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

[johnelros]

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It hasn't felt like the most productive week, as my day job has been unusually busy since July, but I did get a few fun renders done, along with a few customs. We have a

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and some exclusive images available on Patreon now. So check those out and cast your vote. Read on to find out what else our team has been working on.
Overall Game Development
As you may have seen, Xor was a busy bee this week. We now have a

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for To Be A King & Last Call available, allowing you to quickly revisit the lewd scenes you've unlocked in your playthroughs. We've also added a special image gallery for each game filled with exclusive renders (Available to our new tier, Cassia's Prince, and higher tiers). This image gallery contains customs from our Fiona's Fan Club tier, as well as special renders I've done before (many haven't been released on Patreon). And to make sure that these galleries have new content regularly, I'm committing to 3-4 new images per release to add to the gallery. Each game's gallery has unique images.
Last Call
Inkwell has made great progress on the Last Call .4 script. Once Inkwell finishes the script, I'll be working on new environments and any new models needed for the release, and then add my render notes. I corrected some longstanding lighting issues with the bar, so at least that is a big thing off my to do list. Since To Be A King .3 will likely be well underway by the time renders are ready to begin with LC .4, I'll be starting on LC renders after I finish up To Be A King .3. We've published some fun photos with our Last Call ladies on Patreon and Discord, so be sure to check those out.
To Be A King
I completed the new environments done for To Be A King .3 (all 12 of them!). The To Be A King .3 script is done and ready to start on renders. Just a few new character models are needed for later in .3. With any luck, To Be A King .3 renders will start this weekend or first thing next week! I'm estimating around 800 renders, so it will be a large release. To Be A King .4 is already shaping up to be larger than that, at least in scene totals. Yes, I've already done some work on the .4 script. So much for the whole "To Be A King releases will be fairly short" idea. I'll have previews for To Be A King .3 as I work through it.
I've got my only vacation of the year coming up in September, but I'll work as hard as I can between now and then. In the meantime, I hope for cooler temperatures and under 80% humidity here as rendering in these temps is not fun. Have a great weekend!
- IT Roy

 

[Yamura]

Nice stuff, really looking forward to an update here.
It is nearly as enticing as the girls (and damn, they are gorgeous imo) that in this version it seems absolutely any char and potential loveinterest could be written as one to actively work on freeing the throne for the MC in the next parts.
Maybe even ALL of them if the devs have a nasty streak and the former attacks perhaps did not all come from the same source.

Spoiler

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Yeah I wonder as the womenfolk all seem to have their own agenda. Our Hero probably wishes he was back on the frontier where at least the enemy was known. Will be interesting to see how he sets priorities with the crises erupting around him.

 

[cxx]

Yeah I wonder as the womenfolk all seem to have their own agenda. Our Hero probably wishes he was back on the frontier where at least the enemy was known. Will be interesting to see how he sets priorities with the crises erupting around him.

their agenda is to get married to mc but there are "few" obstacles like current king who won't approve that all his daughters marry same man.

 

[Manewr]

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Tłumaczenie wykonał Robmon, a Ja zrobiłem opis przejścia mod tylko na polską wersję w razie błędów o proszę kontakt.

The translation was done by Robmon, and I did a description of the mod transition only to the Polish version in case of errors please contact me.

 

[artyzdio]

Man, Cassia is such a visual knock-out. Can't wait for the next update.

 

[christoprd]

wallpaper:

 

[Pogo123]

great news! nice wallpaper looks also nice (some wallpaper for oldert princess planned?) i still hope to see some incest with the oldest daughter and her father (like the thumbnail told me the first time i saw this game) would be soooo nice. (still kinda sad for me we don't play the father in general^^)


but keep going! great potential!

 

[ITRoy]

great news! nice wallpaper looks also nice (some wallpaper for oldert princess planned?) i still hope to see some incest with the oldest daughter and her father (like the thumbnail told me the first time i saw this game) would be soooo nice. (still kinda sad for me we don't play the father in general^^)


but keep going! great potential!

I didn't make the wallpaper, and there will be no incest in the game. Harem route is an option though.

 

[MuffinManWantsPregnancy]

I didn't make the wallpaper, and there will be no incest in the game. Harem route is an option though.

That's good that there won't be incest in this game. As for the harem route, I am personally not going to do it. But I must ask, will there be a pregnancy path with the girl you choose? If it's secret then I understand. If there won't be, then I understand that too, but not really.

 

[cxx]

all 3 will get preggo and prolly that dressmaker too.

 

[ITRoy]

That's good that there won't be incest in this game. As for the harem route, I am personally not going to do it. But I must ask, will there be a pregnancy path with the girl you choose? If it's secret then I understand. If there won't be, then I understand that too, but not really.

