Archmage Rises News

Hello fellow adventurers!

Our first major content update is now available. We worked hard to bring the people of Vaelun to life for your enjoyment! Please see note below about previous game worlds and save files.

• Relationship Perks - Building relationships with NPCs offers new relationship perks as you increase your friendship level with them, giving you perks such as discounts on goods and services, etc. This is a significant system we can expand on going forward.
  
• NPC Job Skills - Now several of the vendors have a new job skill stat that indicates how good they are at their craft. As their job skill increases, the quality of their goods and services will increase as well. This is a big system and lays a foundation we can build further from. For now it is implemented for Innkeeper, Outfitter, Weaponsmith, and Armorer. This is why we call this "Part 1".
  
• Job Skill Quests - New job skill quests are now available that will significantly boost an NPC's job skill, allowing them to level up.
  
• Ask NPCs Questions - NPCs know a lot more about their world. You can ask questions about specific subjects such as people, places, resources, services, etc. They give more in depth responses such as what they know about the subject, how they feel about people, where to find things, how long to reach certain destinations, how safe it is, etc.
  
• Known vs Unknown NPCs - When encountering NPCs in buildings, known NPCs will have fully visible portraits, while unknown NPCs will show up as silhouettes.
  
• Gifts - NPCs who have become your friends may now possibly send you gifts via letter
  
• New NPC Portraits, with Emotions - We updated all of our NPC portraits with high quality art, adding the range of emotions for reaction to what you say and do
  
• NPC Schedules - NPCs are now no longer static in their workplaces. They can move around throughout the day off hours, grabbing something to eat or hang out at the inn, study at the conclave, run errands around town, etc.
  
• New NPC Trait System - NPCs have traits and opinions of those traits in others. This creates consistent reactions between NPCs. This is just the tip of the iceberg, we can do much more with this.
  
• Improved quest system - we had a technical constraint where a quest chain could only track killing something OR collecting something. Now we can do both, allowing for more interesting quests.
  
• 15+ New Quests - enhanced with emotional responses and additional trackers
  
• Revised Relationship Screen - Hey, it actually works! It is cleaner and shows more valuable data: people's jobs, hometown. It also provides filtering options - current town, friends, enemies - and sorting alphabetical or by relationship score high/low
  
• New World Creation Screen - updated to the new UI look and feel. You will see several new tabs and settings (disabled for now) allowing us to add more options later
  
• Revised Relationship Tiers - It is easier than ever to make friends in Vaelun. The new values are:
  Casual Friend 75
  Good Friend 225
  Close Friend 450
  Best Friend 900
  
• Time Stands Still In Conversation - Time no longer passes during conversation. You're welcome. ːhappystar2022ː
  
• Town Economic Themes - Towns and their economies are now categorized into themes based on their geographic locations and the available surrounding resources, which also affects trade with nearby towns.
  
• New Items - like enchanted pickaxes, armor padding, weapon wraps, and fluffy towels.
  
• Custom NPC portraits - customize a person's portrait by right clicking the portrait and selecting a local image from the "%appdata%\LocalLow\Defiance Game Studio\ArchmageRises\CustomPortraits" folder.
  

To make all the new stuff above, we had to significantly change the file format for NPCs. Sorry, there was no way to migrate data across. We try very hard to maintain file compatibility within minor versions but will likely change it significantly across major versions.

A prompt will appear when you start the game asking to delete your incompatible files for you.

• Some of the pricing is wacky. Will hotfix it tomorrow, didn't want to hold up the whole release for that.
  
• We're investigating a performance / lag issue sometimes when talking to certain people. It seems to be based on quest pool selection behind the scenes. We're working on it right now will patch soon as we can.
  
• This is a big update, we probably introduced bugs we didn't catch. Thanks for your time and reporting in advance. We appreciate it!
  

Thanks so much for being on this adventure with us! We really hope you enjoy this update!

PS. It's still Jun 28 EST when I published this. 4 minutes more and we would have been late. ːlaughing_yetiː

Hey everyone!

