Fabled Lands News

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While autumn started knocking on the door all of a sudden, this week I was focusing on adding more content to the Fabled Lands build.

What can I say, I sure did enjoy gathering some scorpion venom from the corpses of my enemies! ːsteamhappyː

Combat at the moment is at a middle stage. This is the biggest gameplay change from the source material becoming a full grid-based combat instead of one vs one melee combat. The first thing I want to mention for sure is the size of the grid.

The size of the grid is really not that big but I can give you my reasoning behind it. The game is PvM as opposed to controlling a whole party. However, real time combat on the world map with monsters appearing and attacking you just wouldn't fit neither the pacing nor the mood of the game. I decided turn-based was the way to go and I wanted to experiment with a hex-based grid as I have experience in that in one of my previous titles. If the grid is too big you just run away indefinitely and recharge your cooldowns/shoot with a ranged weapon and it becomes quite easy.



The absence of a party really is a challenge for the tactical aspects. So aside from terrain modifiers and obstacles, I decided to play around with spell patterns. I.e. you have to position yourself accordingly to be able to gain maximum utilization of your spells' hex patterns. Add on top of that some passive skills that may adjust the effects depending on how you apply them and I feel it starts to be interesting. There are summoning spells as well like the Wayfarer's animal companion or the Troubadour's illusion. These spells instantly elevate the positioning element of the combat as well.

I will talk a lot more about combat in the future updates with the development of active and passive skills and ranged weapons and ammo and how this would affect the gameplay. My biggest challenge would be the emblematic boss fights and how to turn them into challenging and interesting encounters.

Here it is! Fabled Lands' very own inventory equipment window v.1.0 :) An improvement from the demo earlier this summer, you now have a separation of your backpack and equipped items. This gives the desired increase of inventory space. The rework of the item system from last week enabled me to transition to this classic rpg approach.

When I re-read the rules of the gamebooks I am adapting again I saw that most items that modified your abilities required you to select only one of them, i.e. you have to choose either a Mandolin or a Flute to increase your Charisma rather than both. This is a bit underwhelming if you do right click Equip/Unequip on each item that modifies an ability type and there are 6 of them... So a dedicated equipment slot would be a great solution to the UX impediment.

With my reworked combat system I could also take advantage of the usage of different armor types such as helmets, chest armor, rings, etc. for raw defence boost and shields for blocking.



So this brought up the number of equipped slots to a nice number that can actually serve as a proper RPG mannequin.

And I think that the increased inventory space that way for Adventure Gear, Consumable and Quest items is a big quality of life change as I always struggled after 2 hours of game time what to carry and what to throw on the ground. But most importantly the balance with ability checks is kept mostly intact.

My ultimate desire is when I iterrate on my inventory system next time, I'd add stackable items. There are already items with charges that I haven't properly implemented yet. Also, stackable items would allow me to introduce ammo like arrows and bolts for ranged weapons. Aside from loving the concept myself from purely old-school RPG perspective, ranged weapons are a bit OP at the moment. Having arrows that take up your precious inventory space would really help in that area.

It's already September and what better way to start this month of weekly updates than the hand-drawn fantasy map of Sokara, The War-Thorn Kingdom, the first big area you'll be free to roam in the upcoming game!

Sokara is a country torn apart by civil war. Grieve Marlock, the newly self-appointed Protector General of all Sokara, has overthrown and killed King Corin VII; now the country is divided between those faithful to the revolution, and those still loyal to the heir to the throne - Nergan Corin.

No stone is left unturned as you take on a journey through the War-Torn kingdom. Visit the beautiful cities of Marlock and Yellowport, climb the Coldbleak Mountains or walk to the northern mountain range known as the Spine of Harkun. Knights, monsters, royalty and a smouldering city are just a few pieces to be included in your Fabled Lands cRPG experience.

Some of the quests in this area involve assassinating the king of the rat-men infesting the sewers in the city of Yellowport, looting treasure from the lair of Vayss the Sea Dragon, defeating the Black Dragon Knight in combat to the death and rescuing a trapped god from the summit of Devil's Peak.

Fabled Lands has over 100 items that can help you over the course of your adventures. There are skill checks throughout the game like in your classic DnD RPG and useful items like potions can help you twist any unfavorable odds.

This week I brewed some Potions in Blessed Springs' Alchemy shop :)

I needed to figure out a proper way of adjusting abilities temporarily both outside of combat (in story mode) and inside of combat.

I had already coded buffs/debuffs logic for effects like Poisoned or Immobilized in Combat which I extended to story-based statuses and diseases like Ghoul Bite which reduced several of your character stats until you would find a cure.

However, temporary enhancements of a particular ability with the possibility to stack several potions on top of one another (whether this would remain a feature would be debated) were a bit tricky.

The temp effect would last until an ability check is made. I've implemented something partial to make the task progress, but it still needs some code refactoring to make everything align better with the existing buffs/debuffs logic. When I am happy with the result I'll merge into the main dev branch and make a bulk commit update.

I believe it's finally time to refactor my Items' behavior as well, in particular Consumable items haven't been fleshed out and I've hardcoded some nasty stuff for the healing potion and the poison antidote.

I really, really enjoyed Unity's component-based approach instead of typical hierarchical solution, so I am headed in this direction.