Hey everyone!
It's been a while now since our last game update, so we're posting this development update across all our platforms, rather than only Patreon, so everyone can easily see where we're at and know what to expect in the coming months.
If you've followed our previous development updates, you'll know we've been working on the side paths and Realm 4 simultaneously. The whole team's been familiarising ourselves with Blender, overhauling the quality of environments, adapting to our new workflow, all with the goal of ensuring the quality of the game improves. When we first decided to change our 3D software from Daz 3D to Blender, we'd hoped the transition would be much faster and easier. It has taken us longer than anticipated to be here fully, but we're confident that we're now past the most challenging part, and we hope that what we release going forward feels worth the wait.
Currently, all focus is on The Seven Realms, so everyone who was working on ACTC is now focused on TSR to help us release things ASAP.
Side Paths
As the side paths will be our next game update, we'll start here. We'll recap some of the info we've shared previously to ensure this post gives you the full view of where we're at.
We released three side paths earlier this year. The next update will contain the remaining 13. They relate to the following characters:
Continuations: Kagome, Yuki, and Gina*.
*Gina's will have two variations depending on the allies you chose in Realm 2.
New ones with one side path: Kali, Mei & Ling Guo, Seraphina, and Zyair.
New ones with two side paths: Leyala, Naya, and Tasha.
For those with fewer paths here, they will receive more in the future Realms, to ensure all relevant characters have roughly the same amount of side path content.
In total, the remaining 13 side paths contain 14 NSFW animations and about 1,350 images. The number of images is equal to almost half of a Realm.
The animations have been animated and lit, and we have rendered about half of them. We're currently rendering the remaining few.
The still images are all posed, and we are working on the lighting for them now. This will be the primary focus over the next couple of months. This is our first time lighting so many still images for one update, and our first full update in Blender, so we don't know our pace just yet, but we hope to launch the side paths update in early November. This will first come to Patreon, and will follow on our other platforms.
Alongside the side paths update, we will also launch a Turkish translation for the game.
Once development is complete on the side paths, we'll jump straight into Realm 4.
Realm 4
Our planned release schedule for Realm 4 differs slightly from that of Realms 1-3.
With Realms 1-3, we released around 10 separate game updates on Patreon and Itch. For Realm 4, we plan for four updates. On Steam, we still plan to release the whole Realm in one go, not in smaller chapters.
When Tae initially wrote Realm 4, she wrote it the same way as Realms 1-3, with 12 updates. To have bigger releases, we've decided to split these 12 updates into four (with each update being around x3 our typical Realm 1-3 updates). So each update will be significantly bigger. Having completed all of Realm 4's main story and made significant progress with the animations, we aim to maintain a good release pace now that we're back on track.
Here's what we've currently got done for Realm 4:
- All "safe-for-work" animations have been animated.
- We have animated NSFW animations for the first two updates.
- For the still images, all environments have been created, and the characters have had their bodies posed for all of Realm 4 (not including facial expressions and some other finishing touches, such as final outfits).
- Facial expressions have been posed for Updates 1 & 2, with Update 3 currently in progress and expected to be completed within a couple of weeks.
Initially, we'd posed the mermaids with naked torsos, but this week we've been working on unique outfits for them. We're happy with how they've come out. We haven't shown off the Realm 4 ladies much yet, but we will start sharing more of them after we release the side paths.
Hopefully, this all gives you a good idea of where we're at and what to expect. But if you have any questions, feel free to ask away below.
Thanks so much for your continued support and patience. Have a great weekend!