Shards of the Past 0.4.0 - Final Dev Update

This is it, the final countdown. The latest fixes for images are rendering on my PC and I have sent the testing group a copy to playthrough as well as a test build uploaded to Steam for testers there. Now the rest of the needed work is just playtesting as much as possible and working on the code for the new updates and features like Journal details, Map locations or triggers and the remaining music and sound effects. If you are in the Pathfinder Tier you and other testers will be getting new builds over the next week with fixes or updates to play before the final version goes live. Check the Discord Beta Channel for more details.

The current game build has grown quite a bit and I think the latest playtest build showed around 4.5 GB in size after I compressed all the images into webp format. Total story word count was at 156,500 ish words for just the spoken dialogue. This didn't include any journal updates, walkthrough hints or extra content stories in the gallery. The number of just story images sits at 7400, not counting any achievement or gallery images and extra content galleries. Some of these counts might change after more playtesting and new music tracks will increase the file size some. I setup my folders in the game to try and create a patch system as the size of the game will continue to grow and I will see about implementing that in the future.

In order to not delay the release any further, some things I will wait and work on after the 0.4.0 Release version is live. Mainly the PDF player's guide as it is something that takes a good amount of time. I will release what I have completed and include it with the game, but make more updates later once the release is published and work on the next update begins. I won't be posting an update until the release goes out so I can use as much of the next week or so as I can working on the game. It will be a busy time outside of game development as I have an out of town trip this weekend and my kids start their school year next week. But I am bringing my laptop with me since most of the remaining work can be done away from my main PC.

That is all I have for now. I am excited that finally all the hard work is coming together and I hope you all enjoy the effort put into this update. The outline for the 0.5.0 release after this is already sorted out and I will also be working on that along with the Early Access Steam release soon. Have a great weekend everyone and thank you all for your support!