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[nenjin]

I think better art and sound is what has the potential to draw in people that aren't just hardcore strategy gamers...and make TWS a run away hit.

[ScriptWolf]

king any chance of a ETA on the demo ?

[Delta Foxtrot]

king any chance of a ETA on the demo ?

The last page (50 post/page) has quite a few mentions of that. Basically:

No ETA yet - I know it's frustrating.

I cannot say with certainty that it will be out before the close of KS, and every day that I can't say it than it becomes more likely that it won't.

I don't think things have changed enough in the last two days to warrant much more than that.

[KingDinosaurGames]

king any chance of a ETA on the demo ?

The current ETA is just a giant sad-face, I expected things to slow down second and third weeks but they're just getting more intense (which is of course also a great thing).  We should be receiving two big news bumps this week which make Procedural a real possibility.

I think better art and sound is what has the potential to draw in people that aren't just hardcore strategy gamers...and make TWS a run away hit.

Yep, not only is this our thought but we have been in contact with a lot of interested and very helpful industry people who have launched hugely successful games.  They echo what you are saying - that if we just get the graphics to the next level this could be a massive hit.  It was never our intention to reach that far, we mostly wanted to make an in-depth strategy/simulation that let you feel like you were a stereotypical manipulative evil power - but the more successful the game is the deeper we can delve into the simulation so we certainly aren't adverse to the game reaching that larger market.

We're debating whether or not to put in additional stretch goals, if we do they will most likely be asset-related (our Programming Dev-hours are essentially all spoken for at this point).  Before we made any kind of decision on that we would return to the community to see what interests people the most, be it VO, more races, an underworld map, or something else.

[sjm9876]

Tbh, for additional stretch goals I'd like to see more agent types and AI types than anything else. Maybe more quests that can pop up, or random events. Shouldn't be too hard given all you've said on modding, but still adds a lot to the game.

[KingDinosaurGames]

Tbh, for additional stretch goals I'd like to see more agent types and AI types than anything else. Maybe more quests that can pop up, or random events. Shouldn't be too hard given all you've said on modding, but still adds a lot to the game.

An agent pack might be feasible - but we try to be very unique with the agents mechanics (adding something new to the engine) so they actually require development.   

AI is probably out of the question given the development time required, but I don't think you'll be disappointed in the variety of AI we are now delivering.  With Rival Old Ones, Gods and Religions, and Endless Simulation we have even more variety to the objectives that the AI pursues and the methods they follow. 

We could do Quests and Random events, but to be honest we are constantly adding new ones anyway - we allocate time in our daily schedule so that every day we are adding at least one new Event and one new Quest.  It would feel disingenuous to add it as a stretch goal unless we were pledging to add assets or bring on a new content creator.

[Romanul]

As far I'm concerned we could do without a demo. I don't see the need to spend the resources on it since the game has been successfully funded and that it will be available through early access on Steam . Again, that just my opinion.

It might be a bit premature to talk about other stretch goals, there's still a lot of ground to cover until we reach procedural generation. However, it's still a lot of fun to do so. I don't care so much about graphics. I saw above the opinion of the experts but that's still the way I feel. I would like to know more about the game features that were scraped during development because of money constraints etc. So far religion and gods were a pretty good idea to say the least. Maybe you had a few other ideas that didn't make it and that are worth developing.

[nenjin]

I'm with you on the demo, personally, but it's been said often enough now it's an expectation on many people's part. TWS seems farther along than a lot of Kickstarter games, but that said, I've seen some games do a demo and get caught up fixing the demo and making it playable, when they should be plowing ahead to their release version instead. And having played enough Early Access games now, I'm starting to regret touching games early at all. Because I end up not revisiting them for a solid year after.

[Cthulhu]

My brain knows no demo might be for the best but my heart has been itching for a demo since the beginning of august.  It's tough!

[SharpKris]

I dont have any feeling towards better graphics, in the end they're just graphics, the things that keep good games going are modability, content and good core mechanics

[KingDinosaurGames]

As far I'm concerned we could do without a demo. I don't see the need to spend the resources on it since the game has been successfully funded and that it will be available through early access on Steam . Again, that just my opinion.

It might be a bit premature to talk about other stretch goals, there's still a lot of ground to cover until we reach procedural generation. However, it's still a lot of fun to do so. I don't care so much about graphics. I saw above the opinion of the experts but that's still the way I feel. I would like to know more about the game features that were scraped during development because of money constraints etc. So far religion and gods were a pretty good idea to say the least. Maybe you had a few other ideas that didn't make it and that are worth developing.

