VN Ren'Py To Be a King [Ch.11] [ITRoy]

[Drakan47]

But this is the Roman Empire so MC successor will be the first male child independent of who his mother is

Not quite, the roman empire was not dynastic at all for most of it's history (and most of that dynastic history happens well after the fall of the west), most of the emperors who came to power by being the son of their predecessor were previously made co-emperor well before the deaths of their predecessor (meaning being favored by the former emperor mattered more than just age), and a good chunk of those were also adopted rather than biological sons.

Besides, the state depicted here is far from that kind of stability, it looks a lot more like the crisis of the third century, so assassinations and civil wars matter a lot more than bloodline.

 

[keterboy]

But let's be realistic after MC death there will be a huge civil war with all of his children seeking to claim the throne, because this is the Roman Empire and peace never lasted more than a generation.

true lol. Unless Anna intervenes, but then i feel athena? (the goddess rival anna said that seems to be sort of eyeing the kingdom) wil get involved. Though my educated guess is that she's probably going to make a move in the next update, probably backing king brenus(sp lol) to sow discord and blame it on anna, im tossing a speculation in the ring.

 

[Kalsan]

Not quite, the roman empire was not dynastic at all for most of it's history (and most of that dynastic history happens well after the fall of the west), most of the emperors who came to power by being the son of their predecessor were previously made co-emperor well before the deaths of their predecessor (meaning being favored by the former emperor mattered more than just age), and a good chunk of those were also adopted rather than biological sons.

Besides, the state depicted here is far from that kind of stability, it looks a lot more like the crisis of the third century, so assassinations and civil wars matter a lot more than bloodline.

True, for the first 5 or 6 centuries of the Roman Empire succession was a mess and a great deal of his fall to decadence was because of the very common wars for the throne.

 

[Den187]

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Ah. Feel that? It's the feeling of a lot of progress. I survived my "vacation." I also managed to get in some good writing for Chapter 10. If you are in the Discord server, you might have seen that I also spent some time on my marketplace pages, a new SFW trailer for To Be A King, and a new demo of the game. I usually prioritize render work, but being unable to do those during the vacation meant that I had other things I could stop neglecting and work on. The website also got an overhaul, though it still needs a bit of work. To round out the list, I updated some graphics for future To Be A King releases (starting with Chapter 9). A few of those graphics had been around since Chapter 5 or even longer, and they needed to get some polish.

Oh, and I worked on a guide/walkthrough for Volume 1. I know there have been requests for this before, but I needed to find more than just choice information to add. I think you'll like what I came up with. I've got it being proofread/checked for accuracy (hilariously a word my spellchecker just flagged as misspelled) by a few folks, and then I'll look it back over before releasing it.

The march towards a completed Chapter 9 continues, and with it my march towards a completed Volume 2 gets closer (yet still so far). I'm doing away with the progress graphic, at least for the next few releases. Why? Well, because I'm now able to announce release dates well ahead of time. No more reading the progress graphic tea leaves for an idea of when I'll be done. Chapter 9 will release on September 13. Barring some catastrophe, Chapter 10 will be released on November 15, just about two months after Chapter 9. 4 chapter releases in 8 months? Yep. That is what it is shaping up to be.

July was a good month on Patreon with the release happening. We almost got as many patrons as we did in May, when Chapter 7 launched. At least I think we did. Patreon completely changed how they track patron numbers in the past couple of weeks, and now I have no idea. As usual, a big drop off in Patreon numbers happened at the beginning of August. I sincerely appreciate those of you who stick around for multiple months here. It shows me that I am on the right track and also helps me plan my spending.

I'll end by talking about Steam. I finished testing my Steam build while I was on vacation, and all achievements and code work. Now it's just continuing to market it. I appreciate what must have been several of you promoting it, as I got a nice boost of folks adding it to their wishlist over 10 days. I hope those wishlist additions keep coming. You may get tired of hearing me talk about Steam for the next couple of months. It is just that there are a lot of folks who would never sub to Patreon or find the game otherwise. I am hoping Steam can really boost

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here as we enter the final stretch with the story. New chapters will continue to be exclusive to Patreon. If you're wondering how the Patreon and Steam versions differ, I'll have a post up soon going over that.

Now, please enjoy the Chapter 9 release announcement video up top. It was fun to do with my After Effects template, and hopefully won't give away too much of what is going to happen. I will definitely need Chapter 10 following close behind or else I anticipate riots. We haven't ended on a cliffhanger like we do in Chapter 9 for several releases. I'll have some NSFW previews from Chapter 9 for patrons later this week. Now I'll get back to writing Chapter 10. Have a great week, everyone!

 

[straightguy90]

Any links to the official walkthrough that was posted yesterday?

 

[cxx]

Any links to the official walkthrough that was posted yesterday?

there is wt-mod.

