Cross of Auria News

[p]It's been a long time since I've done one of these, but since I'm introducing a major change to the world map, here's a sneak peak at what it looks like today![/p][p]One of the concepts I've had running since development started is "1 tile on the world map = 1 unique map when zoned in". I of course did a huge purge of that concept style to free up numbered maps for future locations, but it held in the final dimensions of places like The Black Forest where the maps as they originally were simply combined to form the new bigger single map. The whole thing of course falls apart when you look at somewhere like Den An'ura which is presented on the world map like a mountain, but in concept in lore is a location that burrows down into the earth as you go in - not existing at flat level throughout. The 'encampment' area should be far underground, with Frostbrood Laid being at the very bottom.[/p][p]One of the more recent additions to the world map is the northeast corner, which you may know as Snowdrift Village Area. It follows the same format as the Black Forest mapping which should give you an idea of how big that location is if you haven't been there yet. Before Snowdrift was placed in 4KA, the snowy forest north of Lvell only ran west in what is now the defunct "Battlefront" area. Travel on the world map itself is not possible north of the Frost Forest / Snowdrift Area entrance line, so this very well may be your first time seeing the world map as it has existed for a while.[/p][p]Aside from the new connecting river and bridges, the four main cities plus Frost Forest, Obscurite, Den An'ura, Scarlet Cavern, Hell's Gate, and Agartha have all been on the world map since the initial 2018 release of the game. The Mwynn Isles were added several years later intended for a scrapped project titled "Honor At Sea", which could not be completed due to engine limitations regarding in the field battles. It was supposed to focus on the pirate Kara, ship warfare, boarding and plundering your enemies, and discovering their pre-scourge selves. Fun fact: Kara is the unnamed girl in the Veil at the very beginning of the game appearing alongside Atropos. This event is intentional and canonical, but the 'how we got here' of it all was lost with the scrapping of Honor At Sea.[/p][p][/p][p]What's New? - The location internally known as "The Great Heap" has been removed from the world map design and this change is now reflected in the Sha'ri Desert map as well. Water now connects from the ocean through to the central lake, above what players know as the Nexus Waterway. Water now also fragments the Four Kingdoms Area into sections, with Sha'ri isolated on the southeast, Castalia on the mid-west, and the unnamed volcano region on the southwest. Most notably, the Mwynn Isles (working name?) are now visible from the easternmost parts of the continent. [/p][p]Perhaps least noticeable is the new location on the world map inside the Shoreline area. This location will allow boat travel between the Four Kingdoms Area and the Mwynn Isles at certain times during the campaign. Boats will not travel during the Orc War, but will both before and after. [/p][p]Final Notes About the World Map - This is not the complete, finalized map of the world. The Dragon Scars west of Castalia are not visible (or even designed yet!) and neither are the Ophelia (east across the sea) or Lumeria (directly south connected by land) continents. These locations are outside the scope of Cross of Auria and will not be added in future updates. One or more of them may appear in the second game depending on where the story takes us. And last but not least - the map still may have a few changes before 9.0 is released. Construction of Mwynn Isles begins today, so as of the writing of this post, I really couldn't tell you about it's intended level range, story elements, or anything else![/p][p]Two new minor zones were already added yesterday - Prison Gate and Auria Lighthouse. Look closely at the terrain directly east of Auria and you can see where these two locations are. I am currently uncommitted to allowing access to the prison in CoA-1, but the lighthouse has a new purchase/craft set of gear using Leather Scraps, Metal Chips, Essence of Life, and Essence of Magick. This new 75 point set should serve as a fair intermediary set between Stalwart and Nexus. Unlike other sets, it does not drop anywhere in the world and is unique to the Gearsmith in the tower. Oh, it also introduces the first orange quality Staff with the new skill Reflect. [/p][p]All of this and more will be available when 9.0 releases. I think I've decided to save the major system changes for CoA2 instead (stat squish, skill removal, plugin removal), but a new game file will probably still be necessary, especially if you have saved where the terrain has changed.[/p]

[p]A few months ago, we talked about how the game was going into end-of-service mode. Well, I have a plan for how the second title is going to go and I think it's something I can do with relative ease provided I first do an overhaul on some systems and other back end concepts. That's where 9.0 comes in.[/p][p]Over the next few months, I'll be working on the 9.0 version of Cross of Auria, which will require a New Game file to play. The trigger to disable the New Game requirement is met at the very beginning of the game and cannot be avoided. Due to the reuse of the current game framework, it will not be possible to revert back to the 8.0 world once 9.0 is released. There will be a post 7 days before the release of 9.0 to give you adequate time to prepare, and even that is likely months down the road.[/p][p]9.0 will be the final update to Cross of Auria and this is your warning that it requires a New Game file to play.[/p][p]To summarize this section, the overarching goal is to reduce bloat within the engine's database which makes future development difficult. These were mistakes made between 2017-2019 that were never corrected, the effects of which continued to ripple to this day.[/p]

