Welcome back to another dev blog! There has been so much going on since the last update, that I can’t possibly cram it all into one blog post. It would simply be too time-consuming and a very long read. I will however do my best to summarize the most important development leaps during the last few weeks.
Personally, I’ve really shifted over from managing external freelancer relations to focusing more on marketing. We have pretty ambitious plans for the fall, in terms of releasing more content and showing off more parts of the game. So far we haven’t shown much video, but we plan to change that and release more in-depth looks at the game and our development process. I’m looking forward to telling you more about the game in another narrative format.
We have also prepared a new trailer that shows more gameplay and… combat! Yes, it is finally happening and you will be able to see the trailer very soon. Expect to hear more about it as early as next week!
Our freelance artist Cyangmou has created some large blockers for the Arleon battle maps. These objects give additional variety and break up the organic look of the combat grid in a nice way!
The Alpha is planned to start next week, assuming we can squash all bugs before then. When we are ready we will send out an email to everyone who signed up for the Alpha with more information. So if you haven’t done it already, sign up right here. Keep in mind that we’ll have very limited access with only one hundred testers to start out with. More will be added as the development progresses and we need more fresh eyes to evaluate the game. So if you don’t get picked for the first round of testing, do not fear, more chances will come!
As far as coding goes, the tech team has recently switched focus to only fix bugs prior to the testing period. But they’ve also had time to develop more features. Niklas spent a lot of time fixing our win/lose system. It had a lot of issues that we had forgotten to take care of while focusing on other things. He also added a couple of new lose conditions, to give players many more ways to fail at the games, I guess.
Apparently, your only Wielder can’t die if you are to succeed with this mission. Makes total sense if you ask me!
Marcus changed the AI think loop to help avoid "tunnel vision" and various other AI adventure tweaks. He also updated AI build plans with help from Carl, to make sure it constructs buildings in a relevant order. The AI was also further optimized with regards to maintaining a good framerate during gameplay.
When asked Robin claimed that he hadn’t done “anything sexy”. But he did mention that he set up team factions and names for campaign maps. Making sure you could transfer wielder stats between campaign maps. And another a whole bunch of small-to-medium things. If that’s not sexy I don’t know what is Robin!
Behold the new and improved bug reporting tool™! Niklas created it to nudge people into writing more relevant bug reports and from what I’ve been told it has worked wonders!
The look and feel team, who mainly focuses on stuff like UI, VFX, and UX has not been spared from the bug hunting duties! But they’ve also managed to get more interesting work done. David helped Mattias, our new VFX artist, with getting some tech setup for spells. Things like battle wide spells, night during effects, and chain lightning. David also worked on troop VFX and updated the building portraits with pixel artwork. He also added blood to the battle scene. Emil focused on the wielder inventory where he added a section for the wielder specialization and a summary for all the equipped artifacts.
Christian was hijacked from UI work and implementation to fix things like a new landing page, marketing assets, and much more. Something big is brewing, so stay tuned!
Knowing how the artifact’s stats modify and affect your Wielder is a good thing. Emil is an avid strategy gamer and he prefers things to be clear and understandable to the player. Which is… understandable!
The art team continues just to ramp up assets for the game. We now have almost all combat troops animated on a basic sketch level. Arleon and Loth have all troops finalized and Rana is pretty close to finished as well. Patrik and Anders focused a lot on tweaking the first Arleon campaign maps, which will be a part of the Alpha test. They also got pulled into fixing tons of things for the trailer production, like setting up and finetuning specific maps and scenes. Kordian continued creating hostiles and Wielder sprites for the adventure map and Martí continued to animate them.
It’s a delicate process indeed to design a troop that will look good in both large and small scales. This troop, the Chelun, has like all the other troops one version for combat and one version for placement on the adventure map.
Carl, our game designer, has been working on game balance, story, and making maps! He has been getting some great support from our external producer Johannes, who really has a hand in almost every aspect of the game by now. We are really fortunate as a team to be working with a publisher like Coffee Stain, who first and foremost focuses on the quality of the game.
Not sure when the next blogpost will be but as mentioned, please keep a lookout during next week as we plan to announce big things! Until next time, take care and 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.