Since I'm back to doing dev work, figured it was best to start naming these weekly updates appropriately. So here is dev update #1. A lot was accomplished this past week. Here's all I got done.

Except for one environment that won't be needed anytime soon, I have all the environments updated as I wanted. There will be some significant changes in terms of the textures I used that change with Chapter 5. Essentially, the textures used in the palace now match with very little variation. This does mean that things will look different mid-game, but I don't see it as a valuable use of my time to go back and redo about 1700 renders right now. Once the game is "finished," I can go back and polish up those renders to match. I imagine I'll have learned a good deal more by then anyway. I plan to lock these environments in place through the rest of the game, unless there is some significant issue that initially goes undetected. With the characters already having their updates to fix issues, this means that, except for new environments needed for future releases, we are all set to not need breaks in release development to do fixes and improvements (at least until the end of the game…).

Coding is basically wrapped up with all the changes I needed to get done. I've got my new splash screen, a special intro video when you first start the game, and other changes I've mentioned in past weekly updates. As far as I can tell, there is only a single bug in the code right now, but intense play testing during the beta may reveal things I've missed. And, of course, as I add things for Chapter 5, I could break something there. While coding has been nice, for me, it's all about making the presentation and game elements better. I don't enjoy coding for the sake of it.

The script review and my outline is complete. It's certainly not set in stone, but Chapter 5 should be locked down unless these new scenes I'm adding to Chapter 5 are shorter than I anticipate. Because I'm focusing on To Be A King as my sole project, I've decided to make releases a bit more content packed. This will help balance out love interest content in each release and also provide more playing time for each release (obviously dependent a lot on your path and choices still). I'm working on some replay improvements too, though those will be announced closer to Chapter 5's release.

That leaves a few character model updates and finishing writing the new scenes I've added for Chapter 5 (and boy did I add a lot of scenes). It will be a big release, but hopefully my day job cooperates enough to allow me to get in good render counts each day. As is my custom, I'll be working on the script for Chapter 6 during Chapter 5's development. All renders and no writing makes for no balance.

Now that we have our love interests introduced (and there will be some flings you can have later too), it will be balancing those interactions between releases. This means that some releases will be light on content for certain LIs. If you don't see your preferred love interest much in Chapter 5, they likely will be back with more scenes in Chapter 6.

That's it from me. I've still got a few experiments I want to try with the renders for this next chapter, but I don't anticipate that significantly adding to development time. From here on out, once these new scenes are written, it's mostly doing what I've done for multiple releases of To Be A King - making renders and massaging the script as I go. Until next time, take care!