Roboquest Devblog #10 - The Summer Update
Howdy Guardians!
Welcome to our tenth Devblog, it’s a pleasure to be back.
Today we’re going to talk about the Rogue’n’Roll update, the Summer update and the development of Roboquest in general.
There’s a lot to talk about so tighten your seatbelt ‘cause we’re diving in right away.
The last time you heard about the Rogue’n’Roll update, we were working on fixing some of its systems in order to release it.
We worked on it for several weeks now, and the more progress, the less ‘Rogue’ it seemed. To such a degree that releasing an update called Rogue’n’Roll felt less and less grounded in reality.
In addition to that, we had to keep working on the rest of the game (for future updates).
And we finally arrived at a crossroads where we had to choose whether or not calling it and releasing the Rogue’n’Roll update was still relevant.
The answer we came up with was that it’s not the case.
As a result, the Rogue’n’Roll update will be wrapped up with the Summer update (0.10.0) which should come around the end of June (at least the playtest version of it).
Now, let’s talk about where we’re at regarding the system rework of the now obsolete Rogue’n’Roll update.
The weapon categories, the shopkeepers, the XP orbs removal and most class changes will be included within the Summer update (with a few changes and adjustments following your feedback during the previous playtest and our analysis). The public matchmaking and cross-platform will also be included.
That means that all weapons can be equipped and scale upon your level. You get to find shops spread out in the levels where you can spend a new in-game currency to purchase weapons and other upgrades. Changes to classes' primary, secondary and passive abilities remain as well.
These changes should help the game feel more fresh each run as you’re not necessarily going to encounter the same items in the merchants, more weapons are viable for your builds and classes should feel more specialized.
The XP orb removal has been counterbalanced with the addition of health orbs dropping from enemies which was a system available within the 0.9.0 playtest but that we pushed further in our current system rework. We might be adding some other incentives through the ranking system and the drop of the ingame currency we talked about earlier.
But like we said in our latest news, we’ve backtracked on the perk system changes. Or rather, we mixed a few systems together and we reworked a lot of the 0.8.0 perks.
Factually, you will get to select class perks, class perk upgrades and neutral perks when leveling up (at different level thresholds). We also increased the maximum number of perks you end up with at the end of your character progression and increased the number of different perks in each class.
This should bring back the agency you had prior to the 0.9.0 regarding your build choices and even extend it further by adding more viable builds and more interesting perks. We’re expecting (and hoping) to see the adaptability and run differences we were aiming for in the Rogue'n'Roll update to emerge from other game systems (like some we mentioned above).
So the Summer update has ‘absorbed’ the Rogue’n’Roll update and will include the reworked systems, but what else?
While it doesn’t include one major spotlight, the Summer update is packed with lots of minor additions.
We’re continuing to add and progress on missing and placeholder visual effects, on the optimization of several aspects of the game and the rework and balance of many weapon affixes and alt-fires. Also, we're pushing some minor quality of life changes to different systems such as momentum-retainment when riding rails.
All of that (not only the VFX update!) will be coming with the Summer update.
While this may not seem much, fixing our Rogue'n'Roll mistake, updating the perk content from 0.8.0 and continuing to work on the game as a whole takes us a lot of time and as a result you might feel the next update lacks a bit of new content. But like we mentioned in our previous news, we're aiming for the long-term solutions and schedule and we didn't want to rush things. We hope you'll understand and bear with us for the time being.
That being said, we're making progress on many different things in the meantime and we hope it will make up for the long delay between updates and content addition.
Please note that the systems and elements we'll be discussing in this section won't be included in the Summer update, they are simply some of the things we're making progress on right now.
[h2]Enemies[/h2]
When we initially started Roboquest, we thought that two dozens of enemies would be enough for the entire game. We quickly realized how wrong we were and how much more variety we needed.
That’s why we’ve been spending some time designing and adding new enemies within the game.
Though, making new enemies from scratch is a hard task for a small studio like us (we only have one animator for the entire game) hence why we needed to find a solution to that issue.
Consequently, we’re finding some shortcuts like creating elemental variants of enemies we already have or modifying existing archetypes by changing their attack patterns. While still giving these new enemies unique visuals to clearly visualize them.
Here are a few examples of new enemies that will be coming in the future:
Finally regarding enemies, we're making progress on the design side of the Elite enemies and you might hear more about them in the short to mid term.
[h2]Basecamp[/h2]
As you might have seen in some of our news or in our developer leaks on Discord, we’re hard at work at finally making the Basecamp you deserve. Both visually and in terms of interactivity.
The Basecamp will evolve following its level progression and slowly get larger, fancier and use better materials.
We’re also planning to add new structures to the Basecamp such as the Compendium or the merchants’ workbenches.
Finally, unlocking upgrades for the Basecamp will be done through one single user interface for all upgrades, probably in some form of “tree”.
