Book of Travels News

[h2]Hello![/h2]

Much has been said about the art style, our pipeline and graphical process we use in making BoT. Today we're sharing a peek at some of our most recent assets - ones that we are now implementing in the game. It’s really important that everything you see in the game is carefully handcrafted and painted manually. This takes a team of four 2D artists working full time on the project. Some assets can be painted in a day, others take up to a week for one artist to paint. Below you can see two ancient trees that only appear in one place in the game world. Their names are Kesnan and Kham and they stand tall in one of the areas on the western side of Braided Shore. You can also see a tipping lantern, which can be interacted with via an Endeavour event and has to be created in several parts to be able to animate.
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Nerdy Art Trivia [/h3]

(Or scroll to go directly to the images)

In order to make all the painted assets of the game coherent we've created a meticulous 2D pipeline that ensures that the style is consistent and that all things visual are in sync. We use a specific brush for all assets and never stray from it or its size (15px). We also use a tricky hatching technique for the brushwork. It gives the art more of a textured feel and adds detail and variation to each piece. Besides that, we have also adapted a rather unusual way to underlight the objects, using brighter values low and darker ones high. This was inspired by A.J Casson who’s unique style is one of our major influences. The underlight helps to create an unpredictable and odd impression that we really love.

Once finished, our game designers can start drafting and implementing events that take place at or near these unique props.









We hope you’ve enjoyed this first dive into our process. We’d love to hear any thoughts, feedback or ideas about this or suggestions for things you would like us to feature here. Let us know in the comments section!

Thank you for your time!
Jakob, Marcus, Charlotte, Olle and the rest of the team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/

[h2]Hello![/h2]

A while ago we asked all of you on Discord (go here to join!) if you had any questions that you wanted our Lead Tech Artist to answer. Well, today we're happy to present the results! This is the first in a series of short dev interviews that we hope you will enjoy. Here he tells us about the unique perspective the game offers and some of the challenges it presented to the team. Take a look and do not hesitate to ask more questions in the comments (we will force Peter to answer).

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
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Until next time!
The Book of Travels team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/

We're happy to share the first of a series of mini posts that will take you behind the curtains of Book of Travels production. In the coming months we'll be sharing small insights into the production journey, leading up to early access release later this year, and towards full release!

Today we want to share some progress on the game design systems. As many of you have read before, Book of Travels balances a lot of contrasting gameplay elements and it’s very much up to the player to pick and choose which parts to engage in. One of the pillars of the experience that we’re currently working on is a multiplayer feature we call Endeavours.



Endeavours are special events that require players to help each other and cooperate to solve situations (players of Meadow will recognise traces of obelisks). The amount of players needed, the context, the goal and the rewards all vary greatly from event to event. Starting out, your character represents one “slot” in any endeavour (see the above screenshot), but as your character develops it might gain the ability to cover two. Some Endeavours can be solved alone, but others will require you to gather a large band of travellers before engaging. Some will reward you with small magical boosts or items, and other, rare Endeavours can be the starting point of larger adventures! Endeavours are divided into four categories; physical, mystical, mechanical and social.


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/

[h3]Physical Endeavours[/h3]
These situations challenge your group with feats that require strength, such as operating a draisine cart, pulling objects out of a well, or clearing heavy rubble to uncover items.

[h3]Mystical Endeavours[/h3]
These can be anything from praying by a shrine or singing at a graveyard to interacting with magical beings and invoking visions of the past.

[h3]Mechanical Endeavours[/h3]
Braided Shore is a land that inherited an ancient industrial infrastructure, some of it is still noticeable in today's society. Through mechanical endeavours your group can use ancient steam boats and train engines, unpick mechanical locks and use various mechanical devices in the world.

[h3]Social Endeavours[/h3]
Examples of these are a merchant who doesn't give access to her wares unless a group convinces her to, or a scholar who can give lectures to larger parties earning them valuable skills and knowledge in the process. Social endeavours are about interacting with folk in the world and affecting their response to you depending on your numbers.


