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In Development - Skills and Combat

Following up on the Roadmap I posted last week, I wanted to give an update with some more details about new skills system and combat update.

The skills system will be expanded from 9 unique skills to 21 unique skills, with many of these having improved versions, for a total of 54. Below is the work in progress for the new skills UI.

(click to see full size)

In this first shot, the player has unlocked all of the skills. Each skill requires 1 skill point and any tiered skill will also need the previous skill to be unlocked first. Note in the actual implementation, you may not be able to get 54 skill points and unlock everything. More likely it'll be around 30-35 or so. The Trainer building will continue to allow you to respect your points.

Skill tiers are unlocked based on the number of houses in your town. I may change this to include buildings, but I think houses is super clear whereas buildings would mean only certain structures, since things like walls and decor structures wouldn't count. I really like the idea of unlocking tiers being tied to your town while actually getting skills is mostly tied to adventuring, although you do get skill points for building structures too.

(click to see full size)

In the above shot, the player has unlocked tiers 1 and 2 and has purchased a few skills while others are unlocked, but not purchased yet.

Gaining skill points will work as it does now, with points being awarded for completing quests, destroying monster camps, helping NPCs, and building structures.

The planned 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

With these updates to skills, combat will also get a refresher. Most notably for the character, stamina will become a slightly more important part of combat. The refresh timer for special attacks will increase a bit, but will also recharge faster the more you hit with your regular attack. I'm also going to be adding an effect on your character letting you know your special attack timer is recharged.

The New Lightning Attack

Monster AI will also get some updates. Some monsters will get shields that they can use to block your attack. If a monster goes into a block stance, it might remain blocking until you let up your attack or it may block and then immediately counter attack. The counter attack would be a special attack doing more damage and possibility having other effects. Monsters will not be able to block your special attacks, just as you cannot block many of their special attacks.

Mages will gain the ability to buff their friends. I was going to add the ability for them to heal as well but honestly I find that kind of annoying so will probably skip it. Buffs can be offensive or defensive and a monster with a buff will have some kind of display letting you know they have it.

Also, because there are seven active attacks, I'm going to be changing how you perform special attacks. This is in the late design phase, so it might change, and I will start working on it soon.

Kick, Shield Bash, and Dash Attack will all be on the F key.

These are context based, so a Dash Attack will occur if you have the skill and the monster is out of melee range. A Shield Bash will occur if you have the skill and just blocked an attack. And if you are in melee range and didn't block, your character will kick. Kick will be the first skill you unlock during the tutorial.

The other attacks (Power Attack, Confuse, Lightning, and Shield Break) are used with the R key.

Pressing R will bring up a radial menu displaying the attack skills you can use. While this menu is open, time is slowed way down giving you a chance to pick the attack skill. You will pick the attack using WASD or arrow keys, or the d-pad on controller. Once you get used to where each skill is in the menu you'll be able to quickly press R then W to perform the power attack for example. Below are a couple of quick mock-ups of this, one where the other UI remains and another that turns off the other UI when the special attack UI is up so it's easier to focus on it.

These images show the UI for a controller. Keyboard will display arrow keys and WASD.

(click to see full size)

(click to see full size)

If you don't have an attack skill unlocked it won't appear as an option.

I don't want you to have to remember seven different keys to perform the attacks and I think this interface will be way easier to use while also being equally friendly for keyboard and controller users. I'm going to play around with this as well as the position of the UI - and of course, once it's available to test I would love your feedback on it! I also might change the names of some of the skills.

The new content and the skill and combat updates are the two biggest items on my plate as we head towards a 1.0 launch. All of these updates will be placed on the test branch for you to check out along with the new content as I work on them.

Feedback and comments are always welcome!

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]
  • My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
  • Discord Channel: discord.gg/soedesco

Beta 14.8.17 - Quest Loading and Orc Fixes

As part of testing the new content I've been going through the existing content and updating some of it. While doing that I found some issues I wanted to resolve and fixed them in the current live branch. Tonight's update includes those fixes.
  • Fixed a sound setting that caused the Orcs, Skeletons, and Orc Boss in the Orc quest to fail to make their sounds.
  • Fixed the position of parts of the UI when in build mode in the Orc town.
  • Fixed a few cacti that were floating off the ground.
  • Reduced the number of waves in the skeleton attack from three down to two.
  • Fixed a bug that sometimes made the Orc build system think you were at the maximum number of Orc Huts after getting the second quest to build one.
  • Increased the Orc Boss's health, attack frequency, and attack animation speed. He was a bit too easy. :)

This build also fixes a bug when loading saves with existing quests. Quests that involve an NPC name and job will no longer display the "%NPCNAME" and "%NPCJOB" and will instead always display the correct information. The "Found Ore' quest will also now display the type of ore that was found when loading a save with this quest already active.

I'm just about done with the new content. Focusing now on testing the final quest string. After that I'm going to move to the UI updates I mentioned in the roadmap along with some of the combat improvements.

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]
  • My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
  • Discord Channel: discord.gg/soedesco

The Road to HammerHelm 1.0



I wanted to take some time and update you all regarding where HammerHelm is heading and how we get to the 1.0 release.

I’m very happy with the state of HammerHelm right now. Since launching in Early Access there have been over 550 updates to the game including new art, new music, more buildings, more quests, and a host of new features and content. I’m very excited to be at this point and feel like HammerHelm is very close to being launch ready!

