My dear friends,
Today we’ve crossed the Rubicon in the history of After Reset. We’ve funded and it took us only 10 days to achieve it. And when I say ‘we’ I imply every one of YOU even more than myself, or anyone else Black Cloud Studios. Rephrasing my namesake: “We must always remember that modern gamers represent a great nation today not because of what developers did for gamers but because of what gamers did for themselves and for one another.”
I truly regard After Reset as a proof that any… really any mere gamer, like myself, can take it upon themselves to stop moaning on forums and establish your own serious development team to build the game of their dreams. It won’t be easy. It will probably be much harder than your previous life. But if you follow your heart, you will find a way.
Once again, congratulations my friends!
As a second part of today’s Update, I’d like to update our FAQ with the most frequent issues we’ve met in our correspondence since the beginning of the current campaign.
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Q: Why did you drop our goal from $900k to $35k?
A: We still plan to create the same big and sophisticated RPG as we originally planed, but to make this game real we had to split it up into smaller chapters. With your help we can complete the Prologue and put it into Steam EA, and possibly GOG EA as well. According the statistics, SEA brings 10 times more donations than Kickstarter does. That is the good motivator for us to go for a critical hit in maximizing our efforts now for extra stretch goals and achievements.
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Q: Why do you need cinematic intro for the game as the first stretch goal?
A: As a gamer, I feel that true immersion into the story and setting begins with the intro. I bet a decent number of our backers, my dear friends, were initially drawn to our project by our backstory movie. As a manager, I must admit that we really need it for successful SEA results. I hope you understand.
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Q: What other stretch-goals will there be?
A: Frankly, when I planned our new strategy of the project’s funding by parts/chapters, I split all the features up into different stretch-goals between each chapter budget (except for the cinematic intro). Hence, our stretch-goals will consist of separate chapter’s budgets. Those parts/chapters will contain big story shards with a bunch of side quests and massive neighboring regions to explore.
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Q: If I participate the Alpha/Beta tests or SEA, won’t I lose my interest for the game?
A: I ask myself that same question every time I see a promising game in SEA, and I believe I’ve found a promising solution, which I’ve outlined in the following two measures:
First we use a sandbox simulation for the game’s AI. I used to program that earlier for Newerwinter Nights’ Persistent World “Baldur’s Gate” that I hosted. The idea is that there won’t be static quests except for the main storyline. NPCs could be out of the area when you are there, or they could go chill, or they could not be in the mood to give you some quests, or they could die doing their routine that is not connected with your adventures… anything could happen.
Therefore, side storylines will work much like random encounters in Fallout 1 and 2. When you touch the main storyline then your previous choices will rise to the surface with interesting and unexpected results. My objective there (as a director) will be to make the line between main storyline and side storylines indistinguishable.
Second is a big final stage of development. It will take the same amount of time as it takes to develop one chapter, but it will be completely devoted to adding extra locations (some with small quests) for random encounters. These won’t be revealed in the beta, so when you get to see them they’ll be fresh experiences even if you participated in all of the other chapters on SEA. This should also increase gameplay time by about 30%.
In summary, I believe After Reset RPG should bring your personal story to life and still support replayability even if you’ve participated in each stage of development.
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Q: I am a backer. Will I gain access to all of chapters or just the "prologue"?
A: Our backers will receive full access to each episode as well as the full game.
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Okay, guys. Once again thank you for your attitude, support, and trust. Feel free share your opinion about my vision and plan.
And stay tuned for more daily updates!
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Congratulations! This game looks really great. I hope all of your goals are reached.
Much obliged, mate!
How do you sleep at night?