It’s very, very hard to post updates during development. It seems to be run by a completely different part of the brain that turns back on when projects near completion.
There needs to be a study on this.
So… years after my last post, finally some news!
Iron Ruler
Iron Ruler is set to release on July 19th July 22nd. Of this year! At least that’s what I told Steam, so now I’m accountable.
There’s a new trailer!
Check out the newly released tentative Steam page! You can even wishlist the game there.
Iron Ruler was a side project. When I lacked the enthusiasm or inspiration for Sovereign, I had something to fall back to with the perspective of adding a title to the collection. The AI stumped me for longer than I expected though, so it wasn’t the smooth ride I was hoping for. But it works nicely now. I lose to it sometimes 🙂
How much will it cost, you ask? Why, absolutely nothing! It’s not big enough to warrant a price tag and I want to focus on the RPGs. Maybe it’ll help sell those so I can announce the sequel to Sovereign (which already has a title, a main page, and it’s awesome if I dare say so myself.)
Underworld
The most important of which turned out to be identifying and fixing an issue that remained a thorn in my side for years. There was an incompatibility with NVIDIA graphics cards. The game would freeze every 10 minutes or so on those setups. My desktop PC worked fine, but I had the issue with an old laptop. That led me to think the game was too resource hungry so I attempted to improve it on that end, but it was the wrong diagnosis.
Most of the reports on this issue included the player reassuring me that it was OK. They’d just quicksave often and the game loaded up fast enough. No big deal. Except it was a big deal, and I almost gave up on Sovereign because of it. There were enough negative reviews and refund requests caused by this to make me wonder if it was worth all the trouble, just to have another unstable game crippled by unsatisfied players.
Then one of the reviews included the player’s specs, and I thought to look into the graphics card. Finally.
Sovereign will be freeze free, as Underworld is today!
Sovereign
I annouced Sovereign almost a decade ago.
Feature creep set in. Big time.
The idea was to replicate Underworld with a surface world. But I quickly envisioned more (as my announcement post suggested already).
It needed a new magic system. With lots more spells.
New classes.
And lots of passive and active skills.
Then the event module, which worked nicely for Underworld’s scope, did not allow me to sustain something that much bigger. It was a mess. It’s nice and coherent now.
About 200 maps.
As for the main questline, let’s just say it changed a few times.
I’m working on a new video and a Steam page that I aim to activate as Iron Ruler launches. I’m thinking there might be some synergy between the two. Also it should allow for a somewhat more reliable ETA.
I’m looking at Q4 2022. But I’ve been overly optimistic before…
Gog
Gog turned down Underworld again. I’m guessing it’ll be the same for Sovereign. Oh well.