Yep, I completely agree with every point you make.

It's really hard to talk about what was lost in the game because of the prototyping stage, where the essence of the game shifted a lot before coming into final focus as That Which Sleeps.  If we ignore the prototyping stage and set the marker at about a year and two months ago, the first thing to go was Multiplayer - but that was less a feature and more a design choice that let us go into so much more simulation detail than if we tried to make the game support multiple players. 

Cities originally had a lot more detail then they have now, we were going to have a very simple district system that let you slowly corrupt areas of the city, wage guild and thief wars, and be able to secure a district as your stronghold.  Heroes would have to retake districts from you, slowly fighting for control.  It was actually a very fun system and pretty lightweight for the depth that was offered, but the supporting elements to really actualize it would have cost far too much - and the asset requirement was fairly high.

The next thing to go was the Agents playing out their unique desires - originally you had agents similar to units like in a normal Civ game (recruit multiple peddler types) and then you could bring into being some of your Forsaken (that term was obviously meant to change), who were extremely powerful and could perform Schemes that affected multiple POIs, but required support to do so.  More critically, these Forsaken may or may not do exactly what you told them to - they might fight against eachother, gather support for themselves, or seek ancient artifacts.  You would have to control them through punishment or enticement to keep them in line.  We somewhat regain this functionality with the Lesser Evils.

We then took a critical look at how we were building out influence and corruption - this was back when we had corruption as a currency for all actions.  At this stage we had the entire political system charted out per government, similar (though not as complex and certainly not as realized at this point) to Crusader Kings.   We went through the situations an Agent would ideally find himself in, and realized that without really developing these minor family members and political figures it didn't make sense to have them, as an Agent operates at a much higher level of political intrigue.  There are remnants of this in the advisers and immediate family of the royal family you will encounter, most notably with the Barons of a Feudal system.

After that we lost Religions, for reasons I've gone over in depth.  Very excited to have it return.

The underworld was taken out, we had a very simple extra map similar to Master of Magic, but it was meant to represent the caverns and people that lived underground.  The benefit of taming it was that you could move your forces quickly between POIs, under the water, and circumventing armies.  It ended up not entirely making sense, would have required even more graphics for the map, and at the time we didn't think we'd be supporting underworld races (though we have since implemented most of them).

We had animated combat on the map itself, so instead of the battle screen you see here the units actually fought.  It took too long, and the animation requirement actually restricted our ability to diversify heroes - so that was removed and replaced with the current, much faster, battle system.

There's doubtless more but these are some of the larger ones off the top of my head.

[rylen]

While you are talking about art assets, how distinct are the heroes and can we visually follow them through their careers?

[KingDinosaurGames]

My brain knows no demo might be for the best but my heart has been itching for a demo since the beginning of august.  It's tough!

Haha, don't worry - "no demo" if we go that route will still result in a demo, I'd have to talk scheduling but we'd either release it right after the Scenario Viewer going out to the Beta Testers (1 week after KS ends) or we'd just release the Beta Tester release (2 months after KS ends) slimmed down to a demo. 

The gain to be had is we don't back to the feature lock that we put in... almost a month ago? More than a month ago?  Things have gotten a little messy since the KS started.  So we ignore that, push out fresh release based on what was fixed and move ahead to the Beta Release.   It means the Beta Release is accelerated but it costs us the demo. 

On the other hand we fix everything after the feature lock, we release a demo ASAP - it costs us some time in regards to the Beta Release but gains us exposure.  However, what we're hearing from people is that demo exposure is irrelevant in the final calculations and it's best to just focus on iterating with your team until release - which makes us think tighter integration of the Beta Tier team with us is probably the best path.

[KingDinosaurGames]

While you are talking about art assets, how distinct are the heroes and can we visually follow them through their careers? How different will two heroes with the same class be?

Classes share portraits, which creates some confusion - but we do want interchangeable components on the Map Asset for heroes, so you should be able to see at a glance that they are different.  This is NOT locked down however as we will be moving into Map Asset art direction with the Beta Tester team right after KS - it may be that a "higher quality" art per Class is more desirable then a lower quality but easier to see at a glance difference.

Even if the art does not differentiate on the Map, a mouseover will tell you what you need to know - and additional icons such as the flag of the Adventuring Group or their current cause may help.  You can also check the action history of a Hero (if you have infiltration) which helps put the pieces together. 

EDIT: Just a quick edit, currently interchangeable components are the way they game is programmed - so this is currently supported in the game.

[nenjin]

I've articulated how I'm feeling about playing games before they're done, in .jpg