Hello friends! It is time for an update don’t you think? The game development is coming along nicely and tons of things have happened since the last post. I was actually planning to share a devblog a few weeks earlier than this, but a lot of people have been sick, including myself, so the schedule was a bit fudged. But, to compensate for the lack of updates I’m treating you to an extra long wall of text, spiced up with the occasional image just to keep you on your toes! Please remember that if you ever feel that the lack of updates is getting to you: We try to share a short game development video each week on our Youtube Channel. We read all comments and try to reply to all questions, so it is a great way to talk to us!
Here they are in their full glory, the whole Arleon troop lineup. Most of these troops have been shown before, but this is the first time we show them all off in one image, including all upgrades. What do you think?
I know a lot of you are curious about the main features of the game, like combat, town construction and the magic system. Rest assured that we will talk more about this as soon as we are ready! We are preparing videos that will show more gameplay material, but the truth is that we are still tweaking several features and changing stuff around. So for as long as we don't feel 100% confident in the design decisions we don’t want to drop videos that might give people the wrong impressions.
Moving over to check in with the tech team we’ll learn that our lead programmer, Niklas, has become a father! Drop him some well wishes in the comments won’t you? Besides getting to know his latest family member and between the diaper changes he has also gotten some work done. The biggest thing was changing how the save/load system works, basically expanding the system we already had in place. The system now also supports spaces in save names, the future is truly here!
Niklas have refactored the post game statistics and included more features. You can now toggle teams, see values on the y-axis and see where a player lost a fight (the skull shown in the image above).
David and the wider ‘look and feel’ team has done a little bit of everything! The biggest update being a new version of the spellbook, to adapt to a major rework of the spell system (more on that later!). The enemy portraits now use pixel art, instead of painted 2D images, if you attack a neutral hostile (non-Wielder) on the adventure map. It is used in dialogues and pre battle as well. Creating hand painted portraits for all 64 troops would simply be too much work, but fortunately it looks really nice with the pixel art as well!
Lots of small quality of life updates has been done, as well as finishing all the spell visual effects with the help of Mattias, our VFX freelancer.
Christian has made sure that our UI is now more readable. We have three types of text in the game; Title, Label and Lore. Each type has three sizes; Large, Medium and Small. All text in the game now has been increased in size with a main focus on lifting the Medium and Small types. We are currently trying the new font sizes with the Alpha testers to a general positive sentiment.
Ding dong, something important happened! Running a kingdom requires your constant attention, hence the need for notifications. So while you’re off fighting battles or searching for loot and artifacts, these notifications will keep you covered.
Getting back to the tech team I’ve been provided with a deep dive into the AI development by Marcus. So buckle up, because we are about to enter the Matrix!
The AI has had some large changes done to how it moves on the adventure map. When a Wielder has to walk a longer distance to reach a valuable destination, we do pathfinding at a different level than usual (usual meaning between every tile on the way) and instead look at the distance in "regions". When it has performed all relevant actions and emptied a region it will be looking for new areas to explore. A region in direct connection with the currently selected region will be weighted as more valuable than further away ones. But this decision is also weighed together with the total "need" of all the available resources and pickups in that region.
The images above illustrate several parts of the AI behaviour. Showing regions where it starts and where it moves when it has emptied the region of all relevant resources.
The AI now also does rudimentary troop trading between wielders. This is being developed currently but here's how it works for now: If two commanders are within proximity it will check who is the strongest from a battle perspective. The weaker Wielder will walk to the strongest Wielder and give away as many troops as it can.
Robin has also entered the Matrix and improved how the AI builds their towns. There is now a specific set of build plans per town instead of per team, meaning that the AI can branch development into different areas for different towns. The handling of the build plans are more dynamic and adaptable to the game situations. AI algorithms for determining the need for different resource incomes and troop production have also been improved, along with build decisions that deviate from a human made build plan.
An early view of the Rana settlements! These can be found and claimed as expansion points across an adventure map. They are in essence small towns, with less building sites but with the ability to draft troops if you construct the appropriate buildings.
