Zofia News

When we first put Zofia in Early Access, we anticipated a 2023 release date. We have (most of) the quests added and have been testing them internally, but as we have been playing through the whole game, we're finding a few things that aren't clicking, so we're pushing the 1.0 release to 2024.

Let's talk about some of them:

- Encounter Design

Early on, enemy placement was static. In some locations the enemy placement is still static, but we've included a lot of enemy spawners that can adjust to difficulty settings and the amount of players.

The default 'trigger' area for enemy spawns was ~10 meters, which isn't enough space to assess a situation before you're in the fight, and doesn't allow you to effectively sneak.



The new default is roughly ~40 meters, so you often won't see enemies spawn at all.

This is compounded by another issue. As Zofia's magic system requires a nearby element to leverage in combat, we're finding too many areas where options are too limited and so don't give you much to work with, so we're reworking some areas to include more element types.

Lastly, some of our enemy types are a little too limited and predictable, so we're looking into expanding the current set.

- Quest Designs

Currently we have ~11 quests that will be available. One of which is not very good and may just get removed entirely, and two that need some reworking.



We expected the quests to be challenging to make, but we're running into unusual difficulties having all the pieces connect together, having things change if a quest is completed and you revisit a map, and trying to make sure the quest is intuitive.

My concern early on was to leave quests until later as to not get wonky save data if the quest is changed or updated, and unfortunately in our testing, this is absolutely something we ran into.

- Some Quality of Life features and changes

There are several things that have been brought up previously that we're also trying to add, and one of the bigger ones was PlayStation gamepad support, which should be included in the next update.



There are some other smaller additions/changes but I'll talk more about them when I actually get them done and in an update.

This update was intended to be the big introduction to quests. Well the quests aren't quite ready yet so this update is intended to fix some combat issues and other details that came up during the recent expo we were presenting at.

Balance changes:
- Reduced all weapons to a single damage type. Now rather than a sword doing normal damage + elemental, it will only do elemental. (Also all elemental weapons were slightly buffed)
- Combined magic armor/shield into a single 'buff'
- Removed shield from armors as it added unneeded complexity
- Throwing knives have had their damage reworked to scale correctly on stats
- All melee weapons can parry and block again. Blocking right as an enemy attacks will parry.

- Added star system: More difficult enemy variants will have a star on their health bar, two stars for even more difficult ones. Starred enemies will usually have new abilities or a different weapon. (This is still a work in progress)

- Changed intro text cutscene
- Added dummies to hub
- Added various Otter armors
- Fixed load screen tips
- Luna can now be asked for directions
- Luna's teleport can now be canceled
- Changed UI slightly
- Made cliffside map more grassy
- Fixed traveler's dialogue
- Added NPCs for quests (incomplete)
- Added various sounds
- Prologue will now play music at a certain point
- Prologue bridge gap fixed
- Prologue ramp near fort and near obstacle course are fixed
- Prologue checkpoint near grapplehook section has been fixed
- Fixed melee combat tutorial for gamepads as it displayed incorrect information
- Removed a rogue material
- Changed physics objects breaking damage. Kicks will knock the objects around, but most weapons will destroy them now.
- Reduced intensity of lunge
- Dodge now goes backward if player is not moving in a direction
- Added spell tomes and a spell tome shop (incomplete)
- Fixed paper cards in shops
- Added a coffee machine to the hub for obvious reasons
- Fixed ghost fall damage
- Added new enemy gunship model
- Adjusted some text in character editor
- Enemy spawn animation has been slightly updated
- Old Legion Rifle now displays 'no ammo' when attempting to fire it
- Old Legion Rifle light is now significantly brighter
- Old Legion Rifle icon is fixed
- Updated some various map sections
- Updated some various dialogue

I know I ironically posted there would be a bigger update coming up next, but unfortunately we found a pretty critical bug that we needed to patch immediately, so here is a smaller patch as a quick fix, as well as some other stuff:

Fixes/Changes:
- Improved Luna's Flutter animation
- The practice dummy is now networked synced when you hit it
- [Prologue] Fixed performance issues in Prologue's main hall
- [Prologue] Moved some tutorial tips to earlier in prologue
- [Prologue] Added cliffside path that let's you skip village
- Drink animation is now significantly faster
- Character Editor UI has been changed, Steam friends inviting should now work on gamepads
- Fixed critical issue on main menu where a certain button would call a debug function and break the UI
- Fixed main menu lighting (Fog was previously too light)
- Fixed splitscreen issue where previously solo players couldn't add a new local player
- Fixed splitscreen issue where editor got scrunched

Additions:
- Ghosts have hands again, so you can see when they throw things
- Players now have a sword icon over their head so they're easier to find
- Dummies now show damage numbers when hit
- Added nearby text chat. If you're within ~10 meters you can overhear what other NPCs/Players are saying. (This feature is a Work in progress)

- Added a bunch of object icons
- Mouse wheel now scrolls dialogue options
- Added additional Otter armor models
- Added more key binding options (Gamepad keybindings are still unavailable ːsteamsadː)
- Added tarby hair styles
- Pressing Middle-Mouse Button lets you point out a location (Work in progress)

Other:
- Cleaned up old files/assets/items
- Demo has been updated as well

If you think we're being a little quiet lately, its not just you!

We were planning a bigger update for Zofia's 1 year anniversary of going into Early Access. Well some life events got in the way, and a few tasks I wanted to get knocked out have snowballed into much bigger tasks.

I'm also currently looking at a few experimental changes that we're likely going to do a little internal testing to see if its working as intended before trying it out here in Early Access.

If all goes well, we should have a bigger announcement soonish.

We've had a few reported issues that we're working on, but here is a hotfix for a few critical ones and a few lesser ones:

- [Prologue] Fixed Anna incorrectly mentioning your house
- [Prologue] Erik no longer hands you a weapon as the dialogue was confusing if you were not the one who got the sword
- [Prologue] Erik now states correct info about fighting, as some of his dialogue involved some changed mechanics
- [Prologue] Removed the house with the second locked door as this proved misleading if you were investigating the town
- [HUB] Trying to leave the HUB with the airship will now tell you that you're supposed to use the map
- [HUB] Asking Kirik additional questions no longer gets you stuck into a conversation loop
- Fixed ghost blight zones for clients
- Candlesticks now correctly show lit/unlit for clients with a visible flame effect
(Also updated the candlestick as it was the incorrect model, and reduced the brightness as it was 300x too strong)
- Made some additional fixes to 3rd person mode so it aims better. This was technically only used for a debug mode to check equipment but we may expand upon it as it seems desired.
- Blight zones now slowly deplete stamina, instead of rapidly
- Made some stats that altered the pause before stamina begins to regenerate less impactful, as some high/maxed stats would allow you to regenerate stamina even while doing actions