Taking a break from PSCD characters intro to introduce nonetheless than Roger Steel himself!!! 🙂

Introducing Roger Steel… Explorer. Spy. Legend. Pawn.

When Ann and Arthur are ambushed at a remote temple, the surviving sibling and their friends are rescued by a handsome stranger in the middle of a mission of his own. Little do they know it is Roger Steel himself, whose adventures real and ‘enhanced’ are broadcast across the British Empire as part of its 20th century quest to maintain global order and confidence in its rule in these troubled times.

In books and movies Steel’s adventures have been chronicled and mythologized so much it is hard to separate man from legend. But the real Roger Steel is very human indeed, and when in a rash act of kindness he intervenes that ill-fated day, his duty to a ruthless Empire and his human inclinations are set on a collision course.

But unbeknownst to him, in the corridors of power in London, his mission has already taken a darker turn. With the endgame in sight, as with all pawns, the day might soon come when it is easier to remove him permanently from the board than keep him in the game.

Update about Seasons Of The Wolf

If you follow the game development in my forums, you know the mess I managed to make last week 😀 In practice I wanted to use the new Ren’Py, then found out the saves weren’t compatible because of a variable, I changed it, meanwhile Ren’Py coder kindly had fixed that on the framework-side, but was too late. And I even managed to run the auto-updater stopping it in half, so I had a mixed version (part old, part new Ren’Py)!!

In short: a giant mess. I can load some savegames but other won’t work, and the safest thing is to start again the game from scratch… even if is normal during such early beta testing to lose access to old saves, every time it happens I’m angry at myself.

Luckily the testers are very supportive and accept it without drama. Well, almost 😉 I heard some started drinking after the 7th consecutive playthrough from scratch…

Jokes apart, I am still going on with the game. Admire a portrait of a Kraken below:

I am coding ACT4 right now, even if ACT3 is still not playable because I need the tileset (won’t go in more details to avoid spoilers for those who never played it). So as fun as it might seem, considering the tileset won’t be ready before 1-2 weeks at least, I might be done with ACT4 before ACT3! It’s not bad though, since means I’m not losing any time.

During act3 you can also do all the romance talks, including some funny jealousy scenes!

If all goes well the full game (still in beta though) could be done by end of month. But when was last time that “everything went as planned”? Hmm…I can’t remember 😀

Time for another character from Roger Steel world. Please note that all those images are still work in progress: for example we’re thinking to make Arthur’s hair light brown to match Ann’s. His “devilish look” will still remain though 😀

Introducing Arthur

Up until now, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Roger Steel is a yuri title given that all the characters we’ve introduced so far have been women (not that there’s anything wrong with that!); but you’d be mistaken as our next character attests.

Arthur is a rather outgoing fellow who’s probably a bit too clever for his own good, especially with his tongue (and get your minds out of the gutter right now: that is not what I meant!). Along with his partner in crime, Neville, genius inventor whom we’ll meet in a couple of weeks or so, Arthur is something of a whiz with gadgets, although you, his esteemed players, might prefer to develop his sharpshooting, archery, martial arts, or sundry other non-combat skills.

Whether Arthur indulges in romance or simply becomes the star of his very own action buddy movie VN-TBS RPG, is up to you; as is whether he treats the rescue of his sister as a true coming-of-age, or simply a great excuse for a damn good time with lots of handsome gents and lovely ladies to party with during those long evenings camping beneath the stars in the wilderness.

Seasons Of The Wolf update

Work on SOTW continues, last week I finally had the last missing images for Dingirra, like the big Arena:

And the artist who was busy with another project now can resume working on this, he’s currently doing the 3rd Act tileset (won’t be more specific for people who didn’t play the game yet to avoid spoilers!).

Another big new feature was the improved AI, which gave me a whole new array of possibilities to make the player think “wow this computer opponent could even seem smart sometimes!” 😀

Currently coding battles against Ghosts and Wraiths, Zombies and Liches, and so on. (the background on the battle screen above is temporary obviously).

While I cannot give any estimate yet, also because a lot of art is still missing, I’m guessing that could be done with Act3 for end of September 🙂 I also have two new games approved on Steam (Roommates and Bionic Heart 2) so adding them to the portal will take some time too!

One last thing, do you remember that preview image I posted last week? still not announcing the game officially but I’m facing a tough choice. More info and a poll in my forums: http://winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=3418