There will be pregnancy late in the game for at least a few of the LIs.

 

[xXwankerXx]

There will be pregnancy late in the game for at least a few of the LIs.

Let us put babies in the 3 princesses and/or the momma queen and we call u hero. At least Cassia and Aelinia should have a babymaking contest with their favorite general.

 

[johnelros]

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Dev Update #36 - Yes, My Lord?
Happy Labor Day weekend to everyone in the U.S. My vacation kicks off in about 10 days, so I'll be taking a forced render break for a bit over a week. In the meantime, I'm working each day to get renders done for To Be A King .3. I have an announcement about it, but I'll save that for the end. Inkwell recently finished the script for Last Call .4, and that one projects to be over 900 renders. So let's talk about large releases for a moment.
As with any branching VN, these releases easily grow. While you won't see all the renders on a specific path, I've got to make them all the same. Inkwell (Last Call) and I (To Be A King) have to write the paths. And poor Xor has to code the paths. It's the nature of the beast that large releases later in a VN don't mean significantly longer playthroughs for players. But large releases also take longer to create. I really hope that doesn't come as a shock. Last Call looks to continue its very large releases from here on out.
During development, I'll do more one off renders, as you've already seen many of, to help keep some new content going. I enjoy doing these. They are the perfect thing to do most evenings after I've spent several hours doing game renders. We've even got some new images added to our commands in Discord. So check those out.
Finally, I continue to try and improve my lighting. Been working on some new things with To Be A King and some of these one off renders that seem to be very effective. Lighting is probably the biggest challenge with 3D rendering, and it's a continual process of improvement for me.
Xor and I were talking about To Be A King the other day. We discussed how our original plan to keep the releases short for To Be A King has already failed miserably on only .3 (.3, as originally planned, is bigger than any LC release to date). As you may remember when announced, To Be A King was designed to be shorter episodes and replace our monthly lewd render sets. While working on .3 renders, I realized that we COULD cut the release in half. We do have a few scenes, as will be the norm now, that will only show if you are on a lady's path. And this release is a bit lewd heavy. Remember that harem is an option here. Since the visual novel development path is serialized releases, cutting .3 in half presents no problems for the ultimate story. We just split part of it off as .4 now.
My thanks to everyone who voted in our poll about release size. That poll isn't to keep us stuck to a specific size in a given amount of time. It makes no sense to push just to hit an arbitrary target, whether that be a render count, script size, or a date. Much like game developer Valve, my motto is "When it's done." I prefer doing smaller updates more frequently, as long as they aren't too short. With the majority voting for smaller, quicker releases also, that will be the plan for TBaK going forward. If you'd like longer releases, my recommendation is just to grab TBaK every other release. The plan now is to release To Be A King .3 before my vacation, and then what will now be To Be A King .4 (the original second half of .3) after that. This will also better help us stick to our original goal of To Be A King being shorter, more frequent releases.
To Be A King .3 development is smooth so far. Almost too smooth. Renders should be wrapping up for it soon, which will leave coding and testing. No idea on a specific release date, but my goal is before my vacation. Since I'll be gone for a bit, it will be three weeks before the next dev update. Be safe, and we look forward to bringing you a new release of To Be A King in the near future.
- IT Roy

 

[Sesinho]

Well, the girls look out of this world beautiful.
Personally i prefered the slow paced part, the slow buildup kind of made sense, at least if the game was further developped. Once you meet Kaylan palace turns into a whorehouse really quick, not that there wasnt any sexual tension involved, and i guess you can reject advances, but feels rushed.

Sex scenes where you pick one option to perform, unless they are seamless,they pretty much break the mood if everytime this actions are finished, scene returns to a default picture.

Theres interesting poses there but i think thatpart of the game is still weak, im not feeling it.
The option to accept or reject Valentina, feels like out of place, he is been rejecting her for 3 years and accepting her makes him almost love her all of the sudden.

Like i said, things at some point were rushed.

 

[ITRoy]

Well, the girls look out of this world beautiful.
Personally i prefered the slow paced part, the slow buildup kind of made sense, at least if the game was further developped. Once you meet Kaylan palace turns into a whorehouse really quick, not that there wasnt any sexual tension involved, and i guess you can reject advances, but feels rushed.

Sex scenes where you pick one option to perform, unless they are seamless,they pretty much break the mood if everytime this actions are finished, scene returns to a default picture.

Theres interesting poses there but i think thatpart of the game is still weak, im not feeling it.
The option to accept or reject Valentina, feels like out of place, he is been rejecting her for 3 years and accepting her makes him almost love her all of the sudden.

Like i said, things at some point were rushed.

