I’m back from a week away. We had some great progress last week, so let’s get into it!
UPDATE 2B: COMBAT REWRITE
More stolen combat art from the internet. This time from Pathfinder!
Combat has been in development for 6+ months. 90% of our resources are focused on it: Mark, Josh, Michel, Tyler, Zach, Jonathan, Jessi, Nolan, and Rubi.
Last week we saw the key indicator that we are close to being done!
For review, the new system was embarked on to make it cleaner/better/easier/safer to add new spells and make it faster to iterate on them.
This week Mark was able to design a new spell, from scratch, using just JSON text editing and see it work in game. We’ve been working for a long time to reach this moment!
A test spell created in the new system.
We have a whole new buff/status effect system in that allows for the stacking of buffs. This is critical for one of the spell schools, so it plays differently than the others.
No dates yet. We still have more work to do. But we’re close to picking a release date for Combat and ramping up the promotion of it.
UI Redesign
Some may remember, Nic and I threw together the first UI just so we could get something playable for our booth at two game conventions.
Fun facts: The rose on the left represents the purity of your soul, and petals would blacken and fall out as you make evil choices. The candle represented how much of your life was left before you die of natural causes.
We moved from that UI to what you see today which was revised out of necessity.
We call this iteration Version 3
While I attempted to make something functional and decent looking, it was always just placeholder until I could get the right people involved and give them enough time to make a “real” UI.
Now is that time.
UI redesign is part of roadmap Update #3 Exploration. Jessi has been on our art team for over a year now, working with the UI as is. Now she is ready to lead the charge on a proper User Interface and User Experience. She’s excited (and maybe a little nervous) to be unleashed and make a real proper professional design.
Not without assistance. Phil has years of experience in marketing and websites design, while Mark has years in AAA games. I think we have the right team to figure out how Archmage Rises should play.
It will take months of slow boil to get this right, which is why we are starting now.
As creative director, I have given a very broad direction:
I really want to embrace the medieval world feel.
I’m in love with the Medieval world; 13th century is my fav. I admit to holding a highly romanticized view. I’m certain if I jumped in a time machine and went, I couldn’t stand the smell!
Last year I went to France to visit the Cathedrals in Chartres, Rheims, Amiens, and Sainte Chapelle. I left that experience with an appreciation of stained glass as an art form.
I encouraged the team to explore how stained glass could be used in the UI.
I perused the UI mood board and love the color and feel of this picture:
Where is this going? How will it look? We don’t know!
These dev updates are raw and I’m telling you what’s happening as it happens. We’ll see in a few weeks what comes of this.
Until then, I’ll share this cover art from one of my favorite game series:
Thank you Moby Games for preserving game history! It’s appreciated!
Dynamic Quest Generation
Just before I left, Nolan and I made some great progress on the dynamic quest NPC text generation. The system is generating text we find compelling. More details to come in tomorrow’s detailed update.
The first part of Dynamic Quest generation is coming as part of Update #3 Exploration.
Priority Tasks
We’ve had a big influx of new players this past week, always a good thing. Here is what we are focusing on for this week’s patch:
Hiding equipped items from trade/sell window
Stief000 was unable to load a save game
Asking in an Inn about quests generated a ton of errors, because a certain kind of quest giver won’t generate.
Some encounter screens are missing related artwork