Archmage Rises News

It's been a while coming, but now you can finally fight your rivals! Prepare for a brand new challenge, as your rivals not only bring magical attacks your way, but they also bring some interesting defensive challenges for you to face.

[h2]NEW:[/h2]

• New enemy types to fight: Fire Mage, Ice Mage, Earth Mage, Storm Mage. Each mage type has it's own unique challenges to face
  
• New option to attack your rival when you meet them
  
• Rivals are now more difficult to locate. NPCs will not easily divulge their locations.
  
• Bribe or schmooze Conclave Chapterheads to discover the location of your rivals
  
• New NPC greetings - now NPCs comment on you based on a variety of factors (your appearance, their relationship with you, how long ago they last saw you, etc)
  
• Gain additional legacy bonuses for eliminating a rival
  
• You can now hunt down and kill your primary rival in the Mabren's Tower quest after you've completed the quest
  
• New combat arena - Town Street
  
• Added new magic XP book reward to Innkeeper starter town quest
  
• New death animation over rival portrait after killing that rival
  

[h2]IMPROVED:[/h2]

• Prompt to abandon a quest when talking to a quest giver now shows the name of the quest
  
• Added AP cost to button tooltip on weapons
  
• Additional "do not know" NPC responses
  

[h2]FIXED:[/h2]

• Fixed VFX glitch when casting Fireball
  
• Fixed a bug with enemy difficult scaling
  
• Fixed some gender-related text generation bugs
  
• Fixed some minor combat background formatting issues
  
• Fixed a bug where abandoning the tower quest wouldn't remove the prompt to abandon the tower quest
  

There are likely more fixes and additions not listed here that I may be missing :)

Also, there are a few bugs remaining that we need to fix, but we have already made you wait long enough, so we decided to release this beta build with these issues outstanding so we don't keep you waiting any longer. These aren't game breaking bugs and we'll get these fixed up asap.

[h2]KNOWN ISSUES:[/h2]

• While NPCs will not reveal the location of your primary rival in the Mabren's Tower quest prematurely, it's still possible to potentially encounter this rival by chance and kill them prior to completing the Tower quest. This should end the quest, but currently does not. We'll fix this soon.
  
• If you kill a rival and then find them on the Relationship screen, it currently does not indicate that they were killed. This will be fixed soon as well.
  
• When visiting a Shipwright, there is a text bug related to displaying his current activity when greeting you.
  

Thanks for testing out this beta and we hope you enjoy it! As always, we'd love to hear about any bugs you come across that we may have missed and would love to get your feedback on the new rival combat. Enjoy!

We are winding down on the final touches to the Rivals combat update, and ramping up on what is shaping up to be our biggest update ever!

Here’s what folks are working on this coming week (and beyond):

[h2]RIVALS WRAP-UP:[/h2]



We are so very close to putting a lid on the Rivals combat update, at least as far as being able to push the update to the Beta branch. Last week after testing, Thomas and Phil were both pleased with how it all plays in general, with just a few more important bug fixes to squash.

Once we finish those, we’ll release it to the Beta branch for another round of testing where players can try it out, we can find any other bugs that may have slipped through the cracks, and do some more final tune-ups (if needed) before finally releasing it to the main public branch.

Phil will be heading the charge on this with the assistance of D2. Alex will also join the fray later this week (more on that later).

[h2]EXPLORATION:[/h2]

Mark and the rest of the team are full steam ahead on what is currently known as the “Exploration” update, which essentially (as of now anyway) will be our biggest update/release between now and our 1.0 launch!

This is what we’re focusing on this week:

• Michal, James, Nolan, Mark - Exploration Events/Encounters.
  
• Tyler - Revised Skill/Stat System
  
• Zach - Dynamic Quests
  
• Jonathan, Jessi, Phil - Continuing on UI/UX Overhaul
  

We’re all very excited with how exploration will be improved in this coming update, which will (at least in Phil’s perspective) make the game feel a lot more like a TTRPG-like experience. BTW, an easy way to get Phil’s stamp of approval internally is to compare how the feature/idea we are working on is like D&D and he’s pretty much on board 😆. For those of you who might be worried about the game losing that feel, you can rest easy knowing that you’ve got several torch bearer’s within the team carrying that torch for you!

[h2]OTHER NEWS:[/h2]

We’ve got 3 new team members joining us this week! Starting on Wednesday, joining us on our quest are:

• Emily: project management and helping us all stay on task and hitting our goals
  
• Alex: QA testing and running our regular patch updates
  
• Andrey: For the summer he’ll be joining us as a developer before returning to his teaching work
  

Next week our new artist Lucas will be joining us as well. Would love for you to give them a warm welcome!

