Thing 2 RPG November Update #2 news

Hello Captain, It's been a busy week and even the release of Fallout 4 hasn't hindered me! (Well not that much...)

In the last week I have been adding new graphics to the game, little extra touches like a pool table, new corpses and little extra bits like that. Jose has been busy handing work into me and we are close to the end now. We even put some time into a secret mini-game in the game which I'm sure you'll find fun.

As promised I did make a video although It took me a few attempts as I didn't really know what to show off, I didn't want to spoil too much and I've already talked about v2 features as it is. Below is the video tease for Prequel Mode, View it on YouTube and read the description to find the voice actors credited.

I'll post a recap of the v2 features as we get closer to the end. As for release November looks unlikely but I'm trying to get stuff done. My main concerns are with work contributed by others but sometimes people are busy I get that. I'll keep you posted but I hope you don't mind a December release, I want to release the v2 update/expansion as intended not half-done.

Work Left To Do / In Progress:

Voice Acting; when a developer is lazy and skips voice acting in favour of text there is good reason. It requires a whole extra scope of balancing, quality control and management that is purely cosmetic and while enhances the experience logically doesn't add anything gameplay wise. There is 1 character left to record and 6 left to edit & get retakes. I started VA casting in August but wish I had started sooner as it has taken more time than expected. It's not fair on the other voice actors if I release v2's Prequel Mode half-voiced.

Macready’s Story; There are 3 parts to making this, the first (in progress, nearly done) is the sprite tiles and graphics. Jose has created most of what I need now and once that is all setup we can move to part 2.

Part 2 involves me putting the content in game. The plan is that you find Macready in Story Mode and he tells you about US Outpost #31 THEN he tells you about what happened after. I've got it planned so you take control of Macready and experience a choose your own adventure short story as told through his eyes. The multi choice elements will affect the outcome of his story and what happens afterwards. In the transition back to Story Mode he will set you a few tasks (general rpg quest stuff) and you will help him resolve any unfinished business at US Outpost #31.

Finally Part 3 is the "Art Assets" or Artistic Cut-scenes that are used to display parts of the story that are too difficult to sprite or more impressive in art format. Theres around 30 of these and they will take Jose some time to finish so during Part 2 I can leave "placeholders" where the art will go making it easy to drop them in once completed.

Simply put the only work on my end involves creating MacReadys content in game (2 weeks tops, its already written/planned out) and testing Prequel Mode with full audio (To iron out any issues or bad audio, 1 week). Outside of that I have nothing to do but play some more fallout...

As a side note the game is a lot more difficult now, general life expectancy of the average NPC has fallen significantly.

You're welcome!
Richard