• [p]Remove unused or unstable plugins. (This forces the need for the new game file, as saved games loaded with missing plugins instantly crash)[/p]
• [p]Remove all current Timelost Zones from the game files. (Save files loaded still inside these long since removed zones will instantly crash)[/p]
• [p]Across the board stat squish.[/p]
• [p]Removal of erroneous quests, quest functions, skills, actors, classes, items, weapons, armor, states, troops, and system types. (This is the biggest back end overhaul)[/p]
  • [p]Skill Types down to Skills, Magic, Special, Enemy Skills, down from ~20.[/p]
  • [p]Weapon Types down to Dagger, Sword, Staff, Axe, Bow, Katana, Scythe, down from ~20.[/p]
  • [p]Armor Types down to General Armor, Shield, and Accessory, down from ~15.[/p]
  • [p]Stormchaser class removed, replaced with Adventurer. Gaining of Ruby's special abilities now through questline progress rather than random level up.[/p]
  • [p]Recent new subclasses no longer available by default without meeting key criteria or completing related story missions (ex: Pyromancer was originally meant to be locked behind a Sha'ri questline, but an accidental line of code permanently released it with no way to reel it back)[/p]
  • [p]I am currently uncommitted, but I may rip out the Quest Log in its entirety. With the scope of the game having advanced to what it is now, adding the overlay of the quest log data is too much extra unnecessary detail. If I do this, key story dialogue contained within the quest log itself will be moved directly into the campaign somewhere. Ex: every start quest is 1 line, every quest step change is 3 lines, every changed visible reward is 2 lines, every quest ended is at least 3 lines increasing with # of rewards. And then for some players, the display breaks ~30% of the way into the game.[/p]
• [p]Build meaningful Class change structure. (This may appear as the biggest front end overhaul)[/p]
• [p]Tighten the story and dialogue where necessary.[/p]
• [p]Open Terra Anatis, Shadowfrost Citadel, Brandywine Manor, The Great Heap, and other minor locations throughout the Four Kingdoms Area. [/p]
• [p]But most of all, prepare the engine itself to make additional games based on the resources already gathered here. CoA as it exists today was originally intended to have been 3 distinct separate ~10 hour campaigns. By my last count, there's currently nearly 60 hours worth of baked in content - a good deal of which is discoverable and not blatantly in your face.[/p]

[p]A few of you had expressed interest in making guides for CoA over the last year or so. In your guides, I recommend adding a version label for where this information is relevant. Something as simple as 'how to find the poison weapon' in Den An'ura will fundamentally change come the 9.0 release and the removal of Schematics. [/p][p]The Gift Pack DLCs and contents contained within caches will be scaled based on the new tuning system. However, with the removal of most Armor Types, the Gift Pack DLC items will feature stat spreads consistent to those type of characters without requiring those characters specifically to wear them.[/p][p]I unfortunately can't rapid fire release the finished pieces because it would be possible to convert them back to the previous version of the game and vice versa which would cause permanent balance issues that coding could not resolve. So, in modern day terms, Cross of Auria is effectively getting its first real expansion. Welcome to Cross of Auria - Reawakened. Coming soon (estimated release window: Fall 2026. Could release as early as next month barring any serious roadblocks. Either way, I'll give you that 7 day heads-up promised earlier in this post. Oh, and yeah, you'll get a special start-of-game item if your Game Completion achievement is detected from 8.0!)[/p][p][/p][p]Thanks for listening[/p][p]//bryan m.[/p]

