The Iron Oath News

Hey everyone, we hope you're all doing well and enjoying the weekend! We've been busy the last few months finalizing and polishing various features of the game, and for this month's update we wanted to primarily share a quick look at our finalized Overworld.



We haven't shown a ton of the map previously, other than a small portion that was in the demo and our most recent trailer. The map has undergone some changes over the course of development and internal playtesting. It now consists of 5 regions (instead of 9) and 18 cities (plus 3 faction hubs). Though it sounds like a significant alteration, the overall size of the map hasn't changed too much. We did this because the original map had some regions that were too similar and redundant (now each region has its own distinct biome), and the size of the counties were too small and cramped with as many cities as we had. We also felt that with our original version it was harder to keep track of and stay connected to the world and its ongoing affairs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGdKJbWjz3s

One of the many changes we've done recently was also finalizing our fonts. Judging by past feedback on our previous fonts, I don't think we'll be able to please everyone, but hopefully the majority of you approve! Above all, we want to make sure both the headers and main text are always clear and readable, which wasn't always the case with the previous pixel art fonts we had.



As we continue to finalize and polish things we'll have more to share with you over the next few updates. Next month you can look forward to seeing some combat functionality and quality of life changes that we're excited to share! Here's a sneak peak at one of the QoL changes: visualized movement paths!





Lastly, we wanted to give a shoutout to our composer, Alex, who recently collaborated on an awesome album with Dark Souls composer Yuka Kitamura. You can listen to it for free on Alex's Bandcamp and YouTube. It's very cool to see him teaming up with such a high profile composer and we're thrilled that he's part of our team :)


That's all for now! If you haven't yet wishlisted the game we would really appreciate you doing so. We'd also love to have you join our growing Discord community! Thanks for reading and we'll see you next time! :)

Hey everyone, we hope you're all doing well! Before delving into this month's update, we'd like to welcome you to join our Discord server if you haven't already done so. We're always active in there and it's the best way to stay up to date with the game's development!



We've still been hard at work on the game these past few months, and we wanted to take a some time to talk about our plans are for mod support in The Iron Oath. It's something that has come up recently in our Discord and we felt it would be best covered in a big update!

Mods

The Iron Oath will support a variety of things you can tweak and modify fairly easily. At your disposal will be the ability to make both big and small changes to quests, simulation variables, or custom artwork. For things like quests and in game events we're using modified version of the Yarn tool you can find here. While our version of the tool is pretty custom, quite a bit of the syntax and general tool use is the same so if you want to familiarize yourself with it then I recommend checking it out!

Here is a small sampling of the things you will have easy access to mod when the game is released.

• Create new quests or entirely new campaigns that span decades of in game time
  
• Modify basic stats and damage values for player & enemy classes and their abilities
  
• Create custom dungeon layouts and set traps and enemy encounters as you see fit
  
• Create new weapons, gear, consumables, etc (along with your own art) to be set up in the generic loot pool or make something unique to be given as a quest reward
  
• Custom Company & House banner flags as well as custom character portraits
  
• Add new player and enemy color templates
  
• Create custom events for the player to stumble across in the overworld or in a dungeon where you can add your own character interactions, sound effects, and music
  
• Access to most of the variables used for controlling how the game simulation works
  
• Create custom backstories for generated characters and what traits are associated with them
  
• Tons more with other variables you can tweak or icons you can manipulate
  

The above list is the broad overview of what you'll be able to modify and add to the game through mods but there are plenty of other things to tweak. I hope by the time we launch or shortly after we'll have a wiki setup that details everything but for now I'm going to walk through a couple examples of quests and events.

Sample Quest

-The basic layout of our quest editor with various quests and event nodes

Here is what the quest editor looks like. On the left hand are a list of categories which contains groupings of quests and/or events. On the right hand side of the editor are a group of nodes that contain all the scripting for different quests and events in the selected category. Each node has either details on the quest itself, various events and traps, or scripted encounters associated with it.

-A simple quest can be set up with very few lines of code and then fleshed out with more event node

After selecting a node you can modify any scripts contained inside. From here you can set various rewards, description text, which tileset is associated with the quest, etc. There are dozens of other variables you can configure when creating a quest like making it only appear if there is a plague active in a region or only during times of war. Certain quests can be given to the player through another scripted encounter so it doesn't require quite as many variables to set up since it will be assigned directly to the player from another event. The one above is a repeatable quest you could take when the conditions for it to show in a region occur. It could potentially be found in a city hub given out by one of the town citizens.

