Development continues on NALE Chapter IV, so we're here for a quick update about progress, and some info about changes to Steam's developer pages and how that affects us.
Written plan is nearly complete!
This is a big one; the written plan for NALE Chapter IV is nearly complete!
We suspect, for some of you, that might seem anticlimactic (like you were expecting that would've been over ages ago). Being somewhere between adventure game and visual novel, the written plan for a NALE chapter is a huge part of development; easily half the total work involved, at least in terms of the head-scratching, difficult stuff. It involves coming up with the top-level plan of all the case's twists and turns, alongside the emotional arcs for the player and the characters, but then, critically, breaking that down into all of the states we need for implementing the story.
The plan looks a bit like this; pages and pages of these boxed paragraphs. We've mosaic'd it for spoiler purposes.
The game is structured as a big state machine, where each step of the game is a new high-level state, and things which happen within those states are low-level states. This way, every moment of the game can be broken down to two numbers - what HLS we're in, and what LLS we're in, and in dev terms, we've written tools which allow us to jump around between states, for testing. Additionally, all states are self-contained, meaning problems in one can't affect another, which helps limit bugs.
What this means is that the (near) completion of the written plan is a huge step forward, and once it's complete, full development on Chapter IV in-engine can begin in earnest.
Change to how Steam manages developer pages (and what that means for you)
Steam has made a change to developer pages. Previously, when we posted on our developer page, we could have those posts show up on our games, too, auto-magically. Unfortunately, this has now changed, meaning that posts on each game and the dev page are placed in distinct, separate areas.
What this means for you is that we're going to have to limit our posting a bit; as a small developer we can't split our focus between multiple games AND our developer page (that just wouldn't work).
So, if you want to keep up with news of NALE Chapter IV, please follow the game's page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2124200/Nina_Aquila_Legal_Eagle_Chapter_IV_Sacred_Feathers/
(Please note - "follow"; you can wishlist the game too - in fact, please do! But you need to "follow" to receive news updates)
Meanwhile, fans should follow our developer page to expect news about us as developers, which will include major milestones, releases and sales:
https://store.steampowered.com/developer/TSS/
Naturally, you can also follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/NinaAquilaGame
Next Steps
Thanks everyone! We're going to get back to working on the written plan (with a goal of completing it by the end of Jan), and we'll let you know when that happens.