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April 19 Update (Patreon)

Published:
2020-04-19 20:11:01
Edited:
2020-04-19 22:47:18
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

It is almost, almost time for a clearer schedule. First, two items that may be of interest to you:

1) TLS is on itch.io

I hadn't realized there was any activity for free games on itch.io, but I've finally put TLS there now. Also, did you know that you can rate games there? I honestly didn't, and having no ratings hasn't had a negative effect on sales as far as I can tell. But this is potentially a new avenue to attract players to TLS, so if you have an account, would you be so kind as to leave me a rating? Alternatively, let me know if anything looks amiss or could be improved, as I just put up the page.

2) I'm doing a panel/AMA this week

I will be part of a potentially big panel (basically group AMA) on r/fantasy. Truthfully, I might be the least popular author on that panel (it includes Amazon Top 100 authors and some very popular web serials), so there may be a lot of new eyes on my work. I shall attempt to be appropriately scintillating. I may send a reminder message about this if anyone is interested, or unless people express disinterest now.

What Comes Next

I knew my schedule for the beginning of 2020 was going to be a bit hectic, but now I'm nearly to the point where I can breathe easier. All launches or unusual releases are done, my  scheduled novels for a year are written, and I pray there will be little more promotion. I've intentionally avoided scheduling much in this upcoming period so that I would have some time for more free creativity.

What will be happening now? More normal TLS updates, definitely. Maybe the major Eustrin elements next, but since those will be variable locked, I may want to throw in some more content.

Another thing I definitely want to do is try to clear some old projects off my plate. Don't Save the Princess, unfortunately, is waiting on other people at the moment. But Once Ever After could theoretically get finishing work and a new patron beta whenever I decide to put sufficient time into it. Many types of art are done or nearly done.

I hope the less busy period will also help me think on what projects I want to do after TLS. It's been over a year since I polled everyone about a variety of things, but I still haven't decided. The end isn't imminent, but I want to have an idea fully matured before the conclusion.

Most likely I'll write something new before the end of the year. NGM, SC, and TBS together formed the first step of my writing plan. It has been both more successful and less successful than I'd hoped, depending on what metrics you use. I've been reflecting on potential ideas, but I likely won't put too much time into this in the near future because I want to invest more time into game work.

Or I might do something that isn't work, Did you know they've continued producing movies and shows over the past year? Shocking.

Anyway, other than the panel, this next week should be clear. I hope by the next weekly update, I'll have not only a clear idea of what I'm doing next, but meaningful progress on it. That's all for now!

Comments

Dubsington

I look forward to the public unveiling of Scintillating Sierra.

WaxerRed

Question for the artist known as Scintillating Sierra, "Is mayonnaise an instrument?"

Darthjake

But will the Scintillating Sierra have a shining sword?

sierralee

Shining swords shall shimmer superlatively!

pokemorph

Well couldn't rate game on phone but I left -what I hope is- a decent review I hope it helps

pokemorph

Oh no problem you've brought us a story that in my honest opinion is on the same level as one of final fantasy's best

Nathan Phoenix

Sierra I searched for the last sovereign on my icho.io desktop app but your game so far does not show up. Looks like new games can take a while to appear but keep your eye on it. Make sure your tags and appearance options are set correctly.

sierralee

Could it be the NSFW thing? Please check if the direct link works for you. That said, it's entirely possible that something is set wrong, but if so, I don't know what it is.

DukeLeto7

In the interests of being helpful, and because I don't think Sapharlantis has the RPG Maker VX Ace and the decrypter, and thus couldn't answer, and definitely not because I'm procrastinating something else; I went through the list of counter questions you asked Sapharlantis in that big giant comment thread on the TLS blog and looked up the answers for him. Teleportation Event Map: 14: Third Arclent War/Aram Events/Aram Battleground Event ID 001 Preceding Line: Hilstara: "Whew... is it finally over?" Animation should be changed to "Wind One", centered on either Event 003 (Altina/Mage) or Event 002 (Altina/Mage) depending on whether the switches 0248 and/or 0439 are on. (There needs to be a nested conditional around the show animation.) Megail "to to" Map: 14: Third Arclent War/Aram Events/HQ Campfire 2 Event ID 001 Line: Megail: "Just because we're trying to to save lives here doesn't mean we should let them walk over us." Delete duplicate "to". Yarra speech duplication: Map: The Tower/Twisted Space Calm Event ID 003 Page 3 (Minor issue phase of Synod) Yarra lines: No, I get it. I really do./I grew up thinking the older succubi knew better than me. I trusted them and assumed that at the top there must be someone even smarter./But instead, there was only the Incubus Emperor. The world I knew was ruled by a madman. Not sure what Sapharlantis is on about but I vaguely recall the second line might have been repeated in an earlier release. Sapharlantis IS playing the current release, right? --- I think that leaves the questions about mana potions restoring Yarra's SP and the probably impossible possibility of getting penalized for opening the ruins before Ancient Ruins before the Erosian Crisis/Erosian War. (Sapharlantis is a bit unclear on this.)

sierralee

Thanks for taking the time! I've gotten these corrected, except for the Yarra repetition. It's entirely possible that something is repeated, but at the moment I can't be sure.