That said, there are some things I want to update before going to 1.0, including…

Finish the new story content and associated features
This includes the new trading system, new character outfit, and some more buildings – plus the new stronghold level. I’ll likely be adding more quests that use the stronghold after the 1.0 release as well. This is about 85% complete as of this posting with most of the work left mostly testing and refining related.



Update Combat, Monster AI, and the Skill System
The core combat system of attacking, blocking, and dodging is solid now, so I’ll be focusing on adding to it and refining it. This includes:
  • Officially making auto-facing during combat a toggle. Right now, there is a key command to toggle this, but I want to add it to the options menu.
  • Update the skills system to something similar to skill tiers. In this model, the current power attacks and the kick attack would become part of the skill system and I’d add a couple more active attack skills and some more passive skills too.
  • Update monster AI to add some more special attacks
  • Add defensive actions for monsters such as allowing them to block with a shield.
  • Make stamina a bigger part of combat. But without creating a system where you are constantly running out of stamina mid-fight.
  • Add some more visuals and audio cues to combat.


Refine the User Interface
I plan on auditing the user interface to make it more intuitive and accessible.

A good example of this is the current way you interact with buildings in build mode. Most of this is tied to a variety of different key and mouse combinations which is clunky and not very intuitive. My plan with this is to create a new UI window that has all of the options for buildings. This would mean only one click to open the window and then you could pick what you wanted to do – move the building, change the roof color, upgrade a house, etc. I’ll probably make the “enter road paint mode” a button rather than a key command as well.

There are also a lot of UI elements that use very small text (like the pop-up text for mousing over items) so I’ll be updating those to make the text larger and easier to read.



Optimization
I have a couple of things I want to do to optimize HammerHelm a bit more, specifically regarding memory use. This is mostly related to clothing hues. The update will not only save memory, but it might allow me to add some more color options in the future as well. I’ll also be doing some smaller updates to improve framerate even more.



Other Smaller Changes
These are mostly visual changes to make some aspects of the game more interesting. There are also some community suggestions that I want to get in before launch as well.

My plan is to finish all of this and then release it as the 1.0 update. The main reason for this is because many of these new features will require a new character. If I released each of them as they were completed, the new story content, skill system, and clothing hueing would each be incompatible with previous saves. The 1.0 update should be the last time you need to start over.

As always, anything in the above could change or get cut if I’m not happy with the progress. I’ll be posting more details on these updates in the coming weeks while they are being implemented and will continue to update the test branch for those that want to check out the new stuff early.

I don’t have a specific date for when we will leave early access that I can share just yet. But we’re getting close! I want to thank everyone who has supported HammerHelm. Your feedback, suggestions, and reviews have all contributed a great deal to getting HammerHelm to this point.

I will forever be grateful for your support and I can’t wait to get to 1.0 and beyond!

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]
  • My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
  • Discord Channel: discord.gg/soedesco

Beta 14.9.9 Test - Story Quest Updates

Today's test build includes a bunch of updates to the new content, focusing mostly on the early changes. The following are parts that I've played through and tested and feel pretty good about:
  • Refined the timing for quests, ensuring that you get Grrrumble's initial quest and the Shaydee Business quest before the Scarecrow quest occurs. This is necessary for the story to flow well.
  • Fixed a couple of bugs related to the Haunted Mansion map.
  • Updated the Lich's quest dialog, improved his disappear particle, and added a sound effect for it.
  • Removed the jump scare from the Mansion as it was silly and often didn't work anyway.

Other additions, although I haven't fully tested them yet:
  • Added in some new quests that occur in-between the Orc quest and the Stronghold quest. These are more dialog focused to add more context to the story.
  • Added the Deep Dweller spawners to the Stronghold.
  • Added all of the NPCs to the Stronghold.
  • Refined the stronghold map to clean up a few issues and make it more performant.
  • Created the Stronghold quests. The full quest is now set from start to finish, although again, I need to test these more.
  • Created the building for the trading post. This isn't accessible in the build menu yet. I'm also having some new art created for it so what is there is placeholder anyway.

Overall the quest should be playable from character creation, to the prologue, and all the way to the final stronghold quest. My focus now is to test the middle and later content and fully hook up the rewards.

If you would like to check out the content, you can get it by doing 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 14.9.9" in the title screen.

VERY IMPORTANT - do not load an existing save with the test client and any saves you make with the test client will not work with the live client. Also, all of the new quest text isn't localized yet and as mentioned above, some of the quests haven't been fully tested yet.

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

Beta 14.8.16 - Fixes

Some more quick fixes while I continue to work on the new content.
  • Fixed a bug that caused ore to spawn in safe mine levels.
  • The death UI now appears when the death animation finishes. Closing this immediately returns your character to their feet. This fixes the issue of being able to move while still in the death animation.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the wrong text to display for the Flower Garden (1/3) quest when loading a save.

Also, today I'm going to be playing through all of the new quests and fixing any bugs I find and adjusting some of the text. Once it looks good, I'll create a new build for the test branch. This will include all of the new story and quest content. After that I'll work on finalizing the rewards. Will hopefully have the build ready today, but if not, then certainly early in the week.

Thank you everyone!

-Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna
[email protected]
  • My Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios
  • Discord Channel: discord.gg/soedesco