[previewyoutube=V6vFcs6MvVA;full][/previewyoutube] [h3]Seasons Greetings, Industrialists![/h3] As we are wrapping up 2024, let's unwrap some of the accomplishments and major developments for Gilded Destiny! All of us at Aquila want to express our gratitude to all of you for being part of our growing community over the last year—from followers on social media, active members of our Discord, content creators we have worked with, our backers on Kickstarter and Modian, and the few pre-Alpha testers who have provided us valuable feedback. We are humbled, encouraged, and excited by all of the feedback we continue to receive about the game development. Looking forward to next year, our goal is simple—we plan to make sure we have playable loop and polish it to the point to where it would be fun. All of the major features we want are in the game already. However, now is the time where we need to focus on balancing and refinement, and redesign as needed. if you have any questions or comments, 'let it snow' in the comments below! With that, we would like to thank all of you, and wish you a Gilded Christmas and New Year. Also, Check out our eighth Alpha Roadmap Update: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2189430/view/4445711438670989141 [i]You can find the full script for the Dev Diary below.[/i] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Let us know if you have any questions or feedback over on Discord. And be sure to wishlist us to stay up to date! [b]Join our Discord community today![/b] https://discord.gg/3d77T9gxDF Speaking of Discord, we have started rolling the Discord roles to our Kickstarter backers! If you have not yet completed the Kickstarter survey we sent out, please do so. If you have filled it out, and are not yet in our Discord server, join and say hello in the main channel to let us know you're there to claim your role! Our Kickstarter officially ended in April, and brought in a total of £31,974 GBP, which is 159% of our goal! We offer the most gilded appreciation to all of our backers and our community. Your support, positive feedback and encouragement, and our growing vibrant community of industrialists motivates more than ever to make Gilded Destiny the most moddable, immersive, fun, and grandest GSG out there. You can access the survey on the Kickstarter website: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gildeddestiny/gilded-destiny-a-grand-strategy-game?ref=bjurrh Finally, if you are interested in what we do and want to join us but do not see a relevant job, send us your resume at jobs@aquilainteractive.io! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [h2]Script for Dev Diary 23:[/h2] Seasons Greetings, industrialists! I'm Marc, a Producer for Gilded Destiny. And, still getting over that cold. Another year has come and gone. As we wrap up 2024, I hope this year has been as productive, merry, and gilded for you, as it has been for us at Aquila Interactive. In this Dev Diary, I'd like to reflect on what has been accomplished this year on Gilded Destiny and at Aquila. I want to express my gratitude, on behalf of everyone at Aquila, to all of you for being part of our growing community over the last year—from followers on social media, active members of our Discord, content creators we have worked with, our backers on Kickstarter and Modian, and the few pre-Alpha testers who have provided us valuable feedback. We are humbled, encouraged, and excited by all of the feedback we continue to receive about the game development. As always, please continue sharing suggestions, asking questions, and improving our vision of the game. The year is coming to an end, and as we are all settling in for the holiday, I think it is an essential time for us to highlight some of the progress we have made this year and what we have our sights set on going forward! So, without any further ado, let's take a little look back in time. At the very beginning of 2024, we were looking forward to share our first video of gameplay, but had not done so yet. We gave a first sneak peak of gameplay, in January, however, with the release of the Kickstarter announcement trailer! Our Kickstarter ran during March and April, and brought in £31,974, which was 159% of our funding goal! The main reason we launched a Kickstarter was to promote the game and introduce it to a wider audience of potential players. On all counts, the Kickstarter and Modian were a success. In September and October we shipped physical merch to all of the backers who supported us at the higher tiers. And in November, we shared the first pre-Alpha build of the game with a small group of randomly selected backers. So far, we have received lots of constructive feedback, suggestions, and bug reports. Early next year, we will be bringing the Alpha build of the game to our Kickstarter and Modian backers. We also intend to offer others, who did not back our Kickstarter or Modian, a way join the Alpha once it is fully released. In 2024, Gilded Destiny has undergone several major revisions and redesigns: to name a few—Reimagining the game UI, Artwork, and portraits; Creating, updating, or redesigning several game systems and mechanics; implementing major updates the editor; and doing a major rework of the map to improve performance and visuals. For 2025, our goal is simple—we plan to make sure we have playable loop and polish it to the point to where it would be fun. All of the major features we want are in the game already. However, now is the time where we need to focus on balancing and refinement, and redesign as needed. A main focus will be refining the economy system so that it does not destabilize a few months into the game, and addressing several known issues, such as unexplained population explosions. We also plan to overhaul the Military UI, which works currently, but it does not meet our expectations for being user-friendly. In 2024, the UI and game artwork has been vastly redesigned. Since coming on board, Timor, our Art Director, has created a consistent visual language throughout the UI and game artwork. He and his team of artists continue to refine many of the UI and UX components that will make gameplay fun, intuitive, and immersive. Examples, include Trade, Technology, Country and Province UIs, and many more. You can check out our Dev Diary on UI Considerations for more. In addition, you have had a preview of some of the new artwork and portrait styles for Leaders in our game. We will be implementing more of these in 2025. The Technology system has been thought out, designed, and implemented into the game. You will be