Progress Report: January III (Patreon)

Well, the people have spoken! The progress reports will become a free feature for everyone to see if they are on my email list, and there WILL be spoilers inside! I am also not going to be responsible for what spoilers a patreon may comment in the comments :D so enter if you dare!

Art will now become a marketing bonus that will show up when i have update links ready for you guys to help me reblog and like!!!

The side stories of KaE (35k in total) will be cleaned up/reworked to fit the new direction of KaE, and will become a Silver Wolf tier benefit, of which the whole collection will go in there. I will not be releasing them all at once however, as that is STILL 35K WORDS TO COPYEDIT, and my main focus is the main game!

I am totally cheating and using those old side stories as the foundation to not have to start over and steal too much time away from writing in the main game. With their low effort cost, I am hoping that by the time I run out of the old side stories and have to start from scratch, I'll have taken us far into the story that it assuages any fears that the side stories wont hinder development. Which, by then, I aint gonna lie, will only be one 2k side story a month. Not gonna focus on the fries when I got the burger to eat, after all.

Hence, the side stories will come sporadically, here and there. Once a month, ill release a side story for free for the Free Folk, among other content already given out like lore tidbits and the like.

The Collection for the Side Stories is already created, and will be easily found here:

PS, this is also where you will find the Collection titled FREE SHIT!!!!

Also, please don't forgot to use the Chat feature of Patreon! I'll be using it going forward to communicate less important things from now on, as i dont want to email bomb you guys constantly lmaoooo

Now for the actual progress report!

As my dear patreons may know already, I am currently working on the technical update that's mostly under the hood stuff so that we can begin to have consequences for our actions and decisions!

 The relationships tab will be added once again in the stats menu!

But of course, besides having a tab added, the update will across the board increase or decrease people's opinions of us from the moment we are born. So that you dont have to start over and make a new playthrough, I will apply the increases and decreases in the middle of the story and use your selected origins and features, so they have an effect later on. Besides, the first 100k words was used to ease you into the new world of Kingdoms and Empires. So the more gamey stuff can happen after those 100k words.

This is needed so that characters can properly work in the future. Your hair color, your skin color, your grandmother's possible place of origin, will all have impact throughout the story. But as a literal child, one who is nobility as well, would not experience much of that yet.

BUT I have so many characters, that i needed to find a way to help not overwhelm yall!

One of the things I thought up was to use *if statements to only let you see the characters youll see most often depending on your chosen path (Prince, Princess, Squire):

This will without a doubt help. But... I have so many characters still!

SO I MADE A WHOLE ASS SEARCH FUNCTION

How the fuck does all that work?

By blood, sweat, and tears.

Here, I'll drag yall down to hell with me to see how the cogs make the magic happen:

You comfortable? Perfect. Here we go:

Let's do Remiel:

 If you use any of the terms up there, his profile will pull up directly.

Most of the characters will have blurbs like the above that gives you an idea about them.

Now, my main goal for this update is to add the code function of increasing/decreasing opinions of characters, but in the future I want to add unlockable paragraphs that update the blurbs as you learn more about them!

Our main characters will have on average three paragraphs about them; but everyone else will have one to keep things simple for me, and speedy.

Now, let's test the search function out, instead of putting Remiel's direct name, ill instead only put "king". After all, there may be characters you don't remember the name exactly, BUT you do remember their rank or title!

Boom! We find a list of men who are in positions of authority, with status that rank equal or higher, to a king!

Now, what if you struggle with a character's first name, but remember their last name? Or which duchy they're from?

IVE GOT THAT COVERED TOO MFER

Here are the search terms that will get you groups of entries to help you find the person you're looking for

And here's how it looks like when you search for a family:

 And how it looks in game when you actually select one of the houses:

EVERY SINGLE MAJOR NOBLE FAMILY HAS A FAMILY TREE IN THERE! 

Honestly, I think the family tree is going to help you guys big time in case any confusion arises as to who is who and who's kid they are lmao

Again, I'm trying to save myself time, and focus on the technical aspect of this update. This means that a majority of the characters will NOT have blurbs yet! This is okay though, as text additions in a later update are easy and not game breaking! So that I don't get bogged down when I actually have free time, I will be doing two nobles houses each update and complete their blurbs. I won't be doing the unlockable blurb content yet either, as that will for SURE take time away that I don't want taken. BUT it is in the development list.

Speaking of which...

THE DEVELOPMENT LIST

The development list will be a checklist I use to let you guys know how's progress with development features I want implemented, such as the Codex, Relationships, and Stat tabs. It'll also have coding features that I want to implement.

It will have my progress listed within, and I hope that this level of transparency will help you guys know how im doing with things. This is dope because it is mostly coding or moving the side stories and wiki to patreon; meaning it is a lot of busy work that is less mentally intensive as actually writing is. For the main game writing, the Progress Reports already work well.

Anyways that's it for now. Ima be working as fast as possible on this to get as much done before this tech update is due! Honestly, feels great to focus on specific portions of the game and have you guys in the know.