- Oct 10, 2022
- 4,349
- 7,724
- Thread starter Maleficent
- Start date
- Nov 14, 2017
- 59,350
- 29,581
- Nov 14, 2017
- 59,350
- 29,581
well that doesn't leave much options, either ex-queen, goddess anna, diana or her daughter.
- Sep 3, 2017
- 3,679
- 13,689
Lydia's in the running as a candidate too, isn't she?
- Oct 10, 2022
- 4,349
- 7,724
- Nov 14, 2017
- 59,350
- 29,581
- Apr 14, 2020
- 1,031
- 927
- Sep 3, 2017
- 3,679
- 13,689
There's no "if". The prince currently has no power whatsoever. At this point he's nothing more than a ceremonial figurehead / puppet. If the MC so desired, he could publicly feed him to the lions and receive a standing ovation. Marrying whoever you want is basically a given at this point, it's all about how much potential drama the MC brings upon himself.
- Dec 5, 2021
- 687
- 1,102
Choosing Princesses blah blah avoiding bein' poisoned blah blah power struggle blah blah... I say fuck the kingdom, just (grab redhead maid and) run away to live as incognito farmer/hunter somewhere far away or something like that
- Nov 14, 2017
- 59,350
- 29,581
Development Update #84
The grind continues, and I'm not going to bore anyone with details of the triumphs and agonies of the last couple of weeks. I am trying something a bit different with development over the next couple of weeks. You can get all the details (and a sorta preview) by watching the video (no longer 18+!), but the gist of it is that I am now going to try and complete a scene (or most of one) in Unreal Engine to work out all the bugs. There's a lot still to get done for characters, but I'm hopeful that this will be more interesting for you all to see for progress, as well as a nice change of pace for me. Now let's talk about To Be A King's future, without getting spoilery.
New Lands to Survey
Due to Daz limitations, I planned to keep things centered in Caudium. That limitation, along with the animation issues in Daz, are what really pushed me to move to Unreal Engine. Imagine the General and his traveling companions looking out over a vast landscape. Impossible in Daz (without some SERIOUS faking of it). Easily possible in Unreal Engine.
You'll be visiting Egypt, Gaul, Estrid's homeland, and likely a few other locales over the next few volumes. We will return to Caudium periodically, but it's time to visit some new places in future volumes. I don't intend for long journeys to these places, so there will be some short time skips. If all goes well, we will even join the General during his sailing across the Mediterranean on a custom war ship.
More Characters To Meet
I don't want this to turn into 101 To Be A King characters, but we have many left to meet. Possibly some more late game love interests. My original plan with the harem was for most players to do a "gotta catch 'em all" type playthrough. Well, based on how you all feel about the different personalities, I know that isn't likely for most players. That means I'm less concerned about adding in a few more options, as you'll probably only have a handful in a given playthrough.
The General also needs a few more military commanders, and we are going to meet those men over the next two chapters. My goal with these new characters is to ensure they enhance the story and don't remove precious time from your favorites (Kaylan, Aelinia, Flora, etc.). The switch to Unreal Engine is going to make that easier to maintain. Within a few releases, I'm expecting even larger chapters, though your actual playthrough time probably won't increase a great deal. Just more options. More on that in a moment.
Oh, and we are going to meet more gods and goddesses too, if you've chosen to enjoy those scenes. Some very unique characters are ahead, and maybe Queen Avila finally presents herself in the flesh.
Unique Story Choices
When you are doing 1000+ renders per release, and can only setup and render those out so quickly, it is important to keep the story a bit more concise. Put up some guardrails, and make sure you don't enable a dozen choices for one scenario. I haven't been the best at that, but I have cut out a ton that either wasn't possible or would add way too much development time. Trust me.
That changes with this render engine transition. Once I get my bearings in Unreal Engine, I'll be able to let you, the player, direct more of the story. Things like alternate scenarios with a change in a character can be done in minutes, instead of many more hours of setup and rendering. Clothing and hairstyle choices will likely also be included, assuming I don't find significant issues when I test that. Oh, and you'll get to choose when certain things happen, within some limits. I still need to make sure I don't have a story with more branches than a 100 year old oak, but I'd like to offer you all the opportunity to do things like visit the tavern, pay a visit to Goddess Anna, and maybe see if your favorite princess is available for a quickie. I have many ideas, but they will need to go through some testing with my beta team before I can say yay or nay. Nothing about this is going to make the game free roam. Just some more choices presented where you can choose where to go next. Maybe even get risky with your choices to see what happens…
How Long, Roy?
