Mythos: Book One [v.1.0.0 Rus / v.1.1.0.0 Eng] (2021) (Rus/Eng) [Ren'Py] [Linux] [Android] [Completed] [Nine of Swords]

Это обновление выходит на день раньше обычного и без рендеринга из-за некоторых действительно неприятных вещей из личной жизни, о которых я расскажу чуть позже. Что касается обновлений игры, мне осталось отрендерить только сексуальную сцену, а затем (после того, как я выясню, как будут работать другие достижения), пятую главу отправят бета-тестерам.

Так что же не так?

Вчера вечером мы получили сообщение о том, что наш хороший друг находится в отделении интенсивной терапии с инфекцией, и дела «выглядят не очень хорошо». Мы, естественно, вчера вечером пошли туда, чтобы поддержать ее и ее мужа. Сегодня мы в очередной раз провели вечер в больнице с семьей и несколькими близкими друзьями, но муж официально поставил ее под «не реанимировать» — в общем, мы попрощались. Завтра я уже ушел с работы, и как только она умрет, я знаю, что буду в довольно разбитом состоянии, поэтому я хотел сообщить вам всем эту новость.

Спасибо за понимание.

Примечание: мои проблемы с пищеварением, кажется, прояснились — по крайней мере, на данный момент. Кажется, для меня это повторяющаяся вещь.

Прогресс сцены в пятой главе: Все сцены написаны и закодированы!

Fairy Tail, часть вторая – завершено!
Выполнение ежедневных заданий – завершено!
Мы тебя закачаем – завершено!
Лобстер Thermidor aux Crevettes с соусом Морне, подается по-провансальски, с луком-шалотом и баклажанами, украшенный трюфельным паштетом, бренди и жареным яйцом сверху — и спамом — готово !
К черту Эндрю Ллойда Вебера – завершено!
Я выбираю тебя! – Полно!
Секс-сцена – Рендеринг
Глава пятая Прочее:

Достижения пятой главы (1/4)
Безымянная Мара Рендер
Канонический корабль
Мое сердце будет продолжаться – завершено!
Порно для поджигателей
Сохраните легенды живыми!

Девять

I didn’t have time to make a special render for this week’s update, sorry! I had a lot of real-life stuff to catch up on, as well as working on the game. Plus, immediately after I get off work today we’re going to see Wakanda Forever, so I’m in a real Friday time crunch this week.

But let’s talk about Mythos! Chapter Three launched with out any huge issues, which is a first – normally the Patreon/SubscribeStar early access reveals a ton of bugs that slipped through beta and the public release ends up being an X.1 or something. There’s just a really annoying persistent bug at the end of Chapter Two regarding the game telling you that you slept with someone that you didn’t. I may just remove that line entirely because it keeps misbehaving!

However, there is going to be a 3.1 release relatively soon! There’s going to be some changes to Investigation Mode (as I discussed in my last week’s letter), and a few tiny tweaks. I may add a fifth achievement, too! I’m undecided on that.

Chapter Four outlining has already begun, though I’m faced with a dilemma. An idea I had was that the player would pick who to investigate, which means some scenes would be left out if a player decided they didn’t wanna look into a particular character at all. This presents several issues, though:

If a player makes precisely the wrong choices, the mystery could be literally impossible to solve. If Suspect A is the killer, and the player investigates B, C, D, and E, they could get to the end and realize they’d missed a ton of evidence. In an actual investigation that’s normal, but I need to walk a balance between a good story and an entertaining game.
I’d be writing all these scenes, but the player would only see a few of them. That means the update would feel shorter to players than would maybe justify how long they were waiting to play it. Granted, I’m sure some people are going to play through all the variations, but I don’t want people to feel any sort of “grind” if they just want a story.
I don’t want to make the game too “difficult”. The reaction to Investigation Mode has made me kinda think that maybe I was presenting too much challenge.
This is just something I’m still working out. I want there to be player agency, but providing too much would mean writing scenes that will go unseen (which, to the players who don’t see those scenes, it’s just wasted development time).

