HammerHelm News

Today's build includes some quick improvements and polish to the combat update as well was some other parts of the game.

• Added a button to settings to reset the key binds back to default. I'll be adding a button to do this with controllers as well.
  
• Updated the chance for the killing blow skill to occur. It was happening way too often.
  
• Increased the camera shake for regular attack hits by a little bit and for powerful hits (like the Hammer Power Attack) by a lot.
  
• Updated the riches and luck skills so they don't both happen at the same time.
  
• Polished up the areas of the map where the grass and sand transition (see shots below).
  
• Added an additional animation to handle when the character jumps from a height and hasn't touched the ground before the jump animation ends. Right now the character will run in the air, which looks kind of goofy. Also added some momentum loss when falling. See gifs below.

Old grass to sand transition. So many right angles!


New grass to sand transition.


Old falling jump.


New falling jump.


To check out the test build:

1. In the Steam Client Library where it lists all of your games, right click on HammerHelm
2. Click Preferences
3. In the window that opens, select the "Betas" Tab
4. Enter the password to download this build - StoryTest2021 - and click Check Code
5. You should get a message that the code is correct
6. Click the drop-down box and select BigUpdateTest

Steam should immediately start a new download with the test client. The new game should be called "HammerHelm [bigupdatetest]". Once the download is complete you can launch the game and you should see "14.9.14" in the title screen.

VERY IMPORTANT - make a new character so you can get skill points in the new system - don't use an existing save with this update.

To get back to the main build:

1. In the Steam Client Library where it lists all of your games, right click on HammerHelm
2. Click Preferences
3. In the window that opens, select the "Betas" Tab
4. Choose “None” from the drop down
5. Steam should then revert back to the main client

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]

• My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
  
• Discord Channel: discord.gg/soedesco

This is a big update with a lot of screenshots and gifs, so buckle up! :)

Today's update includes the big update to combat and skills. It also includes the Trading System


The controls for basic combat remain the same, but there are some updates and changes of note.

The hit particle is now larger and higher up on the monster to be more noticeable.

There is also a slight camera shake and some new sound effects for when you hit monsters.

Speaking of getting hit, I've made it more obvious when you get hit as well. A more noticeable camera shake, a bigger particle, and a better sound.


Monsters have also learned some new tricks. Including spellcasters giving buffs to their allies and monsters blocking attack with shields. Some enemies can even buff themselves, without the need for a mage. There are ways to counter these abilities that I'll talk about in the Special Attacks section. When a monster gets a buff you will see an effect play on them and an icon is added to their healthbar.

A Goblin Mage casts an attack buff. Note the Goblin Grunt's healthbar now has an indicator to let me know he's got the buff.


Hit by a Goblin with an attack buff. Note that the hit particle matches the buff effect that the Goblin had. And of course the damage is higher! A good reminder to be more careful with this one. The Goblin mage is powering up his lighting attack, which you'll notice is now much larger than the current effect. The camera shake is a bit bigger as well.






These next two shots show the defense buff spell. In the second shot, the defensive buff effect appears on the Goblin to remind me that, while he did take some damage, his protection lowered it.





So now that monsters can do more, it's only fair that you can too! The new attacks, Lightning, Confuse, and Shield Break are in this update as well!

The four active attacks (Power Attack plus the three mentioned above) are now activated using a menu. When you press the Special Attack key (default R on keyboard, middle mouse button, and B on XBOX controller) you get presented with the UI. When this UI is open, time is slowed down a lot, giving you opportunity to make your choice.



In the above shot all four skills are available since I have learned all of them. However this won't normally be the case as the skill also has to be valid to appear. So for example, if you open the Special Attack UI and a monster is not actively blocking, then the Shield Break icon wouldn't appear. Likewise if your target doesn't have a buff, then Confuse Attack Icon wouldn't appear.

You make your special attack choice with either WASD, the arrow keys, or D-pad on controller.

So what do you do when a Goblin is blocking your attacks with his shield? Take it away from him with the Shield Break attack of course!


Here, this monster has a buff. So when I open my special attack UI, the confuse skill is available.


Hit with the confuse attack, the Goblin loses his buff and is stunned.


And the lightning attack with special guest appearance from one of the new monsters - the Deep Dweller Grunts.


Every special attack has it's own effect and sound to go with it. If you don't have enough stamina to perform a special attack, the menu will not open, and the area around the stamina bar will blink red.

With this update, I wanted combat to be more interesting and give you some more choices, without building something super hardcore or punishing. I'm still balancing some things, especially stamina use, so expect another update or two as I test more.


But there's more! Many other skills have been improved with effects and sounds - replacing the current, flat flying text that I never really liked anyway. These effects also use the same icon as the skill to help reinforce what's happening.