How much longer until the next chapter? How about the completion of To Be A King? Short answer: No good idea right now. I hate to promise and miss a date (short of a catastrophe). I planned for 4-5 months for the next release, if I kept everything in Daz with its animation system. We are past the 4 month mark now, and my to do list remains large. This transition has been both the most exciting and most demoralizing change I've done for TBaK. Quite frankly, I've felt like an idiot many times. I haven't, for a moment, felt this transition to be an error. But I've certainly questioned whether I'm missing some big thing to make this easier. Sadly, it appears not. A lot of this is trial and error, even for experienced developers in Unreal. All I can do is plug along daily, and continue to show you all the progress.
My goal for Chapter 11's release now is sometime late this summer. Believe me that I prefer quicker release cycles, and I hate the wait as much as you all. Sadly development is not a quick process, even in the best of times. I know it can look like all I need to do is write some words and stick some characters into a scene and pose. Sadly, even just in Daz, it is never that easy. The good news is that you'll (relatively) soon have beautiful fully animated scenes with your favorite characters. They will look more lifelike, and even the environments and clothing will be more realistic and period appropriate. It's my first go with animations, so I'm also studying other experts on how to do these since the devil really is in the details.
As for the end of To Be A King, I'm now looking at 4-5 more years as a reasonable timeline. Volume 2 has two to three more chapters left, and there is going to be a Volume 3 (and likely a Volume 4). Those should average 5-6 chapters. That means that, conservatively, we have 12 more chapters, and those will continue to grow a bit in size. If you want many more adventures in the kingdom, you won't be disappointed. Just writing out the remaining events that will happen in Volume 2 makes me giddy. Big decisions lie ahead, and, as you've seen with me, I love to let your decisions take many chapters to play out. I'm evil like that. Every character will continue to develop, and yes, there will be more weddings. Let me stop here before I spoil anything. Goddess Anna would be pissed!
- Jun 16, 2022
- 341
- 352
Not going to lie, I hate the idea of switching engines/rework in almost any sense of the imagination within adult games, but the developer has not personally let me down yet, so I'll be continue to be patient and do other things in the meantime. Baring a setback, I assuming late August-early September. Either way, I'm excited to see more of what To be A King has to offer. I enjoy the time period (only so many school setting harem games I can take), my dick desires many of the girls (Great job on their personalities by the way), I do love the implementation of factions (let chaos reign), etc.
This game has amazing models. Dev, do you plan on adding impregnation content when you have time?
- Nov 14, 2017
- 59,350
- 29,581
- Jun 27, 2017
- 328
- 595
You must be registered to see the links
The name of the game is now polishing the characters. Still some bigger items on the list, but this is helping me get everything dialed in and finding the errors I've missed.
One big area of focus has been getting hair optimized. By far the biggest performance hit of my scenes in Unreal Engine is the converted groom hair. Just adding that cuts the FPS in half. If this was for a game in real time, I'd definitely be sticking with less realistic card-based hair. The physics simulations themselves for the hair have a minimal impact on performance. But 2+ million strands is a lot for even the most powerful systems. So this has led to me doing a lot of experimentation to get excellent quality, but the lowest performance impact. It is definitely an individual thing as each hairstyle has its own quirks. I have learned way more about hair and creation of 3D hair assets than I planned to.
Clothing has turned out both easier and more complicated than I thought. I am indebted to a couple of videos that went into detail on cloth settings in UE. Those videos saved me at least a couple of days of experimentation. However, Daz clothing has a big issue. It is very high poly, which means that the simulations in Unreal Engine don't perform very well with it. I can lower that poly count, but it is a challenge to do that without making everything look terrible. I'm still fine-tuning that process, but clothing with the lower poly count still looks great, and the simulations look incredible. It is nice to see a tunic lightly move at the bottom, and not worry about poke through from the character's skin.
Progress on this first scene for Chapter 11 is going well. A lot of tests, but each test gives good feedback for what to fix or improve. Good news is that each scene won't be like this. As with doing anything for the first time, it is slow going. Each time it gets a little quicker. I do love my ability to quickly iterate in Unreal Engine.
The overhaul of the music and sound effects is close to wrapping up. I'm getting all the lewd sound effects redone by a voice actor, and those should be ready sometime in June. All these changes will be incorporated into Volume 1 later this year (free update to those on Steam who have the game there). The changes I've already seen in the audio makes me wonder how I tolerated it before.
If you haven't taken a look at the
You must be registered to see the links
lately, some new things are there, including a roadmap. That roadmap provides a look at some big improvements I have planned for the future. Most of that will come at the end of Volume 2 though, at the earliest.I finished my weekend writing out a list of milestones I've reached, and it was a helpful reminder that, while I still have a ways to go with this transition, I've gotten quite a bit figured out now. Not bad considering everything on my list that I expected to be able to address after Chapter 11 ended up needing to be solved now. Not to mention all the "wonderful" new problems I've encountered with this transition. All this work in order to get realistic animations. May Goddess Anna make the jiggling breasts wonderful.