Here's a sneak peek of our current progress on the visual side of things (WIP):
[h2]Weapons[/h2]
While we currently are quite happy with the weapon roster (and so are you considering the feedback we receive), we know we still have room for more.
We carefully followed your suggestions on that side and we picked-up a few ideas to complement our own. Though, we’d like to keep the number of melee weapons limited for now as they only work in a few circumstances and only appeal to a few players.
We can’t really show anything right now as we’re still in the early prototyping phase, but we’re trying ideas that typically step out of the regular gun/shotgun/rifle/sniper path.
[h2]Boss[/h2]
Let’s talk a bit about our long term plan for Bosses.
We want to add 4 new Bosses in total. One for each act and one final Boss.
And we’re currently working on two of them (Act 1 and Act 3) and we have ideas for the final one.
This should bring the number of different bosses to a comfortable amount of variations for the different acts.
We’re pretty advanced on the game and level design of the new boss for Act 3 (alongside Beetle Royale) and that will probably be… elevating! But we're still trying to find out an appealing and consistent visual.
Here’s a raw sketch of that boss (please note that this isn’t even a work-in-progress, this is simply the very first sketch of it, the final visuals of the boss might be completely different):
[h2]Corruption[/h2]
The corruption is the blueish-purplish-themed structures you come across in the different levels. It slowly spreads over the world of Roboquest and soon it will take over several different levels.
We’re spending quite a lot of time to visually design this corruption and to infuse it wherever needed (noticeably the challenge rooms and soon-to-be ‘corrupted levels’).
You will already be able to experience these updated corruption visuals in some places in the Summer update, but it is just the beginning.
And that's it for this devblog! We hope it answered some of your questions and concerns, if not, don't hesitate to ask us in the comments below, we're always following and glad to answer.
We're giving it our all to provide you with the best Roboquest experience possible and yes, that takes time.
But we hope you'll stay up and pumped for the future updates.
And in the meantime, we wish you all a great week-end and happy robot bashing!
Roboquest Discord - https://discord.gg/roboquest
Roboquest Website - http://www.roboquest.com/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/RoboquestGame
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/RoboquestGame/
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiusIjcrkm3HrAESaKZALYQ
If you have a question about the game, you can find the FAQ here on the Steam forums. And if your question is not answered there, make sure to ask us in the community forums or on our Discord server (where you can interact directly with us!).
Welcome to our tenth Devblog, it’s a pleasure to be back.
Today we’re going to talk about the Rogue’n’Roll update, the Summer update and the development of Roboquest in general.
There’s a lot to talk about so tighten your seatbelt ‘cause we’re diving in right away.
About the Rogue’n’Roll Update
The last time you heard about the Rogue’n’Roll update, we were working on fixing some of its systems in order to release it.
We worked on it for several weeks now, and the more progress, the less ‘Rogue’ it seemed. To such a degree that releasing an update called Rogue’n’Roll felt less and less grounded in reality.
In addition to that, we had to keep working on the rest of the game (for future updates).
And we finally arrived at a crossroads where we had to choose whether or not calling it and releasing the Rogue’n’Roll update was still relevant.
The answer we came up with was that it’s not the case.
As a result, the Rogue’n’Roll update will be wrapped up with the Summer update (0.10.0) which should come around the end of June (at least the playtest version of it).
About the system changes
Now, let’s talk about where we’re at regarding the system rework of the now obsolete Rogue’n’Roll update.
The weapon categories, the shopkeepers, the XP orbs removal and most class changes will be included within the Summer update (with a few changes and adjustments following your feedback during the previous playtest and our analysis). The public matchmaking and cross-platform will also be included.
That means that all weapons can be equipped and scale upon your level. You get to find shops spread out in the levels where you can spend a new in-game currency to purchase weapons and other upgrades. Changes to classes' primary, secondary and passive abilities remain as well.
These changes should help the game feel more fresh each run as you’re not necessarily going to encounter the same items in the merchants, more weapons are viable for your builds and classes should feel more specialized.
The XP orb removal has been counterbalanced with the addition of health orbs dropping from enemies which was a system available within the 0.9.0 playtest but that we pushed further in our current system rework. We might be adding some other incentives through the ranking system and the drop of the ingame currency we talked about earlier.
But like we said in our latest news, we’ve backtracked on the perk system changes. Or rather, we mixed a few systems together and we reworked a lot of the 0.8.0 perks.
Factually, you will get to select class perks, class perk upgrades and neutral perks when leveling up (at different level thresholds). We also increased the maximum number of perks you end up with at the end of your character progression and increased the number of different perks in each class.
This should bring back the agency you had prior to the 0.9.0 regarding your build choices and even extend it further by adding more viable builds and more interesting perks. We’re expecting (and hoping) to see the adaptability and run differences we were aiming for in the Rogue'n'Roll update to emerge from other game systems (like some we mentioned above).
