V185: Hands, mugshots and prep work for a few big features
This week we've been busy with further improvements of how we display token mechanics during encounters. We also rolled in a completely new concept of how we show spell formulas that features hands of mages that move in the astral space! Additionally, we have a new music track for Prologue, and a number of interface additions that prepare the game for a few new big features – mood states and personal traits.
If you already own the game under Limited Early Access, we hope that you love the progress! =) And everyone else will soon be able to try Spire of Sorcery's playable demo that will be a part of Steam's Next Fest in June.
Detailed release notes for version 185: on the game's forum, as well as below.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]CONCEPT[/h3]
This week we continued doing our "house cleaning" and "homework", which stands for "improving UX for existing content and features" and "preparing the game for new features to come". When people think about the best parts of making games, it comes down to "new" things: new mechanics, new content, new experiences that click together. But a larger part of games development is actually seeing things through – making sure the buttons are where they should be, the tooltips reflect the actual rules of the game, and nothing of what happens on the inside is confusing or invisible to the player. Which is where we're at, this week and this month in general.
[h3]STEAM NEXT FEST[/h3]
Before we dive into what's new in version 185, we wanted to share with you a bit of good news: we decided to showcase the payable demo of Spire of Sorcery during the upcoming Steam Next Fest, which starts in about 10 weeks. We see it as a unique opportunity to let everyone who's interested in the game, but is currently not a part of the Limited Early Access community, to try the game first-hand. Aside from this being a hard deadline for us to finish a number of key features, it's also a convenient deadline for our dev team to finalise the translation of the game into the 7 key languages that we plan to launch in.
[h3]UPDATES ON CHARACTER MULLIGAN SCREEN[/h3]
Character Mulligan screen, which is currently a part of starting every new game – but will in the future move to its own place in the campaign structure – got updated:
[h3]WHEN EQUIPMENT ISSUES TOKENS, THIS IS NOW REFLECTED WITH ANIMATIONS[/h3]
When characters have active equipment, such equipment issues tokens at the start of the encounter. Earlier, we were unable to connect for players such tokens and their origin. Now, we display the specific equipment and the token that is issued, as well as name the activated mechanics (in this case, "Added") – see below:
[h3]UPDATED CREATURE MUGSHOTS[/h3]
When creatures attack your party, the attacker first indicates the indented target and the token that it's about to deal. Earlier, we used a downscaled version of the whole creature to identify the attacker. Now all creatures have their own specific mugshots, like on the screenshot below.
Another place where mugshots got an update is on the list of extra creatures waiting to join the encounter on the left panel:
[h3]WHEN ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECT DEALS TOKENS, IT IS NOW SHOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCREEN[/h3]
Earlier, we would increase the size of the effect's icon, but this was not enough to draw player's attention there. Now, whenever an environmental effect begins to act, we first introduce it by displaying its large icon in the middle of the screen.
[h3]CONCENTRATION GOT ITS OWN ICON[/h3]
Concentration is a mechanic that allows characters to perform more than one action per turn, during encounters. Because we already have diseases (and soon will have injuries and mood traits) that affect the cost of concentration, it was about time that the mechanic received its own icon. Here's how it looks in Character Profile (the tooltip is not implemented yet):
And here's how it looks in the encounter mode, on the button to the left of the elements on hand:
[h3]WE'RE GETTING READY TO ADD MOOD TO THE GAME[/h3]
With one of the upcoming versions, the game will receive the Mood mechanic that will replace Euphoria and Stress lasting effects. There are 7 mood states, and each character receives (randomly) 2 mood traits that define how different mood effects them personally.
While the feature is not hooked up in the game logic yet, we already added it to the user interface. You can see the mood scale shown below the portrait of each character, in their character profiles.
[h3]WE'RE GETTING READY TO ADD TRAITS TO THE GAME[/h3]
Similarly to mood, personal traits are one of the bigger features that we "ship by parts". With this week's update, we bring them into user interface and with one of the upcoming builds we'll also enable the effects. You can currently find the list of personal traits on character profile. The list will expand as we expand the pool.
[h3]WE'RE GETTING READY TO ADD PERSONAL PASSION TO THE GAME[/h3]
"Passions" is a new mechanic that is related to character's dream: it is something that improves the mood of a particular character, such as "casting combo spells" or "casting really long spells". While we cannot turn this mechanic on before we implement the mood, we already found a place for it in the character profile.
[h3]ANIMATED SPELLCASTING AREA[/h3]
This change has been a while in the making, and we debated whether we should introduce it in this week's build – or wait until a more refined version. In the end, we decided to show what we currently have, as we like keeping the dev process transparent. In a nutshell: spellcasting area now shows 'hands' of the mages, which reflect the progress of spellcasting (idle, in process, completed). This will continue evolving as we'll fine-tune the animation as well as add a pretty cool solution we thought of, in terms of reflecting the memory stat.
[h3]NEW MUSIC FOR TRAVEL MODE, CHAPTER: PROLOGUE[/h3]
We finally got around to creating the custom music track for the current chapter, Prologue. You will now hear it playing in the travel mode. It's meant to reflect the mood of the chapter.
[h3]WHAT'S NEXT?[/h3]
In general, we still have quite a lot of homework and house cleaning to wrap up: getting better at displaying encounter outcomes, improving animation of environmental effects, and so on. At the same time, we're going to move forward with a few new features: mood, mood traits and personal traits, so that we can finally get around to implementing hunger, foraging and cooking. It's hard to say what exactly we will ship next Friday as time flies so fast! We wish you all a very nice spring weekend, and look forward to your feedback on the recent version.