[h3]Current status - your input![/h3]
We’re currently developing these systems and plan to try some out in the upcoming beta. We truly hope that you like the idea of Endeavours, and we’d love to hear your thoughts regarding them in the comments right here. If you have ideas for other types of Endeavours we can add, please comment below and we might implement them! (And credit you for it in the final game of course!)

Thank you for your time!

Jakob and the team

Over the next few months we'll be sharing some gameplay insights with you, and today we want to share some progress on the game design systems. As many of you have read before, Book of Travels balances a lot of different contrasting gameplay elements and it’s very much up to the player to pick and choose which parts to engage in and where. One of the pillars of the experience that we’re currently working on is a multiplayer feature we call Endeavours.



Endeavours are special events that require players to help each other and cooperate to solve situations (players of Meadow will recognise traces of “obelisks”). The amount of players needed, the context, the goal and the rewards all greatly vary from event to event. Starting out, your character represents one “slot” in any endeavour (see the above screenshot) but as your character develops it might gain the ability to cover two. Some endeavours can be solved alone, but others will require you to gather a large band of travellers before engaging. Some reward you with small magical boosts or items, and other, rare endeavours can be the starting point of larger adventures! Endeavours are divided into four categories; physical, mystical, mechanical and social.


These situations challenge your group with feats that require strength, such as operating a draisine cart, pulling objects out of a well, or clearing heavy rubble to uncover items.


These can be anything from praying by a shrine or singing at a graveyard to interacting with magical beings and invoking visions of the past.


The land of Braided Shore is a land that inherited an ancient industrial infrastructure, some of it is still noticeable in today's society. Through mechanical endeavours your group can use ancient steam boats and train engines, unpick mechanical locks and use various mechanical devices in the world.


Examples of these are a merchant who doesn't give access to her wares unless a group convinces her, or a scholar that can give lectures to larger parties earning them valuable skills and knowledge in the process. Social endeavours are about interacting with folk in the world and affecting their response to you depending on your numbers.



We’re currently developing these systems and are aiming to try some out in the upcoming beta. We truly hope that you like the idea of endeavours, and we’d love to hear all your thoughts regarding them in the comments right here. If you have ideas for other types of endeavours we can add, please comment below and we might implement them! (And credit you for it in the final game of course!)

Thank you for your time!

Jakob and the team

Hello!

Today we are really excited to share this, our new trailer! We hope you like it. Much like an elephant, development is coming along slowly but surely. Currently the team are working on elephant behaviours, level design and bringing some animal NPCs to life.



Elephant Development

But the truth is that we should have been further along than this by now, and today we're writing to let you know that we've had to revise our schedule - release is now set for a realistic early 2021. We're sorry - we know that some of you have been waiting so patiently! But we're a small team and along with updating Meadow, we just don't have the resources to move much faster than this. This means that we won't be working on any new updates for Meadow until Shelter 3 is released. Pulling resources away from Meadow means that we can fully commit to our deadline for Shelter 3, however we do have plans for some fun Meadow updates when that time comes - we think it will be worth the wait!


Meadow in the Meantime

Meadow has been an unexpected high point in our journey and we want to say a huge thank you for making Meadow what it is today - it's been four years of animal joy, and we've never stopped being surprised, touched and deeply grateful for all that you have produced and shared. Thank you. 

Our recent Kickstarter means that there's been a few new faces in Meadow recently, and we'll continue to do more Play-with-the-devs events (one soon-to-be-announced for April). We also want you to know that the emotes you've been using so effectively will be gaining a sibling in our upcoming fairytale RPG, Book of Travels. Again, to all Meadow players, a huge thank you for helping us test and develop this communication system and showing us how magical it can be.

That's all for now - thank you for all your comments here on Steam! (We've been a little absent lately but we'll be around more often to say hello in the future.)

Best Wishes,

Helen and the team at Might & Delight