Queen Of Thieves – Melvin

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Today we’re talking about the last male romanceable character of the game, the mysterious Melvin. Here’s how the writer introduces him:

Melvin Thorburn

Very few people in Ahkra really know Melvin. He is the scion of a long-standing noble family although rumours persist that he is the last of his line, and his estate is essentially empty except for him. His family fell out of favour with Lord Raul due to issues dating back to Melvin’s childhood, and it appears Raul has little interest in burying the hatchet. Mostly, he is seen visiting various business in the city, and buying all sorts of strange items that may no logical sense when put together. No one quite knows what he is up to although there are many who are curious.

Those few who have interacted with Melvin find him rather charming albeit somewhat vain. He tends to agree with any compliments given to him and has gained quite a reputation as a womaniser. Many do fall for his good looks and charming words, thinking they have won the heart of a noble, but all have ended up disappointed when he vanishes after a night of passion.

Some have noted an undercurrent of rage that can be heard in his words, especially if the topic of Lord Raul or the Queen of Thieves comes up. Most assume it is just his anger at his family’s treatment at the hands of Raul or that his family was one of the many victims of the Queen of Thieves. Whether that is true or not, Melvin has no interest in answering.

PSCD – alpha preview version

If you follow me on twitter or read my forums, you know that last weekend I was able to put up an alpha preview version of the game. Since then, this week I am working hard to finish the beta version of the first 10 missions (which will also be the final demo length of the game) for this weekend.

I am at good point, but I spent a bit of time to add some polishing (the basic battle attack animations) and a detailed tutorial on the first battle which should let players who aren’t familiar with such games to understand the basics mechanics.

I am unsure if I’ll manage to finish the demo for Sunday, but of course I’ll try. As always check my twitter or forums for more up to date news! Enjoy some screenshots of the game various features below:

In the deck screen, you can upgrade any card to silver or gold status, increasing its stats

The team talk screen is where you’ll get to know better your teammates and other NPCs

Queen Of Thieves – Mary Ann

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As you know, I like strong female characters in my games. Mary-Ann surely fits the description completely! Below the official intro by the writer.

Mary-Ann Folami

When Mary-Ann was an infant, her grandparents and parents left the Broken Lands to settle in Ahkra. Her grandfather started a forge in service to Lord Raul’s father and soon her family began to prosper. That ended shortly after Raul came to power. Her grandfather had died by then and Raul had little interest in the services of Mary-Ann’s father. They were cast out of his castle and were left to man a forge in the city. Gone was the creation of unique weapons and armour, replaced by horseshoes and other simple things that any competent blacksmith could make.

Shortly before turning eighteen, Mary-Ann’s parents died and she found herself alone. She decided to take over the family forge and has served as the town blacksmith ever since. Mary-Ann is extremely gregarious and very good at her job also. She is very popular in Ahkra and she often likes to take advantage of that. Deep down, she yearns to do more than what she does now: however she understands that she cannot abandon her family’s legacy.

Mary-Ann is infamous for her sexual appetites and has had a string of female lovers. It is well known she has little interest in serious relationships but most of her former lovers say that blacksmithing is only one of her considerable talents…

PSCD pre-orders and incoming beta

The game will offer some OPTIONAL side missions for those who want to “grind” 🙂

I sent a newsletter last week, offering the possibility to preorder PSCD. The game temporary webpage can be found here: http://winterwolves.com/pscd.htm

My plan was to release a beta demo at mid-November: however things have been going very well, so I think I might be able to release either a shorter demo this weekend, or the beta demo early next week.

Beta demo doesn’t mean the full game, since I am still missing some GUI art, and I also need to code the advanced missions and test/tweak.

I don’t plan to release the game this year, especially considering how crowded it seems to be (both other indies and AAA companies are releasing a lot of games in the next weeks!) but I will probably complete the full beta version before end of year. Which means you could play the whole game in beta in a few weeks from now 🙂

Queen Of Thieves – Fredrick

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And now time for another male interest introduction: Fredrick! Read what the writer has to say about him below:

Fredrick Holtzer

Fredrick has been a lifelong resident of Ahkra. He was born in the town and expects to die there. His family has been living in the area for generations and he has some pride in that. Even when things might be better elsewhere, he has rather stubbornly refused to move on.

He currently runs a rather successful shop selling all kinds of goods. The middle classes and even some nobles frequently patronize his establishment leaving him relatively well-off compared to many others under the rule of Lord Raul. His success has made him rather unpopular with his fellow merchants but he cares little for that. So long as those that count him as friends like him then he cares little for those he is not friends with. He does not make real friends easily, however, so there are few that have a high opinion of him in Ahkra.

Most consider Fredrick a troublemaker who has no respect for the rules of business. He scoffs at such attitudes, attributing them to jealous rivals who struggle to grow even as he becomes more successful with every passing year. That is not to say he believes himself superior. He just believes in taking risks and reaping the rewards. Sometimes those risks do not work out but he does not let that destroy him like so many others. No matter how badly he is put down, Fredrick will get back up.

More progress on the robbery missions

Another week has passed, and made progress both on PSCD and the robbery missions of PSCD. The screen below is the main screen you’ll see when doing your night raids with the three sisters:

I am quite satisfied by the results, since there are several mechanics and they seem to work well together. Beside running the shop normally during day and earning a few money, during night you can:

pickpocket people: merchants is the safer district, but if you try to pickpocket nobles or even military people… you could get in trouble. Failing at pick pocketing will start battles, some with specific goals (stop the noble from calling for help for example)
explore: you will spend time to find new targets to rob. But even after you discover one, you won’t know much about it
and that’s where gather info comes useful: you can spend time eavesdropping or a little money to bribe people to gain more info about the chosen target: how big the house is, how many floors, how much money/gems, level of the encounters, etc
finally, choosing start robbery will start the robbery mission itself 🙂

I like the freedom you have, since you can choose to start a mission even without getting information, but maybe the target won’t have much money, or the enemies inside will be tougher than expected, and so on.