[h2]Recipe for Success[/h2]

The last several weeks have been planning and transition. We’re bringing on four new team members in just over a week, so getting everyone aligned and on the same page as far as game vision has been pivotal.

Mark Webster is a 15+ year veteran game designer (GoW:Ragnarök, God of War 2018, Guitar Hero, Skylanders) and Lead Designer on Archmage Rises since last fall. Last week he laid out for the team how and why we are tackling development in a Play Experience way.

I recorded this meeting for the new employees starting in May. But afterwards, I felt it was so good and explanatory that I am taking a chance: I’m sharing this internal meeting with you, our faithful fellow adventurer.



This is the first slide, which I forgot to record.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Notes:

• What we’re working on is Update #3 Exploration, but it is so comprehensive of an update that it is most of the major parts of the game. It is going to take us a while, many months.
  
• We will continue to make patches every other week as long as we need to, while we are doing the above.
  
• Mark mentions something about ‘Adventure Books’ and ‘Seasons of Life’. These are concepts around structuring the overall ‘life’ of a player character still very much still in design discussion. I’ll have more to say when we figure out what it means!
  

[h2]Rivals[/h2]

• All five mage types are working: Fire, Ice, Arcane, Earth, Storm
  
• Phil and I are doing one last round of experience testing before we release to the beta branch. Think it is this week.
  

[h2]FIXED:[/h2]
Fix for game launch black screen bug caused due to an empty or malformed Settings.json file
Fixed some bugs that were causing some players to get stuck in/at the end of combat
Fixes for some starter town quests
Various NPC conversation and keyword highlighting bug fixes and optimizations

[h2]IMPROVED:[/h2]
Added Day/Night cycle to Mage Tower
Added the ability to ask NPCs about monsters

Less pontificating this week than the previous two weeks updates! More details about the game dev.

[h2]Mini-Update Rival Combat[/h2]



Rivals is a small update adding the ability to fight specific named mages in the game. These mages specialize in one of the schools and present a unique challenge to the player.

• Great news! We think Rivals will be ready to hit the Beta branch either this week or next week.
  
• This one has taken a while to pull together for the reason I wrote about last week: Finding the music. Being more intentional about the experience, the feels, rather than just the lyrics and the feature.
  
• I’m not pretending it’ll be the best thing you’ve ever played, but it should feel like ‘Hey, they put some work into this.’ If it does, then this is a good microcosm of the larger ‘find the fun’ initiative we’re going into
  
• There are a number of fixes and Quality of Life improvements baked into this version
  

[h2]Exploration[/h2]



Exploration is our next major update to the game. It will greatly enhance the overworld experience, map exploration, UI experience, dynamically generated quests based on NPC motives, and player progression.

• Jessi, Phil, and our Super-Senior programmer Jonathan are all working on the new UI. The new UI is being architected well (as opposed to what we’ve had to date… which is not). The new architecture will allow something good for you and something good for us
  
  • The new architecture supports custom keybindings and controller play - eventually this game is going onto the Switch and other platforms, but I personally like playing PC games with a controller and we’re allowing it
    
  • The new architecture allows for automated testing scripts. This will help improve quality and make our new QA Alex’s life much easier!
    
• Mark is working hard on ‘finding the fun’ (the music) in the new Regions concept for the map
  
• Zach has the dynamic quests working well, but needs to rearchitect some of the branching dialogue tech. My goal is to make a crappy video of dynamic quests working in game next week. It is really really cool!
  
• Nolan and I are discussing the Relationships aspect of the game. We’ve been mulling over ‘What does friendship look like in Archmage Rises?’ To make these NPCs feel good we’re going to use more of the techniques you see in novels and games from the likes of Bioware, Larian, and Obsidian.
  

[h2]This Week’s Patch[/h2]

• Fixed an issue with game start ups due to corrupted setting files
  
• Working on a bug causing some players to experience combat freezing
  
• Improvements + fixes to the Topic Picker, including the ability to ask about monsters. If the NPC knows they will tell you where they are. Invaluable for quests!
  

[h2]Other Studio News[/h2]

• Josh has decided to move on. Our time with him was beneficial and appreciated, we thank him for his efforts, and wish him well for whatever is next.
  
• It just so happens I’ve been in discussions with a programmer for a year. He is looking for something immediate. We’re able to bring him in right away to help.
  

Curious, do you like the more ‘game details’ posts like this? or the more ‘thought piece’ like the last 2 weeks? Give us a shout and let me know.