stationmaster

Progress Update: Starting to take shape

Added 2020-11-20 04:56:06 +0000 UTC

The Rise of the Exalted alpha is coming along nicely.

Conquest and construction now work more or less as designed, the cathedral is looking ritzier by the day, and the button that used to immediately capture every village on the map... doesn't do that anymore. Art is still placeholder, but that will largely be resolved before 0.1.

Like Quid Pro Quo, the game takes place in a hybrid perspective. The world map where you plan your conquest and the blueprint where you construct your structures have top-down views, but they exist as physical objects within your base. Events involving captives and other Exalted will happen when you walk to their stations and talk to them (and they'll have indicators if they have something interesting to say).

Events outside of your cathedral will work more like Stationmaster's, with authored scripts and 3D environments, but they will be triggered by visiting points of interest from the world map. Most of these will cost Essence to activate, with the amount depending on how much magical badassery the player needs to unleash to capture whoever is there (pulling the princess out of the tower might be easy, but liquifying the slaver army is going to cost).

One of the things I'm most excited about is the new character and event engine. Not only should it look and perform better than Stationmaster's (and I'll show some screenshots to prove it once it's finalized), but I'm designing it from the ground up to allow several people to be included at once. This opens up a lot of options that Stationmaster couldn't really explore.

Meanwhile, I'm still working with an animator (who asked not to be credited, or I'd give them a proper shout-out), but the timeline on that is a little fuzzier. There's a good chance that, like with Quid Pro Quo, animations will not be finalized right from the get go. Unlike Quid Pro Quo, the "make animations not suck" project probably won't last longer than the game itself.

This is a long way of saying that I'm making progress, but still don't have a release date worth sharing. Thanks for hanging on, and I can't wait to hit that big red button.