Overview
Art Update
Here is the animation for the fire starter evolution, which was missing from last month’s starter evolution showcase:
Community Update
Starter names
Our Wind Starter Candle backer, Lucas, revealed the names for the wind starter creatures:
Sunli > Sunlitika > Litika
I personally love these names, and I’ve already added them to the bestiary. Don’t worry, the other starters will get names eventually too.
Game Update
Backups
I like having a backup plan just in case things go awry. In terms of the codebase of the game, I make commits to a private repository that I have on github, but I keep a mirrored version on bitbucket.
This month I spent some time making sure I had a backup solution just in case I ever had problems with my backend provider, Google Cloud. I already kept database backups on AWS S3, so I removed dependencies on some google services just in case I ever need to migrate to AWS.
This also ended up being the perfect time to create api.necromancers-gift.com, which doesn’t do anything too important. For now.
Random tidbit of information that I think I hadn’t shared until now: during the Kickstarter, I had my Facebook ad account suspended for around 1 week. Facebook support was very nice, and even gave me a small credit once they fixed the issue, but I had established a backup plan, and it’s possible you saw an ad for the game on Kicktraq instead.
All that to say that I do try to be as prepared as possible for the little obstacles that show up in the development of the game.
Road map
As a final note, I want to acknowledge that there haven’t been any updates that I can show in terms of you know… actual gameplay. I am still diligently working on the game, but I sadly have nothing to show since this was yet another scaffolding month.
I think things are going relatively alright, and the Kickstarter backers with alpha access should have access to the early alpha on August 31st, just as the original timeline posted on Kickstarter.
I want however to set expectations correctly, and confirm that I haven’t prioritized polishing or bug fixing. This means that the alpha will serve as the start of a conversation, rather than a finished product, as most alphas are these days. It is also very possible that I have to delay the early access release, but that’s a conversation we can have much later.