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Dev Update #27
Ha ha! Fooled you! Well, not really. I honestly didn't think I'd have a dev update this week or likely next week. Turns out there is a bit more that happened around this release. In order for my next dev update not to be a long magazine article in its length, I'm here for a dev update this week (and possibly next week, but we will see how my break goes).
It's both a relief to have the release out in your hands and a feeling of existential dread. Time to repeat this cycle all over again, and see what I need to fix and improve for the next release. Chapter 7's story is already getting a rework to smooth some things out, update some things that I added late in Chapter 6, and improve the pacing a bit.
Oh, and I guess I need to celebrate these milestones. We crossed $1000 in revenue in a single month here for the first time ever. Thank you to all the new patrons, and those of you who have put up with me for months now.
Full Harem?
There has been much chatter, definitely to my amusement, about certain ladies and how they could not possibly be in your harem if other women were there. The wise words of Goddess Anna are appropriate here: "You have Goddess Anna on your side, General. Prepare for awesome things!" To Be A King is certainly fantasy. I mean, the amount of ladies alone make that obvious. However, I do try to keep it somewhat plausible. You will never be punished for having all the ladies you can in your harem. In fact, full harem is ALWAYS my first play through in alpha and beta testing. But a lot of ladies will come with their own sets of challenges, especially as they find out about each other. Yeah, I'm sorry. This isn't a VN where you can screw every lady in the house, and yet, somehow, they are unaware of your dalliances with everyone else. But I've got some fun, historically-rooted examples of large harems that are helping to keep this, as the Mythbusters would say, "Plausible." Is a harem required to enjoy the game? No, it isn't. You can choose one woman and stick with her. I'm doing my best to work in content with each love interest for each release. But the game is designed as a harem game. You won't have an unenjoyable experience if you don't play it that way, but there obviously won't be as much content either.
New Ports
If you didn't notice, there is now an official Android version of To Be A King. Xor, Thunderline coder and artist extraordinaire, kept assuring me it wouldn’t be hard at all to add. Well, he might have stretched the truth as it took me a lot more software installs and editing of files than I anticipated. But I did get what I hope is a playable Android port out late on launch day. I plan to continue to provide that as long as it is feasible. I also plan to refine my compression to make it smaller, while maintaining as much quality as I can. Android players, please feel free to send in your suggestions or bug reports for it. I have to use an emulator, but I'll do what I can to improve that port if there is enough demand. It's unlikely the Android port will get a beta test, unfortunately. I'll alpha test it in my emulator as best I can.
Since I already need to have a compressed version for Android, there is now an official compressed version of To Be A King. It's about 1/3 the size of the standard release, and there is a bit of quality loss, of course. But if you've got connection limits, it may be your ticket. It's an easy thing for me to build and upload without much extra work, so that will be continuing for as long as Android ports are released.
Oh, and there might be something for iOS users coming soon, but it needs more testing before I can announce anything.
Other than that, I've been whittling away on my massive to do list of fixes and adjustments from Chapter 6 and for Chapter 7. Eleven new or massively changed scenes are going into Chapter 7, so I'll be writing those here very soon. No new progress graphic to show yet, but it won't be long before I have the one for Chapter 7. Hope you all are enjoying the new release! It will be available in a week to my $3 tier patrons. Have a great weekend, and I'll be back in a week or two with another dev update.