November 2018 Board Report

November is here and I am getting VERY excited at the prospect of delivering a playable, robust build that includes lots of the fun elements of SoW2 (also my kitchen is almost finished—what a drama!).

Let's start with some stats:

408  Patrons (-9 from last month) , $2,028  pledged (- $72)

Torrents—Enpornium 20,2753 ‘snatches’ (total downloads last month)

Forum-- 270 actives (261 last month)

I’m adding this link to see an indie data grab showing our relative position:

https://graphtreon.com/creator/SelectaCorp

Patreon payout was $1,956 USD, which will be reserved for projects and monthly coding.

Costs:

Moimrosoft Project 3rd tranche payment: $900

Annual Photoshop License: $250

Dr. P SoW2 In-game Writing: $150

Current Project Status:

Spoils of War 2-

Hywell has come back with most of the video work and there are LOADS of scenes—he still has some more complicated ending scenes to come in this week.  I am working with them now and have some drafts ready for a quick take.  This first batch are all news reports that tie into the backdrop of Dominion affairs and reference and will pop up in early game to give a flavour of what the stakes are.  These are, to my mind, critical because they provide the player with a sense of what they are fighting for— many future Priority List NPCs are referenced so if/when you get the chance to acquire them, they have a background/personality/particulars that make them desirable.  

I sent out a link to a debut vid but I inadvertently tagged it as ‘private’ when I should have labelled it as “unlisted’.  This means only the shared link will reveal it.  They are all SFW but I wanted to get some examples to Dirs+ to get your take on them.  Again, they will pop up in a random way early game to provide a running backdrop of life in the Dominion before it gets ugly—so while they seem unremarkable, the intention is that they will spark some revolutionary appetite for some spoils of war.  I am also thinking of some ‘classified’ videos that reveal a more violent side to the conflict…

GNN Hannah Debut:

https://youtu.be/sRYmstZmnig

Opening Day Parliament:

https://youtu.be/lL0W-uKVsoI

Negotiations w/PRF:

https://youtu.be/B3tIq0no6pI

Crown Princess Katrine 21st B-Day:

https://youtu.be/bSg3Qsq8pls

Request for Increased Military Spending:

https://youtu.be/L4wFIS6eK3w

Dev Diary- I’ve been writing up some diaries for Patreon feed that hope to establish aspects of the game (so far, a run down of the Priority List concept and an overview of the Dominion military force and units).  I’ll continue to add to this list so players will have a sense of the hows/whys of what’s in the game.

Campaign Tutorial- In addition to a sandbox mode, there will also be a campaign tutorial that helps explain the basics on up.  I’ve written four so far and anticipate another 3-4.  Each will introduce aspects of the game, from basic combat to ministers/ministries/policies to provincial conquest/administration to diplomatic and more.  These should provide a new player with an easy ramp up so they can do a sandbox campaign sooner than later (or just start w/sandbox if they prefer to learn on the go.)

In-game Mission- Dr. P, proprietor of Exec2Sec tumblr amongst others, has written an in-game mission for players to pursue if they wish.  This will become available under certain circumstances and either penalise or reward, depending on how the player handles it. He’s completed one (hint: set up a secret facility that specialises in producing…?) and is working on another.  These prolly won’t make the first Alpha but will be added in next version.  

Dev Schedule-  We’re behind but MiNT is working to catch up.  Next version will be ready imminently—he’s just fixing up errors and bugs.  Next version promises to include entire map, ministries, tech tech—we shall see.

All in all, it finally feels like it is coming together.  The commissioned vids/pix are solid and it is looking like the more fun aspects of the game are about to be revealed.  I’m anticipating loads of balancing issues in terms of gameplay—this is a big scope game after all—but that’s a problem I want to have.  Once the bonus content is added (all the artwork I try to share daily), my hope is we’ll have a pretty immersive world in which to wreak havoc in and terrorise as brutally as you like— served by degraded beauties of the fallen regime… which is actually the whole point of the damn thing!  ; )