General Progress Update

Hey everybody, I hope you've had a fantastic weekend.

It's been a while since we gave an overall progress update, so we thought we'd fill you in.

In general, things have been going great. We've received an excellent response to the game's new image and animation quality, which we're super pleased about.

Team

We now have a few members on the team. We've mentioned some previously, but we now have two people working with us full-time: Autmn3 on the animations and Shoe_Lac3 on lighting and post-work, amongst other tasks.

For posing and image creation, we have IronLionArts, who is creating all of our Patreon and social media images to much praise from our community members. As of the next update, Luceian is posing our action sequences, and he's doing an incredible job. I can't wait for you to see.

We are also working with Coral's Dream and Forlorn Desire on asset and environment creation. Realm 3 is currently due to be almost entirely custom-built environments, as we want the Realm of the Elves to feel unique. Our desire is for The Seven Realms to feel unique and for you not to recognise any of our environments in other games.

One such environment that will feature in the next update is an updated Council Chamber. You may remember this room was used prominently early in the game, but we moved away from it as it was a difficult room to work with, and it didn't quite reflect what we wanted it to. Below is an old image in the initial environment, followed by an upcoming image in the new one.

We are trying to find more people who are the right fit to enable us to keep a good pace and consistently deliver new updates. Currently, we're doing some tests with someone to help Shoe_Lac3 with the lighting.

We're also looking for another animator to help Autmn3. If you have knowledge of Blender/Maya or know someone who might be interested, let us know.

We're also still open to having more people on the team, but you will need to have knowledge of D-force and Marvelous Designer.

Unfortunately, our programmer, who we have been working with since the end of Realm 1, left the project this week due to a personal change in circumstances. Fortunately, we built a solid foundation together in the game's code. There are various simple tasks that I am now picking up, but there is more complex code we want to implement before the end of Realm 2. It is currently a lot of extra work for us. We are trying to find a new programmer urgently to ensure there are no delays in Realm 2 being completed. We don't expect this to impact us too heavily, as we always plan as far in advance as possible. Although this is a setback, we are optimistic as we have just begun talks with another programmer who is really professional and experienced.

The end of Realm 2

As some may know, we always planned for Realm 2 to have ten updates. Our previous release was the eighth update. We are considering merging these two final updates into one big grand finale (which will likely be around 700 images). The ninth update leads directly into the tenth, and we feel that releasing them in one go may be more satisfying to players.

Depending on when we can find a new programmer and how quickly they can get up to speed, this may slightly push back the final release. We are currently aiming for late June to early July. I will expand below on why we need a new programmer up to speed before the final Patreon release of Realm 2.

Splitting the Realms into Volumes

This idea is still in the works, but we are considering splitting the game into volumes rather than only by episode/realm. For example, this could see the future of the game split out as below:

Realm 1 & 2 = Volume 1

Realm 3 & 4 = Volume 2

Realm 5, 6 & 7 = Volume 3

Each volume would be its own game on Steam with the additional Realms as DLC. You can import a save file (name, choices made, etc) into the next volume. Alternatively, if new players wanted to join the story later, they could pick up Volume 2 and receive an advanced recap where they are given context. They can use a prebuilt journey or make relevant choices from the information provided.

The idea behind this change is to make the game more accessible to new players and for downloads on Patreon and Itch to not continue to grow in file size. Realm 1 & 2 is approaching 5GB and is increasing rapidly in size due to the improved quality of our animations. We plan for the future Realms to be larger than Realms 1 & 2.

We also want to reduce the potential of saving bugs. If you are playing on a single save file up to Realm 7 and a bug then corrupts this save, you may have to fast-forward through tens of hours of content to get back to where you were. We hope that being able to import all important choices and stats to a new set of save files in a new volume will reduce the impact of any saving issue occurring.

For the save import feature, this is why we want to ensure we have a talented programmer on board before the final release of Realm 2. To ensure that we implement this save import correctly and avoid any bugs or annoyances for players.

I understand that currently, that is just a lot of numbers, but I hope the correct branding and implementation will make the game easier for players to access.

Realm 3

While still a little way off, as I mentioned Realm 3 earlier in the post, I thought I would touch on it. I recently completed a full proofread of Realm 3. Aside from a few minor additions, the writing of the main story of Realm 3 is now complete. Tae has written most of the optional side paths for Realm 3, but I still need to proofread those fully.

We have also compiled a hefty list of the environments we will be commissioning creation of for Realm 3, and we are working in the background on new custom outfits for the characters that we feel fit their personalities and the situations they're in.

Realm 3 will be an enormous undertaking, so we've tried to plan as far in advance as possible.

Well done if you managed to read through all of that, haha.

Thanks for taking the time. Have a good one!

Jay