've been banging my head off for a while, and I don't know if I have all the right answers. Let me know in Discord or in the comments if you have any thoughts.

But for now; I hope you all enjoy Act VIII.

I've traditionally leapfrogged development; first I'll do the main Act, which advances the calendar and timeline, then I do an Act+, which expands on the world, and add content that can be enjoyed across the entire book.


This update marks the first Act+ of Book2 , and it's probably the biggest one I've done.



A lot of love has gone into King's Dragon; there's two new Questlines, one of which ends up giving you an ingame pet that can be found playing in various locations in the pub. Both questlines can be triggered from drinking at the King's Dragon (first one after day 124, second after day 130). While I was at it I also expanded Molly's replayable Late Night sequence with more positions; I'll keep doing that (and maybe adding replayable Akane, Bella or Katie events) as I continue to build out the game.

There's also a couple of non-Kings Dragon events; I've added a new quest-line for hardcore poker-players; Snowdrop will tell you about them if you shower at night in Camelot.

I also didn't want to leave Edinburgh totally behind; there will be events that trigger by drinking at the Crowley, including any time you watch news on TV, and old friends come to visit.

Finally I added a whole bunch of small fixes; new enemies, keyboard shortcuts for map navigation, a player PC at Pendragon Inc, and many more.

Hope you like it... now it's on to making Act VIII. The Gathering awaits.

Quick-fix; 1.0.15b did not link in the Steam libraries, which meant you couldn't record achievements inside the Steam App, just inside the game. Fixed and updated.

1.0.15b is primarily a bug-fix and optimization build; in general Love of Magic has had a smooth release, but some people have had bugs, and those always suck. The big one was the ability to break some of the scripted combat sequences; I fixed two known issues, and added guards around the others... hopefully that fixes this particular problem-child for good this time.

I was also updating some of the early character art for Book 2, and decided to fix it for Book 1 while I was at it. Molly initially started out blue-eyed, but by the end of Act II I had changed to her gorgeous green eyes. I'd forgotten to update her nude sprite to fix that, so I re-rendered and re-animated her. While I was at it I also updated some other sprites; Emily's casual and nude animations used a slightly different color palette than her later outfits (with more subdued colors), so I fixed that in post-production.

Thanks for the support, and I'll get back to building Act VII+, the next release to the main-line. It'll include new King's Dragon Events, new Crowley events, the start of Snowdrop's scouting combat, and an updated replayable scene with Molly.

Full notes are here:

1.0.15b
- Build promoted to Steam default branch

1.0.15
- Fixed a bug where invalid images being set could trigger an assert, halting script execution
- Fixed a bug where Olivia's combat could trigger an invalid reaction
- Updated Molly's 1st homework session to make her green-eyed
- Updated Olivia's homework art to make her boobs look less ridiculous
- Fixed a bug where you could break Emily's date 6 (lich combat) by killing the enemy before Emily enters combat
- Did a hardcore optimization pass on Android (reducing max texture size for room backgrounds, enabling ETC2 texture compression for characters)

1.0.14
- Updated Molly's nude animating character to have Green eyes (an early version of Molly had blue eyes; I forgot to open redo her nude pose when I changed them to green)
- Updated Emily's casual and nude animating characters; the color palette of the game changes, this brings her up to the slightly more colorful palette I use in the later renders)
- Fixed a logic crash bug that would cause the Snowdrop quest to be impossible to finish if you brought Bella to combat
- Fixed a bug where opening the save/load UI in combat or in elsewhere would cause the normal UI to show up
- Fixed a bug where speed-clicking the allys using the keyboard commands could end up accidentally soft-locking the conversation UI
- Bumped up the first Lich HP from 1000 to 1500; he was a bit underwhelming as an enemy, and it was possible to break the script by one-shotting him