Regarding PSCD, I made a video of the current status of the battle screen:

For more info check my forums here: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=3724

Last but not least, all the romance CG ending for C14 Dating are done! It means that the game should be out soon 🙂

Queen Of Thieves – Therjalla

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Therjalla is the only elf romanceable character of the game, so already for this rather unique, but I also like a lot her design, I think artist did a great job with her 🙂

Therjalla Arme’Fallanerien

No one really knows who Therjalla is apart from being Ahkra’s new healer. The old and much maligned healer died very suddenly a couple of weeks before the sisters arrived in town, and the priests of the temple begged the traveling elf to stay on as temporary healer, until a replacement could be sent from the order’s headquarters hundreds of miles away. She agreed to do so, as despite being a scholar first, she still held to her vow as a healer, and could not let the people be without one for however many weeks it will take for a replacement to be sent.

Outside of healing, Therjalla keeps to herself at all times and talks to no one, except to collect various supplies she has brought in, to aid her research into the various herbs and plant life of the world. Several people have spotted her roaming the woods at night, collecting samples and carrying them back to the temple where she stays, but what she does with them nobody knows.

Many mistake the scholar for being cold but she is nothing of the sort. Therjalla actually cares a great deal about people, she is just not a particularly expressive person. She does not think there is anything wrong with this, and makes no effort to change her demeanour to suit others.

Queen Of Thieves update

Speaking of this game, this week started working on the last part of gameplay missing: the “robbery missions”.

In the image above you see the pre-robbery setup screen, where you can choose which usable items to carry with you. Yes, because differently from my previous RPGs, you have a limited amount of items you can carry with you (starting at 6 in Easy, to get as low as 3 in Nightmare difficulty). This was added to solve the problem that had in both Loren and SOTW, that is you could stock up a big amount of items, like bombs, and then kill even the most powerful enemy just using them (in SOTW there was a clever AI so it wasn’t always possible, but it was still unbalancing a bit, giving a clear advantage to Thief classes).

Now don’t think this restriction will make the game much harder or less fun: it will still be possible to win using the right item at the right moment, and since you are fully healed (both in HP and SP) after each battle, you don’t need to fear entering in battle already injured (like could happen in SOTW).

I wanted each item and decision to use one, to be more meaningful/important, and this way I think I’ve achieved my goal. Also, class restrictions have been removed, even a Mage like Joanne knows how to throw a bomb! 🙂 This mainly because with only 3 playable characters, having a limit of items usage by Class would have been too much.

Work on the other games goes on as well. I’ve commissioned new GUI for a few of the games in progress, like Summer In Trigue, which you can see below. I particularly like the star-shaped menu choices and the new dialogue window 🙂

Queen Of Thieves – Tiberius

Captain Tiberius Celsus

The captain of the guard has served Lord Raul for all of his adult life. He joined the city guard as soon as he was old enough and quickly rose through the ranks. Due to his tall height and build, most assume him to be a mindless thug but that could not be further from the truth. Tiberius is an extremely thoughtful person although he can come across as being rather slow because of this. He thinks things through from all sides before coming to a conclusion. This can frustrate some, but he can be stubborn when others try to force him to move at their pace.

Tiberius is extremely popular with the women of Ahkra, although as yet he is not known to have had any real relationship with any. It has led to rumours of him having interests outside of women although he has always denied such accusations when questioned. Asking him about such things is one of the sure ways to embarrass him. His female friends get very defensive when he becomes uncomfortable, so it is often advised not to fluster him in front of others.

Most people find Tiberius rather taciturn. He tends to speak little of himself, when he does speak and overall his speech tends to be to the point. His duty comes before everything so he rarely socialises except with those he knows very well indeed.

A very big PSCD update

This past week, was basically… insane 🙂 I started working full speed together with coder, and in a single week we fixed a lot of bugs and added a lot of new features to the card engine. Some of them will be also useful for Undead Lily, and the new AI system will also be reused (at least partly) in future RPG frameworks, like for Loren 2 and other games.

This of course doesn’t mean the game is ready, but at least for the framework behind it, we made really BIG progresses. I joked with coder because recently was unavailable, that if he works like that, he just needs to be around 2-3 weeks a year for me to finish a game 😉

Anyway, I also made progress on the layout. It’s still clearly work in progress, but I added some nice visual effects:

The first unit on left (Laser Squad) is invisible (there’s a moving fog over it), while the battle drone has a force shield which prevents any damage the first time the unit gets hit.

The cards can also be zoomed in to examine their stats and abilities. Not all cards have one, but most yes. It was fun to design over 120 cards (only for the Human Empire!) and several aliens:

As you can see, there’s also our friend Kaden. He is present in a main mission, but if we decide to make a small adventure also for the DLC (possible, though not yet officially confirmed) I will include also some other secondary characters which aren’t main heroes in the base game.

As you can see I’m quite enthusiast about it! I have coded 15 missions, but I know already I’ll need to replay them all once the computer AI is finished, to make more challenging battles at higher difficulty levels.

Next week I plan to take a break and go back working on Queen Of Thieves robbery missions. Doing a RPG and a CCG at same time sounds crazy? well, yes, it actually is 😀 but I’m having fun so far, so that’s all matters to me!

Computer Games

Development diary of Celso Riva