Looks amazing! It'll look a lot less barren once we have some clutter for it.
This year has probably been one of the most productive since 2015. The sheer magnitude of work I started with, compared to the pittance that now remains manages to even make me feel good. Between the open beta weekend where I finished 50 or so maps within a few days. To going from 116 optional planetary events to the point where now only 25 remain, and it's taken only 3 months.
39 optional events per month, at a rate of over one per day.
This last 30 days has been immensely productive. With an absolute swathe of planetary events being knocked out of the park, we started with zero progress on anything other than one shots, now we're almost finished. With 2 scenes left for Galaxia and 4 for Tekerlek.
Over the weekend I took a break to stave off some mild though very expected burn out, and to process legal forms to keep the place I'm living in. The forms as of today (monday) have been lodged so now I have but to wait for the hearing to be arranged.
Xiie should be back about any day now, Pjcr has finished submitting the Xeltara and is now onto Lilith.
Xeltara
The final pose and two facial expressions. Tonight i will implement them and see about finishing off the galaxion scene events. Now after a break I'm keyed to get back to work. I intend to change my routine back to my shitty hot topic vampire variety as the Australian summer gorws in intensity.
So... Will we be done in time?
The influx of files Pjcr has been sending is great, but not nearly fast enough. There is still much to submit and Pjcr having reliable net will not magically fix everything. At the current rate we're looking at a march 14th release instead, which is bad and far from schedule, but this is actually good news.
With Xiie back in the game soon, she too will have a hard time catching up to present demand, even with the absolute hoard of files she's worked on, there is much i have not been able to get her to make for lack of context and her internet being too poor to accept image files.
That's nothing to say of my own progress, while yes, if all events left were merely scenes, I could easily make the deadline, but only 6 of the remaining events are scenes, the remaining 19 are boss fights from medium, to hard, to surreal difficulty. This is also the disk where the first of four superbosses becomes available, rated on the INSANE difficulty. While there are exceptions, these difficulties for players also match up relatively well with the effort and difficulty of production for me to develop. There's also a lot of interface upgrades to be implemented, such as rewards. That's not to mention the custom VA these optional bossfights will necessitate, and given the line up of professional VAs i have for many of these characters, and my limited fortnightly budget, it may just be infeasible to release this game on December as originally promised.
So... what will happen?
The December Delta Build
Demo 3 has already had an Alpha, and a beta as was the weekend in Janurary this year, so when did Gamma happen?
Gamma was a closed doors build that nobody actually got to try because it got cancelled for a fairly valid reason. it was scheduled for June 6 but it was one day earlier that my PC bricked.
So I decided to just move on ahead, planning a delta build in november, but this would leave only a month for testers, and my breaker is very thorough and a month is simply not enough time, this game is too massive.
So putting all things in perspective, moving the delta build to december seems like a fair concillation for a failure to release this year, which leaves Demo 3's release a few months to really get things airtight, and ensure all placeholders are more or less a thing of the past.
This would mean Demo 3 would release on 3/14 and our 10th anniversary, the game will also be put on steam, as "early access", the full game should be ready in about a year from then.
Avoiding the Problematic Crunch of Rush
The release of Fantasia Demo 2 didn't go as smoothly as I would have liked. The writing felt disconnected and jarring, and a lot of what was going on made less sense than more- that is where Re-Write came in.
Looking forward, no matter how many delays it takes, I refuse to rush the content. I want to create a game that doesn't need a Re-write patch to fix what should have been correct the first time around.
The only knowledge I had plans to release the game in December comes from the trailer, which is a mistake on my part. That said, there will be SOMETHING that happens in December, be it the Delta build, a Simian Scandal 9.5, or whatever else... I don't intend to say there will be something, only to welcome all who anticipated that with nothing.
If a miracle happens and my artists get me all the files I need, then maybe a December release will be possible. But that's seeming less and less likely with every day that passes. For the 12/12/22 release, all bets are pretty much off already, as that leaves us less than a month to finish everything. 12/22/22 is more plausible, but still unlikely. Doing this would also mean no QA from the delta build, as this would leave no time for a Delta Build to exist.
So in closing: It's more likely a Delta Build will release on the 22nd of December, giving delta testers a little under three months to give feedback, which should be enough. Me and my team can then focus on getting all the resources finished and implemented, while I have the budget to pay the voice actors for their contributions.
This would also give us something to celebrate our 10th Anniversary with, not only our first venture onto the steam platform, but a valuable release as well. If this is the path that ends up being taken, I intend to have the game finished completely before march, allowing me time to prep steam direct and get press material ready and some marketing and hype generation done.
