Status Quo

First of all, let me apologize for the quietness - I feel bad letting 2 whole months without a devblog update go by! While writing these blog posts is fun, it also takes both a lot of time and a lot of energy, especially since I usually end up typing up a small essay. As a result, I've been thinking about ideas for some updates that would be smaller and more fun sized - that should hopefully still be interesting and something you would want to read, but while also allowing me to update every once in a while without it being too daunting a task.

On the bright side, the time that I haven't put into the blog has gone into a lot of crunching on Ronn For Your Life. And as a result, it's actually starting to get exciting.
For more than a year now I've been fleshing out the "engine" of the game - covering all the bases I will need to make a great game. This process saw me expanding the scope of the game a whole lot more than I initially expected - adding a skilltree, upgradeable spells, underwater exploration, a stealth mechanic (which also meant expanding the AI), and a bunch more cool stuff that I never intended to be in the game - including my personal favorite - a building system for a highly customizable weapon that will then further be personalized by other factors. It will be elaborated on in a future blog, but think of it as a character creator... For your weapon.

The base that will make up the foundation of the game - all the features and systems in place - has taken a lot of time and work. Hell, just look at the blog post I made about writing an entire piece of custom software just for writing dialogue.

And all of this, like I said, is basically just the "engine" that the game is going to be built on. But here's the cool part...

Almost Done!

Almost all the main features and systems are done now - even with the expanded scope and some of the additional features mentioned above that I never planned to include. What that means is, in the very near future, I will actually be able to begin on actual production - ie. content!

This is going to be an incredibly exciting part of the process, because this is where:

• I will start to seek out concept artists to actually get a final art style nailed down
• Placeholder art will slowly start to get replaced with production art
• Dialogue and quests will be written and implemented
• Levels will be designed

After that process, the game will go into testing, then some tweaks, changes and balancing will have to be made based on beta feedback. And then release!

If you've followed along from the beginning of this blog you will know that the main story for the game and its various possible endings was already written a long time ago, so that part's down - but stuff like side quests and more particular dialogue will be written in the production phase.

What Now?

To finish off this post, there are two main things I would like to stress.

1: Expanded scope and feature set will be thoroughly explained and documented here
Like I said, a lot of features and systems were added over the past months that were never really intended to be in the game to begin with, and therefore haven't really been mentioned anywhere. Over the next couple of months (give or take) these features will be featured (harh harh) on this blog, and we will show you a bit more in depth what each feature will mean and how it will work.

2: Production will start early 2018
Building the engine and all its systems has been pre-production; actual production on content and making the game is very close. The plan is to officially start production in Q1 2018. Right now there are only a couple of modules + 2 spells left that needs to be implemented. So we're getting close.

There will of course be an official announcement on all of our channels once we get there, but even after we've hit production, we will still keep all talk on this devblog until we have some actual production graphics to go along with our official announcements.

So in conclusion, this year will be much more exciting for Ronn For Your Life, as content will finally start to shape - happy new year, and stay tuned!