Hello future curators!
Small but also big update... we're finally in beta! It feels weird to say, and it also feels like we're forgetting something, but we're finally feature-complete for an Early Access release. We have all the systems in and now we just need to fill them out with content. Coderman has stories to write and music to make and I have a lot of customizables to draw and animate (furniture, clothes, hair, etc.).
Related to that, I did finish all the furniture sets and have moved on to miscellaneous and outdoor items! I will finish those up before moving on to probably clothes.
The next thing we are going to work on is a sound pass (button sounds, ambience, action sounds, etc.). It will be fun to add some more life to the game, but we also may become numb from listening to hundreds of similar sounds for hours on end.
Unrelated picture, just so you have something to look at. I wonder what kinds of sounds dinosaurs used to make...
And now some words from Coderman.
BETA BETA BETA! YEAH! I mean, it's easy enough to write that out, but it still doesn't feel like it, even though we're genuinely moving on to a more content-creation heavy part of development. It does, however, feel like all of our systems are in place and are generally as flexible and robust as we need them to be. That's exciting. There's still plenty of core content to make and polish to apply to UI and animations and all sorts of things, but they are mostly that, creating the content. Not writing or implementing systems. Or, worse, rewriting them. So let's talk a bit about what we ARE doing. Or what I'm doing anyway.
Firstly! Sounds. I'm not going to get everything in for sound right out of the gate, but I will be spending the next little bit adding general ambiance and sound triggers for the stuff that needs it. Then we will get better sounds added in over time. After that, I'll be working on all the Main Story stuff... I guess I'll do a small paragraph on the narrative concept.
So, rather than have things work the way they tend to work in the standard modern RPG (single core branch and choices that still more or less lead to the same outcomes), I'm going to be planning multiple branches and decisions made along the way will put you onto these branching paths, each of which will have their own outcomes and consequences. Getting the core story laid in will let me then tie stuff into that for character stories or side stuff. And making the branches themselves discrete should keep planning and reactions from spiraling out of control at a baseline while allowing for more specificity wherever it's needed.
For now, those are the two main projects for me. We'll see where we land after those and what the plan is for next steps and Early Access plans and whatever else. Onward we go! We're definitely getting closer.