- Apr 26, 2020
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Since this game is on hold while the devs finish Last Call it will probably be a good while before this gets updated.
- Thread starter Maleficent
- Start date
- Mar 17, 2019
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IT Roy here with one last post from me. If you look at the Patreon now, you may be wondering what happened with To Be A King. It's vanished like ships in the Bermuda Triangle. Well, it isn't gone. But after discussions with the Thunderline crew, we decided that moving it over to my Patreon is best since, when development hopefully resumes on it in the next few months, it is at its new home. To Be A King was my project, though Xor did the coding (I'll be taking that over now #shitlessnervous) and Inkwell was kind enough to proof it. I'll be the sole person working on it when it resumes (sorry, don't have a date to announce when that is yet).
If you're loving both To Be A King & Last Call, still stick around here as work on Last Call has resumed with Xor now handling both coding and rendering. For your To Be A King fix, check out my
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. I've got the .4 release links available there, and I'll be posting on that site when work resumes on To Be A King. In the meantime, I've got some fun renders over there and a new comic (short VN of just over 60 renders) coming in the next few days.Thanks again to everyone for their love and support for both games! I'm now an official patron of Thunderline here, so I can't wait to get my Last Call fix in the coming months. Cheers!
- IT Roy
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To Be A King now has a new home - HERE! The Thunderline team and I agreed that having it housed here on this Patreon, along with future updates being here, would be best for everyone. To Be A King has been my project, though Xor coded and Inkwell proofed it. Now, that's all on me...
As to the status of To Be A King, here's where we stand:
- Episode 5 is fully written, but needs another run through and some proofing.
- The game assets still need some refreshes, though I'm over halfway done with that.
- I'm not promising any start date for when I resume work on it, and definitely too early to give a release date. But I think that the restart of work on it is best measured in weeks now, and not months.
I've got a post up with the
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for To Be A King .4 now. Nothing has changed if you played it before, but if you haven't played yet or need to redownload, grab it!I've got more things coming soon, including a new comic (short VN with just over 60 renders). I'm sticking to my pledge to myself not to give release dates, but the new comic should be out in the next week or so. Cheers!
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- Nov 24, 2019
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I'm glad to see that TBaK will be continuing
Maleficent With me taking sole ownership of the project, can we get the dev changed over to myself from Thunderline studios? Post #494 in this thread notes the changes and has a link to my new patreon, as well.
On F95 the "On hold" tag stays until there is a content update released, so when Roy drops the next bit of content the tag will be removed.
New Discord link:
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- Nov 24, 2019
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First, a progress update. I've completed 19 scenes out of 35. Your eyes are not deceiving you. We went from 28 scenes originally planned, to 29 scenes last week, to 35 total this week. Most of these scenes are short, but I'm trying to fill out this chapter with some awesome content. You all have been waiting quite awhile for this release, so I want it to be worth the wait. We officially passed the 850 total renders completed mark too. There are just a few scenes left to be written, along with a few small to dos before I'm ready for alpha testing (in addition to the remaining renders, of course). Progress has been a lot faster than I thought. No idea on total render count or word count right now, but this will be a release unlike any other I've done. For a quick comparison, Chapters 1-4 combined have a total render count of 1661 renders and word count around 48,000. Chapter 5 is going to be darn close to that length.
Let's preview one of the changes coming with Chapter 5 (If you don't care, there's nothing else in this post, so feel free to go enjoy something else). As I've mentioned previously, I've overhauled the game significantly. I'll be detailing all the major changes in a post before release, but let's look at one of them today. This is the biggest change, so let's get into the details.
When I started rethinking To Be A King, I wanted to achieve more of a video game feel. My inspirations were games like GTA, Assassin's Creed, and Cyberpunk 2077: story-driven games with a main story, but that include numerous other little missions/side quests. Now, I'm not delusional enough to think I'm getting anywhere close to those game mechanics, let along their quality (ok, so hopefully better quality than Cyberpunk 2077 at launch). But I wanted something different from the linear VN I had been doing. Something that has replayability, but not the punishing type where you have to replay a game just to get an additional scene or two. If I could pack in some extra content, but give players control as to whether they want to play each of these additional scenes, all the better. This brings us to the biggest change for Chapter 5. This change impacts everything in the game, and I've reworked the first four chapters to incorporate it.
I'm introducing free roam. It's a Renpy-based game, so this is not Assassin's Creed or Red Dead Redemption, but I'm dividing the game into main story and free roam elements from here on out. For everyone screaming at their computer screens about how they don't want to have to figure out where the hell to click, and please throw sandbox designs into the pits of hell, I hear you 100%. I personally don't enjoy the games with a large map that does not make it clear where you need to go next, especially those that base things around the time of day. If you love that sort of thing, more power to you, but To Be A King isn't going to work like that.