 

[straightguy90]

there is wt-mod.

That's not what I meant.

 

[cxx]

That's not what I meant.

no wt-pdf.

 

[straightguy90]

no wt-pdf.

The creator announced on his patreon page that there is an official pdf walkthrough. I just wondered if anyone had any links for it to post here.

 

[cxx]

The creator announced on his patreon page that there is an official pdf walkthrough. I just wondered if anyone had any links for it to post here.

well as you can see it's not leaked.

 

[sunneyboy]

please give me v6.1 to v7.1 and to v8.1 updates.

 

[cxx]

please give me v6.1 to v7.1 and to v8.1 updates.

0.8.1 has content from 0.01 to 0.8.1. no update only files. if you want old versions for some reason then svscomics prolly has those behind slow hosts.

 

[xXWolfZz]

Was hoping the king would catch me boning his wife then I declare war on him or something with the other princess kingdoms army and steal the wife from him but he died already

 

[Sorrow85]

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A whole lot of progress. I continue to spend a bit of time on the

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as I find a few small issues here and there. It has been nice to have several weeks still to check things. The Steam edition of the guide & walkthrough now has its own store page for the DLC. That was a new experience for me, but once I figured things out, it was not difficult to setup at all. It did require that I do some code updates, but those were very easy. Steam players who purchase the guide will see a convenient Game Guide button on the main menu that opens the PDF guide. If they don't have the DLC, that button won't show up. Pretty nice, and very easy to code.

Oh, and I released the

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last week also. My special thanks to my beta team who went over that thoroughly. In fact, I did a couple of small fixes on it at the end of the week (feel free to redownload, though these fixes were very minor). That guide is available to anyone with a $10+ pledge, and I've decided to leave it as another benefit for that tier. Future guides will be released shortly after I finish future volumes.

Other than that, work continues on Chapter 9, and my beta team found a few small typos they missed in Chapter 8. Those will get fixed when Chapter 9 launches in a few weeks. You'll continue to see some more Chapter 9 previews over the coming weeks. We aren't far from Chapter 9's release now




Some good news for those who will be eagerly anticipating Chapter 10 after they play Chapter 9. That script got finished last week. I still need to add some code and choose the music for the scenes, but the script got a few proofreading passes from yours truly. That means there are probably under 150 bugs! I will be ready to start on renders for that chapter once Chapter 9 is ready. Remember that, barring something truly terrible, Chapter 10 will be released on November 15.

Finally, I've been doing some housekeeping, and

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here on Patreon got some code improvements, typo fixes that somehow slipped through the cracks, and an update to help it run better on MacOS. This brings it up to 0.7.4. No need to redownload it, but I did not want anyone in the future who grabs it to encounter any issues. These same fixes will be in the full version released when Chapter 9 comes out.

I'm afraid that dev updates may be a bit boring for the next few weeks. Just standard development work going on, along with promoting the upcoming Steam release. I'm told by a few birdies that at least one website will be having a Steam key giveaway closer to To Be A King's launch on Steam. I think Valentina dropped some Steam keys when she was surfing the net.

Volume 2's development is very much benefiting from my process improvements, and I plan to look for some more here around the holidays. Right now I'm in the development zone, and want to ride that wave while it lasts. Things are going so well that it is looking likely Chapter 11 will be released on January 10, 2023. About two months to create a release is seeming doable without killing myself.

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[lionarslan]

I know it will sound as if it comes from a total nerd, but it is a picture worth a page of words. Commodus were an imaginary character from "The Gladiator" with Russell Crowe and (Emperor) Constantine (Constantinus?) were a real person, the one who proposed Christianity as a religion for a Roman Empire (well, it was the only thing he's famous for). There was no significant wars during Constantine reign, so he has time and society's approval for this. Commodus was a cliched tyrant, no more no less. That's the comparison for those who know both American culture and Ancient history, IMHO, it's breaking immersion kind of thing. So, if dev would be here I'd say it's worth to change characters Nicabar talks about. But, alas, I don't see dev here. So I safely say it's dick move, mix IRL history with Hollywood tropes.

 

[Raziel_8]

View attachment 1986023
I know it will sound as if it comes from a total nerd, but it is a picture worth a page of words. Commodus were an imaginary character from "The Gladiator" with Russell Crowe and (Emperor) Constantine (Constantinus?) were a real person, the one who proposed Christianity as a religion for a Roman Empire (well, it was the only thing he's famous for). There was no significant wars during Constantine reign, so he has time and society's approval for this. Commodus was a cliched tyrant, no more no less. That's the comparison for those who know both American culture and Ancient history, IMHO, it's breaking immersion kind of thing. So, if dev would be here I'd say it's worth to change characters Nicabar talks about. But, alas, I don't see dev here. So I safely say it's dick move, mix IRL history with Hollywood tropes.