able to appoint Leaders to research techs in one of three disciplines: Military, Academia, or Industry. Your interactions with other countries (through Research Diffusion), your country policies, Leader traits, research progression vis-a-vis the tech trees for each discipline, and a bit of randomness will determine your progress through the Tech trees. See the Dev Diary on Technology for more. The Trade and Production system is an example of a system that has been redesigned significantly, and will end up being updated some more, in order to interact better with other systems we are redesigning, namely the Economy. Many of the features will stay the same, but we will likely be announcing some changes in the future. Nonetheless, you can see that creating systems is an iterative process. As one system or mechanic is changed, other systems require updating or redesign to work properly or take advantage of the previously changed system. The general trend for the editor has been to increase its reach into the game code. Our goal is to allow our designers to run checks and effects on as many aspects of a country, province, or leader as possible so that our content can be responsive to the current state of a playthrough. We know that modders will want to have access to every aspect of the game, so, for example, even if we do not need to manually increase or decrease the population of a province, effects like that will be available. Furthermore, toward the end of the year, we have improved the UI for the editor, so that implementing content is easier and more efficient. And, this brings us to the major overhaul of Gilded Destiny's map, which our Technical Artists and Programmers completed in the latter half of 2024. The Map Rework was aimed at improving performance, improving pathfinding for logistics and military units and supply, and making the map more beautiful—including improvements to coastlines, rivers, mountains, hills, and snowcapped mountains. While the backend of the Map Rework has finished, we are still going through working on the terrain and art assets and features on the map. You may have noticed a few incremental changes in the last few Dev Diaries, if you look closely. Finally, in the last year, we have added many new members to our development team around the world. Our team actively working on Gilded Destiny has grown now to a few dozen. I'd like to take a minute to highlight a few of their contributions during their time with us! Timor, our Art Director, said he is proud to have contributed to a new visual art style that will hopefully make the game more intuitive and easier to play. And that over the course of 2024, the UI has certainly changed for the better, in his humble opinion. For 2025, he most looks forward to the new art of the world map and the character portraits. Elena, one of our artists, has worked on several UIs, including the Colonization, Province, Country, and City UIs. She has also done a great job on creating the goods icons for the game. Stephanie, one of our artists, has done excellent work on significantly updating the UI Art in Technology. Vincent, one of our technical designers and programmers, is proud to have worked to implement the redesigned Country UI and set up and implement some back end analytics in the game. James, one of our content designers, has created several of our events in game so far, and also has designed an improved system to better aid country UI to understand their strategic system and set logical goals (more on AI in a future dev diary). Joe is one of our designers and has been an integral part of the redesign, development, and input the new diplomacy system. In 2025, he's looking forward to improving performance, adding more content, and balancing the game. Our content designer, Basten, has contributed significantly to the map—adding and adjusting national and provincial borders and coastlines, adding cities, and currently refining terrain. He has also contributed to the military system design and has designed content for the military tech tree. Andong, Gilded Destiny's Lead Designer, has a hand in almost everything. However, he wanted me to highlight the leader system, which is highly adaptable and flexible, and able to support many nuances in the game regarding culture and religion shifts, government types, various appointment methods (hereditary, electoral, or appointment), and adjusting term lengths. James H done great work on publishing and business development, overseeing the successful Modian campaign in China, and expanding awareness of Gilded Destiny. And all of our backers who received their rewards have Sarah and James H to thank for coordinating shipping. Nii implemented many of the changes to significantly improve the editor. And Luka has been building out the embedded map-editing functionality of the Editor. Machilus has worked on the design for the right-click context menu and developing the game AI. Also, I'd like to highlight Liximi's contribution to the redesign of the Country and Province UI, Mingqing's contribution to Policies and Technology, Charlotte's improvements to the construction system, and Tianyu's contribution to the music player, population logic, design of conditions and effects, and overall optimization. And, of course, we have several more colleagues, who were not mentioned above, who have done great and integral work in developing Gilded Destiny this year and for whom we are incredibly grateful. That's probably a good note to wrap up this Dev Diary—with wrapping paper and a bow, of course. We hope you've enjoyed it, and as always, if you have any questions or comments, let it snow. As the season of joy and giving is upon us, don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel, so you can stay warm and cozy watching Gilded Destiny Dev Diaries over the holidays. And, if you haven’t already, add Gilded Destiny to your Steam Christmas wishlist, and be sure to check it twice. Until our paths converge once more, we bid thee farewell with tidings of comfort and joy. May your destiny shine as brightly as the gilded star on top of your tree. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [h3]Also:[/h3] Be sure to listen closely to the backing tracks in all our videos—they are the pieces you will come to hear in the game, composed by John Skoog. Also, the solo clarinet on this track was performed by yours truly, Marc. Listen to some of John Skoog's other work on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3PGd3lmURa72oFasqK3N7N?si=nDl4DUTRQGKKLaDtGcHBJw John Skoog Music: https://www.johnskoogmusic.com/