Keystone Updates 03 Oct 2024

WOOHOO!

I'm very happy about this months updates. I made an amazing leap forward in many regards.

The library interior is nearly complete with it's foundational design. It's not 100%, but it is 100% designed and ready for polish. I also have a ton of content ready.

1 - Lobby: Speak with Charlotte, the information desk head. Check your Achievements and Statistics. And soon we will have the Guest Book available in the lobby too.

2 - Reading Room: Books, Stories, and Inspiration. Books are the main game and adventure of Keystone Library. Stories are "just reading" - actual short stories for reading. Inspiration is content to inspire you to read more.

3 - Terrace: The terrace is a small outdoor place just for fun. Nothing here makes sense. You can type commands to make special effects pop up on the screen. Read a poem. And in the future there will be a "PET" you can play with and send on missions.

4 - Management: In management you have Clive to speak with regarding upgrades for the library. And in the Facility menu you can do upgrades and customizations for the library.

5 - Great Hall: There is a room called the Great Hall, imagine a giant hall full of doors. Each door is a potential room addition you can add to the library. Add a cafe! An arcade! A disco! A restaurant! It's a fun feature and a good place to add more mini-games.

So all of these things are in place. The only thing remaining now is DESIGN. Every room is basically a photo I grabbed online, and with some boxes slapped over it to serve as panels. So I have to break out an art tool and start drawing everything more professionally.

I also did some code clean up. As of this date none of the special effects are super impressive. That's partially because everything is a bit of a rush, mostly placeholders. I had functions slapped all over the place to make effects on the fly here and there. Well, over the past few days I cleaned that all up into one, simple, beautiful, easy-to-use effects system.

So that's a relief and very exciting, because now hopefully I can really code up some really fun effects.

Finally, I have created a very detailed schedule and plan for the entire game. In this schedule I detailed which features should be ready by what date. And I will continue working on that monthly. For example, I plan to have everything mentioned above completely designed, functional, and then I will launch again to Steam. After that there are more items to be done before another launch in Dec, then March. And on like that until about the end of 2025 - I think. At which point I might be able to officially launch the game out of EA and start publishing on other platforms.

That's all for now. Full steam ahead!