Carl has been doing a little bit of everything, well to be honest, he has done a lot of everything. As we are nearing the end of the development cycle there seems to never be enough of Carl to go around as team members need to know about different aspects of the game and all campaign levels need to be wrapped up. Lately he has focused on creating a new version of the spell system along with our producer Johannes. This is very much based on feedback from the Alpha testers and we are trying to create something that has a bit more risk/reward and add more dynamic aspects to combat.
Essence is now a spell casting “currency” stored in the Wielder’s “Essence Wallet”. You gain essence in various ways: At the beginning of each battle round a Wielder adds all Essence gained from skills, special abilities and equipped artifacts as well as team-wide Essence gained from research and claimed objects on the map. When it becomes a troop’s turn to act, it adds its Essence to the Wielder’s wallet.
Each spell has a cost of one or more types of Essence, which is “paid” when the spell is cast. There is no limit on the amount of spells that can be cast in a round, as opposed to once per battle round as it was before. The “Essence Wallet” is cleared after each battle.
The layout of the Spellbook has been changed to adapt to the new spell system. It is less complicated than the previous one and in general we feel it conveys the magic system better.
More design work has been done on the towns and buildings for all factions. Many prices have changed and moved around. Most prerequisite building requirements have been removed and replaced with a higher cost of exotic resources. To build the “best” medium building you need a specific small building. To upgrade your end tier troop dwelling you need a specific medium building. To build a Rally point or similar building, you’ll need a Marketplace.
Kim is working on the campaign together with Carl. She has also rewritten our world document, melding lore snippets and short stories with informational texts about the game world. When she is done it will be version number five of the document, will it be the last though? I wonder.
Our amazing map artist Marc Moureau has finished the campaign map for Arleon. Behold the island of Arleon! Well, at least parts of it!
On to our jack of all trades - Patrik! This time he told me that there was not much to say about what he had done since the last blogpost, due to him being off sick for a long time. Oh yeah? You underestimate yourself Patrik, says I, and will without further interruption list just what has come from his desk since our last update.
Teleportation now works as intended. There is a working prototype for controllable ballistas in the siege battles. Selected objects are now highlighted on the minimap. The battlefield zone of control areas has been given some visual love. All claimable neutral map entities now have proper portraits with team colors (where applicable). Rana is starting to get proper building portraits. The artwork, localization and stats of all planned artifacts are now in-game (all 109 of them). The first frame of all Rana wielders has been added to the game! Among other things, such as improving the walls in adventure.
And that segues nicely over to Anders who has added textures, noise and improved the 3D meshes of the walls. He has also finished art for all levels and research updates for the regular buildings of Rana along with the help from Kordian. Eyal is now hard at work with getting them all animated. The Rana camp is the only one still in need of upgrades at this point.
Try wallhacking your way through this! Well, come to think of it. Please don’t.
Anders has furthermore done more work with picking optimal colours for the teams, making sure it works when recolouring the combat troop sprites. He has also continued to create more artwork for siege battles. Kordian has - besides creating first drafts of all Rana buildings - also designed early versions for all Barya buildings, as well as first frames of the full Barya Wielder line up. Martí has finished all the animations for the Barya troops and he now only has Wielders left to animate!
Our design intern Albin has been working on a new pvp map for 8 players. This is an extra large map with a concept that he thinks will be interesting. It is rich with triggers and talking hostiles that strengthens the narrative of the experience. Besides pure level design he has also been great at finding lots of weird bugs and just generally being helpful.
The Youtuber H for Havoc recently released a video about our game. Please note that the contest for Alpha keys is not active anymore. But, there will be more chances!
Finally I’d strongly encourage you to follow us on Steam if you aren’t already doing so! Following us on Steam is a great way to support the development of the game. It basically tells Valve that yes, people do care about this game. And it also means that you won’t miss out on any new videos, weekly highlights, etc. So, what are you waiting for? Give us a follow and get our eternal love.
Until next time, take care!
Please note that this is a dev blog. Features and graphics mentioned or displayed above may or may not change during the development process.