Last Update: 1 NOVEMBER



This is the replacement thread for the "estimate release dates" one I was talking about. Since it's IMPOSSIBLE to know when a game is out, it's better if I just keep a sort of log of what I'm working on and the current progress, no?



Remember: sometimes to do the last 10% of development can take MONTHS. Take for example Volleyball Heaven: the story is all done, it was all done already a couple of months ago, but there's still a lot of art to be finished and need to script/playtest and code some other parts. It might not even be out this year. Also because I don't want to rush any game anymore, so if to do that last 10% which can improve the game greatly we need months, we're going to take months



You understand why "estimate release date" it's totally a useless concept now?

Current working on:

Love Bites - writer is finishing some routes, and "the scripter" is sending me the stuff to playtest. They're both doing a very good job, when I get the scripted files I add a bit of stuff here and there, but overall I'd say it's 60-70% good. Main plot and Viktor are done, 3 romances left to do

Cursed Lands - even if writer needs to do the main quest scenes, I'm using placeholders and I keep coding the other sidequests (there are many) so I don't lose time

Volleyball Heaven - just managing the art production for now (a few secondary characters and all the romance CGs to be done), and waiting for the writer to send me the final script (with some basic scripting added).

Of course! But I still hope you can put back a general list of the rest of the games, so we can see the overall games you had. Just a very simple text list will do (No need for an update on those). Asking for the future, that is (the current list batch can be referred to in the old thread).

You mean a list of the games currently in progress? yes that is not a problem, though in future I'll limit what I post in public greatly, I'm aiming to become a "normal indie dev" who has max 2-3 projects at once (lol, actually normal indie devs just have ONE they're working on at any given time!).

Listing everything I am planning to make in the long run has become too much stressing, when people (rightfully) ask stuff like "is game XYZ abandoned?". Etc. If it's not listed anywhere in public, people can't ask and I don't get bad reputation (I still remember when I finished 5 games last year some people whining that I never finish games... )

I understand you can't really give any specific periods, but can't you still at least put like year you expect game not to be in.



Like for example Loren 2 - probably not before 2019. Cursed Lands - probably not before end of 2017 etc...

You might actually get less "is it abounded? when will it be?" questions that way and it's not something you need to update all the time.

Well in that case I should still update it every year and it would be a bit pointless anyway. For example I expected PS2 to be out max in 2013... we're in 2017... lol



The games I'm working on now, are games very advanced and where the writer assured me would get the writing done quickly (of course, unexpected problems can still happen, but in general writers I trust and expect to do what they said).



Anyways once I get back writing most games myself, deadlines will be meet much more regularly



I will update that other thread as you suggested so at least people won't be waiting a game expecting it to be out soon!

Anyways once I get back writing most games myself, deadlines will be meet much more regularly

Sweet! More like BH (always will be my big thing, in case ya don't know by now, lol) and PS1, then?

Not just sci-fi, even if I really like it. But for example I'm going to write some story parts of PS2 (already spoke with Miakoda) so the missions are better integrated with the gameplay I have in mind to do. For the romances instead I'll leave them to her since she'll do a much better job than me for sure

As said already this was also a main issue in Amber, for certain kind of games (but all games with a gameplay in general) you really need to write it yourself (at least the main story) because you're the only one that knows how the gameplay is. Writers can try to guess, but it's really hard.

I will update that other thread as you suggested so at least people won't be waiting a game expecting it to be out soon!

Yea that's what I was thinking about when I made a suggestion, this way at least people won't jump on hype train before rails are even made

Yes but for that the best solution in future games will be to not announce anything until things are almost done

Today's update: Cursed Lands' writer just emailed saying he'll try to make the first full moon missions next month. I am STILL working on the sidequests, but I think they should be all done next month so that's perfect timing. Obviously if I get new updates on Love Bites I'll work on that first.

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today started coding the first full moon mission. It's going well, there are some interesting choices, and if writer manages to send me the remaining texts, I might finish this event by mid-November, which means after this a very good amount of the game is playable. Unfortunately there are still several things missing, since the game was written "in blocks":

- second and third full moon events (obviously!)

