HammerHelm Development Update
It’s been a while since I wrote up a Development Update so I'd like to give you all a glimpse into what I am working on and what’s coming next!
A few things to keep in mind before we get started. All of this is work in progress. Some of this may change or not make it into the game at all depending on whether I’m happy with the results. And last, some of these are a bit of a ways off – especially the story.
Ok, let’s start!
Bug Fixes
Always first on my list is fixing any bugs. Boring I know, but top priority, so I’m listing it here. :)
Optimization - NPCs
Part of this is already in the game but there is still more that I want to do. Thankfully I’m using a plug-in to help me optimize the NPCs so the process is pretty quick and I’m mostly at the point of tweaking numbers until I get a nice balance of visual quality vs. performance.
Optimization - Town Buildings
Similar to the NPCs, this is already partly in the game as a few buildings have been optimized, but most haven’t been yet. Unlike the NPCs, this is a manual process and requires me to edit every building individually. I’m not an artist by any stretch of the imagination, so this is slow going, but so far, I like the results I am getting both visually and in performance. This is something I’ll be doing bit by bit as I work on other things.
(less tris is better performance!)A Story
This is the big feature I am working on and the one I am both the most excited and the most terrified to tell you about so early. :) It’s easily going to be the biggest thing I’ve ever added to the game.
I’m still in the design phases for this and working out the details, but I have a lot of it fleshed out. Enough that work has already started on the assets to build a new location and some new monsters that will feature in the story.
Unlike the Scarecrow and Orc Quest and you will be able to travel back to your town during parts of the Story’s quests and this won’t be something you finish in one bite. Especially since the Scarecrow and Orc quests are going to be part of this story! You’ll also get to learn more about some of the characters you’ve already met on the island and meet some new ones too. Completing the story has some really cool rewards and will also unlock a new gameplay feature or two.
All of that said, I have some early work in progress shots I’d like to share. No spoilers, but I’m thinking some of you might be able to guess the new location. This is still quite a way from being complete but as I progress, I’ll continue to give you sneak peeks and sometime in the future I might put some things up on the test branch that you can check out.
Improved World Map
The world map is being updated to be more dynamic. Things like the monster camps, quest locations, Grrrumble's cave, will be added as you get quests, rather than always being there. Work on this has already started and the artist who drew the current map is working on updating it so I can add and remove points of interest as you get quests and/or discover new things. I’ll likely be adding some more features to this such as mouse-over pop-ups and player facing.
Updated Combat
This one I’m not 100% sure on yet, but I want to make combat feel a bit better. As I’ve often said, I’m not trying to make a hardcore combat system. I want HammerHelm to feel mostly relaxing. But I think there are improvements and tweaks that I can make to help combat feel more fun without adding too many layers of complexity. In addition to refining the controls this might also include some active skills to replace some of the passive skills. Monsters might get some tweaks as well. I’m still designing how using skills would work, especially for controllers so again, grain of salt with this.
New Quests
In addition to the big story quest I want to add more regular quests too, including the quests with the town item rewards. Most of this is coming up with ideas, both for the quest, and for the town items, but it’s been a while since I added new quests so I really want to work on some more.
New Music
Still in the early phases so not much in the way of details yet. As this develops, I’ll be sharing more.
Better Tutorialization
If “tutorialization” isn’t a word I’m officially making it one! What I mean by this is explaining things that aren’t necessarily obvious, such as how to place multiple mines or other features that are easy to miss. I don’t want to add more to the tutorial itself, but I think there are some things that could be explained better early on. If you have examples of things that you found complicated or a feature you didn’t even know existed at first, I’d love feedback on what you think could use better tutorialization.
Wrap Up
I know that you’ve all probably noticed that I’ve been very focused on bug fixing, optimizations, and improvements to existing systems. Important stuff, but not terribly exciting. I felt it was important to let you all know that there are some other, really cool things going on in the background while I shore up the current game. Of everything here, aside from the bug fixing and optimizations, the updated World Map is probably the farthest along.
Thank you!
As always, thank you for all of your support, feedback, and ideas. I cannot say that or express how grateful I am for this community often enough. If you have ideas for new content or features that you’d like to see please feel free to share!
-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]• My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
• Discord Channel: discord.gg/soedesco