One last thing I want to address about the game is the animations. As you know (or at least you noticed by now), I’m not doing animations going forward. This could change if I get laid off at work or someting else happens that gives me a ton of free time, but for now let’s just assume the sex animations are a thing of the past. I was never happy with how most of them turned out, and some recent reviews sorta reinforced the idea that they detracted from the game more than enhanced it. I’m probably going back to remove the animations from the earlier chapters so that players won’t be expecting them going forward.

Speaking of reviews – please leave them? I see on certain sites tons of people talking about the game, but not actually leaving a review in the reviews section. This would help me out immensely!

Remember I always say that I’ll never give a release date until the release is done? Well… it’s done. It’s all done. Everything that needs to be in the chapter has been put in, tested, broken, fixed, redone, and finalized. It’s going to be releasing to everone on Halloween! Patreon and SubscribeStar folks will get it sooner, and they’ll have their own separate, special post about it.

For the 23rd time, I again want to apologize for how long this took. It was over a year. When I finished Chapter Two, I had set myself an internal goal to have Chapter Three out by Valentine’s Day.

So, what happened?

For those of you who haven’t been following along (or just forgot – it’s been a year), there’s been a whole lot of bullshit that hit me in 2022. If you don’t care about all this… well, you got the release date, so the rest of this is fluff.

Two COVID strikes, one for me, one for Morgana. It was miserable, and I hope neither of us ever get it again.
The California trip to meet my neice and nephew. They’re adorable, but I hate travel, particularly air travel, and particularly when we go to this super-isolated tiny town that’s an hour drive from… almost literally anything else.
My dog died. People who know me know that I love animals so, so much. Every animal. But my dog was just the sweetest little girl, and even though she was old (anywhere from 14 to 16, we were never sure) it was still a very sudden decline in health that had us shocked on top of sad. I’m still kinda tearing up thinking about it.
My grandmother died. Yes, I typically care more about an animal dying than a human, but I loved my grandmother dearly. This was also a huge family shakeup – everything in our family happened at her house. We still have no idea how the holidays are going to go, this year. To loop back onto a previous issue – her funeral fell dring the California trip, and my family insisted that we still go on the trip despite missing the funeral, which… yeah, more turmoil.
The pharmacy debacle. I was on antidepressants, but our lovely pharmacy insurance fucked shit up, which meant my prescription got delayed. Anybody who’s been on any maintenance mental medication probably knows that having your supply very suddenly cut off for a week can do bad shit to your brain. It was not a fun week.
The doctor debacle. The second time I had to get my meds refilled, we learned that my doctor suddenly… stopped working at her practice. Nobody else at the practice took our insurance, so we had to scramble to find a new doctor (which is such a tedious trial). This time, however, I had plenty of notice – I “tapered” off my medication to avoid withdrawal effects. This lead to be… now no longer being on antidepressants, and I actually feel fine. I guess I’m “fixed”, now?
On top of all that, I think one change in my life that I underestimated is Morgana’s new (no longer new, really) job. She previously worked retail, which meant that there were many nights where she’d be working and I would be home alone, able to completely focus. Now she works overnights. That means when I’m getting off work, she’s waking up. Then she goes to work when I go to bed. So that whole block of time I used to have in solutide now has me trying to work on Mythos while she’s also present, and usually trying to talk to me. Eventually I had to tell her that I need absolute solitude and silence to get anything done (it’s too easy to knock me out of my “groove”), and she understood.

So… that’s been my year. I do not anticipate Chapter Four taking nearly as long as Chapter Three. But I also didn’t anticipate Chapter Three taking this long; life just likes to fuck me.

Regardless, I hope you all look forward to the Chapter Three release as much as I do. After it’s been out for a week and I see people’s reactions, I can start the work on Chapter Four!

Keep the Legends alive!