About the Summer Update
So the Summer update has ‘absorbed’ the Rogue’n’Roll update and will include the reworked systems, but what else?
While it doesn’t include one major spotlight, the Summer update is packed with lots of minor additions.
We’re continuing to add and progress on missing and placeholder visual effects, on the optimization of several aspects of the game and the rework and balance of many weapon affixes and alt-fires. Also, we're pushing some minor quality of life changes to different systems such as momentum-retainment when riding rails.
All of that (not only the VFX update!) will be coming with the Summer update.
While this may not seem much, fixing our Rogue'n'Roll mistake, updating the perk content from 0.8.0 and continuing to work on the game as a whole takes us a lot of time and as a result you might feel the next update lacks a bit of new content. But like we mentioned in our previous news, we're aiming for the long-term solutions and schedule and we didn't want to rush things. We hope you'll understand and bear with us for the time being.
About Roboquest Development
That being said, we're making progress on many different things in the meantime and we hope it will make up for the long delay between updates and content addition.
Please note that the systems and elements we'll be discussing in this section won't be included in the Summer update, they are simply some of the things we're making progress on right now.
[h2]Enemies[/h2]
When we initially started Roboquest, we thought that two dozens of enemies would be enough for the entire game. We quickly realized how wrong we were and how much more variety we needed.
That’s why we’ve been spending some time designing and adding new enemies within the game.
Though, making new enemies from scratch is a hard task for a small studio like us (we only have one animator for the entire game) hence why we needed to find a solution to that issue.
Consequently, we’re finding some shortcuts like creating elemental variants of enemies we already have or modifying existing archetypes by changing their attack patterns. While still giving these new enemies unique visuals to clearly visualize them.
Here are a few examples of new enemies that will be coming in the future:
Finally regarding enemies, we're making progress on the design side of the Elite enemies and you might hear more about them in the short to mid term.
[h2]Basecamp[/h2]
As you might have seen in some of our news or in our developer leaks on Discord, we’re hard at work at finally making the Basecamp you deserve. Both visually and in terms of interactivity.
The Basecamp will evolve following its level progression and slowly get larger, fancier and use better materials.
We’re also planning to add new structures to the Basecamp such as the Compendium or the merchants’ workbenches.
Finally, unlocking upgrades for the Basecamp will be done through one single user interface for all upgrades, probably in some form of “tree”.
Here's a sneak peek of our current progress on the visual side of things (WIP):
[h2]Weapons[/h2]
While we currently are quite happy with the weapon roster (and so are you considering the feedback we receive), we know we still have room for more.
We carefully followed your suggestions on that side and we picked-up a few ideas to complement our own. Though, we’d like to keep the number of melee weapons limited for now as they only work in a few circumstances and only appeal to a few players.
We can’t really show anything right now as we’re still in the early prototyping phase, but we’re trying ideas that typically step out of the regular gun/shotgun/rifle/sniper path.
[h2]Boss[/h2]
Let’s talk a bit about our long term plan for Bosses.
We want to add 4 new Bosses in total. One for each act and one final Boss.
And we’re currently working on two of them (Act 1 and Act 3) and we have ideas for the final one.
This should bring the number of different bosses to a comfortable amount of variations for the different acts.
We’re pretty advanced on the game and level design of the new boss for Act 3 (alongside Beetle Royale) and that will probably be… elevating! But we're still trying to find out an appealing and consistent visual.
Here’s a raw sketch of that boss (please note that this isn’t even a work-in-progress, this is simply the very first sketch of it, the final visuals of the boss might be completely different):
[h2]Corruption[/h2]
The corruption is the blueish-purplish-themed structures you come across in the different levels. It slowly spreads over the world of Roboquest and soon it will take over several different levels.
We’re spending quite a lot of time to visually design this corruption and to infuse it wherever needed (noticeably the challenge rooms and soon-to-be ‘corrupted levels’).
You will already be able to experience these updated corruption visuals in some places in the Summer update, but it is just the beginning.
And that's it for this devblog! We hope it answered some of your questions and concerns, if not, don't hesitate to ask us in the comments below, we're always following and glad to answer.
We're giving it our all to provide you with the best Roboquest experience possible and yes, that takes time.
But we hope you'll stay up and pumped for the future updates.
And in the meantime, we wish you all a great week-end and happy robot bashing!
Roboquest Discord - https://discord.gg/roboquest
Roboquest Website - http://www.roboquest.com/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/RoboquestGame
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/RoboquestGame/
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiusIjcrkm3HrAESaKZALYQ
If you have a question about the game, you can find the FAQ here on the Steam forums. And if your question is not answered there, make sure to ask us in the community forums or on our Discord server (where you can interact directly with us!).