I'm glad this game is finally getting updated, it's definitely one of my faves.Okay, it's time to post the rest of the patreon posts.
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New battle system.
There's a new battle system implemented. We felt that the old one is too simple and not engaging enough. Our future plan for the battle system is to have classes that'll introduce different ways of fighting. Each class is planned to be unlocked in different ways. One such way would be by finding a book, containing forbidden knowledge and if the players decides to follow through with some of the instructions in the book, they might find themselves unlocking a new class that'll bring in a new set of cards that can be used in battle. The cards will have some synergistic effects and make the player think about which ones to include in his deck and which to throw away. We are planning to really bump up the difficulty in later stages and updates so strategizing to unlock all the content will be a must.
For now though – there are not a lot of cards yet because of our time constraints but this is definitively a high priority and we will focus on adding a bunch as we go.
The limitations of the engine made this battle system a pain to make. In the end we had to settle on compromises and made us re-think our ideas and understanding of the engine multiple times. The process was slow and full of issues. It’s mostly because we are lacking experience and working on something really new to us. The visuals had to wait the longest here since we never fully knew how it will turn out in the end.
In the end we are really happy with it - how it looks and feels. I have also learned many new techniques I could use for later stages. For example – I have many ideas for small animations and visuals I want to make and this is what I could do. (special thanks to mr. Topo Gigio for helping me with animation rendering)
I have attached a short clip of the animations below. I'm thinking of showing you the step by step process of making them, I think it would be really interesting to some of you.
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New Quest system.
“The quests and instructions are not clear enough” – was the most common complaint I’ve seen - more or less since the beginning. Therefore we have worked very hard to make the quest screen much simpler and direct to use. I've shown this screen before but now everything is 100% filled in and with an extra option to show already completed quests.
A bigger window now allows the quests to be much more detailed, while the character icons were moved to a new “progress” section. There it will show how much story is left for any character to complete and in the future it will say short hints or directions on what to do for that specific character.
We plan on moving the “progress” screen once again when we complete the new character sheet screen we have in mind. There it will all work together and make it much more centralized.
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Story!
The long awaited storyline with the landlady Helena is here, or at least the first part of it. In order to win her heart, there will be quite a few adventures you'll have to go through culminating in our first ever dungeon event with a boss at the end. There are also small bonus scenes, which you'll be able to find through different stages.
Our plan was to make it more intimate with this character and to engage the player in different ways. Right now there are a few new animations and a bunch of static scenes (a big chunk of older ones have been remastered).
Please – keep in mind that we mostly used our time on other aspects of this update and the amount of NSFW content is only a little bigger than usual. This will be different in the upcoming updates since we are now finished with the hardest parts. I have already sketched out future scenes with Helena that will be included in the 2’nd part of her storyline.
Quality of life changes and animations and small bugfixes.
We've added new animations for the menu and we are working on character sheets for every character in the game. We've also added better text boxes, there's a better UI for navigation in-game as well. There were quite a few bug fixes that we did that are just too many to list and we forgot them ourselves. Either way please tell us if you find anything, we'll fix it asap in a quick patch after 0,08 release.
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What’s left before release of 0,08?
-Having a few big playthroughs to check if every system is well connected and is working.
-Making sure all the side content from earlier is accessible.
-Making some small tutorials for the new systems and new players.
-Making final tweaks to story parts and dialogues.
-Proof reading and balancing some enemies.
So, what about the future of the Big Beyond?
This update is next to ready. Afterwards we are looking at releases between 2 and 4 months, depending on the type of content we are to dish out.
As some of you may know, right now the development of the Big Beyond is more of a passion project and we still need to work out main jobs in order to feed ourselves. I’m hopeful still that if the project reaches a bigger following I will be able to dedicate work on the game full time as I have in past times.
Story-wise, the next update will focus on the desert city, that's located on the northern part of the desert. Your involvement will be crucial in shaping the city's destiny. Will you contribute to transforming it into the desert's crown jewel, as it is destined to be, or allow it to decline into a decaying shell, plagued by crime and becoming a notorious center for illicit activities? The desert city story will cover between 2 and 3 updates because of it’s big scope. That being said, the desert city will not be the sole thing we will be putting out. I will work on the short story and quest for the orc girl and some things about the sister story will be re-written. It won’t be too different to the current one but the overall flow and dialogues will be better.
About the overall story, we've discussed the direction we wish to take everything. The whole new area, towns, characters are already planned. As I’ve said before – we will try to make the base game we have in mind first and then we can start adding all kinds of bonus stuff on top. There might also be some smaller rewrites/retcons to certain characters. That's still being discussed and we'll update you.
Regarding the battle system. There are still things that we are planning on adding, but we just didn't have the time to add them for this update. The next class will come as side content for a future update. I cannot say which class that might be, but maybe(a strong MAYBE) we can put it to a vote on patreon. The idea behind the class introductions is to have a questions to obtain the class and possibly even have a nice scene with a new female character related to the class fantasy. For example, if you are trying to unlock a class like Warlock, you get a nice scene with a demon.
Thank you for taking the time to read through this. I hope it was all interesting and worthwhile.
I wish you a great day and I also wish to again thank everyone who has supported me and this project through everything. It means the world to me, Tjop-
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That's the rest of the posts. It's lengthy, I know.
If you have any questions ask away, I'll try to answer everything to the best of my ability.
With this update it looks like the game is getting more solid and more polished, and I couldn't be happier (especially for some QoL features like the improved navigation inside the main city).
Just some opinions/hopes for the future of the game:
1) Please fix the "3 pieces of evidence for divine mystery" quest, as many people, me included, got stuck there. I've even tried following some tips written in this thread, but to no avail.
2) I'm so glad we can finally see the harpy in battle. One of my favourite things about the game was stripping enemies while dealing damage to them, but this only applied to the satyr and the orc. The harpy was always blurred for some reason, so I'm happy to see her (and I hope we'll get toalso fuck her).
3) Changing the navigation system in the forest area is a huge improvement, as the old system was really clunky and took a while to get used to.
4) I have mixed feelings about the new combat system. The old one was a bit shallow, but that made you go straight to the point in every battle, which is something I appreciate in a game I'm playing mainly to beat my meat, and not really for its gameplay. The new combat system looks more thought out and definitely more appealing, but I hope it doesn't get too grindy or too complex. I wouldn't mind having more interesting fights than the ones in the current version of the game, but I hope it won't get too crazy, especially since new dungeons and harder sections were mentioned in the first post about the update.
This last part is probably the most subjective one, as people play (porn) games for different reasons, so give this opinion its due weight.
All in all I'm very happy to see where this game is going. Can't wait to play the update!