– Nine

Hello, Mythies! This is Nine, and I’m actually gonna write this post myself since it’s some pretty big news, as well as me trying to clarify some stuff because it seems like people are confused by the whole “Gender Canon” thing.
I’ll start with the big news – the final beta test build of Chapter Three is going out to the testing team today. I put out a call on my Discord to expand the team, and since the bulk of the story and the most intensive parts of the code were already beta tested over the past two months, hopefully that means you’ll be seeing a release in the near future.
Yeah, that’s right. A release. I’ll do an overview of the trials and tribulations around Chapter Three’s progress when I write the release post, but I don’t forsee the future chapters taking quite this long unless I somehow have another extraordinarily bad year.
Or, perhaps, I’ll have a really good year, which would let me quit my job and take on Mythos as a full-time job, letting me get the updates out even faster! This is doubtful, unless I get like… a lot of Patreon and SubscribeStar support. Health insurance is expensive.

Now on to something else. Or rather… back to something else: the Gender Canon blog post. It looks like there’s still some confusion around what I was trying to say, and I think I may have over-explained it. I’m going to try to summarize this as succinctly as possible:
When the Main Character of Mythos: Book One is referred to in anything outside of the game (stories or comics or whatever else I create), it will be as Kylie Nelson.
That’s really it.
Here’s some important points:
I am not taking away your choice of gender in this (or future) games
The things you do in your own playthrough aren’t invalidated
Future games will have prompts where you can “fill in the blanks” so that your Book One MC will be whatever you chose
If you’re familiar with how Darth Revan was approached in the Knights of the Old Republic canon, that’s exactly what I’m doing here. They could have never written the novel “Revan” without making a “gender canon” choice just like I’m doing, as Revan could be anything the player chose.
The game is 20 years old, I’d better not hear anybody upset about spoilers about freakin’ Darth Revan.
So, in summary – play the game however you want, but more importantly:
The Chapter Three Beta is in the final testing stage!!!!
Keep the Legends Alive!

– Nine

Good morning, Mythies!

I’m not sure if it’s the ginko suppliments I’m taking or what, but I’ve been hyper-fucking-focused these past two weeks. If you take a peek down at the checklist you’ll see what that means – there are only four scenes left to render! Granted, I saved the two “biggest ones” for last, but that still means Chapter Three is nearly done!
What comes next? Well, after all the renders are done I need to put the music into the proper places, which means I need to finish the bits of music I still haven’t. I also need to do some transitions. However, I do have to warn you, the transitions in Chapter Three may not be quite as flashy as they were in the previous two chapters, just because of the way the story flows in this one. I doubt that’s even a big deal, but I figure it’s worth a heads up.
I also still haven’t done the title screen. I actually forgot about it until I looked over the list again, and it’s always been something Morgana had done. This time it’s all on me, though! I have an idea of what to do, I just gotta open up After Effects and do it.
In short, Chapter Three is like… ominously close. I’m still not going to give any dates or even estimates (because I see too many other devs get torn to shreds for missing their self-imposed deadlines), but “soon” isn’t just a funny buzzword at this point! It’s really soon!

Chapter Three General Progress:
Side Image Re-Revamp 163 images – COMPLETE!
Story Flow Chart – COMPLETE!
UI Improvements – COMPLETE!
New Music Tracks
As Above, So Below – COMPLETE!
Geraldine – COMPLETE!
Seventy-Five Year Trauma – COMPLETE!
Modred’s Legacy – COMPLETE!
Codito Ergo Sum – COMPLETE!
The Dark Depths of Despair in my Blackened Soul (I’m Dead) – COMPLETE!
???
Learning After Effects – COMPLETE!
Introduction Scene by Nine – COMPLETE!
Creation of New Characters – COMPLETE!
New Mythos Logo (commissioned) – COMPLETE!
Chapter Three Title Screen
Organization of Daz Assets – COMPLETE!
Achievements (4/4)
No Takesbacks! – COMPLETE!
Trust No One – COMPLETE!
Friendship is Magic – COMPLETE!
The Stinger – COMPLETE!
New Opening Title Sequence – COMPLETE!
Integration of “Tales from Mythos” – COMPLETE!

