Hello All,
Work is continuing on HEROES OF CELTICA v0.9.1 and it will be released soon. Definitely in the coming week.
I'll just write a little today about how the story for DARK DRUID is planned out. So basically, I plan the entire story structure from beginning to end, so I've marked out all the major beats and events for DARK DRUID. But I leave everything else vague, which allows me some creative room for how I get to those major story events, which are like stepping stones towards the end of the story. One thing you can rest assured about is that DARK DRUID will not just continue endlessly without direction or planning.
On top of all of that, there is an additional layer of complexity in that this is not just a straight up story, but an interactive experience with choices and divergent pathing. I can see myself revisiting completed chapters later in the development cycle to tweak point values for things like corruption and also retroactively adding in plot points that make sense later. This is not ideal for players that are waiting on my updates, but it will make the final completed game an overall better experience.
Unfortunately, I lost a day this week from another storage failure. This time, an external SSD drive (an SP Silicon Power drive) just decided to stop working with no warning whatsoever. Frustratingly, it was one of the storage devices I bought to replace my last hardware failure in February. I was afraid most of the images for the next update was lost. However, the SSD did manage to boot again on another PC and I quickly downloaded all critical files while beads of sweat were running down my face. I now have an external HDD I use as a backup-only archive that sits in a drawer to avoid another SSD failure. That HDD will need to be updated with each new release of the game as a safety measure. In addition, I've gotten a new internal SSD with a 4TB capacity with supporter funds (makes a massive difference, so thank you). Obviously, the key quality I want in an SSD is not read or write speed - it's simply endurance and reliability!
Anyway, everything is fine now and the next updates should be the release of v0.9.1 for Omega Slam supporters and v0.8.0 for the public.
Thanks for reading!