Update 2B: Combat Rewrite

It’s snowing outside, so this Elmore Dragonlance pic inspired by Dragons of Winter Night felt right.

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.

Combat is coming along and the team is greatly encouraged. It’s really cool to see new spells being created by text JSON files like this.

A rewarding side effect of this data-driven approach is the quick iteration time on changing and reloading data without having to rebuild the game, saving about 5 minutes per testing cycle.

I wish I had a cool video or screenshot to show but this will have to suffice. It is an example of data driven enemy tooltips.

(Yes I know that isn’t a skeleton, it’s all test data at this point)

Dynamic Quests

Nolan requested more specificity to how the text is chosen and this required a rewrite of the core dialogue selection system. More details to come in tomorrow’s detailed update.

The first part of Dynamic Quest generation is coming as part of Update #3 Exploration.

UI Redesign

We’ve had some good meetings on how we can redo the HUD of the game. The above is just one mockup of many but it proves a couple of points which seem solid:

Bust out of the hard frame and allow UI elements to ‘float’ in different zones of the screen
Spell selection is bottom center
Focus attention when speaking with an NPC
The player portrait will always be on display and show damage by filling with red (like Pillars, Baldur’s Gate)

Jessi and Phil are heading up our UI redesign as part of roadmap Update #3 Exploration.

Priority Tasks

DeLastOne suggested highlighting Knowledge Subjects directly in the dialogue text. Good idea. We’re trying to implement it.
2009dh pointed out with inventory being precious, provide the option not to pickup loot in dungeons when it appears.

Other

We’re currently doing 360 reviews for our 10 employees.

At a minimum, a company should do formal reviews once a year. A really good company will do them twice a year. I’ve put them off for 18 months marking me as a bad leader. 🙁

Why do them at all?

How does a person know if they are doing a good job? Meeting expectations?

A comprehensive 360 review gathers feedback from people above (supervisor), beside (co-workers), and below (direct reports) to give a full picture of someone’s performance.

As you work in ‘close proximity’ with someone there are great things you notice and little annoyances that accrue. When do you ever get a chance to share these? Stand-up and project meetings aren’t the right time. Even praise can be hard to share. The words “I’m proud of you.” can sound weird in the wrong context or moment.

What if they are difficult or awkward topics? Like farting too much in the office?

An actual issue I had to address with a programmer at my software company. He didn’t last.

So a purposeful one-on-one time to share the teams thoughts and encouragement in improvements is necessary to healthy team growth.

Why do them now?

I put off doing them because there just never seems to be an opportune time:

Jan - Feb we were crunching to get the Demo out for Next fest.
Mar - Apr we were getting out the launch of the game to Early Access
May - Aug we were crunching on Content Updates
Sep - now we’ve been scrambling to get Combat Rewrite done

So it’s happening now. It’s a big time investment for myself, meaning I don’t have as much time for other things like Dynamic Quests or staying up to date on the forums. But I will get back on the forums soon.

That said, if you would like to be involved in the process, go ahead and post on Steam. I’ve already incorporated previous posts in some people’s reviews. Phil and I are the most public facing team members, but if you want to shout out some audio, narrative, gameplay, or art I’ll make sure it gets to the right person.