Chapter Three Scene Progress:
Scene: Apologies to the Serling Estate – COMPLETE!
Scene: A Little Help from my Friends – COMPLETE!
Scene: Yeah, About That… – COMPLETE!
Scene: It Goes to 11 – COMPLETE!
Scene: Shantay, You Stay – COMPLETE!
Scene: Your Call is Very Important to Us – COMPLETE!
Scene: Reach Out and Touch Someone – COMPLETE!
Scene: Fancy – COMPLETE!
Scene: The Lyin’ Bitch and her Wardrobe – COMPLETE!
Scene: Cry Little Sister – COMPLETE!
Scene: Touched by an Angel — COMPLETE!
Scene: My Immortal — COMPLETE!
Scene: Ventrilo Harassment — COMPLETE!
Scene: It’s Been Revoked — COMPLETE!
Scene: Who Ya Gonna Call? — COMPLETE!
Scene: Magic, the Gathering — COMPLETE!
Scenes Still In Progress:
Fuck the Police (Need Renders)
Ah, My Goddess! (Need Renders)
Grumpy Old Men (Need Renders)
Werther’s Original (Need Renders)
How Many Roads Must a Man Walk Down? (42)

Mythies, ahoy!
My birthday was Wednesday, but today and tomorrow are the days we’re actually celebrating it! Going to Fogo de Chao today (a steakhouse that serves unlimited meat!), out with friends tonight, and then going to the Rennaisance Festival tomorrow. Oops, I broke the rules by talking about my personal life before the game in the update! Welp, it’s too late to change it now!
The Mythos progress is boring, but not because I didn’t get a lot done! I didn’t get to finish “Touched By An Angel” Friday night like I’d hoped. It’s a multi-character scene so I didn’t get the last render done until Monday. Then I burned through “My Immortal” pretty quickly, so now I’ve begun on “Magic, the Gathering!”
With me not having animations to worry about, I’d say progress is looking really good! My testers have been seeing images of the progress as I go, and none have spoken up about anything glaring yet, so I’m forseeing smooth sailing for the forseeable future!
Now I gotta get off the computer so that I can make myself presentable and shovel a bunch of steak into my face!

Chapter Three General Progress:
Side Image Re-Revamp 163 images – COMPLETE!
Story Flow Chart – COMPLETE!
UI Improvements – COMPLETE!
New Music Tracks
As Above, So Below – COMPLETE!
Geraldine – COMPLETE!
Seventy-Five Year Trauma – COMPLETE!
Modred’s Legacy – COMPLETE!
Codito Ergo Sum – COMPLETE!
The Dark Depths of Despair in my Blackened Soul (I’m Dead) – COMPLETE!
Herja’s Elegy
???
Learning After Effects – COMPLETE!
Introduction Scene by Nine – COMPLETE!
Creation of New Characters – COMPLETE!
New Mythos Logo (commissioned) – COMPLETE!
Chapter Three Title Screen
Organization of Daz Assets – COMPLETE!
Achievements (4/4)
No Takesbacks! – COMPLETE!
Trust No One – COMPLETE!
Friendship is Magic – COMPLETE!
The Stinger – COMPLETE!
New Opening Title Sequence – COMPLETE!
Integration of “Tales from Mythos” – COMPLETE!

Chapter Three Scene Progress:
Scene: Apologies to the Serling Estate – COMPLETE!
Scene: A Little Help from my Friends – COMPLETE!
Scene: Yeah, About That… – COMPLETE!
Scene: It Goes to 11 – COMPLETE!
Scene: Shantay, You Stay – COMPLETE!
Scene: Your Call is Very Important to Us – COMPLETE!
Scene: Reach Out and Touch Someone – COMPLETE!
Scene: Fancy – COMPLETE!
Scene: The Lyin’ Bitch and her Wardrobe – COMPLETE!
Scene: Cry Little Sister – COMPLETE!
Scene: Touched by an Angel — COMPLETE!
Scene: My Immortal — COMPLETE!
Scenes Still In Progress:
Fuck the Police (Need Renders)
Ah, My Goddess! (Need Renders)
Magic, the Gathering (Rendering)
Grumpy Old Men (Need Renders)
Werther’s Original (Need Renders)
Ventrilo Harassment (Need Renders)
It’s Been Revoked (Need Renders)
Who Ya Gonna Call? (Need Renders)
Excessive Meat Consumption — Imminent
Keep the Legends Alive.

– Nine