Silk Games

Weekly NEStalgia News Updates

Pyramid OverworldOne of my big struggles this past year has been in communicating my development progress (and for many months last summer/fall, the lack thereof). Especially when it comes to the Key of the Exiles content expansion, I’ve felt self conscious posting previews etc. in the face of so many delays. My reasoning has been that long time players probably don’t want to preview what’s in the works; they just want to play it already.

The feedback that I’ve been receiving, however, runs contrary to that. Even in the absence of a clear release date, many oldbies are curious about the expansion and want to know more about it. NEStalgia also continues to sell really well on Steam, meaning that there are lots of new players discovering the game every month who want to see more signs of progress from the dev team.

All in all, I think that most players want to hear from me on a regular basis – even if I don’t have much to report. Therefore, my plan this summer is to drop the “only show up when you have something to say” approach and trying something new.

From here on out I’ll be posting weekly development blog updates every Thursday. I can’t promise that the weekly posts will always be full of exciting new information, but players will at least have the opportunity to see what I’m working on and ask questions. The question that I have for all of you is this: What do you want me to show and/or write about?

I’m wary of spoilers when it comes to the expansion, but I’d like to show screenshots of the new areas and at least general descriptions of what’s going on in them. I also have some back-end updates in the works that could drastically increase the size of servers. If you have something else that you’d like me to address (no matter how big or how small), leave a comment on this post or future weekly update posts, and I’ll try to cover all requests.

The first weekly update will be posted this coming Thursday. In the meantime, here are several new screenshots from the expansion for you to digest:

Caption Testing 123
The first line of the “Back to Balzack” cutscene where your journey picks up.

Out to Sea
Sailing out to never before seen lands! This is the deck of your new ship.

Test
The Pyramid of Higaza is home to many dangerous traps…

Test
The main door that you’ll need the “Key of the Exiles” for.

Posted

in

, ,

by

Silk

Tags:

Comments

24 responses to “Weekly NEStalgia News Updates”

  1. deadfool Avatar
    deadfool

    Your ranger sprite seems to be different than the usual sprite layout.

    Also, will we get teaser shots for the guild ships?

    1. Silk Avatar
      Silk

      I’ll make a note to cover guild ships soon, thanks!

  2. blacksniper Avatar
    blacksniper

    Good to see some activity, Silk! It certainly doesn’t take much to keep people interested in the development process of the game, so don’t feel pressured into giving away too much. Take the Starbound blog as a for instance, they do really good activity updates and often show content that never even makes stable release, but it gives the community a lot to speculate on and a launching point for discussion.

    For me I’d like to know what you meant by an increased server size, like are we getting just a player cap bump or are you considering some sort of mega server comprised of all the servers we have now? For that matter I know save bloat has been a pretty big problem for this game over the years so little things had to be slowly changed to help relieve lag issues (the ranch being cut a few pages), would these changes help to alleviate those old problems and let us as players get more companions recruited or even finally have more than 16 characters per account?

    Oh, and do I spy one of the new classes?

    1. Silk Avatar
      Silk

      If it pans out the way I’m hoping, we’ll be looking at a mega-server with shared savefiles and different instances of the game. This will allow us to open and close server instances as needed, rather than worrying about starting up entirely new servers and then merging them later, etc. I’ll probably be focusing on this topic in the weekly update either this week or next.

      And yup, I’m using the Bard class in these screenshots.

  3. jeff Avatar
    jeff

    Oh, having some news is always nice.
    About future updates…mh, what about a “Monster of the Month” update where you present a single new monster from the expansion (it may include its companion infos, too)?

    (also, it makes a nice pun)

    1. Silk Avatar
      Silk

      Thanks for the suggestion. I think that at least covering some of the new minibosses in that way would be cool.

      1. jeff Avatar
        jeff

        Well, even normal ones could be nice, seeing as we would also get informations about new companions that way. And they probably don’t end up being too spoilerish in doing so.
        It could also be tied with some other update. For example, we already saw some companions from these screenshots, and while one is an old miniboss, the other definitely is a new monster (a sort of gust monster, it would seem).

  4. lordrith Avatar
    lordrith

    Love what I see, how about them Pirate ships though?

    1. Silk Avatar
      Silk

      I’m way behind on implementing those, though I’ve made progress this past month. The groundwork has been laid, but I still need to communicate with all of the contributors to actually get their icons and other info.

      1. lordrith Avatar
        lordrith

        Fair enough. Will we be allowed to have a small amount of banter before the encounter starts?
        I was thinking of something similar to when you fight Rehgor. (Although preferably 3-4 lines of Dialogue)

  5. Mahn Avatar
    Mahn

    Wooo! Updates! Thanks much Silk. Time to wait longer. =)

  6. lumino Avatar
    lumino

    I absolute think this is a good idea. A little bit of communication goes a long way to maintaining good PR and confidence.

    Out of things I am curious about, I think I’ll start with our ship. It looks rather simple and small right now, but I imagine that’s going to be something we can change in the future. Maybe by gold, or maybe by a quest chain. Hell, maybe both! If you need a topic to discuss, I’d vote for that.

    -Lumino

    1. Silk Avatar
      Silk

      You’re right, you will be able to upgrade your ship quite a bit (via gold). The upgrades can actually change the structure and layout of the ship as well. All of that would make for a good blog post with lots of screenshots, so I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.

  7. silentz Avatar
    silentz

    Fantastic. Thanks, Silk!

    -Z

  8. zool Avatar
    zool

    Heya.

    Apparently looks like I’m a weird one and content enough to wait :p

    Think main point I have from my viewpoint is just ensuring there is sufficient spammed notice of when update is ‘imminent’ so have time to get back into the swing of things and be ready for when new content does drop. (and probably play test some of it maybes :p)

    You keep taking as long as it needs to get things right, and don’t get pressured into rushing it out too soon. (With the caveat of not turning into 3D Realms level of waiting :-D)

    1. Silk Avatar
      Silk

      Thanks! I’m the same way as you are when it comes to games that I’m following; I don’t care much for previews, and I basically just want to know whenever the update happens.

      I’ll be sure to make it known far and wide when the update is imminent.

  9. Sarm Avatar
    Sarm

    Yeah, I think the ship’s look seems a little off from the screenshot. The cabin seems to be 2/3rds of the ship’s total size and it looks a little goofy as a result. :p

  10. jumier Avatar
    jumier

    Thanks for the update Silk!

  11. jozeppi Avatar
    jozeppi

    I would like to know: if one teleports via recall or a hearthstone, will the ship come along as well like in DW3, or will it be left where it was disembarked?

  12. kerblam Avatar
    kerblam

    I think this will help keep NES interest piqued 🙂 any plans to rebalance and release the 4th of July event?

  13. mindoom Avatar
    mindoom

    Good idea!
    Even if it not some full of exciting new information,
    i will be happy to read what going on ^^
    Also,that’s a nice flûte.

    Thanks!

  14. Quinn Avatar
    Quinn

    Hi Silk. I have a question. Will you be adding sea encounters? That would be really cool.
    Thanks for all the work you`ve been doing. This game gets better and better.

  15. brucey Avatar
    brucey

    Can’t wait!

  16. TheRealRaptor Avatar
    TheRealRaptor

    are we eventually going to be able to recruit the mini-bosses?

Leave a Reply