Killing a Goblin and the Killing Blow skill activates, regens my stamina and special attack cooldown!


A goblin reduces me to zero hitpoints, but Second Wind activates and I'm back with 30% of my health!


Opening a treasure chest and the Luck skill activates!


And opening another chest, this time Riches activates!


My goal is to make more of these effects for the other skills, such as Lumberjack, Nimble, and any others that have a chance to activate.


This update also includes the activation of the Trading System. After completing the Stronghold quest you'll get a new quest to build a Trading Post. Once built, one of your friends from the Stronghold will join your town and automatically take on the job as Trader.





New goods arrive for trade every day in the morning when the lanterns in the town turn off. I'll also be adding an alert to let you know when they have arrived.

If you made it this far, I hope this update seems exciting to you. I had a blast developing all of this stuff! If you want to check out the new combat, skills, and more - grab the test build!

1. In the Steam Client Library where it lists all of your games, right click on HammerHelm
2. Click Preferences
3. In the window that opens, select the "Betas" Tab
4. Enter the password to download this build - StoryTest2021 - and click Check Code
5. You should get a message that the code is correct
6. Click the drop-down box and select BigUpdateTest

Steam should immediately start a new download with the test client. The new game should be called "HammerHelm [bigupdatetest]". Once the download is complete you can launch the game and you should see "14.9.14" in the title screen.

VERY IMPORTANT - make a new character so you can get skill points in the new system - don't use an existing save with this update.

To get back to the main build:

1. In the Steam Client Library where it lists all of your games, right click on HammerHelm
2. Click Preferences
3. In the window that opens, select the "Betas" Tab
4. Choose “None” from the drop down
5. Steam should then revert back to the main client

With this build, the loin's share of the big gameplay updates I wanted to make before the 1.0 release is done. Still have some minor tweaks and other updates that aren't tied to gameplay directly that I want to get in as well as some more optimizations. More news to follow as things progress!

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]

• My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
  
• Discord Channel: discord.gg/soedesco

Tonight's build is mostly to fix a bug I found with the new skills system that caused it to fail to update the skill UI tier unlock based on the number of houses you have after loading a save.

This build also some early updates to the combat system, including monster blocking and spellcaster buffs. These are both early implementations and are by no means finished, but rather than turn them off I decided to leave them in the build so you can check them out.

For now, only Goblins will block or cast buffs. Once a Goblin decides to block, he will remain in his block stance until you move away from him. This will change with the full implementation to allow monsters to decide how long to keep a block up on their own and/or when to perform a counter-attack after blocking. Right now they can block you power attacks, but that will also change as I work on the system.



Goblin spellcasters will cast buffs on their melee allies. The buff doesn't do anything yet but the spell animation and particles are in. In the shot above a Goblin spellcaster has placed an offensive buff on his friend. Note the red particle on the spellcaster's hand, the red particle on the melee Goblin and the buff indicator next to his healthbar. Offensive buffs will be red, defense will be yellow. Blue and green are reserved for attack spells like lightning, poison/acid and the mushroom-man barf attack.

For testing, and since the buff doesn't do anything yet, Goblin Spellcasters will always cast a buff. In the real system, this won't be the case, and the likelihood of a spellcaster casting a buff will increase with the monster's level.

Once the full system is in place, other monsters will block and cast buffs and you'll have skills to defeat these tactics such as Confuse and Shield Break.

Monsters will now also occasionally jump away from an attack and sometimes immediately counter attack. This is something I turned off a while back but re-added it as part of this update. I will likely make this maneuver unique to specific monster types, such as Ratmen and Mushroom-men, as part of the combat update.

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]

• My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
  
• Discord Channel: discord.gg/soedesco

Today's update includes the majority of the new skill system.

• To open the skills UI press the X button on keyboard or the Y button on controller to bring up the radial menu.
  
• There are 21 unique skills with most of them having tier upgrades from 1 to 3.
  
• Upgrading a skill makes it more effective or more likely to occur depending on the skill.
  
• You will earn your first skill point after destroying the first Goblin camp in the tutorial rather than after the third camp.
  
• Kick is the first skill you will unlock, after that you can choose any from a tier that you have unlocked.
  
• Higher skill tiers are unlocked by placing houses. Both wooden and stone houses count.
  
• All of the skills are implemented except for confuse and Shield Break. These will be implemented as part of the combat update.

