Games by JimD Newsletter #43 – Project Updates, Publishing Timelines

Welcome to my 43rd newsletter! As I was receiving my second vaccination shot for COVID-19 this month, I thought about the adjustments our society has made related to this virus. In the past eighteen months, we have altered the economy, had mandatory lockdowns, and instituted public health initiatives like social distancing and masking. It made me wonder what impact society would face from the fictitious Zeta virus. Of course, those changes would happen quickly due to the aggressive nature of the virus, but I often wonder if my story got it right. Would the government have stepped in sooner with mandates? Would FEMA or the military immobilize faster? Would citizens help one another or become selfish individualists? It’s interesting to theorize, and I hope we never face such a challenge in real life.

This past month has been another hectic one for me. I have devoted most of my time to Safe Haven, Part 3. I’ll discuss my progress and also give a quick note on Vampire: The Masquerade - Out for Blood. Finally, I want to discuss my timeline again for publishing Part 3 since we are getting close to finishing it.

Let’s get started.

Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, Part 3

Part 3 is currently at 482,225 words! That’s over 21,000 words written this month. I am projecting another 4-5000 words before I release the next alpha update on February 25th. I’m also scheduling to release chapter 10 for a public beta on May 1st. That’s a busy month, but I’m going to keep this pace for a while. Now that my other projects are calming down, I can devote all of my time to ZE:SH.

As many of you know, I’m currently writing chapter 12 and hope to have it done by next month. This is such a pivotal chapter because it sets the stage for the next part of the story and continues certain pivotal storylines. If you have been reading the alphas, you will know what I’m talking about. I’ve also been asking about the type of content you would like to see going forward, and by far, romantic interactions has been the most-voted option. Because of this, I invested a large part of chapter 12 to providing a pivotal scene with your current romantic option. When I started to write the scene, I had not projected how long it would take. With 13 ROs and each one taking 1500 words, you can see how much effort goes into that type of content. I didn’t like the brief interludes with your ROs in the originals ZE. I like more complex and dynamic interactions. So I don’t want to skimp in Safe Haven, but as you can see, it takes a lot more to write these types of scenes. Therefore the actual mission and heart of the chapter has been pushed back. It’s started, and those who are reading the alpha will get to see how that mission begins. I also hope you enjoy the romantic scenes as they are a pivotal part of the game at this stage.

I also want to let you know that I’ve done some preliminary tests, and Part 3 adds 80,000 words per playthrough. For comparison, Part 2 is around 72,000 words per playthrough.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Out for Blood

As you know if you’ve read these newsletters in the past few months, my first draft has gone to the staff at World of Darkness for review. They have provided feedback on chapters 1-10 (of 12 total chapters). I am pleased to announce that they have had little feedback that requires changes which shows their confidence in what I’ve written. I should have those changes made within the next few days. I’ve also been doing “seed” testing. This involves running an automated script that prints out all of the text from a single play of the game with random choices picked. A tester then reads the output of that file to check for continuity errors and anything that does not make sense. I’ve already completed a dozen of these tests and will be doing possibly several dozen more. If everything goes well, I will turn this version over to Choice of Games, and they will hopefully have the game out sometime in June.

My Schedule Going Forward

I am hoping to have chapter 12 finished by mid-May and then turn my attention to adding any content I have missed in Part 3. This includes such things as romantic encounters in chapter 8 and conversations with every major character. As you can imagine this is a lot of work, so I will probably need until the end of June to complete all of this along with coding some transitions between chapters. These transitions will allow you to level up your skills, train others, and perform leadership duties. Therefore, I will be sending these files to the copyeditor by the end of June, and hopefully go into the publishing queue soon after.

Once I am done with Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, Part 3, I will immediately continue with Part 4. If my projections go correctly, I will start work on this new part in July and have the first alpha version posted at the end of that month. There may be some error fixing needed for Vampire: The Masquerade - Out for Blood, but I should be able to focus most of my time on Safe Haven.

That’s all for this month. Until next time, stay safe and thank you for all of your support!