Hey!

So it's been a bit, I know. I really am sorry for leaving folks hanging for so long. Unfortunately my life's been incredibly busy; I was running approximately 10-hour days for 6 days a week. This, as you can imagine, did not leave much time for games work, hence the delay. That said, I'm off that clock and I've got a bit more free time going forward, and while I can't just steamroll all the work like I did when I was ignoring my homework back in college, I should still be able to get more done.

With all that said, I'd like to get out a couple of announcments!

Announcements

First, Quinn's stepped down from Songs for the Dusk. She announced this some time ago, but unfortunately I was too disconnected to share the message on time; still, I wanted to cover it in an official announcement. Her contributions to the game have been tremendously valuable, and I'm extremely appreciative of the work she's put in thus far! She'll be credited with game design, system development, layout design, and visual identity going forward; expect to see these crediting updates in v0.6 on.

Second, I've tapped my friend Annie Johnston-Glick for a map of Tamaris and its various regions. You might know Annie's maps of Partizan and the Divine Principality from RPG show Friends at the Table (a work I'm sure most of you are familiar with), but even if this is your first time seeing them, I'm sure you can imagine why I chose her. I don't recall if I've mentioned before that v0.6 is primarily a setting update, but if I haven't, well: it is. Annie's maps are going to form the centerpiece of it, and I'll be filling out a ton of gaps in the setting, too.

Specific plans for v0.6 include:

• Annie's map
• New landmarks and factions for every region — a total of six of each for every region in Tamaris
• A major overhaul of the crafting system, based on the Clockwork rules I released for free some time ago
• Bugfixes and rules updates for anything that needs fixing between now and then
• A quickstart guide
• Possible touchups to the magnitude and expert systems which should hopefully make them easier to understand and use

Those are the biggest announcements, but if you'd like to get a preview of some of this stuff, please read on!

Dev Progress

It's far too soon to announce a timeline, but I would like to show off some of the progress I've made as well as some of Annie's preliminary work.

A fair amount of work's already been done on the setting updates: the new landmarks have all been written, and they'll be found on the map once it updates. Annie's map work is gorgeous, and I'm extremely looking forward to the finished product.

In terms of factions, I'm primarily in the concepting stage right now: getting down sketches of groups to fill in the gaps of places like Malvarose, the Starfire Pelagic, and Pinelocke. Once that's done, I'll be moving to filling out the faction details for each group.

As far as mechanical updates are concerned: with Clockwork released, the bulk of the mechanics updates are not only finished, but — well — public, though it's worth noting that the SFTD-specific implementation of these rules has already been written. Magnitude and the expert system are harder to give updates on — design work is the work that's most prone to ballooning in complexity unexpectedly, and I don't want to make uncertain promises at this stage. I'll have more on this as in the future!

And last but far from the least, let's cover the quickstart guide. The sample missions have been written for sometime (I've run a few of them as oneshots, actually!), so the content is largely done here as well. It needs some editing and layout, but prepping it for release should be a fairly quick process.

Previews

The Crystal Cradle and Resolution Lake, two of the new locations from the Meridian Valley.

The Sundial Pragma and the Helix Nine, factions from Malvarose and the Starfire Pelagic respectively.

Looking Forward

I hope you enjoyed! I'm really excited to be getting back on track; I've missed the chance to work on this and share updates with everyone. I'm tentatively hoping to try and get a devlog out this time next month too, even if I don't have a patch to show off; I'd really like to be able to keep folks updated on what's going on with the game. Songs for the Dusk has a long way yet to go, and I'm looking forward to sharing more and more of it going forward.