I know the big frustrations with free roam in most adult VNs is figuring out what the heck you're supposed to do, and when you can do it. I've solved both problems, the latter one by not having any sort of time system. You can play the entire main story without needing to touch the additional scenes, which I'm calling quests and map events (there is a difference, but I'll get into that in another post). If you want some extra gameplay and more story, those are there.
During the main story, there will be breaks now where you will be put into free roam mode. From there, you can play quests, visit some areas of the map for special scenes (this part is still very much a work in progress as new scenes will be added here with each release), or resume the main story by just clicking at button at the top of the screen. If you have no interest in free roam, you can play through the entire game without doing more than having a short pause while you go to click the button to resume the main story. You'll be alerted to new quests through the user interface, so no need to click on 18 different locations only to discover that you're just stuck. If any of this sounds confusing, there is a short tutorial now at the start of your first free roam mode to explain how it works.
So, why the change? As I build out new quests and short little adventures, I want to keep the main story clean without a lot of detours. If you just want to enjoy the main story, that's fine. For players looking to get more detail on the world of Caudium, spend more time with the princesses (and other interesting female characters) and get more lewd scenes, or just see what little easter eggs Roy has put in, have at it. My goal here with this new gameplay option is to not clutter up the primary story, while still offering some fun (and extra lewd) options with each release. Some of these you can play multiple times without having to replay the main story, and I plan to experiment a bit with the types of quests and the mechanics that those have. Initially, these are pretty simple, as I didn't want to bite off more than I could chew with coding this myself for the first time.
So that's the biggest change for Chapter 5's release. You'll want to keep this in mind since Chapter 5 will be close to equally divided into these new quests/map event scenes and main story scenes. The main story scene count is subject to change, but, right now it is 19 scenes. I think you'll really like the quests, some of which are only triggered if you have made certain choices. Look for another dev update from me next week with another sneak peek at what is being improved for the next release of To Be A King.
I think his Patreon page has plenty of new news.
did you read the rest or just stop there? I hate most free roams, so I assure you mine will be nothing like that.
Well this is saddening news.
I read the whole thing. It's just not something I'm into. You say you wanted more of a video game feel, I play VNs for the stories mostly, and find that sort of thing detracts from my experience.
It's cool. Not every game is gonna be for every person. Best of luck to you!
I hope you’ll at least give it a try when it is released publicly. You can immediately get back to the main story, and play it like a traditional VN, by clicking an icon. No waiting longer, no confusion about where to click, and no fuss. It still may not be for you, but I am trying to balance it for folks who want more of a kinetic novel experience. Thanks!
ITRoy I read it, know it'll be skippable and i have to wait to see the visual outcome before fully judging it. But it's still always off-putting to see free-roaming/sandbox features introduced this later on into the middle of a mostly linear choice-based visual novel. Personally more unappealing for me when it's always seems to be either medieval-setting games and/or high-fantasy world-setting games later including free-roaming/sandbox, instead of keeping it a linear story-driven choice-based visual novel. It'd be different if you already had this feature in the first release. My experience from other games, anytime they later on include free-roaming/sandbox its seemingly to compensate for the lack of story content. Not that yours will, just saying.
I'm not telling you how to do your thing, do what you feel is right, just my two-cents here. I do believe you can include all that, the lore, world-building without the need of the free-roaming feature. Where after a main story event just give players the choice options to drive deeper reading into the world of Caudium. Play the side quest at that given moment or skip it and automatically continue to the next main story event. Of course i want more time with the ladies and extra lewd content everywhere given the chance
just add that into the main story. Or include Codex or Character&World Info Sheet for the lore of Caudium.
Unless the feature is something similar to Ataegina. Which is you interacting with certain characters at that given time of the story (in any other you choose) before the main story automatically starts again.
I'm not telling you how to do your thing, do what you feel is right, just my two-cents here. I do believe you can include all that, the lore, world-building without the need of the free-roaming feature. Where after a main story event just give players the choice options to drive deeper reading into the world of Caudium. Play the side quest at that given moment or skip it and automatically continue to the next main story event. Of course i want more time with the ladies and extra lewd content everywhere given the chance
just add that into the main story. Or include Codex or Character&World Info Sheet for the lore of Caudium.Unless the feature is something similar to Ataegina. Which is you interacting with certain characters at that given time of the story (in any other you choose) before the main story automatically starts again.
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ITRoy, just about to play this from the start to refresh myself with the story and pursue different LI's on their own paths (as no harem tag). I amended your screens.rpy to add lines 718 - 726
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