Weekly Update (8-5-2024) (Patreon)

Overall, not a bad week, got some solid progress plus the public update. I might take some time next week to do more advertising. I wasn't in the right frame of mind this week, but I do need to it. As much as there's some part of me that would quite like to believe the old "If you build it, they will come," I know consciously that it's one of the greatest lies ever told, haha. I feel like advertising Noblesse is an annoying signaling theory problem, in the sense that it's not only that you need to get people to look, but you need to signal the quality of the game is worth their time in a sea of stuff competing for attention. <.<;

One thing I know would help is getting CGs (not just for the intimate scenes--I've always wanted cgs for significant story moments too). Unfortunately, it's hard to know where to find a reliable artist for such a long-term collaboration. The volume required is less than for a game like The Last Sovereign, but it's still significant and ongoing. It's something I'll definitely be thinking about, because I know I need to do more to spread the game's reach and stuff, much as I find advertising rather unpleasant. It's a necessary evil if I want to at some point actually be able to pivot toward making games as my actual income. I deeply appreciate the support of everyone here now, though--having a budget for the game is a significant stepping stone toward that goal, since it means I can do things like I have with the art, more music, etc.

Anyway, my musings aside, if you read the public patch notes, you may have noticed I hid a small new feature there. Someone on Steam requested the option for character nametags in dialog. At first, I thought that would be impossible without going back through the whole game, but then I realized it was actually something I could do dynamically by injecting nametags based on the portrait graphic used. So, I implemented that feature for major characters with about 3 hours of work. It's an option in the settings menu now if it interests you. I personally don't plan to use it, or think it's necessary, but since it was something I could do with fairly minimal effort I didn't see any harm in it. It's also not something I'll be testing exhaustively myself, but I'll definitely fix any reported issues with it and such. I decided to just throw it into the public release since I wasn't going to do a ton of testing on it myself anyway.

At any rate, back to work for the moment.