Blacksmith Legends News

Hello smith friends,

after 10 weeks of tryhard, I can say that demo is ready and Prologue is nearly polished. I just want to take a bit more time to implement few more features that will bring you better quality of gameplay.
For example, there are missing few guiding cubes when you want to replace item to other position or few lines of text in other languages. I don't like to present you half baked solutions. So I'll rather put the demo in the store next week.

I'm also preparing for the Steam Next Festival, need to create some content for the stream and so on.

What was done this week?

1. Created a changelog on all those bug fixes. Big thanks to publishers QA team but also our small closed Beta group that was formed up on the game's Discord channel. With their help I was able to fix about 60 bugs (and I thought the game is clean :D) where a lot of them were hard blockers. I believe, Prologue still contains some, but, it's a lot better than it was.

2. German language is successfully implemented and now I should go on the next ones. (Chinese, French, Spanish).

3. While I'm waiting for other stuff to be done, have time to finally continue working on the Arena feature. Added a gate and these days will continue on adding more props inside. After that comes the Gladiators.


So next week, I'll update the demo and then we can share some little stories together!

Stay tuned!

VM Machal

Hello blacksmiths,

so, after another week of polish and bug fixes, I'm getting closer to the release of the demo. Hopefully next week. There were really a lot of bugs and actually I had to change a lot of functionalities to optimize whole building process:

1. One Wall to rule them all - I was making 3 types of walls, for door, windows and classic one. Just because I wanted to have realtime lighting go through real polygons instead of fake lights. As a vision it was cute, but an utter waste of time. Any patterned texture came up in 3 different ways and when placed next to each other, it absolutely didn't fit!
Also, when making new types of walls, it was 3x more work for me. So, what I ended up doing was just one wall and put the door and windows inside it. Put a light source on it so it's as natural as it can. And I think it came out really good, see for yourself!
This was the biggest decision, as from now, I can build other types of walls, windows, doors without worrying about the shape and abundant work.


2. Smarter guiding build cubes - everytime you are going to build some type of object, they will display and show you where you can build and disappear, when you already build an object there. I had to smooth out the cubes especially for Windows, now it works as a charm!


3. Achievements and their content - so, Steam achievements are done and the content is also ready. You will get, flags, paintings, statues, floor, walls and other goodies if you reach few achievements. In Prologue, there will be only 5 of them, but it's a beginning.
(thanks to Vanlal Hriata again and his coding skills!)

4. Languages - I'm in the middle of German language implementation. Pretty much waiting for translators, as I sometimes forget some text. It takes me about a week to translate one language, so it's more than I expected, but it's fine. Chinese will come next. I think I can squeeze it into the demo too. Still waiting for translator to finish it.

And of course, the polishing phase is the most important of it all. Some objects were placed incorrectly, weirdly or it was all unintuitive. Hopefully will wrap the demo up next week.

Stay tuned!

Regards,

VM Machal

Dear blacksmiths,

another exhausting but productive week is behind me and I'd like to share some news about the current progress.

What was done during the week?

1. Achievements(Milestones) - the term in game for it will be milestone, but it's the same as achievement. Prologue will contain 5 achievements, also made for Steam. Each will give you unique rewards.


2. More content - speaking of achievement rewards, an example will be these special statues. A cute Derp Sheep holding avocado (thanks to @MehFruits)

and Armor Statue

that will actually be a set of armor available to player during Early Access in the Arena feature!

3. Game polish - as the game is being tested, there are a lot of changes that I do everyday to increase user experience and simplify it for everyone. A good example are these 'guiding green cubes' that pop up during Wall placement. It shows you, where you can place the wall and more precisely, where to hover your mouse cursor so it will be allowed to be placed.



What is planned for next week?

1. Finishing achievements and adding more types of walls and floors - that's couple of new items to be done and added. It's a lot of work, but definitely worth it and love your company while streaming. Definitely plan to do more community assets too, if you'll be interested, check me up at https://www.twitch.tv/vm_machal

2. Adding more languages - German and Chinese should be finished soon, so I'm planning to have them implemented next week

3. Finish demo polish - hopefully, I can clean all the bugs next week, so I can finally release at least the demo version updated with new stuff.