This is a quick stability patch before the latest update releases. Here's what is new in this patch:

[h2]Fixed:[/h2]

• solves issue with save games not loading due to dungeons being destroyed while player is being serialized as being inside that destroyed dungeon.
  
• fixed issue with dungeons being duplicated in world files, which caused several world and dungeon related bugs (like entering a dungeon in one part of the world and exiting the dungeon in another part of the world, black hexes appearing below lairs, etc)
  
• fixed issue with player data not being cleared after dying or quiting a game and starting a new world in the same play session, which can cause worlds and games to break.
  

IMPORTANT NOTE: Due to the nature of the changes coming up in the Townsfolk update releasing this week, save games will no longer be compatible and will not load in the upcoming Townsfolk Update release.

It's time for another patch!

This patch addresses some of the biggest dungeon bugs that some people have been experiencing lately. Some issues that (while rare) happen on world gen that create duplicates of dungeons that are existing at the exact same co-ordinates, which is causing some strange bugs to dungeons.

[h2]NEW:[/h2]

• Added setting default resolution on Steam Deck
  
• Added triggering onscreen keyboard automatically when entering text in text fields when playing on Steam Deck
  

[h2]FIXED:[/h2]

• Bug at world gen that, in rare cases, generates multiple lairs in multiple locations for a single dungeon. This was causing multiple bugs, including dungeons not appearing on a map after following tracks, disappearing dungeons, entering a dungeon in one part of a map and exiting in another, and in some cases save games not being able to load properly.
  
• Fixed bug that caused zooming into dungeon doors instead of travelling through them
  
• Fixed issue with player and NPC portraits not displaying properly on the relationship screen
  
• Fixed issue with NPC portrait bug breaking quest log screen
  
• Fixed issue with enemies dodging acid pools and similar environmental damage
  
• Fixed issue preventing old worlds from being deleted properly
  

With the new update, and the new save file format (which should help with a lot of the disk usage issues from having very large save files), your old save games are no longer compatible with future versions of Archmage Rises starting with version 0.0.13. The newer save file format is leaner which will not only help cut down significantly with the amount of disk space older save files consumed, but also boosts performance in load / save times.

So what are you do to with the old save files? Well, the game doesn't automatically remove them from your hard drive, so you are welcome to go ahead and delete your old saves in order to save some space.

Here's where you can find your old incompatible save games (and worlds) to trash if you want to reclaim some of that disk space:

NOTE: If you've already updated to patch 0.0.13, in these folders you'll find both files directly inside the GameSaves / Worlds folders as well as folders inside these folders. Those new folders contain your new saves/worlds so you'll want to retain those, but you can delete any of the files that are directly inside the GameSaves / Worlds folders.



WINDOWS:
C:\users\yourusername\AppData\LocalLow\Defiance Game Studio\ArchmageRises\GameSaves
C:\users\yourusername\AppData\LocalLow\Defiance Game Studio\ArchmageRises\Worlds

MAC:
/Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Defiance Game Studio/ArchmageRises/GameSaves
/Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Defiance Game Studio/ArchmageRises/Worlds

LINUX / STEAM DECK:
/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compdata/506480/pfx/drive_c/users/[username]/AppData/LocalLow/Defiance Game Studio/ArchmageRises/GameSaves
/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compdata/506480/pfx/drive_c/users/[username]/AppData/LocalLow/Defiance Game Studio/ArchmageRises/Worlds

That's it! That should get rid of your old incompatible saves and give you some of your disk space back!

Phil

Hey everyone!

We are close to the release of our first major update since we launched to Early Access at the end of April. We're excited to share details on what to expect in the update!

Before we dive into features, lets talk a little about our goals.

NPCs in games are too unrealistic...

NPCs in a lot of games, including Archmage Rises, feel flat and it breaks immersion. Real people have goals, responsibilities, habits, emotions, reactions, likes, dislikes, opinions, etc, all of which are contextually aware of their surroundings.

Our goal in this first major update is to lay a foundation in creating NPCs that are each unique, individual, and special in their own ways. You can connect and interact with the NPCs in a way that builds a unique emotional attachment to each NPC that matters as you share in their successes, joys, failures, and losses, driving your own behaviour as you impact each of their lives.

