Mid-March Progress

Good evening, everybody! It's been a little bit since I've posted a progress report. I didn't have anything interesting to say about it until now, so I figured the time is right.

Last update, I had to withhold some stuff due to things causing bugs or ultimately causing the game to be unstable. This isn't the first time I've had to do this, although it's the biggest feature I've had to hold on to for a bit longer. Ultimately, I decided that I would polish things on the back-end before pushing out the next update, but one could argue that I got a bit more zealous than expected!

On that note, I do have a tight schedule to get things done. Sometimes I haven't had a chance to thoroughly playtest a new feature, and occasionally, it shows. I'd have time to test if something works, but never the time to sit down and assure that it's not causing any issues elsewhere. This has changed recently, as I've spent a good amount of time playing whack-a-mole with the new additions. My work over the past few weeks has been dedicated entirely to testing and fixing everything possible, resulting in possibly the biggest upcoming bug fix yet, and the implementation of entirely too many things that I had to shave off for one reason or another.

Or maybe I shouldn't refer to this as the biggest update to date, because it's almost entirely the introduction of content that should have been released in previous updates?

Perk Overhaul

I've completely dug up perks and laid them back down from scratch. There were a few reasons for this, one being that the old method was leading to a lot of perks not functioning as intended, and another being the problems encountered while implementing new perk flavor texts. While the perks themselves have not been modified, I've gone through and thoroughly tested perks since doing this, and I've yet to find a perk that is not giving the intended bonuses (exception: perks that reference things not yet fully implemented).

With this change out of the way, all of the flavor text I've written for perks are functional for the next update.

Client Races

A feature that was pulled early on in development due to issues being caused, races are now back in the game for nightly encounters. The elf trait that was always designed to cause trouble around orcs is now fully functional. The travel menu now has icons depicting what race is to be expected within a settlement. Human settlements are typically populated by just humans, with the occasional half-elf and halfling. Dwarven settlements may also have the occasional halfling. Elven-controlled territory contains only various types of elves, including the occasional half-elf. Orcish lands are one large perilous dick-trap for elf characters, although they might be lucky enough to run into a goblin. Mixed settlements exist, and you don't know what you'll encounter in there.

Additional flavor text included

This should add a bit more choice when choosing where to flee, especially when combined with advanced settlements.

Fame System

Replacing the previous suicide-by-dicks approach, the fame system stores up fame points you've earned within the settlement and allows you to spend them on three different types of bonuses. This is the first attempt to hammer out the way fame works, and I think it came out rather nicely. You can now control whether you receive additional customers, better prices, or even augment your negotiation abilities with fame. This new method of handling fame should provide more options for playing the character you want to play, and less situations where your character overdoses on semen.

Left click spends points, and right click returns points

Scrolls of Charm have been modified to work within this new system (read: rebalanced). Of course, fame is still reset when you leave a settlement, so remember to build up fame where it's most important!

Advanced Settlements

The big thing from last update that I had to withhold that caused me to begin polishing everything up to begin with. I've been most vigorous testing these new settlements, because settlement-based crashes could outright destroy saved games. So far, I've yet to reproduce any previous problems.

Pending: descriptions of travel options

I won't talk too much about these, since I've touched on the in the past few posts. Right now, the goal is to get these into everybody's hands so that I can start to get feedback on the advanced settlements.



Outside of these four big changes, a few balance changes and additional bug fixes are incoming, not to mention the other additions inserted. This update should be coming relatively soon, since all I have to do is plug everything back in and sand a few edges. When I do release this update, I'm also going to be releasing a rough development roadmap I've prepared up until the v1.0 release, to give everybody an idea on what I'll be working on the most.

One final thing - I discovered yesterday that I've been the victim of an overzealous spam filter. This is a huge problem for someone who regularly reads and writes words like "cock", and it should all be taken care of now. I'll be spending a good portion of tomorrow night replying to e-mails that I received that were incorrectly filtered, because I apparently have multiple dozens! And thanks to everyone who has posted feedback here, elsewhere on the internet, or in my e-mail. I'm considering making a Q&A post based on some of the questions I've received multiple times.