[p]If you're not familiar with the concept of a postmortem, it's what game developers do when a game has launched and some time has passed. They review the development process with the goal of preparing the team for future projects. I'm going to use this as a vehicle to discuss my perspective on this solo project, the things that happened IRL, and where I hope to go from here.[/p][p]In 2016, I started developing my first project using RPG Maker MV. I was in school at the time for Game Design and fully intended to focus on inventory, currency, and battle mechanics. On the whole, this was supposed to be a portfolio fluff piece. After over 2000 hours of solo development, the 1.0 version of Cross of Auria was ready for launch. It went live in the evening of December 31st, 2017. This version of the game started in the Veil with the "you do not belong here" and ended with returning to Auria after defeating the Flame Titan. The Rabbit's Foot existed in its first iteration - the one before Professor Dixon arrives, and no other hunter lodges existed at all. Rabbit's Foot was completely discoverable and led the party to Agartha for the Mend removal scenario into the Den An'ura Rift. The Pit, a repeatable series of battles, was available in the west building of Agartha where the Hall of Challengers now stands. Finally, a minigame where Ruby could hire recruits to travel the snowy north was starting to take shape. This version of the game released with intent to be live service for a few months to finish the minigame, then move on to chapter 2. Cross of Auria - the Awakening was always meant to be up until returning to Auria after the Flame Titan battle.[/p][p]When I graduated in late 2018 and started trying to enter the workforce with the training I had with Unreal and Unity, it became abundantly clear that my degree was useless. I would have been better served making a Unity game during my college time instead of participating in classes at all. But it was too late - I had my first daughter who was getting older and I couldn't invest an unlimited amount of time in a project that might not even be completable by myself. At this point, Cross of Auria hadn't sold too many copies and the Founder's Packs (later becoming the Gift Pack DLCs) hadn't done well. I did virtually no marketing whatsoever and I wasn't an artist by any means. I decided to continue the project in hopes to sell DLCs and keep buzz around the game going. This is where I started extending the story through Frost Forest, removing the Pit and Battlefront, and adding more to the Rabbit's Foot. [/p][p]Come 2020, I had my second child. Free time was all but gone, but I was still chugging away. Zones started getting revamped from being multi-map zones to single huge zones instead with more deliberate terrain and overall more things for players to do. I set CoA as free to download in the hopes of onboarding new players who may be interested in DLC content later, and since then over 60,000 people have claimed a license to the game. [/p][p]Skipping ahead a bit, 2025 is here and I'm still looking back at Cross of Auria - the game I finished, added to, then didn't finish. Sitting there in limbo with no blatant end point, unhappy with where it was. So, in the latter half of 2025, I paused my other projects to put 100% effort into finishing the game. But this wasn't to sell DLCs or create buzz, it was for me. I wanted to be happy with what I had put out there, even if it had come years too late. I created the most scripted events in the game's history, new craftable gear and discoverable events, finalized things that sat dormant for years and made them public. I did almost everything I wanted to do, but it was also time to stop. I could spend another 5000 hours on the engine to make it 'perfect', and still not make another penny off of it. And now there were two kids. There have been two kids for a while. I can't spend 5000 hours on a passion project for free anymore. And I shouldn't have. Not in 2020, and not since. But here we are.[/p][p]I have learned an incredible deal about what I want to make for a non-rpg maker game. I've learned a lot about what kinds of systems I'd make if I were a dev at a big studio. I've learned about the pipeline, bug squashing, and thought about the direction of this story I started nearly 20 years ago. I could make a part 2 on this engine. It wouldn't take nearly as long... but it would still only be played by a handful of people ever. At the end of the day, I want to create something that doesn't just support my family - but that people talk about as a cultural statement of development. And I know I can't do that with the tools I'm working with today. [/p][p]So, what would I do different moving forward? If I were to make a successor to Cross of Auria on the RMMV engine, it would use the already established framework from CoA stripped down to the bones and rebuilt using the best of what I had. More of a 1.5 than a 2 in the series. It would release complete with no DLC for at least 4.99. If there was still more story to tell, then there would be a numbered successor even after that. But I definitely would not do DLC or live service again. [/p][p]If I were to continue the saga in a different engine, I think I would include all the events from CoA and then expand forward and outward toward the true conclusion of the story. Like a real game, if you will. This idea seems insurmountable to me right now because I know what it takes to create the things I want to make and I don't have the skillset to do it alone or the funds to put together a team. But I'm always going to think... what if?[/p][p]If you have any questions for me, please feel free to drop them here. Consider me open book about all things that happened both in CoA itself and during the alpha/beta/gold development stages. Questions about the story as it would be after the events of CoA I can't answer, as I'd love to keep the idea that maybe one day there will be a #2.[/p][p]Thanks for reading! See you out there someday. [/p][p]//hardytier aka bryan moran, just a dude from NJ who has always loved games.[/p][p]PS: There are currently some unused but reserved DLC appIDs for CoA. I may have to use them in one way or another if I do decide to make a new game eventually. If I do, they'll likely be free Gift Pack style content just for the sake of using the ID. They were originally reserved as future Battle Series', which were meant to be successors to Zodiac Overwatch.[/p]