[h2]New in Update 1: Townsfolk[/h2]

[h3]NPC Schedules[/h3]

The first major change coming to Update 1: Townsfolk is that NPCs are no longer static. In games we often see NPCs in the same places doing the same things.

After the update, NPCs in Archmage Rises will have their own schedules. They have places to go and things to do based on their own personal goals and responsibilities! They might have a job to get to, maybe run out to the market to do a little shopping during their lunch break, stop by the armorer to say a quick hi to their friend, return to work. After work, you might find them hanging out and having a bite at the inn.



We aren't just talking about daily or weekly static scripted schedules either. The tech allows each NPC schedule to change based on season, economy, town events & festivals. They can take trips out of town, flee from a town attack, etc.

At first the schedules will be coarse and general, but over time as we get more familiar with it and our tooling gets better, get more specific and detailed.

[h3]NPCs have Strong Feelings[/h3]

In this update, NPCs will have likes and dislikes about each other based on traits. This will later affect how you might relate to NPCs or how you make your decisions in interacting with them.

[h3]NPCs Can Express Emotions[/h3]

I didn't think it would be practical to get emotions into our procedurally generated portraits, but Rubi found a way! So now NPCs can express their emotions visually. If you are talking about something they like, their portrait can now express happiness. Conversely, if you anger them or talk about something they feel negatively toward, you'll see that on their face.



[h3]Deeper Conversations & Interactions[/h3]

Up to this point, conversing with NPCs in Archmage Rises has been pretty limited. In this new update, NPCs will be a lot more knowledgeable about things and the world. We like the idea of learning about the world through people.

As you dialogue with NPCs you will learn 'subjects of interest' (keywords like people, places, events, etc). You will be able to ask about people, places, resources, services, and historical events. They will happily share what they know, give their opinions, or direct you to someone who will know.





[h3]Job Skills & Job Quests[/h3]

This update introduces a new feature for NPC's: job skill. Each NPC will have a "job skill" stat which determines how good an NPC is at their profession. The higher the NPC's job skill, the better options they can offer (better quality rooms at an inn, better/more food and drink options, better weapons, etc), along with opening up new quest options.

While we've had some form of job specific quests in the starter town before, this update will also include a deeper layer when it comes to our questing system. There are 2 main types of job quests:

1. General Job Quests - These are job specific story quests, like an inn keeper or outfitter. The main purpose of these quests are to build relationship with NPCs by doing favors for them.

2. Job Skill Quests - These are more involved quests with the goal of improving an NPC's job skill. An NPC's job skill will increase incrementally over time, but completing Job Skill Quests will help boost their job skill significantly to the next tier.

By building relationship and completing job skill quests, NPCs will in return give favor and gifts back to the player according to their relationship (for instance: a permanent discount for his friend, the player).

An NPC with a higher tier job skill has better offerings of goods and services. An innkeeper has better food, drink, and entertainment options. A weaponsmith crafts better equipment.

We think the perks, favors, and gifts NPCs provide will give greater dimension to relationships and help you feel more connected to the world.

[h3]Revised Relationship Levels[/h3]

With all of these new changes to relationships with NPCs, we've also revised the relationship scoring system to better balance how relationship tiers are obtained and affect the other systems in this update.

[h3]Enhanced Economy[/h3]

With all of the new job skill quests and relationship perks coming in this update, we've made some extra enhancements to towns and economies. Now each town is generated with a theme, just like real towns. You might find a mining town which bases it's economy on the available natural resources surrounding the town and might be rich in metals and metal working, versus a brewing town that makes most of it's income based on alcohol production. Goods can travel between towns, so those near a brewing town will be stocked up with varieties of alcohol produced by the brewing town, etc.

Towns can also vary greatly in their wealth levels. Some towns are rich with resources, materials and goods to sell, while others struggle to make ends meet and have little to offer in terms of goods and services. But those towns can also benefit from a little help from their friendly neighborhood mage who might be willing to invest time and resources to help boost their economy.

Those are the major changes coming in the Townsfolk update, which will be launching on June 28th!

We'd love to hear your thoughts and what features you are most excited about!