If you like a slower buildup, I'd suggest our other game, Last Call. It is more that pace.

 

[Maviarab]

Loving it. This and Last Call are both definitely up there for me, though would say LC edges it so far (maybe the setting, not sure). Excellent work and look forward to seeing where it heads.

 

[OfficiallyGames]

Great game just can't wait for the new update to be uploaded!

 

[johnelros]

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It's been awhile since I did my post explaining our release schedules when we introduced To Be A King. We've got a lot of new patrons (THANK YOU!) since then, so I wanted to give everyone another overview of our typical release cycles.
First, Last Call is still our primary game. COVID massively screwed up Inkwell's schedule at his day job though, requiring a ton more hours than usual (and a lot more stress). Because of this, Inkwell hasn't had as much time to write as he would like to. Kind of hard to write well when you either have no time or are completely exhausted. Last Call .4's script is complete though. It's a massive one, with close to 900 renders estimated right now, over 160 pages, and a lot of path branching. We are targeting a late November release with Last Call .4, but it is still VERY early in development there.
To Be A King's next release should happen in October (To Be A King .4). Renders are over halfway done with it, so I see no issues with hitting that date.
Going forward, we anticipate about 2-3 releases of To Be A King for every release of Last Call. To Be A King releases are shorter (half the size of Last Call updates lately), and I am currently the Thunderline team member with the most time available. My day job does have busy times, but my efforts to be more efficient when I do render have paid off handsomely.
As we mentioned at the time we launched To Be A King, if you aren't a fan of the setting or story, we understand. To Be A King is basically my project with Xor helping out with structure and, of course, coding. Inkwell does proof my horrible grammar, as well. It is designed to give you something between large releases of Last Call. Maybe some of you even prefer some aspects of To Be A King (harem, setting, etc.). Depending on how long I have to spend writing the script for a release, To Be A King can be released about every 4-6 weeks. We are trying to keep every release of To Be A King under 13,000 words and under 500 renders, which helps with quick and predictable episode releases. Believe me, if we all could do this full time, we would just focus on a single game with releases as quickly as we could for that game. It doesn't work that way at team Thunderline though, so this is the adjustment we've made.
Hope that helps clarify for everyone how our releases work and when to expect new releases of both games this fall. As we get closer to a full year of releases, I am getting more comfortable and accurate with release predictions. The unexpected can always happen, but look for a bit more in terms of rough release dates from us. We know you can't wait to see the Last Call ladies again, and you won't have to wait into 2021 to see them again.

 

[Maviarab]

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It's been awhile since I did my post explaining our release schedules when we introduced To Be A King. We've got a lot of new patrons (THANK YOU!) since then, so I wanted to give everyone another overview of our typical release cycles.
First, Last Call is still our primary game. COVID massively screwed up Inkwell's schedule at his day job though, requiring a ton more hours than usual (and a lot more stress). Because of this, Inkwell hasn't had as much time to write as he would like to. Kind of hard to write well when you either have no time or are completely exhausted. Last Call .4's script is complete though. It's a massive one, with close to 900 renders estimated right now, over 160 pages, and a lot of path branching. We are targeting a late November release with Last Call .4, but it is still VERY early in development there.
To Be A King's next release should happen in October (To Be A King .4). Renders are over halfway done with it, so I see no issues with hitting that date.
Going forward, we anticipate about 2-3 releases of To Be A King for every release of Last Call. To Be A King releases are shorter (half the size of Last Call updates lately), and I am currently the Thunderline team member with the most time available. My day job does have busy times, but my efforts to be more efficient when I do render have paid off handsomely.
As we mentioned at the time we launched To Be A King, if you aren't a fan of the setting or story, we understand. To Be A King is basically my project with Xor helping out with structure and, of course, coding. Inkwell does proof my horrible grammar, as well. It is designed to give you something between large releases of Last Call. Maybe some of you even prefer some aspects of To Be A King (harem, setting, etc.). Depending on how long I have to spend writing the script for a release, To Be A King can be released about every 4-6 weeks. We are trying to keep every release of To Be A King under 13,000 words and under 500 renders, which helps with quick and predictable episode releases. Believe me, if we all could do this full time, we would just focus on a single game with releases as quickly as we could for that game. It doesn't work that way at team Thunderline though, so this is the adjustment we've made.
Hope that helps clarify for everyone how our releases work and when to expect new releases of both games this fall. As we get closer to a full year of releases, I am getting more comfortable and accurate with release predictions. The unexpected can always happen, but look for a bit more in terms of rough release dates from us. We know you can't wait to see the Last Call ladies again, and you won't have to wait into 2021 to see them again.

Thanks for posting that here.

 

[Orzammar]

All aboard the 3.1 monarch train