Archmage Rises News

We're mostly all focused on combat right now, but I carved off a programmer to help fix and improve the game this week. Here is what we accomplished.

• Donkornleone suggested dungeon lairs show the race of the inhabitants on the tooltips. A darn fine suggestion! We added it.
  
• We had a "realism" where an NPC has a quest available, but sometimes it shows and sometimes it doesn't. This just annoyed people and caused them to spam talking to the person over and over to get it to display. Now, once they have a quest, it ALWAYS displays it.
  
• Monster Tamer Bloba asked: How do you get art for your mage tower? Well he was really onto something because the answer was: you couldn't. Through a series of unfortunate coincidences it wasn't possible to get them in towns or in dungeon loot. We're adding it back in and pretending to call it a new feature (don't tell anyone)! You can now get Art objects (Paintings & sculptures) in dungeon loot OR commissioning them from an artist workshop.
  

Here is how you can commission at an Artist Workshop:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

• Laiken reported a branch with no dialog options in the Mabren Tower quest. Fixed bad duplicated variable checks.
  
• Pig Boy reported never ending combat. We fixed it, you can finally get out of combat!
  
• Also fixed quest related problems we saw in Pig Boys save file.
  
• Fixed an issue when removing items from the cart when trading which was preventing negotiation from working
  
• Fixed trading negotiation counters not resetting on sleep
  
• Fixed Quest Log to show other quests even if one of them is messed up
  
• Fixed three save file loading issues
  
• Fixed a soft lock when saving when nauseous
  

Next week Monday (Oct 9) is Thanksgiving here in Canada. It'll be a shorter week.

We're really thankful for all of you playing and following the game.

This time last year, we had dozens playing the game and were making plans for Next Fest. Now we have many thousands of players. We appreciate all of you and the positive reviews!

[h2]Holy Goblin Drums! Combat Rewrite is Almost Working[/h2]
I was pleasantly surprised in a meeting last week to hear we can start James and Michel on designing spells for the new combat engine.

We’re nearing the finish line!

This requires some explanation:

There is a whole new combat engine, built from the ground up by Jonathan, Josh, Michel, and Tyler, designed to run tiny data lego components I call ‘Combat Atoms’. But now I’ll now call ‘Combatons’ cuz it sounds cool; like a G1 Transformer. 😊

Combatons are instructions to do things like:

• Apply physical damage
  
• Armor piercing damage
  
• Adding burn damage over time
  
• Increase miss chance
  
• Freeze active character
  

Combatons can also have rules and equality checks to see when they fire. So we could have an effect that reduces HP for X turns, but only if HP is > 1. It won’t kill you, but will reduce you down.

Player actions, spells, and monster actions are simply combined Combatons. We make new spells or monsters by combining the combatons differently or with different seed values.

Getting the tooling, data structions, and system to work has been a herculean effort from Mark, James, and about half of our programming team for 6 months.

Why do this?

By having the programmers focus on making combatons and an engine to run them, now the work of making spells, items, and buffs can be done by designers.

The real benefit is in iteration. A designer can setup a spell, test it, change it, and repeat in seconds without involving a programmer.


James & Michel are creating spells today, and seeing how it works. We’ll keep adding combatons as needed until we have all that we need.

Don’t know how long this will take, we’re guessing this week will reveal a lot of how well it works.

Then another 2 or so weeks to really start building out the spells.

Our goal is to hit ~5 spells per school (5 schools) when we release this combat update.

No dates yet, I’m hoping end of Oct, but we’ll see what we see.

Combat is ~80% of our resources now: Jessi on UI, Michel, Josh, Tyler on programming, Mark & James on design


We appreciate everyone who goes to the trouble of logging bugs and posting issues we need to look at. This game is hard to make and knowing where to put the attention helps alot.

These are the issues we are prioritizing this week:

• The slider quest is getting squashed by the new Mabren Tower quest and no longer appearing, meaning you cannot ‘upcast’ spells.
  
• In general this whole slider quest is going away in the Combat Rewrite because the ability to ‘upcast’ a spell is now handled per magic school and is something you unlock with experience.
  
• A couple of people have posted about inability to find Art objects. We’re investigating.
  
• Monster Tamer Bloba reports trouble trading and negotiating with the Merchant, wrecking the game.
  
• Rival mages from school were sometimes choosing a non-magical career, like Fishmonger. Oops! We’re adding a new job to the game of House Mage which in the world of Vaelun is the next normal step.
  
