Winter Wolves - Cursed Lands - development thread

Player00013 Aug 27, 2017

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Finished both nagas first "camp talk". Now I could make the game demo. Of course I'm going to send the texts to the writer first.

I am not sure if doing the demo right now is a good idea though. I mean, it will be useful to test the combat and spot some bugs. But then, people will probably need to wait 6 months before the game is finished

I mean I'll keep working on it, I have a lot of side quests and camp talk to code. But I still need the main parts of the story from the writer, and without those the game story can't go on

Why does he look so innocent while she looks so bloodthirsty? I really want to romance that cute naga and was it decided if they are siblings or just friends?

jack1974 Aug 27, 2017

Writer didn't tell me, however I'm thinking they're friends only, considering their backstory.

BobTheMob Aug 28, 2017

Backstory?

I don't think we've heard it yet, Jack. Could ya tell us?

jack1974 Aug 28, 2017

Nothing big, but it's clear from it that they're not siblings.

Pace675 Aug 28, 2017

Such. A. Tease!

No in this case no teasing. Initially I just wanted to code the battle, like the QoT "battle demo" I did one year before its release. But then, a bit for the heat and other various issues, all the other games in the works didn't make much progress. So instead of staying idle, obviously I kept working on this game, and now I'm at a point where what I've done so far it's almost of "final quality" but I can't go past a certain point because the main plot (castle infiltration missions) is still not written

So once again depends mainly on how fast the writer finishes the missing parts.

Still a tease :p

jack1974 Sep 02, 2017

Writer was at PAX, I was a bit worried because didn't get a reply in last 10 days and he usually was reliable before

He sent the fixed texts (the scenes I wrote myself) and said should start with the main plot mission when he gets back. Next week I'll focus on Love Bites though, since I have whole Viktor path to playtest!

Lol I love this extra bit he added to Sylrissa. They start talking about the swamps smell:

player "The odor here is quite...strong."

sylrissa "I know! Isn't it delightful?"

player "I was thinking the opposite. It smells like rotting meat mixed with the vomit of buzzards that tried eating that meat."

sylrissa "I know! It's so nice!"

player "...perhaps we should lay this topic to rest. I'm beginning to see why you and I have differing opinions about the swamp."

BobTheMob Sep 02, 2017

Lol I love this extra bit he added to Sylrissa. They start talking about the swamps smell:

player "The odor here is quite...strong."

sylrissa "I know! Isn't it delightful?"

player "I was thinking the opposite. It smells like rotting meat mixed with the vomit of buzzards that tried eating that meat."

sylrissa "I know! It's so nice!"

player "...perhaps we should lay this topic to rest. I'm beginning to see why you and I have differing opinions about the swamp."

Haha, seeing that I gotta ask: Is Sylrissa always so...unusual? :mrgreen:

jack1974 Sep 02, 2017

Yes she is! It's unlikely you'll find a similar character in whole Aravorn (even compared to her own Naga friend Enok, she's very different).

jack1974 Sep 06, 2017

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I'm coding Dasyra's sidequest now. Even if you won't be able to rescue "the other" team member for the first infiltration mission (otherwise the choice would be meaningless - you need to do that mission with the people you decided to rescue!) I thought that you could at least start the various sidequests, since all of them takes several in-game days.

In my testing I was able to do all the recruiting and stuff with more than 12-13 days left, so was a bit weird to let people just click to advance days until the first big story mission

I am also not going with "realism" too much: for example in this scene, Dasyra stays in Hammerhands for several days to do some tests on her brooch. Initially I thought to make her unavailable during fights for the duration (would be 3-4 days) but on the other hand wouldn't be good for gameplay reasons. So she'll still be available in arena fights and during shopping.

It's NOT realistic - however when you do games with multiple quests open, it's normal. I remember in Dragon Age or other games stuff like "you must hurry there's this super-critical mission!". And I did 25 other side-missions before it taking it easy instead :lol:

jack1974 Sep 07, 2017

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Finished coding Dasyra's sidequest: in practice all the sidequests will let you recruit the "other" character of same race, in this case Galan. But beside that, there are some variants, in some cases you also get an item / skill reward. Like in this case the most powerful item that Dasyra can use in her accessory inventory slot

I believe it will take me about a month just to code all those sidequests, not all of them involve combat, some require decisions but still need to script and test everything.

jack1974 Sep 09, 2017

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I've decided to do all the characters in order, so once I finish one I can move to the next. As said will take a while because between the personal quest and the camp talk, there's a good amount of work to do. I'm also probably going to add some more sidequests, since the character personal ones don't always have combat (which is a good thing I think, to have some more variety).

jack1974 Sep 10, 2017

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When you max out the relationship value with Dasyra, you don't get romance (obviously) but a nice bonus skill. I'm also thinking that I could add a special epilogue scene if you max out the relationship too (based also on what she says in this scene would make sense).

So, one character full scenes done. Only 10 left to do :twisted:

jack1974 Sep 12, 2017

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today started Galan's path. I wanted to do Love Bites this week, but I thought to finish both dwarves first. Also, Love Bites stuff will probably take me 3-4 days max

Player00013 Sep 12, 2017

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today started Galan's path. I wanted to do Love Bites this week, but I thought to finish both dwarves first. Also, Love Bites stuff will probably take me 3-4 days max

When will Love bites come out?

jack1974 Sep 12, 2017

Not sure but we're trying to put at least beta out before end of year!

jack1974 Sep 17, 2017

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this morning also finished Galan's sidequest, so both dwarves are done. Now there's only left the nomads, nagas, elves, amazons (lena) ... etc

I also tweaked several values while playtesting, so basically the old demo savegames are useless now (but I guess that was to be expected).

jack1974 Sep 17, 2017

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I also added 3 more bonus potions which will be expensive but very powerful. This one in particular increases defense by 10

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if you use two, Leena's defense goes to 34! :shock:

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so that enemies can maximum damage her for 1 HP lol

I have already fixed it so that never goes above the Max Defense + 10 (so in the case above would never go over 24). Of course more tweaks will be needed during testing, though I liked to have a super powerful (albeit expensive) potions that could turn the tide of the battle. In any case there will be enemies who can lower the defense, or that can use damage over time and other ways to win. So it shouldn't be super-powerful, just "very powerful" :mrgreen:

jack1974 Sep 19, 2017

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started the elves sidequests now. Lol, Kusho above doesn't know that we actually hid the druid (Vaeril) from him :mrgreen:

this is going to be "fun".

jack1974 Sep 20, 2017

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Fight against one of those giant beast called Woodcrashers. Please don't be afraid of the "Impale" skill... :twisted:

jack1974 Sep 21, 2017

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Maybe a bit spoilery, but couldn't resist :wink:

Of course, assuming you want to trust a vampire. Who would be so fool to do that??