Callisto 0.30 - Week 18 Update

Thankfully this will be the last update on v0.30, as I completed the content for this version yesterday, which is included in the uploaded Callisto 0.30c - Beta. All that I am really waiting on before the release of the official v0.30 version, is the completion of beta testing.  All $10 Patreons that have access to this beta, are welcome to assist in the testing, by reporting any bugs in the discord channel. As testing takes more time than the bug fixes themselves, this leaves me time to start on version v0.40.

To further enlighten you as to the road map moving forwards, v0.40 will see the conclusion of the Liberation of Dione portion of the main story. Also included within this version will be the establishment of the Rogue's Den at the Beehive Station. This will be a bar where you will be able to kick off the various side missions (1 planned per version). These side missions will be at a range of new locations and will be highly branching, with very different outcomes. Effort on versions moving forwards will be roughly 1/3 side missions, 1/3 main story, 1/3 ship / character events.

Rouge's Den above - created location today.

As a very brief guide to what each version is planned to contain:

• v0.40 - Liberation of Dione - Part 2
• v0.50 - Gideon Strip Club
• v0.60 - Mad Scientist - Part 1
• v0.70 - Mad Scientist - Part 2
• v0.80 - The Hive - Part 1
• v0.90 - The Hive - Part 2
• v1.00 - Conclusion

The Gideon Strip Club (v0.50) won't really see much progression of the main story. Simple reason for this, is that to do it well, I have to do a large number of animations, which will consume huge amounts of GPU time. I have already established the environment for this club, which can be seen in the prologue. I will also create a management aspect to running the club, allowing you to customise the experience. You will also be able to invite certain crew members when you visit, that will open up resultant scenes. This also gives me the opportunity to create a range of new characters, which I enjoy doing. During the course of v0.40, I will post some of the character designs for the strip club 'talent', so you can choose which ones you prefer to be included in v0.50 via a poll. There will probably be 5 alternatives, from which the poll will select 2 and I will reserve right to pick the 3rd (Want to make sure there is some variety across the 3 characters selected). I will likely create another 2 characters each version, from which the most popular one will be included in the game. Adding additional 'talent' to the roster post v0.50 is actually fairly easy, as it will predominately be just running the animation renders. So this shouldn't detract significantly from time spent on the main game.

Currently I have a trading mechanic and a salvage mechanic in the game in order to generate funds. You will notice in v0.30 that I have adjusted the credits slightly, in order to split Callisto funds from personnel funds. Whilst there is nothing to spend the personnel funds on at this time, some clothing items will appear in v0.40, strip club upgrades in v0.50 and property in v0.60. Initially when planning the game, I was intending on also including a bounty hunting mechanic, utilising a variant of the fighter that the Captain is using in the first few frames of the prologue. However for the life of me, I can't think of a way in Ren'Py to make this interesting. Hence for now this is shelved, in favour of the side missions.

If you have some comments on the above or can think of some other ideas that should be examined, I'm always open to suggestions (eg. map interface / hint system).

Xav