[News] Progress Report
Hello everyone!
Apologies for the lack of updates over the past few days. We’ve been focused on bringing the prologue content back to Unreal 5, and most of the main cutscenes are already done. Only Brooke and the massage scene remain to be transported into the new world.
We’ve encountered some performance issues with Nanite and are now considering dropping it entirely to prioritise gameplay and storytelling over minor visual enhancements to the landscape. On the animation side, I’ve been wrapping up Kalyskah’s Unreal 5 rig. This new rig gives us more control over cutscenes and finally allows us to clean up and use the motion capture animations we recorded earlier this year.
If all goes to plan, one of our team members will focus on transporting the remaining cutscenes to the prologue this week, while I test the motion capture animations. Once that’s done, I’ll work on the new intro scene between Kalyskah and James. After the open-world optimisations are complete, I’ll return to the prologue to connect the necessary quest events and release a demo that combines the prologue with the new dungeon intro.
However, before we re-release the prologue, it’s likely that the dungeon intro will be ready first.
Clan Naming Conventions:
Many people liked "-ach" suffix for the clans, so we’ll stick with that unless a particular name doesn’t fit well. The idea is that Kalyskah herself came up with this naming pattern, and being as old and resistant to change as she is, she’d rarely deviate from it once it became her standard.
Now that we are solidifying the game’s lore, once we’re through this intense phase of refactoring and transferring content from Unreal 4 to Unreal 5, we’ll begin polishing mechanics. A better understanding of the clans will help us refine the skill tree and enhance the books that will be scattered around the world for you to discover.
Quests:
As I mentioned before, we already have 10 to 15 new quests written. However, before adding anything new, our priority is to bring back what was lost, along with adding voice-acting to quests such as Pesky Pirates, By the Bushes, and Captive Rescue which were released before we started the Unrela 5 Transition.
I’ve also been working on writing profiles for some of the game’s characters. Once we’ve done some proofreading, I’ll share Ilreth’s profile here. It will detail her journey from growing up in Danú, graduating in Lindara, to finally arriving at the island of Thulgatha and joining Michael the Wise in his studies. These profiles will also help you understand the world Kalyskah lives in, and if we ever reach the goal of making playable companions, they should give you an interesting starting point as well as hints of what these characters aspire to in their own questlines.
If you like what we are about to release here, I can share more character profiles over time, so you can start piecing together the puzzle of who they were before crossing paths with Kalyskah.