Progress Report (Toddlerhood, finished.) (Patreon)

For those who only care about the demo, it will release in the next six hours as I pull it out of the main folder and put it into a playable demo on Dashingdon, the rest of the post is a progress report on what has been done. The demo will be put in a separate post and everyone will be notified if they have their email notifications on.

(Personal Info)

My trip to Mexico went well! Stayed there for 12 days, and fixed the house up. Sadly, I had to get on the bus again down south after spending a few days in the US to pick up the remaining Mexican paperwork for which I had to be present. It was a very annoying 5 extra days.

I also somehow passed all my finals!!!

(*End of Personal Info)

Luckily, I was able to do 19k out of the planned 30k words for the next update while all this was happening!!!

I'm going to release the revised beginning (which will be released today) then two weeks after that, the starting childhood routes (30k planned words of absolutely new content) will also be released. Afterwards, 10k updates will be the move going forward!

That means far more consistent updates! 

Well, if im being honest, it may be 10k words OR it'll be a complete choice tree that is 10k words full of content (take for instance the Coastal Town branches and the different routes you could take there). Either will work, since my goal is to show you guys progress progress progress.

It's something that I think will work nicely for all parties. Patreon gets 10k updates, while the public will get the bigger 100k updates.

Now for the actual nitty gritty:

MC will henceforth be known as the Champion. I was getting tired of calling MC as MC, even in my developer comments lmao

All the work I've been doing for KaE has been behind the hood stuff, it's only recently that I've worked on producing story content. Narrative, storyline, branching, technical features, coding, and more was what was being worked on until recently.

Stats and Variables have been improved and should now feel more "special" and fun to upgrade. Like said before, I created a new script that allows for players to increase their stats to new tiers that unlock decisions and actions that the Champion can take.

Since I know a vast majority of you will be COMBAT mains, I'll spoil the Combat Variable:

 How do you increase your skill level in a stat? By simply increasing it like you would in any other game!

The trick I'M doing, is that KaE will have a *gosub script that'll level the skill up to a new tier in every fucking choice that increases combat lmao

Which allows YOU to simply see:

Just for the Stat descriptions alone, they reach just over 8k words!

Now for the beginning changes.

I felt like the beginning took too long to establish anything, and reworked stuff.

Of course, as many of you may already know, I've changed the origins

• Good Childhood (had a good family and all that)

• Bad Childhood (you were either abused or you were addicted to something)

• Amnesia (clean blank slate for anyone who wants to headcanon whatever they want)

Each of these will give the Champion a different problem to work through, and could make the new life have a shaky start if you so choose. I'll describe what I mean later.

In the very start, I also changed Military History (which was originally just history) into Military Science, which is also known as War Studies and/or Polemology. It's a real degree offered, most famously at the United Kingdom's King's College. It works for what I need to help write about MC's studies and their knowledge, but I will tot's be taking a few liberties like with everything else so that the story is entertaining lol!

The four educational choices in the beginning will also now give you levels!

• The Political Science Education will jump you to Tier 3 for both Politics and Charisma

• The Military Science Education will jump you to Tier 3 for both Combat and Military Science

• The Civil Engineering Education will jump you to Tier 3 for both that and Intelligence

• The Financial Education will jump you to Tier 3 for both Finance and Intelligence

Also, I regret to inform anyone who really liked the feature that shows you what choices will change stats will be removed.

It's just way too much work for something I wasn't even sure was really wanted or not. It slows writing down by alot, and the way im making these choices trees, it'll kill me. So to save time and give me mental breathing room, I'm removing it.

Also! Truck-kun, or otherwise known as Cheat Mode, will increase all your stat levels by 5!

There will also be a stat variable that keeps track of whether or not you chose the truck that'll let you choose some locked choices. At least, that's the plan for when we progress more ahead. I really wanna make a separate cheat playthrough in the future where the Champion is a literal Overpowered MC lololol

The Goddess meeting is cut extremely short, and i think KaE flows better for it! Now it's only just under 350 words!!

Of course, there's also the new mechanic that lets the player choose the Champion's skin color and the possible origin of Uriel's mother.

The above section has been cleaned up from the preview. Coding wise, there's new differences to help account for the new variables and story/plot changes that may take place in regards to what you choose.

Of course, the heritage variables will also help the story know what type of "Pale" are you. The pale for the mountain tribes is more Scandinavian-like in phenotype, than say a Belthean pale, which is more Han Chinese-like in phenotype.

These differences will give the MC unique scenes, and different issues to tackle.  

 Like I said before in a previous report, I also included a little plotline (and gave hints) that allows a player to look like the spitting image of Remiel's dead wife for some bonus scenes:

OR

You can choose to look more like your mother and the Imperials for other bonus scenes!

If you also choose black hair as well as looking like a Belthean, you can expect Emperor Otto to treat the MC very differently as well, so more bonus scenes!

Finally, the names.

I know there's some people that struggle with names and stuff, especially when doing a second or third playthrough to make those saves look different... but I'm here to help! As many of you may already know, I made some effort to make sure you can choose in-game appropriate names, and even have the game react to those names!

The above has almost 3k words of content of the parents discussing the special names. There's 6 Major special names, and 8 Lesser special names that will fire up bonus scenes!!!

There's some new scenes regarding our toddler years, which are mercifully short, and a new Goddess Dream sequence that I think is much better narrative wise!

Also, you get to choose what type of relationship you will have with Adelina and Uriel for your early childhood:

And it depends on your old life origin. Of course, you'll mend the relationship later if you wish:

Btw, the above choice forest has a total of 5k words due to branching and the story reacting to your choices.

We'll go into the Unloved and Inner Turmoil choice tree and see what's inside, the entirety of it:

Ah, so if the Champion was unloved in their past life, instead of creating space or treating the parents with mistrust, they desperately clung to Uriel and Adelina. To the point that the thought of separation sends the Champion into a panic attack.

We can also choose how to respond to the panic attack:

Let's double down!

Honestly, I need some feedback here, should i keep the above as is or have Uriel call the Champion "little wolf" no matter the gender???

Annnnd that's one Choice Tree!!! Out of six! Don't worry though, I cheated and reused 2 with slight changes since I kinda had a brain fry at that time. I'll probably add in more differences in the future so that I can go back with a fresh brain again lol, but it works for now! The good thing is that four major combos are different and done.

Let's move on, this will be where the current update will end, before the next one that comes out on December 15th

A Caravan trip!?!?!

There's going to be numerous caravan trips until THE caravan trip happens. After all, that attack will cause big political changes within Argent!

Anyways, this is the beginning of where you will begin your royal education with the other children. You will first start with either the Prince or Princess routes, and then have the chance to switch to the Squire route later.

• Prince route currently has 9k words worth of content

• Princess Route has 10k words worth.

With both, i am about two-thirds finished as both routes were planned to be released with 15k worth of content each, at which point the decision to become a Squire becomes available. This is what will majorly feature in the next update on Dec. 15th.

Well, that's all, thank you guys!!!