Development on v0.6 is still underway, but my sudden taken on of development responsibilities rather than only being responsible for the writing has meant needing to shift much more of my focus to TLotG. I've nearly reached a point where I'll be able to bring most of my attention back to MnM, but TLotG has a long way to go before it starts to meet my internal standards, and will likely need a lot more work once I start talking with those who are supporting that project to determine what direction the game should go in, but I'm hoping to be able to stagger that out over the coming months as I build out new content, rather than completely rebuilding anything.
As far as progress on v0.6, all of the maps for the new section are done. The update is going to take place almost entirely within a single Estate, and it's easily the largest Estate I've put together so far. If you're one of those people who has been complaining about how much walking around you need to do and that last sentence made you groan, roll your eyes, or otherwise react in a distasteful fashion, you'll be glad to know that much more of the maps are meaningful. I'm taking a bit of extra time and making a few extra notes to scatter things around and increase the density of hidden items and other secrets to what I originally wanted for the game. Where maps like Uncle Gillespie's Estate or Lothario's Estate I struggled to fill in a meaningful way (and they should probably be shrunk down as a result; more on that in a future update), these maps I've had to make larger to accommodate things that I wanted to include. These maps, despite the intention of them being to feel cold and metaphorically empty, they're some of the most physically full maps I've put into an Estate so far.
I'm also experimenting with some new events for these maps. It's not perfect (you're almost certainly going to see the occasional visual glitch), but I've starting working on creating my own ambient weather effects within the core VX Ace engine. It's nothing terribly fancy, but it should add to the ambiance and general feel of the area.
On top of that, the trophies for this section of the game are going to essentially be quest chains. I've still got a bit of figuring things out to do before I can say too much more about those, but if you've gotten the Preserved Flower trophy following the funeral or the Mother's Blessing trophy from Augalamh, that should give you a general idea. The difference being that rather than having a series of random objectives you can complete in any order, these will be more linear.
The downside is that all of this means I've got some figuring out to do to make sure it not only works correctly, but that you'll be able to keep track of what you already did and what you need to do next, as well as make sure that if you miss something that locks you out of the trophy (which I'm going to try to avoid, but these are already proving a bit tricky and I haven't even started on them yet), you aren't haunted by the objectives every time you try to use the quest tracking to do something else. That means more development time, and more play testing.
I'm trying to take a "it'll be done when it's done" approach to this, because I want to put out the best version of this possible rather than rushing through things like I did with Viridius, but I also don't want to leave ya'll hanging while I get everything polished for release. The only solution I have in mind right now is that v0.6 might release in chunks instead of one giant release, but that presents its own problems and challenges and could interfere with development on later chunks or result in broken saves. I know I'll be able to figure it out, but it all requires time, and I've never seen good things come of asking the internet for patience.
For now, rest assured that I'm still working very hard on making the games I'm working on the best that they can possibly be, and stay cultured out there.
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