[p]Let me preface this by saying that I drafted this ~5 days before the previous update went out due to the delay in dropping the Horseman Hunter Pass. Let's get into it.[/p][p][/p][p]Looking at my calendar between now and the end of the year, I definitely don't have time to do anything more than I've done so far content wise. I finished the main thing - the end of this chapter's story, the ending sequences of Cross of Auria. [/p][p]I may still poke at Yeul's Castle going into 2026, but I think development time would be better served creating a complete experience for the next game - one that doesn't need content updates or DLCs. I already prepared a project file for CoA2 and scrapped every enemy, troop, most items, many skills, many repetitive or unused states, and overall reduced the engine maximums back to their defaults. Unfortunately, I'm still experiencing crashes so there's a fair chance that if I do end up making big pushes with CoA 2, it may not be on the RMMV engine. I had hoped to reuse core locations such as the main cities and already fleshed out dungeons while focusing on adding all new content and new interactions/quests/etc. If I end up swapping engines, I'll have to redraw the world map. With that being the case, I might reconsider it being a direct successor to CoA. Who knows - we'll have to see.[/p][p]Headless Hunter Pass is now available on the Steam store. This offers one of the most difficult challenges created for CoA with the Horseman himself, who then becomes a repeatable fight in the Veil. This was prepared ~3 weeks ago as part of version 7.2.[/p][p]I kept doing the art wrong and getting the store page denied for the DLC, so it's still not approved yet. In that time, I made some postgame superbosses with no attached achievement, just the satisfaction of beating them if you can. They are the first enemies to have shields potentially in the millions, but they each drop valuable gear for defeating the rest of them. In total, there are 14 discoverable post-orcWar bosses throughout the game, with a final 15th spawning after the previous 14 are defeated. These enemies are completely untested and will probably make you pull your hair out. Good luck! If you beat some of them - let me know! With the release of these enemies, the version rolls up to 8.0 and includes data from the 7.2 release, including lowering required levels for various prestige classes.[/p][p]So, this is it. We're entering limited service mode moving forward. I will still keep a copy of the most recent version of the game saved so I can squash out any bugs you all find, so long as they either break canon or the game. If it's just some random artifact that's curious but not damaging, I probably won't come back to fix it. You can absolutely let me know here on the Steam forums and I'll take a look regardless of what it is. [/p][p]The amount of time I put into making this game cannot be accurately calculated. I spent days working on spreadsheets that you all have never seen, weeks storyboarding before I started, and of course the fixed 3806.3 hours I have in the RMMV engine plus 171.9 hours in just this branch of the game itself since I started working on it in 2017. [/p][p][/p][p]Thank you all for playing Cross of Auria. [/p][p]I hope to see you in the next one.[/p][p][/p][p]//Hardytier[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Update Info[/p]

• [p]With the upgrade from previous PC to new PC, I no longer have the ability to read or create RTF files, so the PatchNotes file usually included in the game files will not be included moving forward and the way I write patch notes, if I include them at all as a post, will be more like this than they have been in the past.[/p]
• [p]Game version -> 7.2 (Horseman Hunter Pass) -> 8.0 (Postgame Bosses)[/p]
• [p]Class Trial now displays the requirements for Knight, similar to Pyromancer.[/p]
• [p]Reduced Pyromancer's Black Mage required level from 50 to 25.[/p]
• [p]Reduced Knight's Swordsman required level from 25 to 20.[/p]
• [p]Added 14 post-game discoverable bosses at level 75.[/p]
• [p]Added 1 post-game discoverable boss at level 100.[/p]
• [p]Includes functionality for Headless Hunter Pass, available immediately via [dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p]

[p]Hey all, 11 days ago I submitted the formal request for review for the Horseman Hunter Pass DLC which was repeatedly rejected because I am a terrible graphic designer and kept messing up the store asset pictures. I'm basically at the point right now where I have stopped development and I'm ready for limited service mode, but I have this one thing that has to go out first for us to be truly done. I can't sneak in anything else before the new year and my time is better served on a new project than fighting crashes here in this one. Even on a new project using CoA as the baseline but completely stripped, it still crashes. If I do a CoA-2, it'll have to be on a new engine and it won't retain any of the assets made for it. I'm not sure how much I want to learn a new engine that isn't Unity or Unreal. [/p][p][/p][p]So this post was just me letting you guys know I haven't forgotten about what I promised and there is some stuff stuck in the pipeline, I just can't release it until the Horseman Hunter Pass is approved.[/p][p][/p][p]Coming soon are:[/p]

• [p]Horseman Hunter Pass DLC, allowing access to a brief Brandywine Forest questline followed by a repeatable challenge in the Veil.[/p]
• [p]Post Orc War level 75 discoverable bosses[/p]
• [p]Post Orc War level 100 discoverable boss[/p]
• [p]Reduced requirements for prestige classes.[/p]
• [p]True end of service (Jan 1, 2026)[/p]