Road to Closed Beta & Beyond

It’s been a while since the last journal entry. Most of that time went into getting the closed beta up and running, and I simply didn’t keep up with documenting the overall progress. Because of that, this entry will be a bit denser than usual. I’ll focus on the main features first, and cover the smaller changes and bug fixes in a separate list for those who want to dig into the details.

Version: App: v0.13.0 - API: v0.15.0-9502196

As announced across several channels, the Closed Beta is now live, and creators interested in testing the platform can sign up via the Closed Beta form or reach out to me on social media. Most of the features mentioned below were implemented before the Closed Beta started, while some are already part of the first updates.

The Story Player, which has primarily been used for previewing stories during development, is now fully functional. This includes automated cloud savegames and proper handling of story, chapter, and scene states. Every story starts with a customizable menu screen (more on this later). Starting new playthroughs or continuing existing ones is handled gracefully, ensuring that Dreamers (players) do not accidentally overwrite their progress. Player settings can be accessed both during gameplay and from the menu. Credits can be customized through the story settings (with a subset of Markdown supported), and used asset packs are automatically listed at the end of the credits.

As part of completing the first fully functional version of the Story Player, I added customization options for the design of stories. Creators can choose from five predefined themes with different color and font combinations. Please note that this is an initial draft of these themes, and the fonts and colors may still be adjusted. In upcoming versions, you will be able to fully customize the look and feel of your story. In addition, menu screens and credits can now play music and display images. Creators can also choose from a set of four different menu screens.

User galleries are a feature that was requested early on and are now part of the Story Player. Dreamers can create and name screenshots at any time during gameplay. All screenshots taken in stories are accessible through the personal gallery and are automatically synced across all devices.

In addition, creators can use the screenshot feature to easily capture images for the marketplace while testing their stories. These screenshots are saved in the respective story’s media gallery instead of the user gallery. This is a useful quality-of-life feature. To keep the focus on the actual gameplay, distracting UI elements are hidden in screenshots when necessary.

As part of implementing the Story Player, reviews are now fully supported. Dreamers can submit reviews for purchased stories that they have played at least once. In addition to a rating and a comment, Dreamers can select the emotions they experienced during gameplay.

These emotions contribute to a story’s statistics and are displayed in the review overview as percentage values per emotion. This creates an emotional feedback loop, allowing Bards to define the emotions they want to evoke with their stories and evaluate whether those emotions were actually conveyed during gameplay.

In the future, this system will be used to recommend stories based on a player’s emotions, forming the foundation of discovery in Talescape.

Stories can now be purchased using Steam In-App Purchases and Stripe Checkout. For Steam, the Merchant of Record is Valve, while for Stripe it is Aureola. In all cases, Bards (creators) do not have to handle sales tax themselves. During the Closed Beta, both purchase workflows can be tested safely.

Refund workflows have also been implemented for all payment providers. How refunds will ultimately work on the platform is still to be determined and discussed. While the Terms of Service currently state that refunds are not possible through the platform, I believe this is an important trust-building feature. If someone accidentally purchases something or tries a story only to realize it is not what they expected, having an easy way to request a refund builds trust and can increase overall sales. It is also simply a sign of respect toward your customers to offer a straightforward refund process.

Bards can now verify their profiles to sell their stories through the marketplace and receive tips from Dreamers (not yet implemented). To comply with EU regulations, Talescape must collect your business address. You also need to link a verified PayPal account that is eligible to receive payouts.

For now, I have decided to use PayPal for payouts instead of Wise. The reason is that I do not expect creators to feel comfortable entering their bank credentials on a platform that is still new and lacks established trust. Wise will be added later as an alternative for creators who want to benefit from lower payout costs.

Bards without verification can only publish free stories. This helps protect the marketplace from bots and low-effort content that could otherwise be spammed and reduce visibility for serious creators.

Story Editor

• Updated story and release stats: More accurate tracking and display.
• Improved story export: Exported stories now include more metadata (e.g. author, type).

Scene Editor

• Scene elements can now be transformed. This means the scene editor now supports horizontal and vertical flipping, rotation, and opacity.
• A new "simple" element has been added in addition to the "interact" and "inspect" element types. This is mainly useful for adding combined interaction logic.

Dialogues

• Scaling for dialogue characters has been made more flexible overall. Previously, the size was capped at 80% of the screen height. This was a problem when creators wanted to use only the upper half of a full-body image, for example.

Marketplace

• Updated tier system (players & creators): Adjustments to available features per subscription tier.
• Story achievements are now fully integrated into story pages. They always display the unlocked achievements of the currently active player.
• All external links now trigger a warning modal.
• Public announcements are now automatically shown when users log in to Talescape.
• An About page has been added, accessible through the main menu, with information about the application.

Player & Interaction

• Improved story player logic: Smoother gameplay and interaction handling.
• Better loading and performance: Faster loading of stories and assets.
• Improved menu visuals and navigation: A more consistent and clearer interaction flow.

UI / UX

• Updated design colors and themes: Improved overall visual consistency.
• Improved dashboard and cards: Better overview of stories and stats.
• Cleaner UI (icons, menus, styles): Removed outdated elements and refined layouts.
• Improved login experience: More intuitive login flow.

Story Editor

• Downloads of media and story backups have been improved and now function more reliably.
• Fixed a bug where downloading a media image for backup could soft-lock the editor.
• Added missing documentation links.

Story Player

• Scene elements now "know" whether they are interactable and no longer react to player interaction or appear when using element hints.