Constantinus = Flavius Valerius Constantinus or Constantine the great, was emperor from 304 - 337 AD
Commodus = Lucius Aurelius Commodus, was emperor from 180 - 192 AD

Maximus from ''the Gladiator'' is the fictional character not Commodus.

 

[Wizard_Shiryuu]

View attachment 1986023
I know it will sound as if it comes from a total nerd, but it is a picture worth a page of words. Commodus were an imaginary character from "The Gladiator" with Russell Crowe and (Emperor) Constantine (Constantinus?) were a real person, the one who proposed Christianity as a religion for a Roman Empire (well, it was the only thing he's famous for). There was no significant wars during Constantine reign, so he has time and society's approval for this. Commodus was a cliched tyrant, no more no less. That's the comparison for those who know both American culture and Ancient history, IMHO, it's breaking immersion kind of thing. So, if dev would be here I'd say it's worth to change characters Nicabar talks about. But, alas, I don't see dev here. So I safely say it's dick move, mix IRL history with Hollywood tropes.

This is very loosely based on the Roman Empire. If you try to be so literal nothing will end up making sense.

 

[K18]

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Development Update #64
Boring! There is nothing massively exciting that I can share. Though I did work on several things that will be exciting, once they are ready. I'll be moving back to a more irregular non-weekly dev update schedule after the

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, as most weeks are "completed 3 scenes, wrote another scene, nearly melted to death from the heat outside and my render rig running close to 24x7 now."

This past week was To Be A King work coupled with some change of pace work on the next project. My thanks to my beta team who stays busy with me bouncing new ideas off of them in between releases. It was nice to switch creative gears to the next project. Sometimes the mind needs a break from the usual, and this was much needed. I wasn't burned out before, but definitely was feeling a bit more blah about my creative work. A couple of days on new project work, and I'm raring to go on both things again. Now to figure out how to work that into my creative routine every few months.

On the new project front, I've been reading an awful lot about TV show script development, pilots, and planning for multiple seasons. Visual novels, while not exactly the same, have a lot of similarities with TV shows (except for the terrible branching). Some similarities: it's all about the characters; you need some character development but not too much; releases are in episodic form. I've also been taking a look at more non-traditional Renpy games, some I didn't even know were made in Renpy. That is giving me ideas for mechanics and unique stuff for this next project. Still a lot of things up in the air with that in regards to some features.

Totally unplanned, I ended up creating my own Genesis 8.1 makeup set. The options I had were either limited or just too out there for what I wanted. I enjoy having many options to choose from, as that is when inspiration can strike. Apply a couple of presets, adjust a few things, and you accidentally hit upon a terrific concept. After a few days, I have a beta package for my own makeup system. Still some tweaks needed, but most of them are minor now. As usual, I learned a whole lot of other things I did not plan on. Not just about makeup either. It will be nice to use this for the next project.

The final thing I did was dive into code, and create a brand new code base in Renpy 8 for the next project. It's really barebones, but I optimized some things, and hopefully made my life a bit easier. When I took over development of To Be A King (doing the code myself), I knew next to nothing about Renpy. I still know very little, but I have a much better idea of how everything fits together and where I can experiment.

Well, I guess I did complete some things I can share, if you care about the more detailed aspects of visual novel development. This work is always so much for one person that it is amazing these things ever get released at all. Now, if you'll excuse me, I better get back to this scene. Less than a month now until Chapter 9 gets its release!

 

[straightguy90]

well as you can see it's not leaked.

Well, there should be an option to at least buy it without becoming a patreon.

 

[K18]

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Development Update #65
It was definitely an active week. All the love interest character models for the next game are finalized. A few things, like outfits and makeup, need to be tested and added. The big decisions of what they look like, as well as some outfit ideas and styles, are behind me. I even have all the female supporting characters I'll need completed, as well. My enormous thanks to my beta team for reviewing all the model options, selecting their favorites, and providing feedback as I made adjustments. Trying to get good variety with the love interests always presents a challenge.

Work on the male models will commence pretty soon, I think. $10+ patrons are getting previews every few days of the new love interests. Still four more to reveal. Once those all go out to them, other patron tiers will get the previews soon after.

In case you're worried about Chapter 9's release of To Be A King, fear not. There will be absolutely no issues meeting that release date. I'm not about to jeopardize that release with work on this next project.

Other than that, it's been continuing work on To Be A King's script and story outline, a few small code improvements I'm testing for the Chapter 10 release, continuing promotion of the

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, and some Daz learning that is needed for some future plans I have.

I'll have a behind-the-scenes look at how the next project is shaping up a bit later this week (a patron exclusive). Have a great week, and enjoy another Chapter 9 preview up top (a few more previews to follow for patrons later this week too)!