When making your own quests you could make a one off repeatable quest that is added to the pool of other quests to be potentially selected by the game for the player to take on or make a multi quest campaign that spans a generation!

Sample Event

Next I wanted to show you how to create a simple event that can be added to a pool of random events you might encounter during a playthrough. This one I'll break it down a little more so you can get a better understanding on what's going on in the script.

-An event you might encounter while traveling through the world

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The trigger is what shows the event. This particular one is triggered by traveling on the world map. This could also be something like when entering a town, or an inn, or when a character dies, or when camping, etc.

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There are loads of regional events that can be active at any given time like a plague, blizzard, civilian revolts, town festivals, or (in this particular event's case) high bandit activity. There are dozens of these states to check with various effects on the region.

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This variable tells the game to not repeat this encounter more often than once ever X number of days. This can also be set to -1 and it will never repeat after being seen once.

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This is a function that creates a temporary NPC to be used in this event. These can also be used to create NPCs that persist for as long as needed in game.

**Up ahead, one of your outriders is returning to the caravan with great haste. They stop at the front of the column just ahead of you, and begin to relay something to [FNameP0], pointing down the road while they do so. With a nod of affirmation, [FNameP0] turns about on their mount and heads in your direction.**

This is some flavor text that will be shown to the player for the event. Any text like ** text ** will let the game know this is descriptive text and will do some extra formatting when displayed to the user. There are also some variables in the text that can be parsed so we can modify the text dynamically. In the above text [FNameP0] stands for First Name Player 0. This event will select a player at random from the company to be inserted into the text. There are also ways to grab specific players by different characteristics or tags as well.

{player:0}Sir, scouts report a bandit blockade up ahead. We could try and go around, but it will slow us down. What would you like to do?

The above is used when we want to have a particular character talk. The game will know to display their character portrait and name.

<>

{

    {player:$CharacterWithTrait}I say we take 'em head-on, boss. We know they're there, I'd rather not leave them for some unfortunate traveler to happen upon. 

}

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The above script will check if we have any characters that have the honorable trait and if we do then show some extra text. We could use checks like this to branch the event in an entirely different direction so that even if you see the same event multiple times it might play out differently.

->[Honorable,Brave]Make ready to attack!

    <>

    ->**Attack**

        <>

        <>

    <>

->[Cowardly,SelfPreserving]Let's go around. **Continue**

    <>

These lines are how we handle choices being made by the player. Adding -> before a line lets the game know we are about to add a choice for the player to make. Inside the brackets you can see various tags (like [Honorable,Brave]). These tags let the game know this choice is considered to be an action that is honorable and brave. Conversely, the dialogue option farther down is considered cowardly. Depending on who is in your company, making choices can effect how they feel about you as a leader and can have ramifications down the road.

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One last line I wanted to touch on is the above. This is what tells the game we're about to get into a fight and will start the flow of going into combat. The SE.WorldEventBanditAmbushEncounter is another node in yarn that contains the details on the enemies involved in this encounter.

I hope you'll see there's plenty of potential for players to continue adding a ton of content after launch and I honestly can't wait to see what people come up with!



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A2n55Wu48k

Lastly, we've uploaded another design timelapse, this one is for the Imitator enemy. It is capable of taking on the form of your characters and using their attacks against you!

Thanks for reading and for your continued support! As mentioned earlier, we'd love to have you join our Discord, and if you haven't wishlisted the game yet, we'd appreciate that too :) Stay tuned for more exciting updates in the future!

Hey everyone, we hope you are all doing well! As we are reaching the last few months of the year, we wanted to give you an update on the game's current status and release date. 2020 has been a strange and challenging year for everyone, so it's probably not much of a shock to hear that it's impacted the game's development.

We went into this year with the hopes of releasing in late 2020 or early 2021. Development was going well and and we took the game to PAX East at the end of February. We had a great show, met a lot of existing and new fans and received tons of positive feedback, so we were feeling pretty good on our way back home.

Of course it was around this time that the lockdowns began and development slowed down. Chris has 3 young kids, so when schools shut down he had to begin dividing his time between programming and helping to homeschool his kids. More recently his wife got a new job in Ohio, so figuring out their move from Florida further detracted from his ability to work as much. Progress had still been made during this time, but just not at the rate we had expected or hoped in order to release this year.

