What’s this? Another dev blog? Why yes, yes it is! We have not forgotten about you. The lack of updates is merely a sign of great things to come. The team is hard at work with the game, pushing for an internal deadline at the end of May. We are preparing to start a small Alpha around that date, which means some of you will finally get to try the game first hand!
Why keep it small? Well, we will need lots of more testing done and we figured it would make sense to let a few people in at a time. So we can gradually allow more people to try out the game during the fall when we have new features that we need fresh eyes to look at. There are over twenty thousand people signed up for the Alpha. And while we want every one of those subscribers to be able to try the game, allowing 20k users through the door at the same time won’t really help us achieve our goal of a methodical and structured testing phase. The best shot at getting into the early tests is to get signed up on our Discord, as we will handle communications with Alpha testers through that channel.
Andi is currently working on the main menu images. There are still a few more details and objects to add, but overall we are thrilled with how it’s coming along. What do you think?
Most of the team is working on design, features, and assets related to the Arleon campaign. We have also signed with an external studio to help us with the cutscenes that will take place between each mission. Carl and Johannes have been working with them to get the video visuals working together with the campaign song (that's almost finished and mastered).
Carl has furthermore been working on implementing and rebalancing the game after big changes to the research and upgrade system. It’s almost done! He also kept on with the maps, both skirmish and campaign, making sure they're working as they should.
More of that sweet Andi-art. The skills icons are now all done and implemented in the game. Going from temp-art to proper asset always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside!
The art team is working across both combat and adventure visuals. Both the Arleon and Loth factions will be playable in the Alpha and we need to make sure that all assets for both factions are done. We also need to make sure that the maps for the Arleon campaign are looking great.
Kordian has been diligently wrapping up the production of all Loth buildings. Eyal has created idle animations for all of them and Patrik has been adding them to the game. It might seem like a small task, to add assets to the game, but due to our fairly advanced 2.5D setup, each object can take a while to get into the game. It all adds up if you have over 100 adventure map buildings and a similar amount of faction buildings!
Patrik and Anders have also finally started working on figuring out how our siege battle should look. They have come pretty far and we are now confident we can make it work in a way that makes sense gameplay-wise and aesthetically.
Thomas has been working on both unit animations and assets for the battle scene backgrounds. It has progressed a whole lot and now has more visual variety than before. The elements which block the player from accessing specific tiles are randomized in clusters to increase the organic look but at the same time make it clear to the user where it is possible to place troops or not.
It’s been on our list for a very long time and Patrik has finally had the time to make it happen: The fog of war has been getting a visual overhaul. No more sharp black lines, but instead a more organic-looking dark cloudy style. What do you think?
Our very own AI-expert Marcus has added features for the adventure AI. This new functionality will allow us to tweak and modify the AI behavior easier, without changing the code directly. This way we can suggest everything from a very strict build plan for it to follow, to a very loose one (giving it more or less freedom). Also, we can fine-tune certain general behavior, like how aggressive it will be.
Marcus also added a nifty way for it to avoid repetitive behavior, by giving it a "fading memory" of recent actions. If it is in a situation where it has very few options, it won't get stuck just doing those but might seek out other parts of the map instead.
Searching for the treasures buried by an empire long gone. Loth has a unique story twist that will shine through the visual appearance of its faction buildings.
Emil has squashed bugs and added a bunch of minor but important UX improvements. David updated the purchase/upgrade/defend UI and also made some modifications to the troops UI in various places. The troop portraits will soon use pixel art instead of hand-painted 2D portrait. We find that the pixel art reads better in the UI and also gives the users a much clearer view of which troops are which.
Our UI-guru Christian has alternated between planning and mockups of updates to make the player experience better (including “Kingdom overview”, Wielder HUD, and Drafting troops UI/UX). But he also, finally, got to go back and finish up the Loth UI. Seeing the faction-specific UI in the game is really great.
Each faction will have its own UI to give the player more immersion. It is just one more way for us to really convey the spirit of each faction, along with distinct architecture, musical theme, unique Wielders, and troops.
Our lead programmer Niklas has added a bunch of new triggers to the game. We now have area triggers, pre-battle triggers, and post-battle triggers in the game. These are valuable tools for our level editor, giving us the possibility of creating richer and more diverse game experiences throughout both the campaigns and skirmish maps. We truly expect that this is something our users will appreciate as well. The tools we use to produce the campaign are the exact same tools that will ship with the game itself. So I for one is hoping to play some awesome user-created story-focused maps when the game has been released!
David has implemented a tutorial system and yours truly has been creating copy for the tutorials. Trying to keep it short and sweet, but still informative. Long and loathsome tutorials are a huge turn-off to all of our team.
Beyond what I wrote above there has also been a lot of development on the plans for going into Alpha and beyond. We are gearing up to become slightly more public with the game and show the much-requested combat gameplay. We are still a few months away, but stay tuned and expect great things in the future!
And don’t forget, join our Discord to get the latest news first of all, as well as being able to talk to the dev team. Until next time, 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.