First of all, let me convey a great big thanks from the whole team to all of you amazing people who read this blog. When we announced that the game would be delayed until next year I was worried about the response. The wonderful reactions, comments, and positive vibes we got in return were just awesome. Having all of you along for the ride is something every development studio could only wish for. We hope that you’ll be pleasantly surprised when we finally ship the game and you can try it out for yourselves!
David has been working on the updated purchase menu. Players can now upgrade those lean mean troops. How convenient!
Lately, I have been focusing on the recruitment of more pixel artists. We are currently re-shaping our art production pipeline and one step is to shift more production to outside of the studio and to make sure we have a stronger art direction and leadership in house. There are a lot of reasons for this, but basically we need to be able to produce more assets faster. Since the pixel graphics market isn’t exactly booming locally in Gothenburg we need to look outside of our backyard to find good people. Fortunately, we have some very good pixel artists getting ready to sign up for the project.
The Oathbound swore to serve in life and death, if needed. Turns out it was needed.
Speaking of graphics, Anders has redesigned some of the Loth sprites and also fixed troop animations in-game. Troops have been a general focus for a large part of the team, across many disciplines. Marcus has been adding upgrades to units along with testing the system to make sure it works. Christian has worked on the troop drafting and upgrades, along with loading screens and path explorations.
Andi is trying out a new look and feel for our spell icons. Overall I think we are on the right path, would you agree?
Carl has written away on the campaigns, focusing most of his time on the Arleon campaign. He has also given some love to the event system, writing new random events and happenings for our skirmish mode. At the same time, Patrik has been fiddling around with the AI, trying to make it reasonably hard to play against. It certainly hasn’t become self-aware yet, but it is improving each week!
Christian likes to create smooth and clean Scandinavian styled UI’s, but with a hint of meaty fantasy smeared on top. I think he is truly on to something. This is a mockup of our online multiplayer loading screen.
The most exciting thing to happen in these last weeks is that we have started a very limited pre-Alpha testing phase. A few people are trying out the game to help us squish bugs, make sure the UI works as intended and that the game is… fun? So far, we have had very positive feedback from all testers. Niklas has been fixing stability bugs and sometimes clarifying what's happening in the background for the players of the pre-alpha. One example is that people (understandably) didn't understand that the game was quick battling in the background. Because we didn't give a single clue that it did - so it just seemed like the game froze for 1-5 seconds. To solve that Niklas added a large popup with the sign "Waiting for Battle...". That made it clearer!
We have also been investing in more development tools from the Unity Asset Store. Taking time to improve and find new tools can speed up development considerably. I wouldn’t really know, but so the developers tell me. I’m inclined to trust them on this matter.
Please note that this is a dev blog. Features and graphics mentioned or displayed above may or may not change during the development process.