As usual, another month has passed me by and I’m wondering where the time went. Regardless, I’m due for a little dev post here to let you all know what’s going on.

I’m afraid it’s not that exciting, but I guess that’s to be expected for what’s going on currently. I spent a large chunk of the month drawing up more plans. For the most part all of this is now in place. I still have details to figure out like pricing schemes of items and which secret goes where etc etc. While that stuff is important the broad strokes are all there at this point so that’s good. Currently, I’m splitting my time a bit. I’ve started coding, but I still work on the little planning details in some capacity every day. Reason being, I can only look at excel spreadsheets so much each day before I start to lose my mind.

As for development well its about what you would expect given that I’m starting over. Currently the normal title menus are in place, you can start a new game and you can walk around, in an empty field, truly epic. In all seriousness however, that may sound basic but I’m very happy with the progress. For reference what currently exists was created in about a week where I’m only coding a few hours a day due to time constraints. So don’t worry, it didn’t take me a month to code walking. That would not bode well.

I won’t delve into the details but things are going well. I feel like I’m picking up the new engine at a good rate, already its starting to feel familiar. As probably anyone will attest the toughest part of processes like this are learning the new software. While its certainly different I’m finding it fairly easy to grasp which means progress should only speed up the more I use it.

Only other thing I wanted to mention is another feature I was curious about. Currently its planned out so unless people tell me it’s a horrible idea it will end up in the game. The idea is relatively simple but I don’t think its been done in games like this. Full disclosure, I haven’t played many games in this genre, so maybe I’m wrong.

Anyway, the idea is horse breeding/renting out? I don’t know how to phrase that. You can breed horses and then basically rent them out to others who might need them. So for a basic example, there would be something like a posting for a horse that would pull a caravan and you could assign a horse you have to that task and then get paid when it completes that task after a few days.

That’s sort of just the money making end of things. The other parts probably need another pass just to make sure they are what I want. The general idea is horses are treated similar to other livestock that you can own. Their maintenance might be a bit more intensive than just feeding them however. They will also have stats that are basically used to dictate their success at particular jobs. You can breed them for appearance as well as stats. Stats are also planned to play a minor role in gameplay. For instance, a horse that you ride that has a higher speed stat would move faster in the world. Stuff like that.

Anyway, I happened upon the idea when looking at what else could be done and which systems were lacking in my mind. Horses always seemed like something that there should be more to. I’m not a history expert and I’m a bit too lazy to google but I’m like 99% sure that there are ranches in the real world that exist (or used to exist) just to do this sort of stuff so I think it’s a good fit. It also lends itself as just another gameplay option to make money which is the general goal with systems in this game. You likely won’t do them all in one playthrough, but it gives you options to focus on something different if you do multiple playthroughs.

So that’s about it for now. Progress is moving along at a steady pace. Hopefully May will be more fully about coding rather than splitting time. I still don’t really know how long this will take. I’ve mentioned before that I want to basically have a beta branch for this version of the game. That way people don’t have to wait until everything is done to play it. I’m not good with timeframes for this sort of thing but currently I’m looking at maybe the end of summer. That may end up being horrible inaccurate but if the pace keeps up and I don’t run into any huge issues I think it might be possible. Thanks again for your patience and I hope you all have fun playing the current version of the game, such as it is.