The skills are:
(Skills with a * are active, others are passive.)
(Skills that have multiple levels are marked with a +)

Attack
Kick* - same as current
+Power Attack* - same as current, different for each weapon type
+Dash Attack* - same as current
+Power Recover - decreases the cooldown between being able to do a special attack
Shield Break* - destroy the shield of a monster, if monster has no shield, lowers its defense (more damage on subsequent attacks)
+Lightning* - special attack unlocked during the new quest, short range attack that does damage to all nearby enemies and has chance to knock them down
Confuse* - reduces how often a monster attacks and can interrupt mages from casting, also removes any buffs a monster has
+Killing Blow - chance to immediately give you back all stamina and reset the special attack cool down when you kill a monster, might also heal you slightly at tier III

Defense
+Block Stamina - reduces stamina use from blocking
+Roll Stamina - reduces stamina use from rolling
+Tough Skin - reduces damage taken form melee
+Spell Resist - reduces damage from magic
Shield Bash* - same as current, knock a monster down after blocking its attack, can also remove buffs
+Second Wind - chance to not die if reduced to 0 health, gives you 1/4 health instead, may also immediately give you back stamina and recharge your special attack timer
+Nimble - reduces how long you are knocked down
Block Stun - chance to stun a monster when you block their attack, if stunned the monster will take more damage from your next attack

Adventure
+Lumberjack - chance to get extra logs when chopping down a tree
+Stonecutter - chance to get extra stone when hitting rocks
+Run Speed - slight run speed increase
+Luck - chance to get extra resources from treasure chests and from resource gathering
+Riches - chance to get extra gold from treasure chests
+Inspiring - increases overall mood of town



There are a couple of other aspects to the skill system that I want to implement. The tutorial UI for the special attacks needs to be updated to reflect that they are unlocked in the skill system rather than from wielding a weapon. I'm also going to be adding visuals that let you know when a skill like Killing Blow or Luck take effect rather than the floating text.

Next up is the combat update. I'm hoping to have that wrapped up by the end of the week along with the remaining skill stuff mentioned above.

If you get a chance to check out the new skill system on the test branch I would love to hear your feedback!

If you would like to get the test branch, you can do the following:

1. In the Steam Client Library where it lists all of your games, right click on HammerHelm
2. Click Preferences
3. In the window that opens, select the "Betas" Tab
4. Enter the password to download this build - NewMineTest1 - and click Check Code
5. You should get a message that the code is correct
6. Click the drop-down box and select BigUpdateTest

Steam should immediately start a new download with the test client. The new game should be called "HammerHelm [bigupdatetest]". Once the download is complete you can launch the game and you should see "Beta 14.9.11" in the title screen.

VERY IMPORTANT - You must use a new character even if you created one on the test branch already. The skills system isn't backwards compatible.

To get back to the main build:

1. In the Steam Client Library where it lists all of your games, right click on HammerHelm
2. Click Preferences
3. In the window that opens, select the "Betas" Tab
4. Choose “None” from the drop down
5. Steam should then revert back to the main client

Thank you everyone!

Today we have two updates, one for the live branch (Beta 14.8.18) and one for the test branch (Beta 14.9.10 Test).

The live branch includes a couple of optimizations and fixes.

• Changes made to the town's roads (either through manually using the road painting tool and from placing a building) will now always be saved after closing the build UI.
  
• Optimized the NPC mood tracker to only call the localization system if the mood UI is open for an NPC. Prior to this the system was doing a bunch of unneeded localization every time the NPC moods were updated.

The test branch build includes the above two updates as well as a final pass of the new quest content and the new Trading Post building!

• All of the new quest content can now be played from start to finish. I also tested each quest part to make sure you can save and reload at any point during the quests. This was the largest part of the QA process for this so I'm glad to finally have that completed!
  
• After completing the stronghold quest you'll get another quest to place a Trading Post.

There are a few aspects of the content that are still being developed.

• The trading system is still being tested so for now placing a trading post doesn't unlock that. It will once the system is tested.
  
• The two marble lamp posts require marble, which isn't accessible without the trading system. So for now, you get 64 of each white and black marble when you complete the stronghold quest. The marble lamp posts also have a larger beauty area than the other lamp posts.
  
• The quest reward to change your outfit at the Tailor works but the new outfit won't match your chosen tunic color until I finish the work on the character and NPC hueing update that I mentioned in the roadmap.
  
• AI for the new monsters and the new boss will be developed during the skills and combat update.
  
• I'll probably add a monster head trophy as another reward for the stronghold quest.
  
• Another quest reward will allow you to place the HammerHelm banners on your Stone Entrances. I just need to figure out exactly how I want that to work.
  
• I want to do some minor updates to the stronghold, mostly to diversify the looks of the NPCs (right now they all have the same outfits and hair/beards) and decorate the stronghold a bit more.

I'm moving on to the skills and combat update now that the quests are done. More updates on that as the work progresses!

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]

• My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
  
• Discord Channel: discord.gg/soedesco