You are in for a treat! Lord Querkius (Magnus) read my previous posts and asked if we should co-op write a blog post this time. I (Niklas) gracefully accepted the offer and commended him on the fantastic idea. I’m currently downloading a huge update to both Unity and our game repository, so I can’t code anyway at the moment.
And since I am the first to start editing the blogpost I’ll give you the technical updates first!
Campaign AI
Lately, with the AI, we’ve been having a laser focus on the campaign. We need to be able to get the AI to do things it normally wouldn’t do, in order to tell the story that we want to eventually tell you guys. Therefore we need ways to alter the AI behavior with settings and objects in the Level Editor. Marcus has been working on (among other things) a way for the AI to stand guard until something triggers it to do something else - like attacking the nearest wielder or start a dialogue.
It’s a lonesome task, being the designated guard.
Marcus also made a bunch of improvements to our data analysis tool. Next up is improving the skirmish AI, so he needs all the data he can get. For this we have a computer set up, that plays the game 24/7 and feeds us with massive amounts of data.
When you need lots of data, the AI got you covered. This pie chart shows which actions the AI is taking on its turns. This helps us set better values and weigh the actions that the AI should prioritize.
Mac Bug Fixes
Patrik and I also managed to solve one of those bugs again. The bugs that take forever to solve because you cannot really find the cause. This time around it was a MacOS specific bug that rendered only some of our fonts invisible on a built version of the game. It worked fine in the Unity Editor (this is why it’s important to test on your target platforms often). We had no idea why and we tried reading up on the issue for months, but couldn’t find a solution. Eventually, we got to the theory where TextMeshPro and MacOS/Metal couldn’t handle text meshes in world spaces that shared the same material with a text in the UI space. So it took a while, but now our Mac users (Patrik, Christian, and sometimes I) can read what’s going on in the game again.
Zooming is nice again
Patrik took some time to fix the zoom! It had this horribly annoying bug before that twitched the whole screen into another zoom level. Now we can zoom in and out again until our heart’s content.
Zooming in and out like there’s no tomorrow.
Build times
While playing the game, we’ve noticed that the sense of time when building buildings in your time has been a bit off. To solve this we created a prototype where we experimented on the concept of build/construction times. It worked quite well, and now we’ve also implemented it into the main game.
Below is an old gif with programmer/googled art. It looks way better now, but since I’m still waiting on my huge download - I can’t create a new gif.
No more instant building in the game. But the build time visualization will look better than a yellow excavator, we promise.
Separate Troop Pools
Robin’s been working on separating the dwelling pools so that they are local to each town. Previously, you’ve been able to buy all your accumulated troops from any town you own. It kind of broke the pacing of the game, and we decided to have a separate troop “pool” that you can buy from each town.
To connect the towns you need to construct a Rally Point, which enables you to buy troops from any town.
UI & UX changes
Last update, we talked about how you now can pillage your opponents’ buildings. David made a VFX pass to make it look even better and be more rewarding.
Bodyslam that building Cecilia! Knock the lights out of it!
The pre/post battle screen also got a facelift. We’ve been having temporary menus for quite a while now. David took the time to update it from Christians visual mockups. Another UX change that we’ve tried is to make it clearer when it’s not your turn. This is mainly a problem when playing online, but it helps a lot when playing single-player as well.'
Christian has redesigned the purchase/drafting of troops, but also reviewed the troop display in HUD to make them more legible and give more visual room for troop artwork.
Using the sepia tone to illustrate that it is not your turn worked out very well. When the colors come back to the screen it really screams for attention.
Another thing that was mentioned in the last blogpost was the guard towers! We noticed that they were a bit hard to read. It was not super clear when and where they would shoot at your wielders - so Emil added a range indicator so that you can clearly see the danger.
Don’t tread beyond the striped orange line. Or, well, do it at your own risk.
That’s it for my part in this blog! The download is done! Next up: lord Querkius (Magnus). Over and out! /Niklas
Thanks for taking the helm this time and handing over an almost finished blogpost to me Niklas! So let me just continue with the rest of the team from here on:
Carl has overhauled the buildings, spells, research, units, and how they tie together along with our producer Johannes. This started when we wanted to implement some new things in battle and then one thing led to another. Now he’s right in the middle of a huge overhaul, modifying how everything works together. But, from the looks of it right now, things are just getting major improvements and the overall experience just keeps getting better!
The game now saves your intended movement destination between turns. You can now just continue on your intended path when it’s your turn again.
Regarding graphics, there has also been great progress. Thomas has been finishing up the battle animations for several of the upgraded loth troops. Additionally, he was working on some massive background elements for the battle scenes (mainly some new trees and texture fixes) and he added a ton of decorations to all the different battle biomes. He has also been working on the adventure maps and created a lot of new objects, like new mountains, new biome textures, and especially all cliff textures for the adventure mode.
Anders is working on Wielder variations and the Barya troop lineup. He’s also worked on improving the build time visualization along with Patrik. Both of them also added a ton of buildings artwork and set up prefabs for 2.5D objects.
Kordian is hard at work with wrapping up the Loth buildings and we are soon nearing completion. It takes a lot of time and effort to create a full range of faction buildings that are visually compelling and readable.
Burning the midnight oil in the lands of Loth.
Personally, I've been adding a lot of artifacts to the game. We now have around 40 artifacts added but are looking to have 100 in total when we release the game. I also did some streaming on our Discord server while adding artifacts and quite a lot of people tuned in. While it was nice to talk to people from all over the world while at the same time as I was working, it was also a bit hard to focus. Next time I might just try to stream and talk about stuff I already have added, telling about the details, stats, etc.
It’s super rewarding to add content to the game and then being able to see it all working as intended when I play. Lucky for me I have over 60 more artifacts to add.
We've also signed with a studio that will produce cutscenes for the Arleon campaign and started to create storyboards and mockups for those visuals. It’s going to be spectacular when it’s done, especially when it is paired up with the grand song that Carl has composed.
Hope you enjoyed reading up on the development of the game and that we’ll see you for the next blog post. Until then, stay safe!
Please note that this is a dev blog. Features and graphics mentioned or displayed above may or may not change during the development process.