DukeLeto7

I left a duplicate of the above on the wiki forums for Sapharlantis, plus a note indicating that he should give us (on the wiki) a save game state with the mana potion bug so we could have shot at figuring it out before putting it on your plate, on the principle that you want to be doing more high value work. I actually can't find any code in the Ancient Ruin penalizing players for cheating to open it early, hence (among many other things) my wondering if he's using an older version. If there is such code, we can have Fulminato see if there's a path to max/mining it open early without cheating that would invoke the penalty.

snusnumrik

You are on the same panel as nobody103. Nice!

sierralee

Yeah, I hope this will be an opportunity for me. The panel has started now!

Dubsington

I know it's not a competition, but you're wiping the floor with these guys. Scintillate on, brave Sarah!

sierralee

I'm doing the best I can, anyway! Soon I must take a break.

aby

Hey Sierra, since you haven't decided much about your next major project yet, if it is okay, I'd like to make a couple of suggestions, at least for possible genres for your next game: First, a Tactics-RPG or a Strategy-RPG. The big battle events in TLS are super engaging and easily one of my favourite parts of the game, so what if you made a game mechanically centered around those type of events? Be it the more moment-focused approach of the Tactical-RPGs (being a commander in a campaign, having to plan and execute battle-by-battle, trying to do the best they can for their soldiers) or the more broad approach of Strategy-RPGs (A leader overlooking a map in the face of a inevitable war, How will you organize your forces? What you must hold and what you're willing to concede? What alliances are you willing to make? Who can you trust?). I think you'd be able to write really good stories and create great puzzles and scenarios for those types of games! Admitedly, I don't know how difficult it would be to make those games from a technical standpoint. I heard there are some plug-ins that allow you to make those type of games in RPGMaker itself, as well as some other similar engines specifically for those genres, but I do not know for a fact if those would be easy to pick up. And for my second suggestion, I'd love to see what you could make in the Trainer/Management genre, something in the vein of Long Live The Queen or the Princess Maker series. Another one of my favourite things in TLS is that I think you write super nice and warm teacher-student relationships. I'd love to play a game centered around such a relationship (even if it wasn't all roses) and with your min-maxing route-planning puzzles. I feel like anything you did would be quite a breath of fresh air on that genre since, at least for adult games, most of those games end up being grindy, inevitably turning abusive, and becoming irrationally depraved as their endgame, which ironically enough ends up being a turn-off for me. Of course I am only making those suggestions in case you want to try something new and different. I love TLS for what it is and if you think you have another incredible classic RPG in you for your next project, I will eat it up all the same. But if you want to branch out, those two genres are where I'd love to see your work.

Decanter

I'm enjoying reading the thread.

sierralee

I appreciate you sharing your thoughts! I've actually wanted to do a strategy RPG at some point, but the difficulty is indeed the engine. There's an SRPG Studio, but from what I've seen, it's limited to Fire Emblem clones. I havne't fully explored the plugins, but in the past they've often been a bit limited compared to a satisfying RPG. Though I've considered if I have an interesting take on the trainer genre in me, the specific subgenre you mention is actually one of the gaps in my experience. I just haven't tried them up to this point.

sierralee

Glad to hear it! I think it's essentially over now, but I put in a decent appearance.

Rachnera

I would hazard the guess that part of Princess Maker (more exactly Princess Maker 2, the one people usually think about when they say "Princess Maker") enduring popularity with indie game makers is that the original game is filled with good ideas, but never use them to their full potential. As it stands, it's more of a farm optimization game than anything else, but it *hints* at many interesting things: - An equivalence between battle skills and other skills (you can train both swordsmanship and etiquette the same way, and *at first glance* the game lets you dream that you could resolve situation as easily with the fan than with the sword) - A hella lot of secrets and imaginative alternatives just waiting to be unlocked with unconventional thinking - A character evolving both physically and mentally through the course of the game (in practice, she's just taller and the morality system is utterly simplistic) - A final destiny which can range from beggar to queen depending of a lot of small factors (pure illusion, the game just looks at your highest stat at the very end with little consideration for your in-game actions; also, there is a bug making the art skill always first priority; thus you can easily end up as a god-killing street dancer) Yeah, it's the Fable of the early 90s in term of promised versus delivered. Its most successful spiritual successor is Long Live the Queen, which discards farming entirely, balances most of the skills and requires cautious decision making and accepting you cannot be good at everything, and ends with a complex epilogue with multiple moving parts. It also gets rid of the faceless nameless "father" character (the player avatar) of Princess Maker: The main character is old enough to raise herself. I love this game but it's not without flaws. The art style is debatable (imagine if Game of Thrones was an anime made by the Pretty Cure studio), there is an emotional state system which only impacts skill training (?), there are far too many characters to properly develop them and they seem to only actively help when you explicitly ask them to, and Elodie just has a tendency to grab the idiot ball extremely hard sometimes (the goddamn chocolate scene). (first runs are also basically forced disaster runs time for the player to understand mechanisms and setting, a fact which seems to be quite unpopular on the Internet; but that's not much of a problem in my opinion as the game is designed to be replayed again and again) But all in one, it's a fascinating take on the raising sim/political simulator genre. Also, summoning Cthulhu to eat your enemy ships never gets old.

sierralee

Thanks for going into depth. I can definitely see the possibilities, but I'm also hesitant to try something where I don't have organic familiarity with the genre. I'd have to play those two and see how they feel to me.