Zofia News

We're closing the open beta playtest for now - There will be some notable changes based on the feedback, but such changes might not be ideal for regular updates.

We are going to leave the Demo up of course, so that's still very playable.

Thank you to everyone who played it and left feedback!

This update is for the demo only, an update to the playtest will out be relatively soon while will expand and complete 'the Frozen Fort' and add onto the HUB.

Some of the additional pieces have been taking longer than I thought they would, but I can definitely show off one of the things:



Anyways, onto demo updates!

Additions:
- Added the character editor and save system
- Added 'spawners' in the prologue, but only in a few sections

Fixes:
- Fixed an issue where your weapon may not equip correct after loading your save
- Fixed an animation issue where your character wouldn't look down correctly when holding a 2-handed weapon (So now you can see your shoes)
- Fixed some texture issues where some settings were applied to the wrong material
- Fixed the damage numbers in the inventory
- Leveling attributes is now easier and works more consistently
- Stone magic projectiles have been optimized to fix some weird edge case issues
- Ice magic projectiles have been optimized to better follow your aim trajectory
- Using plant magic's thornwire will now only connect to a single other plant, as previously you could exponentially make new plants and crash the game
- Thornwire no longer hurts the player
- Wood magic (Thorns) no longer hurts the player and you can stand on it
- Fixed several of the Otter's animations
- Certain clothing will no longer disappear when sneaking
- Fixed the 'left run' animation as it made the camera bounce a lot
- Added blocks in certain sections as the player could accidentally get themselves stuck
- It is now more difficult to regenerated stamina while swinging with the grapplehook, making extending grappling a bit more difficult
- Fixed some issues with various cliff collision
- Unarmed punching should now have arm's length of range and do basic damage
- The player in the Character editor can now be properly rotated with the gamepad
- The escape menu now works much better with the gamepad
- Fixed an issue where you might end up with the wrong face after exiting the editor

Changes:
- Removed cel-shading from NPCs as it caused unexpected performance issues
- As requested, the lamp flicker is now much smoother
- Disabled some VFX temporarily until we figure out some performance quirks we've ran into with them
- You can now attack/magic with only 1% stamina (previously it required a minimum amount)
- Updated wall candles
- Gave the editor example character all the same clothes regardless of race as it was previously confusing to see it changed when you finished customizing the character (Except for otters, for obvious reasons)

The playtest beta will be live here in a little while.

I ran into a lot of various networking issues and unusual bugs, I have been chipping away at these but was not able to finish some of the other content in time. That being said, we're going to open up the beta with the character editor, prologue, the hub, and part of 'the frozen fort'.

There are also two versus maps with a 'king of the hill' style game mode.

I will be adding the other content through the duration of this playtest beta.

I am aiming to have Zofia's open beta within the next few weeks at the end of May - It will be open sign-ups and be done via Steam's playtest tool. It shouldn't look much more different than downloading the demo.

The beta will include the character editor, a handful of story levels and some of the challenge maps. (Maybe more if I can get it done in time)

Based and the demo's feedback (and some internal testers), there are a couple of changes and additions that will be happening:

- Some of the magic elements you can use were either wildly useful or very situational, so many of these are being reworked to either be more useful, or allow some alternative interactions.

For example, you can now smack the rock columns to hurl a large boulder towards enemies:



- The 'possess' spell and 'swap' spell will likely be coming back but only in certain situations. (To hopefully make them less game breaking)

- Some physics objects can now be picked up and dragged with the grapplehook.

- There will be a few more level changes made to the prologue, as well as some performance tweaks.

I will put out more details as we get closer to the release date.

Normally I try to be formal with these posts but today I am vibing with just talking about everything:

There have been literally thousands of things I have been updating (Specifically 4669 changes), all of which can't really be shown off and were extremely tedious to update... Well I am going to show them anyways:

Zofia started years ago, but whenever I built the initial character rig (which all characters are based on), I made some pretty ugly mistakes that no artist would make. Over the years, this has caused a number of unusual issues to crop up, where some animations would look 'off' and some funky character issues.

Well I have finally taken a lot of steps to correct that, but its led to some significant challenges. Every animation and character model in the game has to be altered/updated, which has been a lot of work. Any character art that hasn't been updated looks pretty broken:

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Unfortunately some of the original files for the older art have been lost, so some of this is essentially getting remade, which has been a slow process.

If you played the Demo, you'll be happy to know this area will be getting some updates:



There were some minor differences in an older version of the map, we previously wanted players to get more comfortable with magic before entering the fort. Well, after some big gameplay and map changes, the player was basically left with not much to do in this section except murder that deer.

The new plan is to introduce the grapplehook sooner so the player can get more comfortable with that.

Speaking of the demo...



I have watched a lot of people play the demo at this point, and (nearly) everyone struggles with these guys (at least, until they get the hang of combat). They are going to undergo some changes so the first melee combat enemies you run into aren't as punishing.

The magic-throwing hoodie ghosts will have significantly less tracking on their projectiles, as it seems a lot of player deaths were from getting hit in the back... Which isn't fun for anyone.

Some other rapid fire updates on the demo:

- Lantern is getting corrected so it works better
- Reducing the demo's build size
- Optimized the bulk of textures and materials
- Adjustments being made to stealth parameters
- Dialogue UI being adjusted as it tends to look wonk in certain resolutions or splitscreen
- Some dialogue getting changed
- Ghost models getting updated
- Some NPC models will be getting updated, thanks to their rig being corrected now
- Engine has been updated to 4.27.2