Archmage Rises News

This week our update is more designy focus, as we are right in the thick of designing the game’s structure and player purpose.

[h2]Update #3 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.

• Zach is busy working on the Dynamic Quest engine and making good progress putting the prototype into the game.
  
• Jessi and Phil continue on the new UI. It’s about 2/3 done the design process, hopefully the design work will be done in about 2 weeks
  
• Regions are a core component to the Exploration update, so I’ll explain them a bit more
  

[h2]Regions[/h2]

• A region is a self contained section of the map like a a territory on the Risk board.
  
  
  • A region is one administrative unit
    
  • It has a name, people can refer to it, “You’ll find dyes in Fessex province.”
    
  • Contains a small number of towns (2-3), with roads between them. The region functions as one political unit.
    
  • It has one leader - a noble of a certain house
    
  • It has one set of rules/edicts that govern it
    
  • NPCs in a region all feel the same way about topics: like the nobles, a kingdom, or the people of another region
    
  • A region can be at war with another region (instead of town vs town)
    
  • A region is affiliated with the Conclave or Renegades
    
• A region has a specific biome - swampy, desert, forest, rolling grasslands, ashen mordor
  
• A region has one (or a few) resources natural to it. This makes something special about each region.
  
• A region has one kind of base problem in it: it has a giant spider problem, or plague, or drought, OR marauding goblins, instead of everything everywhere like we’ve currently done
  
• Regions have a difficulty level. This region is Level 1, that one is 10, that one is 20, another is 30. (We don’t actually have levels but you get the idea).
  
• Later when Kingdoms are added, they are simply a collection of regions ruled by one monarch. Any region not affiliated with a monarch are ‘free city states’ like medieval venice or ancient Sparta
  
• A region has specific ins and outs the player can travel between them.
  
  
  • They can no longer just walk through the mountains, have to take a pass.
    
  • The pass can be blocked by problems like avalanche, bandits, or a gryphon
    
• We can focus the map generator on making interesting regions well. Then we make a map by generating N number of regions.
  
  
  • You will be able to customize your experience at 1.0 where you can change the size (# of regions) for a map.
    
• Each region will have historical events, which you will see in the world gen screen.
  
• Regions represents a massive change to the world structure and game map. This will be a save breaking change. But don’t worry, it won’t be out for several months so you have plenty of time.
  

Regions solve tons of problems with the game! It is time we get to it. This is a core component to the Exploration update Mark and Thomas are working on.

[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.

• Phil and I playtested Rivals and found some issues. We’re both off this week, giving the team time to find solutions. Next week we’ll playtest again and see where it is at. It’s real close!
  
• James, Tyler, and Nolan are improving some of the aspects
  

[h2]No Patch This Week[/h2]

With Phil and I off this week we decided to just pause the weekly patch. There will be a patch next week. We’ll also be off Steam forums and Discord for a week. I think you can manage without us. 😝

[h2]Rivals[/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.

• We’re trying to learn from our mistakes and give features time to “bake”. Rivals is ready for me to playtest, which I will do tomorrow. If everything is good, we’ll announce a launch date to Beta. If it needs more lovin’ in the oven, then we’ll do that.
  

[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.

• This is one of those moments where I’m challenged by how much to share I share now because some some things aren’t 100% nailed down but swirling around…
  
• We’re going to make this update a big update. We will close the game loop(s) and make the game a game. Adding in player progression is important.
  
• We’re actively working on how we handle the player’s lifetime.
  
• We’re adding in a major world altering problem which significantly affects play and provides a win condition. We’re working through how we can add the first one, now. It’s going to be a dragon like Smaug, who shows up and pursues his own goals over time
  
• We’re looking into our map generation and how we can support “regions”, clusters of towns which all know each other and interact with each other
  
• We’ve started the programming work for our first dynamic quest in the game. Once we get it working we can build from there
  

[h2]Other News[/h2]



I’m happy to report we are hiring an illustrator artist May 6! Lucas and I have been conversing since August of last year and finally we are able to pull the trigger. Above is his art test to sketch up some frost orc ideas. Lucas’ first task? Sketching dragons!

[h2]FIXED:[/h2]

Fixed a bug that sometimes caused inn services to not display (along with other shops in more rare cases)
Fixed a bug that sometimes causes Healer services to not heal properly
Fixed a bug that removed all debuffs and buffs when casting Purge
Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash on startup due to a corrupt save file
Fixed a bug with Outfitter's displaying weird behaviors if the player's inventory was full
Fixed text bugs in Tower Game Room services

[h2]IMPROVED:[/h2]

Ara now recovers at an incrementally scaling pace each turn to a max cap of 40 Ara recovered in a single turn
Purge now removes all enemy-induced de-buffs from the player instead of a single debuff at a higher AP/Ara cost

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.

• We play tested the game and found some problems. This led to a revised design session and programming changes. All good things to find before it comes out!
  
• We’re continuing play test this week and will see how it feels. Then we will announce it and initially release it on the Beta branch.
  

[h2]Exploration[/h2]

Exploration is our next major update to the game, greatly enhancing the overworld and out of combat experience.

• We’ve been discussing “purpose” in our design sessions and feel we may need to increase the scope of this update to include closing the game loop and providing the player with real clear purpose. Exploring the map in a better way may be great, but without a “why” it will eventually fall flat.
  
• Programming just finished on Elite named monsters and the quest type to go after them.
  
• Dynamic Quests is the game world (and NPCs) creating their own quests. Programming kicks off tomorrow to take the prototype made late last year and put it into the game.
  
• UI work continues, here is a mock up of how the store/vendor interaction could be:
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Notice the player character portrait in the bottom left of the HUD.

[h2]Other Studio News[/h2]

I’m happy to report the hire of a very much needed position: Quality Assurance. We’ve been trying to make due with artists, musicians, writers, and blabber-mouths like me testing. Sometimes we let bad bugs slip through. 😢 With the game getting bigger, it is an increasingly difficult task which will only get harder. Alex starts May 1. We can’t wait!

[h2]FIXED:[/h2]

• Fixed some bugs around debuffs not being remove via the Purge spell
  
• Fixed some schedules that were placing some NPCs in the Streets or at a well
  
• Fixed a bug where you could click objects behind an intercessional animation layer
  
• Fixed SFX when sleeping in a Common Room
  
• Fixed a bug causing skills stats to be added twice during skill checks