• There is a dumb bug where the player log repeatedly spouts: Skeleton Corpse is immune to Undead.
  

Zach and Thomas are heading up this effort.

Patch is coming out Thursday.

Here with another hotfix for the build that went out last night. Apparently we like to break things as much as we like to fix them! Well, maybe we don't like to break things, but sometimes it happens anyway. If you're a developer, you know what we are talking about - you fix one bug only to introduce another.

This hotfix addresses these issues:

[h2]FIXED:[/h2]

• Fixed Legacy screens appearing blank. The some of text gen on the Legacy tab relies on data from dungeons (to get dungeon names), but after you complete a dungeon, it gets destroyed and no longer exists. The Legacy screen doesn't like that very much, so it goes on strike. We've managed to negotiate it and got it back to work, but refuses to return to previous saves since the data it requires is gone. It sends it's apologies and will work on new games from now on.
  
• Fixed getting stuck in Town Centers. We've provided exit signs so you can find your way out now :D
  
• Students during your character creation can now find jobs as House Mages instead of non-magical jobs. The job market for mages is a lot better in this patch.
  

We're still working through issues that have arisen in the Legacy update. These are the things we are able to fix so far.

• In the Mabren's Tower major quest, upon finding the etchings the game thought it was locked in combat preventing the use of items like torches or tents. Now fixed.
  
• NPC Dialogue: Fixed scroll window would not reset to the top
  
• If you are a real jerk and get tossed overboard from a ship, it will no longer soft-lock the game. :-) you'll be sent to the nearest healer GTA style
  
• Sleeping in camp now has the appropriate screen fade
  
• Fixed inventory error that could occur from auto-eating
  
• Made food "everfresh" property actually function so that it won't go stale
  
• Inn dine-in food should no longer go bad and give players nausea
  
• Inventories will properly pull food when auto-eating
  
• You can now eat as long as the food doesn't put you over the max fullness
  
• Hunger notice only appears when actually hungry
  
• Cleaned the UI in several instances where the X button was not top right
  
• Character Sheet: Relationships: Added tooltips for the sort options
  
• Knowledge Picker: Added tooltips to the sort options
  
• Fixed an issue where town music wouldn't play after character creation
  

• We have hunger and starving debuffs disabled for now until we rework the nourishment system for Update #3 Exploration.
  

[h2]Legacy Update 2a Out Now![/h2]

We got the Legacy mini-update out yesterday by end of day!

Thanks to those who tried out the beta branch on the weekend to uncover issues like these. It was corrupting save files and glad it didn’t get out into the wild!

[h2]Priority Fixes[/h2]
We’re watching closely any issues coming out of Legacy. Zach and Thomas are heading up this effort.

• After reaching a certain point in the Tower Quest the game gets locked into thinking it is in combat, preventing the use of items like torches and tents. Saving the game, quitting, and returning will let you continue but obviously this needs to be fully fixed.
  
• Some other minor things, like audio issues, still need to be cleaned up.
  

Patch is coming out Thursday.

[h2]Update 2b: Combat Rewrite[/h2]



We’ve been working on this since March and I’m trying to figure out what it will take to get it out in October.

On the one hand, I don’t want to rush it. What you are playing now is my half-baked rushing to get it out for Early Access launch.

On the other hand, it has dragged on forever and maybe an 80% version is good enough. We don’t need to invent a sentient AI when it can only move between 15 grid spaces. :-p

Combat is now our primary focus with 4 of our 5 full time programmers working on it: Tyler, Jonathan, Josh, Michel. Mark is designing and directing it, with James assisting. Jessi is reworking UI.

[h2]Update #3: Exploration[/h2]



We are in the very preliminary stages of designing out what will be included in this update.

Some of the things we are looking at:

• Totally revamping resources: how they are found and harvested
  
• Elimination of Stamina, addition of Fatigue system
  
• More places to interact with on the map
  
• Weather & Seasons that matter
  
• Updated UI
  
• Other stuff we read on the forums from you guys!
  

[h2]Other[/h2]

• Nolan is working on world building with the Great Mages
  

Sadly, Rubi is no longer working full time at Defiance. She is moving to contract as she has wanted to make a video game with her (now) husband for about 18 months and decided now is the time to do it. She’s off on her honeymoon for the next month and upon returning will start her game and work as a contractor. What she saw in me that convinces her making your own game is a good idea, I’ll never know! But we wish her well. And secretly joke she’ll make Archmage 2 before we finish Archmage 1 :-)