Progress Report #3

Hi everyone!

Another update about what we’re doing to prepare Realm 2!

This week has been brutal for both Jay and I. Jay has a lot of work to do in his day job, and because he was so busy with TSR, he let a backlog grow bigger and bigger and now he has to work overtime to get back on track. Still, he has been able to work with our new developer on the code.

If you’re on Discord, you may have heard that while the dev was working on implementing the translations we have, he discovered a can of worms and had to rework even more stuff within the code. As the code was before, it was impossible for us to implement the translation because of the way our UI was coded. We had to re-create some of the UI elements (it mostly still looks the same, but now we can change things within it). This has been a major thorn in our side because it looks more and more likely that it will break the saves… HOWEVER, if it were to happen, we will have a gallery opener and an option for you to select all your important choices in order to recreate all of your saves without replaying the game. But if you wish to replay it, please do.

While we were re-working our UI, we decided to re-work our Gallery to make it fancier. So, this week, I have created images for it… We hope you will like how it looks!

But the good news is that now the dev is finally working on the code of Realm 2! In order to update as often as we do, we prepare the code in advance and put placeholder images in order to test that everything is working and that the dialogue makes sense/works etc. There will still be some changes in the code at a later date, but it allows us to have strong foundations in place. We would just need to change the images (some text if needed) and add the animations.

We have also finally implemented the Steam achievements… What should have taken no time took forever. We had a lot of back and forth with the freelancer we paid to create our graphics. That would be another story about Fiverr lol. But in the end, we have our achievements, and we’re really happy about them, Woohoo!

Steam’s Wishlist continues to grow, and we’re really happy about it! We know that nothing is certain until D-Day, but we’ve taken the decision to hire some help in order to improve the game. The generous support of our Patrons is helping us pay towards this; however, in the current stage, we are paying for most of this from our savings. We are really eager to make the game as high quality as possible. We are doing the "interviews" at the moment, but we pretty much have someone to help with the animations if all proceeds smoothly! Finding them was also an uphill battle. Between people going MIA after accepting our price and finding someone talented, I almost gave up. But I’m so happy we didn’t!

However, as they’re working with Maya, we had to find every asset for the characters we sent them (which was a pain), redownloading them (another pain) and share them in order for Atlas to not look like a wimpy kid. Then, the maps were broken in Maya, so they had to redo all of them and re-rig the characters because their rigs were shitty. They will animate in Maya, then send me everything back in Blender, and I will render it there! At least, that is how it looks if nothing changes…

I had also to find references for all the scenes in Realm 2 in order for them to know what I want. It was way more work than I thought it would be, and I don’t think I can watch any more p*rn lol.

The Fourth Realm Supporter animation for September is still delayed. I haven’t managed to allocate enough time to fix the issue and render it again yet, but don't worry. It will be sent to all Fourth Realm and higher tiers that pledged during September. Sorry again for the wait.

I’m also still working on the Script of Realm 2. The dialogue of the first 3 Updates weren’t written by me. Once again, if you were on Discord, you may know what happened… Maybe I will do a post one day about how hard it’s been to find people to work with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not shitting on anyone, the writer was good, but we just had very different styles and visions. I think with more work and time, we may have managed to make it work, but it wasn’t meant to be!

Anyway, at first, I tried to keep as much of the original script as possible because I didn’t want to feel like I paid for nothing, but I realised that I needed to rework the text more. I think it’s even harder to edit dialogue that wasn’t mine and try to add my style to them. So, it has taken a lot of my time and energy.

We’ll also start running the second image poll for October tomorrow, with a Halloween theme again, so be sure to participate in that.

Thanks for reading. Any questions, leave a comment or reach out on Discord😊

Tae