If you already own the game under Limited Early Access, we hope that you love the progress! =) And everyone else will soon be able to try Spire of Sorcery's playable demo that will be a part of Steam's Next Fest in June.
Detailed release notes for version 185: on the game's forum, as well as below.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h3]CONCEPT[/h3]
This week we continued doing our "house cleaning" and "homework", which stands for "improving UX for existing content and features" and "preparing the game for new features to come". When people think about the best parts of making games, it comes down to "new" things: new mechanics, new content, new experiences that click together. But a larger part of games development is actually seeing things through – making sure the buttons are where they should be, the tooltips reflect the actual rules of the game, and nothing of what happens on the inside is confusing or invisible to the player. Which is where we're at, this week and this month in general.
[h3]STEAM NEXT FEST[/h3]
Before we dive into what's new in version 185, we wanted to share with you a bit of good news: we decided to showcase the payable demo of Spire of Sorcery during the upcoming Steam Next Fest, which starts in about 10 weeks. We see it as a unique opportunity to let everyone who's interested in the game, but is currently not a part of the Limited Early Access community, to try the game first-hand. Aside from this being a hard deadline for us to finish a number of key features, it's also a convenient deadline for our dev team to finalise the translation of the game into the 7 key languages that we plan to launch in.
[h3]UPDATES ON CHARACTER MULLIGAN SCREEN[/h3]
Character Mulligan screen, which is currently a part of starting every new game – but will in the future move to its own place in the campaign structure – got updated:
- in addition to seeing character's strongest and weakest stats, you will now see one of the personal traits that they possess
- every character got their own inventory, which you can fully preview when choosing party members
- we also preview the resulting collective inventory of the chosen initial party
[h3]WHEN EQUIPMENT ISSUES TOKENS, THIS IS NOW REFLECTED WITH ANIMATIONS[/h3]
When characters have active equipment, such equipment issues tokens at the start of the encounter. Earlier, we were unable to connect for players such tokens and their origin. Now, we display the specific equipment and the token that is issued, as well as name the activated mechanics (in this case, "Added") – see below:
[h3]UPDATED CREATURE MUGSHOTS[/h3]
When creatures attack your party, the attacker first indicates the indented target and the token that it's about to deal. Earlier, we used a downscaled version of the whole creature to identify the attacker. Now all creatures have their own specific mugshots, like on the screenshot below.
Another place where mugshots got an update is on the list of extra creatures waiting to join the encounter on the left panel:
[h3]WHEN ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECT DEALS TOKENS, IT IS NOW SHOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCREEN[/h3]
Earlier, we would increase the size of the effect's icon, but this was not enough to draw player's attention there. Now, whenever an environmental effect begins to act, we first introduce it by displaying its large icon in the middle of the screen.
[h3]CONCENTRATION GOT ITS OWN ICON[/h3]
Concentration is a mechanic that allows characters to perform more than one action per turn, during encounters. Because we already have diseases (and soon will have injuries and mood traits) that affect the cost of concentration, it was about time that the mechanic received its own icon. Here's how it looks in Character Profile (the tooltip is not implemented yet):
And here's how it looks in the encounter mode, on the button to the left of the elements on hand:
[h3]WE'RE GETTING READY TO ADD MOOD TO THE GAME[/h3]
With one of the upcoming versions, the game will receive the Mood mechanic that will replace Euphoria and Stress lasting effects. There are 7 mood states, and each character receives (randomly) 2 mood traits that define how different mood effects them personally.
While the feature is not hooked up in the game logic yet, we already added it to the user interface. You can see the mood scale shown below the portrait of each character, in their character profiles.
[h3]WE'RE GETTING READY TO ADD TRAITS TO THE GAME[/h3]
Similarly to mood, personal traits are one of the bigger features that we "ship by parts". With this week's update, we bring them into user interface and with one of the upcoming builds we'll also enable the effects. You can currently find the list of personal traits on character profile. The list will expand as we expand the pool.
[h3]WE'RE GETTING READY TO ADD PERSONAL PASSION TO THE GAME[/h3]
"Passions" is a new mechanic that is related to character's dream: it is something that improves the mood of a particular character, such as "casting combo spells" or "casting really long spells". While we cannot turn this mechanic on before we implement the mood, we already found a place for it in the character profile.
[h3]ANIMATED SPELLCASTING AREA[/h3]
This change has been a while in the making, and we debated whether we should introduce it in this week's build – or wait until a more refined version. In the end, we decided to show what we currently have, as we like keeping the dev process transparent. In a nutshell: spellcasting area now shows 'hands' of the mages, which reflect the progress of spellcasting (idle, in process, completed). This will continue evolving as we'll fine-tune the animation as well as add a pretty cool solution we thought of, in terms of reflecting the memory stat.
[h3]NEW MUSIC FOR TRAVEL MODE, CHAPTER: PROLOGUE[/h3]
We finally got around to creating the custom music track for the current chapter, Prologue. You will now hear it playing in the travel mode. It's meant to reflect the mood of the chapter.
[h3]WHAT'S NEXT?[/h3]
In general, we still have quite a lot of homework and house cleaning to wrap up: getting better at displaying encounter outcomes, improving animation of environmental effects, and so on. At the same time, we're going to move forward with a few new features: mood, mood traits and personal traits, so that we can finally get around to implementing hunger, foraging and cooking. It's hard to say what exactly we will ship next Friday as time flies so fast! We wish you all a very nice spring weekend, and look forward to your feedback on the recent version.