Archmage Rises is a role playing game with unprecedented breadth. We have more player actions (verbs) than any other. I’m very excited to show you what the team has been working on the last 3 months. Keeping everyone focused and working on what is most important is a challenge (see previous update). Here are the results of being heads down, cranking on work.
The 25 Categories of New Features
World Simulator and Data Rewrite (JIT)
To allows world populations of millions, instead of hundreds, we have moved to a Just-In-Time world simulation. Before we were simulating everything always and it was killing performance. This fundamentally changes everything in the game. While it may look the same, under the hood it is completely different.
Facts 2.0
We now only generate and store data you know about an NPC. If you don’t ask about an NPCs family, the game doesn’t know if they are married and have kids. We’re inspired by Schroeder's Cat, where you don’t know the state of the world until it is observed. Surprisingly helpful!
Schroeder's Cat
Town Safety Area
The world is filled with monsters and lairs. But civilization has carved out some safe zones to live and raise a family.
Towns patrol their safe area with guards.
We struggled to convey when a player was in the safe zone or not and discovered audio of the town music does the trick.
That meant writing and adding town music. :-)
6 New Monster Races
Each of these require line art and design, painting, rigging, animating, sound, and AI programming
Town Destruction
Attack towns from afar with magic
Model damage and destruction
Search and loot the ruins
Build New Towns
Build new towns anywhere you want, if you have the supplies and gold
Name them
Assign them to a King for big favor boosts
New Travel Perception System
Perception is used to determine things in the distance. If you fail to know what it is, it just appears as a generic icon. Could be good or bad.
Perception skill will tell you how large a patrol of monsters is, so you know whether to avoid or not
New Map Tech
Ability to change terrain types -> Turn oceans into deserts, or deserts into swamps.
Show animating icons
Show animated hex features
Increased terrain and feature combinations by thousands
Added new hex art
New World Audio
Footsteps based on terrain type
Time of day transitions and states: a forest at night sounds different from one in day
New Buildings
Town Well
Artist Workshop
Glass Maker
New Save System
Smaller faster files
Fixes the problems with the 13.8 save system
New Research & Learning XP Tech Tree System
Earn XP in skill groups, then spend it on valuable upgrades.
Allows greater character customization and role play
This is how the player gets new spells, it’s no longer about finding the one vendor selling the spell you want.
Some spells can only be discovered through knowledge.
New Study Techniques
Passive study of book(s)
Active study of books
Create experiments and see what you discover. Some spells can only be discovered through experimentation.
New Notification System
Allows multiple systems to notify the player at the same time, and the player can review them one by one (like strategy games)
New Monster Lair & Patrol systems
Monster Lairs no longer replicate. We did this because it feels futile to take out a goblin lair, and then have it pop back into existence after X years.
This requires populating the world with many more lairs, and having them overlap. Only around towns is it safe to wander.
Make Camp
Sleep, write letters, craft, cook, eat, write a song from anywhere in the game.
Make sure you have safe surroundings or get ambushed!
Temperature
Every hex has a temperature. If it is too hot or cold, player takes damage.
Possible to die from exposure (too hot or cold for too long)
Utilize clothing to keep warm/cool,
Travel at night when it is more cool becomes an option
Seasons
World progresses through 4 annual seasons.
They start and end almost regularly, but it is possible for them to come late or early
Greatly affects travel and trade
Weather
Cloud systems
Storms
Hot and cold fronts
Knowledge System
Whenever the player has a significant experience: a combat, finding a beautiful waterfall, a first kiss, this creates a piece of Knowledge
Knowledge can be used for creating works of art, correspondence, NPC discussion
Letter System
Cheebos are a new magical race of creatures that love to deliver the mail! (Owls in Harry Potter or Ravens in GoT)
Players and NPCs can keep up relationships through correspondence. A close NPC friend cares if you forgot their birthday, so at least you can send a letter with a gift!
Helps make the world feel more real
New Resources
Marble
Jade
Dye
Copper
Silver
Black Sand
Gems
Glass
Stained Glass
Floatstone
Revised Inventory System
We had a weight based system like Skyrim. We decided to simplify and make it a slot based one like Minecraft
Items stack to certain limits, based on the carrier. The player can hold stacks of small items, but only 1 for medium to large items.
Beasts of burden can hold stacks for medium and large items, while also providing more inventory slots.
Much easier to see what is on the ground and move it into inventory
Inventory is no longer on the right, that is now only spells. Clicking the inventory will pop the bags/creatures open and show what you have. Like WoW and Ultima 6.
Buildings can be Anywhere
Previously buildings could only exist in a town. Now it is possible to have a cabin in the woods, or a tower at the top of a mountain.
In Game Help System (Archeopedia)
Inspired by Civilization we added an in game help system which can show text, images, and videos to help convey game concepts.
In Game Bug Reporting
As we gear up for release, we need to make it easy to capture and address all of the bugs people will unfortunately find.
This automatically creates the task in our JIRA system with the data we need, so a) We don’t lose it and b) Jump on it quickly
Automatic video recorder runs in the background, allowing us to see the last X seconds of gameplay before the bug occurred
Sounds Great, When Do I Get Build 14.0?
Don’t know yet. Currently the game is a mess and barely functions: towns and portraits don’t display anymore. We’re working towards cleaning it up in the next 3-4 weeks. We’ll see.