- the nagas recruitments/rescue mission, and their personal quests/romances (this is probably the biggest part)

- Jasper romance

- epilogues/endings (there are a few different ones based on some big choice in the story)

- various other stuff about merchants, zachary, etc (several minor scenes)

currently the whole script is almost 195k words, once all of those are added will probably be 240-250k as I already announced



I must say the writer is doing an awesome job - but still it's really hard, as I said thousand times I'm going to write such games myself in future, because there are just too many little details that needs to be checked with gameplay-heavy games and also based on an existing world...did Apolimesho knew about vampires in Loren? is this enemy a strong enemy enough? can I do XYZ with Ren'Py coding? are skill checks needed? and I could go on for hours!



About Love Bites, Miakoda is working on doing the romance CG/ending of Sabrina/Viktor, so in theory once that is done I can release the game in beta/pre-order since half of it it's done

So I thought to update this thread lol. I made good progress this first month of 2018, considering how both Cursed Lands and Love Bites turned out to be more "small games (tm)"



Cursed Lands:

- waiting for the editor to send me back Jasper and Enok romances, then will script/code them

- waiting for the official writer to send me act2 vampire lieutenants texts, more main plot scenes and some edited texts

- need to write the act3 final battle but all epilogues are done



Love Bites:

- Miakoda finished Tyrone, so there's only Nadia left

- still need to script whole Tyrone and Nadia though



I might release a new build of Cursed Lands even without the vampire texts, since there's A LOT of stuff happening in act2 (or that COULD happen, since this game is much more "open world" than my others, you can do some quests even in act3). So I might decide that's better to do another update to get feedback/fix bugs once I have Jasper/Enok texts edited

Another update! Doing this monthly is much better than the old system with 500 games listed where I had less control and in the end even a game that I thought done, in reality wasn't Now I talk only on the thing that I work myself, or where trusted people work.



Cursed Lands:

Writer said should send me the missing act3 texts + my edited texts this week. I have coded everything else, but once I get the new texts I'll probably need a couple of weeks to script/check everything.



Love Bites:

Miakoda finished half of Nadia, so only Kaitlyn/Nadia left! Then is left scripting and some testing from me.



Volleyball Heaven:

Writer is working on the Hallowen events, then will review the whole script one last time. It still needs to be fully scripted/coded/tested. I think this one might be out in Summer though.



Planet Stronghold 2:

I've finished reviewing the starting intro scenes and first missions/quests. I'm not going to code the actual gameplay until I have all the story written down, I'll keep that as last (also because doing it at same time as Cursed Lands while in beta might be confusing!).

This one won't be out this year, I mean maybe a beta towards the end of year but it's too early to say right now.



After PS2 I plan to finally start working seriously on Loren 2 so another long-awaited game will finally get finished hopefully!

If you get Volleyball Heaven out, then it will be 3 games, not two out this year. That would be excellent news.

Yeah, 3/year is a very good rate! Especially considering that one (Cursed Lands) is a RPG and 300k words long

While I am excited for some of the titles in your upcoming list, you did recently announce that you were asked to "help finish" Corona Borealis. Roughly how far along is that game? Does "help finish" mean "do all the gameplay, scripting, music, etc." or is it more "polish, test, and market/release"? I notice it's not in your 2018 list above.

Ah DOH

I forgot about it completely! Yes I need to do the gameplay/scripting/music, but it's a really small game for my standards (I think like 50k words) so that really will take me 1-2 weeks at best to do everything. Currently Deji is drawing the latest CG images for it, but the music is still all missing

I'd say that that game will come out between the bigger releases since will take me so little to finish it that I can decide to "insert in the schedule" anytime after all is ready, but I hope will be done before end of this year.

Another quick update. Cursed Lands is finished obviously, it's only missing the theme song, and maybe there's some minor bug left but it has been very quiet in the past weeks!

For Love Bites I'm testing the jealousy dialogues today and I plan to code the "weekend activities" this weekend

For Volleyball Heaven the romance CG lineart is being made, that has taken longer than I thought (we're in March and they were supposed to start last year in December!) because as usual there has been various real-life issues going on, but now things seems to be progressing. The full game still needs to be scripted, but right now I'm going to finish Love Bites next month and then start looking at VBH once I've "cleared my mind" (doing two games at once is a bad idea).

I am also making progress on PS2 as you probably noticed but I'm going to focus on finishing the current games in the next month or so, so development on PS2 will resume full speed probably in June or something. I might still get something done in my "spare time" before then though.

Are you planning on a modern demo of Cursed Lands, or waiting on the theme song and official release?