Another productive week, aided by me having a week off from my day job, though not by getting sick.

Current progress:

• 1117 renders completed (total, not just this week)
• 23 total scenes completed (out of 34 - ended up cutting a scene)
• All scenes written

Still too early to give any sort of release ETA, but I do have an internal target. Once we go to beta, I will have a much better idea of release ETA. I promise that this mega release (around the size of Chapters 1-4 combined) will be worth the wait. And going forward, I imagine we will fall somewhere in the 28-35 scene range and 1200-1800 render range for each release.

Also had a bit of fun on Saturday. I needed to take a regular render break, but I had some wonderful help from those in Discord in designing a few new characters. I'll be filling out the game with some fun interactions (not adding more love interests), and it was fun to get input and ideas on some new model options. You'll be seeing one of these in Chapter 5.

Preview

Now, to another preview on what is new for To Be A King in Chapter 5.

I've revamped a LOT of the To Be A King interface from top-to-bottom. Some of that was needed due to the free roam addition, but a lot of it is just things that I found I could adjust in Renpy and create the needed graphics. Some is just some new polish, but there are a couple of interesting things that I've added.

Copying nearly every other VN out there, I'm introducing a new button you can click to bring up your relationship statistics, skill/attribute count (will be more relevant later in the game), primary character biographies, and some information on Caudium and its key characters. I'm calling it the "Codex," and it's easily accessed at any point in the game. It's an easy way for me to provide some more detail about the game world you're playing without overloading folks with a bunch of scenes that do nothing but explain. I'll be updating it regularly with some new content snippets each release.

Along with all this, I've added the ability to name your saves. So no longer will you have to try and remember if your Cassia path saves are on page 4 or 5. A few small tweaks to the gallery, and the scene replay gallery round out the major changes here.

I'll see you all next week for another dev update. Have a great weekend!