For now, things are about as "normal" as they will be for the foreseeable future and we've settled back into a steady rhythm. His kids are doing virtual schooling at home so he still has to devote some time to looking after them during the day. All things considered, we're doing our best under the circumstances we're in now, and we've begun looking for a few additional programmers to help speed things up.

Concerning the release date, it is still TBD. We don't want to rush out an incomplete product, so all we can say for now is that the game will be out when it's ready. As for some good news, the game is now what we consider "Alpha", meaning all the game's features are in place and all that remains is adding more polish and content. So we're excited about that at least, and it brings us one step closer to the closed Beta! We will also be putting out another updated demo on Steam in the future like we did a few months ago. So if you missed the previous event and don't have access to the Beta (via Kickstarter rewards), you'll still have a chance to check out the game prior to release. As always, we'll continue to keep you apprised of our progress, and we hope you all can understand our need for some extra time to complete the game properly.

On the art side we've continued to make good progress with our animator Rafael producing some awesome work with our designs. Here's a look at a design timelapse and final animation result of two recently completed enemy characters:


Outlaw Scout
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJLleAqy9og


Flayer Demon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPKKmREbdnk


We've also begun to work on the final art assets for the city hubs. We haven't talked too much about this yet, but cities are being done at the same scale as our characters and combat environments. We wanted each city to look unique and immersive rather than just a simple menu. Since we've done it this way we can also occasionally have combat engagements and missions take place within the city streets (as they use the same assets). We can't share the final look yet as we still need some more building variants and other assets (such as citizens standing and walking around), but here's a taste of the building styles for the 3 main cultures within the game:


Midden

Nurren

Tyrosene

That about wraps it up, thanks for reading and for your continued support! As always, if you haven't yet wishlisted the game we'd really appreciate it! We'd also love to have you join our official Discord server to keep in touch with us and the community. Stay safe and see you next time!

Hey everyone, we hope you're all doing well! In today's update we're going to be talking about the specifics of how you go about upgrading your company, and what type of options are available.

Renown and how to purchase Company Upgrades

Upgrades can be purchased via the management menu by spending Renown Points. Renown is a secondary resource that you primarily earn by completing missions. It can also be acquired during certain overworld encounters based on the outcome (like helping someone out). Renown is essentially XP for your company and is a measure of how well-known you are. After reaching certain thresholds of total Renown you will gain a Renown Point which can be spent in the upgrade screen. There is no limit to how many renown points you can acquire, so given enough time you will be able to upgrade everything you possibly can.



We decided to go with this type of resource/upgrade system because the game already had quite a few elements that put a drain on your coin, and we want to ensure that the player is always able to improve their company over time, regardless of how rich or poor they are. Aside from upgrades, your total renown also plays a part in determining which type and difficulty of missions are available to you. Special organizations and Houses won't entrust their tasks to just anybody, and you will need to reach a certain amount of renown before you gain their attention.

Spending your Renown Points



To spend your points, you can head into the 'Company Upgrade' screen to purchase whatever is most relevant to your current situation. Each upgrade costs 1 Point, however some upgrades require you to have amassed a specific amount of Renown, or to research certain prerequisite upgrades beforehand. Some upgrades are broken up into 2 or 3 segments and can be purchased multiple times to increase the effectiveness of that upgrade.

Upgrades are split up into 4 different categories. The General tab covers things that have to do with your company and caravan as a whole, such as training faster horses and increasing roster capacity.



Expeditions has upgrades related to dungeon exploration and combat. From here you can increase the amount of provisions you can take with into a dungeon (as well as providing a better selection of provisions), and other things like improving your scouting efficiency in the exploration phase.



The Council tab is where you can hire a Battlemaster, Emissary and Spymaster and unlock their various unique actions and passive abilities (We've touched on the Council previously, but we'll have a deeper dive into it at a later date once we feel ready to make a video about it).



The final tab is Alchemy, which is where you research magical incenses for you to burn when camping, providing you with various primary and secondary effects that aid you in combat and dungeon exploration. We'll go over this part more in our upcoming 'Camping' update which will likely be one of the next two.

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On the art side of the game things are progressing steadily as we get closer to finishing all the enemies and characters that we plan to launch with. Here are two newer timelapses for those who like to see the process!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJNKFTgugTc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7x1dw_xJ6Q

See you next time!