IndieDB release date announcement

I also announced on Steam and it got fetured at Overloadr, a Brazilian gaming site.

Gotta send some more e-mails to press to see if anyone finds the gif funny enough or the game cool enough to put it on their site.

The gif became a top post in reddit (r/indiegaming) which gave it 20k views. That was nice  

Twitter was nice too with 30 RTs and 50 likes.

If you know journalists or sites that might like simulation games, art or history, please let me know 

Brilliant.

Absolutely love it.

Overall, it's great!

But why is the guild sign gone? There is a bright blue line instead.

Also, September 1st is my birthday.

Thanks

I simply forgot the guild sign, oh well 

If you remind me on Sep 1st, I can send you a key as a gift! 

I made a gif to announce the release date of Painters Guild 

Surreal landscape.

I made a release date announcement gif!



It's probably not safe to officially announce this date yet because I need to get Steam bureaucracy sorted first, but I think it will be fine.

Feedback?

Congrats, you deserve it! 

September?! Get hyped!   

September 1st? Awesome. Day 1 buyer. Best of luck on the spit and polish phase. IMO, its one of the most stressful periods of development when you're attempting to tie up all the loose ends...

HUE For life!
Good luck irmão!

Thanks 

So have you decided on a final cost? I hope a lot of people buy it, I've been following this game since it was 1st on greenlight.

Also, will this game be moddable?

Not fully decided, but I'm leaning towards $10. Thanks! While I love mods, the game won't be moddable, sorry.



A while ago I watched a talk by the Plants vs Zombies dev on "Chameleon tutorials", teaching the game in subtle ways. One part was about having hints that trigger only after the player hasn't managed to progress after a while. Most players wouldn't see these, but they would help players that are stuck.

I'm including these arrows as hints for slow/confused players. Does this say "hey, click this guy" to you?

Nice! Love the aesthetics, good luck with greenlight!

Good luck to my fellow BRs, HUE!

I ended up going with "urgent" because it communicates better the feature, and removed the slow ones because they were boring.



Also did a couple more events. Now it's mostly just menus, save/load and polish left. Dawn of the final days! 

Added fast (urgent) paintings and also slow ones.



Thanks to mtarini for the suggestion!

I'll have to see how they work in the game. Maybe I can switch "fast" with "urgent" and remove the "slow" ones, since they turned out to be fairly unexciting. Let me know your opinions!

[September 1st]

Love it. Awesome update and love the historical references in the gameplay...

Great to see you making progress. It really looks great, nice work!

Thanks 

Ah, I approached it from the magnum opus point of view and thought that you codified it from a philosophical angle. You only have one shot to make something great, then the inspiration dries up. How whimsical of me.

It makes perfect sense. And as I stated "long ago" in this thread I'm being reminded how easy it is to be an artist today compared to yesteryear, I don't need to prove myself to a guild or carve in corpses. Perhaps the indie life isn't so bad afterall.

Yup, these guys weren't indies. They hardly ever painted what they wanted, they had to paint want the patrons requested.

Played the alpha: very nice!
I love the art style, and the game is interesting to play.

Here're 2 unasked for suggestions (feel free to ignore, naturally).


1- I think painting commissions should come with different urgency stats, translating directly in how much time you have to complete the job. Naturally, more urgent paintings would tend to be paid more $ (other factors being equal).

For example, there could be very-long-terms commitments, as well as extremely impelling "stop doing anything else" jobs, as well as anything in between.

This would make the player more likely to temporarily leave a few unfinished paintings hanging around the studio.
I love them! They give that impression of "busy painter studio" so much!
But, currently, the player hardly has to ever have one, and basically never more.

(thinking about it, urgency shouldn't change the rate at which the remaining time decreases, that better be constant so to allow easier planning; rather it should determine the initial length of the time bar, even if this means to display longer bars over multiple lines. ).


2- Speaking of unfinished paintings, I hope they will look even better in the next release.
It would be cool to see, first, a drawing phase (which produces a simple gray-scale edge-detected version of the final painting?), followed by the coloring phase. Both phases should look like progressively painted pixels over pure white background, e.g. by flood-filling same-color regions, one-by-one.

1- Urgency sounds nice. The time on the paintings is a variable I intended to be different, but I never got to doing that. As Greipur put it, there needs to be some visual representation for these urgent paintings with the progress bars, otherwise it's weird to realize time goes faster for some paintings. I'll try it.

2- Yeah, ideally the progress of paintings would be more than just an alpha change, like the Mona Lisa in the loading screen where there is sketching + blocking + detailing. But it's too much work for all the paintings.

So here's a couple of new historical events, the first with news about Machiavelli's The Prince and the second a couple decades later with the book's printing.



There probably won't be interactive historical events like I wanted, just messages.

Painters Guild is coming soon. Time's up. I gotta wrap things up. It has outstayed its welcome in production, the time for release is upon us.

September 1st is the current release date I'm working with.

Heard from this game in the GAMESFODA stream, following!

I'm intrigued by the "masterpiece attempt", that you only have one shot. What was the inspiration or thought behind that?

History! The masterpiece was a painting to attain the rank of Master in a guild. You only had one shot - if the other masters didn't approve of your work, you'd remain a journeyman.

A couple events in-game:



New furniture screen!



Now more readable!

damn, great landscapes, Catghost!

Thanks oldblood, yadurajiv and TheTheomach!

Sorry for the lack of updates recently, honestly another thing took my attention and I had to let myself be taken by it. Inspiration is a fickle mistress.





A couple of event images!

Sounds very unique, good luck!

It's been so quiet in here... Is everything ok, AD1337?

Yes, still going!



Worked on various things since I posted here, mostly balance changes and small tweaks to improve player experience. Still need some more of those, especially tooltips and messages explaining mechanics. Today in particular I introduced a skill cap to artists based on their rank. The player is prompted to take action to increase the artist's rank in order to continue improving skill. Should be better this way, ranks were meaningless before and they were very important in guilds during the Renaissance.

Things are getting finished 

Yup, it's fine for the final push to get this released!

I just discovered your game with this devlog and go through the 40 pages of it. The progression of the game and all your design ideas are great. Waiting for the game now

congrats on being greenlit!

Thanks everyone 

I made a poll with 10 game ideas, please pick the ones you like the most! 

http://strawpoll.me/4241748

Here they are:

1) eSports Team Manager
2) Whale Mail, a game about delivering letters on the back of a flying whale.
3) Demon Spa: the resort of choice for well-traveled demons
4) You are the manager of a lucha libre wrestler.
5) Errant Merchant, a game about being a travelling merchant in fantasy lands.
6) You are the Grim Reaper and manage killing as a legitimate business.
7) Wizardr, the dating app for lonely wizards. Find your magic match!
You are a guild leader of an MMO organizing raids on Skype
9) Self-made Racoon: a game about becoming the greatest rodent through cunning, murder, betrayal and hard work.
10) A game about being a streamer and running a gaming channel.