Another devblog just two weeks after the previous? Does this mean that we are moving back to biweekly publishing of dev news? Yes. Maybe. Definitely maybe. If nothing else we aim to give you at least monthly updates. Developing the game is the top priority, but at the same time, we want to keep you updated about the production! On that note, we have upped our presence on YouTube and started releasing short video clips showing random game dev moments. If you haven’t checked out the playlist I highly recommend you do!
Handsome and clever. Hair like a sloth. Hide all your dead, it’s Aldus of Loth.
Since last time we’ve had a new intern join our ranks! Albin will help us, mostly Carl actually, with playtesting and designing levels. We are looking forward to seeing what he will produce during his internship and he will stay with us until early next year. Feel free to say hi to Albin in the comments to make him feel welcome :)
Speaking of design and development schedules: The biggest news we have to share is that we have had to reconsider the number of campaigns we can realistically develop before releasing the game. Our original plan was to create four campaigns, one for each faction, but due to time and budget constraints, we have had to limit our ambitions to two campaigns. Keep in mind that we are planning for cut scenes, custom maps, and a specially composed song for each campaign. It’s lots of moving parts and effort that go into developing a full campaign.
Carl put it like this: We’ve basically reduced the number of campaigns in order to make sure that each campaign is as polished and awesome as it can be. So he’s spent most of his time these last weeks redesigning the story and campaign arcs. Carl tells me he thinks the new stuff is gonna be really great and whenever he seems confident like that I’m inclined to believe him. We don’t see this as a failure, we see it as realistic planning. We still believe that the amount of content will be enough to satisfy people who prefer a single-player experience. Especially since we are shipping the game along with a level editor that we think will be well used and give users a plethora of user-made levels to choose from!
The programmers have really focused hard on the AI by playing, analyzing the behavior, and tweaking. Making a perfect AI is near impossible, but we are working hard to truly make it great! Niklas is currently creating better visualization tools to see what's going on under the hood.
Marcus has restructured some parts of the AI to fit in our essential debugging tools. He added more build plans that the AI uses when it plans its kingdom. Furthermore, Marcus updated parts of the AI movement logic, and currently he’s still focused on that (since we've been experiencing issues with it). One tangible improvement has been choosing the closest tile when it has several to choose from.
Marcus also fixed some unwanted behavior and tweaked how the AI mood changes over the course of a game. We can now nudge the AI a bit if it benefits the build plan we have designed for it. We have also modified how the AI builds up the need to recruit units over time. The speed can be modified depending on what the AI has seen. If it encounters a strong opponent it will start to recruit units more aggressively.
Do you have some favorite type of AI behavior or unexpected moments from other games where the AI surprised you in a good way? Drop a comment below and let us know!
We now have better tools to analyze the path of the AI Wielders. This way we can make better design decisions to improve their decision-making and movement.
The graphics team is mostly focused on Rana, even if Martí is still working on finishing the final Barya units. He’s got Rana Wielders next on his list, and judging from the few designs Kordian has done, these are going to look awesome! Placing the Frogs right next to the Human Wielders gives a lovely contrast and a reminder of the diversity of the game world.
Anders, along with Kordian, is striving to get all the buildings done for Rana within a few weeks. It is a hard task considering all the production steps. Keep in mind that most buildings need to be done in several layers due to the 3D perspective and then animated. They will also need to cater to re-coloring with team colors and look equally good in all zoom levels.
Patrik has, per usual, done a little bit of everything, including adding basic mod support to the game along with Niklas. We are very early into this work and not even sure if it will make it into release, but we do hope that we will be able to get into the hands of users as we think people could create amazing (and wonderfully horrific!) things with it!
Patrik also animated our 2D banners with some clever tech art magic and added proper UI portraits for all Loth buildings.
Yes, she’s big. Yes, she is a badass. More questions?
We’ve also done a lot of work to prepare for proper translations. Niklas and the programmers have created a font replacement system to enable translating to languages with characters that our current fonts do not support (like Russian). I’ve been making sure that we add descriptive texts that explain all parts of the game to translators, so they won’t have to guess in what context a text appears in the game. A big thank you goes out to one of our most hard-core fans, Monday from our Discord server, who has helped us with a lot of the context descriptions!
Let’s see, what more? We are recruiting a new VFX artist. The look and feel team is working on the siege UX and improving the movement interactions. The Arleon campaign map is now finally done and I just might share it in an upcoming blogpost or perhaps just parts of it. We might also just save it for the actual campaign scenes in the game. Some things are best unspoiled, right?
Anyhow, until next time, take care, my friends!
Please note that this is a dev blog. Features and graphics mentioned or displayed above may or may not change during the development process.