That said, Prologue release is planned after Steam Next Festival that is coming soon, so I'd say, mid-june. That will be final free release, after that, I'll prepare for Early Access, that will possibly be happening September/October. That's a super amount of work, but I'm excited to show you, once ready as this project will be awesome! :)

Regards,

VM Machal

Greetings blacksmiths,

another week of hard work is behind me and I'm happy to present you what was done!

1. Market Saturation - now selling more products in a row results in decreased price over time. After thorough testing I'm really happy about this change as I'm bit forced to craft variety of other stuff. Can do one thing over, but it's really not worth it! :)

2. Building feature is complete - can finally focus on adding content, so more decoration and motivating rewards. Check out these pole flags that players get after finishing Prologue! (shoutout to MehFruits for big help!)

I was discussing adding real flags with you guys, but after consideration and check, lot of them are either in a boring shape to display in game and under copyright law if being modified in any other shapes, so probably will just create own instead like those above.

3. Magical weapons added for crafting and new enemies - bandits will occur and if you decide to join the good side of campaign, you will face them a lot. In this GIF below I took a small snapshot from combat against new enemies.
Cutthroats can optionally steal a portion of your gold, if you fail to click on the quick event. Glacier Axe (magical item) has 25% chance to freeze enemy target for 1 Turn. Also adds quite a big amout of ATK to the wearer.

4. Game is now in testing phase - being tested by people who are doing great job from publisher's QA team.

What's going to happen in upcoming weeks now?

1. Achievements will be finished next week and hopefully linked with Steam, along with remaining content for build system.

2. Game will be tested for bugs and I can tell for sure, there will be a lot of them. So it might take a week or two to have this version ready.

3. In about a week I can see demo being published so all players can experience the building feature and help me with feedback and polishing the game a bit more. Prologue version release will be after Steam's NEXT festival. End of June.


Stay tuned!

Regards,

VM Machal

Hello fellow blacksmiths,

I'm excited to announce you, that Blacksmith Legends: Prologue development is getting finished and enters testing/polishing phase!

What has been done this week:

1. Saving System - game is now being saved properly with all assets from the building feature! (big thanks to Vanlal Hriata, without you, this feature wouldn't be possible!). It doesn't cost any performance and everything is smooth and neat.

2. Quest Rewards - now updated with new building content. Regarding new content, can't forget to mention new fan made banner textures! (shoutout to MehFruits and NordicForge for being amazing!)

Flags will be implemented next week.
For anyone else interested in making some stuff for the building feature, feel free to contact me on my discord channel at the bottom of this note! :)

3. Tavern animated icon redesign - (top left corner) now pops in and out between 7pm - 7am. This means, you can't enter tavern during the day. However, if you stay in the scene all the time, it doesn't 'kick' you out of course.


4. Building object tooltips - hovering over and clicking on placed items can reveal what are they actually adding. (there's no tooltip for just cosmetic stuff)


5. Million bug fixes

What's going to happen in upcoming weeks?

1. Balance, polish, balance, debug - playing the game over and over and trying to make it as clean as possible. However I'm sure, there'll be a lot of stuff that I miss, so it will take few weeks to get it in proper shape.

2. Market Saturation - part of balance, but it's a new logic. Crafting/selling e.g. Horseshoes only will cause it to be sold for less and less amount over time.

3. Reputation logic - before I've got a tip to implement a system, where gaining certain reputation can alter workshop appearance. As I love the idea, I'll create building parts, that will be granted upon reputational rewards and stuff.

4. Achievements - connected to Steam, not in demo, but Prologue will have them. At least few ones.

5. Smelter Room Upgrades - still WIP, but getting there. Smelter now will be available when you get a quest to expand and build Smeltery. Only in Prologue as it's quite at later stage.

6. Building feature logic - well, as I don't want it to become Sims or other similar games, you will not be punished by having fully walled off buildings. It doesn't make much sense here, since I don't want to implement bedrooms and kitchen etc., there are better games for that. And, blacksmiths/smelters in medieval era were pretty much outdoor professions. So it's a compromise.

Any feedback is welcome!

Feel free to stop by @Discord - https://discord.gg/CnhggUB

Regards,

Machal