[News] What we've been working on this week!

Hello everyone, we've been quite busy the past few days!

Music

First of all, Archie has been working on a new music track for the vampire hunters. This one is meant for a character who will be more of a true “villain” to Kalyskah, possibly Lord Berrant, after the prologue era.
[See the Hunter Boss music attached at the end of this post!]

Quests:

The new quest that follows the Tupelo ritual scene is nearly complete. We just need to polish the triggers and add a bit more emotion to the dialogue, but it should be ready in time for release.
We also made some small tweaks to the ritual cutscene, added a few missing dialogue lines here and there, and made minor improvements to the cameras in a couple of areas. One of the new lines is attached as "Dalia Bathory" at the end of this post.
The last thing we’ve been working on is writing new dialogue for the citizens of Tupelo, but that will only be recorded next week, so it’s unlikely we’ll have it ready to deliver before the patch.

Programming:

Controllers are being tweaked, and the combat animations from the new system are already being triggered. That said, beyond better responsiveness and a different way for combos to be queued, you probably will not feel too much of a change at first, and that is intentional. We want the system to feel familiar first, and then gradually introduce the quirks, visual cues, and extra layers it needs.
Since we need to release monthly updates here on Patreon, we cannot afford to do a huge overhaul all at once, otherwise you guys would go too long without seeing progress. So we’re handling it through incremental patches.
Animation:
Other than the new dialogue idle we finished and that I shared last week, we’ve been focusing on finishing the animations we’ll need for a small cutscene that will trigger during the Cargo at Bay quest.

Level Design & Performance

This will probably be one of the biggest steps. We’re introducing ray tracing settings, which means people who cannot run the game at maximum settings will be able to tweak things and get better performance.
We’re also introducing a way for our post-process volumes to recognise the biome Kalyskah is currently in. This should allow trees, grass, and interiors to appear brighter than before, without breaking the overall lighting balance of the game.
I’ll share some before-and-after images later so you can get a better idea of what we mean!

Poll Results

The poll we ran here is still going, but if we combine its current results with the ones from the poll we did on Patreon, I can already see a clear order forming. Right now, people most want to see conversations between Kalyskah and Alvina, followed by Ursula and Ilreth.
Brooke is taking the place that Alvina had on Patreon, so do not worry, we’ll be adding some lines for her as well. So, for now, these are the first three characters we’ll focus on.
After that, we’ll move on to adding more dialogue once we’ve finished the planned conversations between Kalyskah, Amara, and Laver.