Swords 'n Magic and Stuff News

Hi, hello! Welcome back to our weekly development digest!

One of the most important things that happened this week was that we found a new illustrator! I won't go into all of the details, but once we get something more finalized, I'll be sharing.

We've made some progress on dedicated servers, which are actually helping us pinpoint some performance issues as well. Performance in a game has got to be the hardest thing (in my opinion - I also don't do programming) to pinpoint and figure out the right way to do things. We've changed up so many things that have shown promise, but still they never end up fixing the issue (I'm specifically talking about the missing furniture in buildings after a couple hours of gameplay). It's a rabbit hole of time and energy.

Louis has been hopping around a bit this week. He's been working on finishing up the shop item overhaul. This would make it so that you can purchase a daily limited supply from shops rather than just the one item sitting there.

He has also been working on vanishing NPC's, a long-needed feature. Basically, if an NPC says "I'll see you in the next town" then once you've left the area and returned, you won't see them standing around anymore. It'll fix the weirdness with Sen seemingly teleporting between Azura and Castaway Rock as well as being super useful for things to come!

Lastly, he's been working on the map overhaul! This overhaul will give you the ability to see the world map, zoom into each (available) zone and even place waypoint markers wherever you'd like. You'll also be able to see your quest log while looking at the map and track quests from it. The map will also be receiving a fog of war feature which covers areas you haven't yet explored and tracking your exploration progress using a progress bar off to the side.

Wendy and Kindred are making progress filling out the quest content in Windless Woods and our dedicated testing team will be combing through them with a fine toothed comb very soon to catch all those pesky bugs before the update launches this summer.

Kindred has been working on the Shrubrian village as well and some background programming needed there. I shared some of the models he made last week, but I don't want to spoil the village.

This week wasn't really picture friendly (but we did share a lot of fun gifs between the team in our conversations haha).

I'll see you all next week!

-Janna

Welcome to another Development Digest on this lovely Friday afternoon!

This week we were busy! We've got quests going in, NPC's coming to life (showcase next week), and these little guys:



This guy is part of the Shrubrian village. Here's some of the houses you'll find there:



Aren't they so cute? Can't wait to see this village come to life!

I've been working on an alchemy rebalance and adding new ingredients for new and old potions. Speaking of alchemy, here's one of the new NPC's in Windless Woods:



Wonder what they are up to?

Some other things have made their way into the Windless Woods; things I am not happy about.



Luckily, we've made an in-game arachnophobia mode. Right now it's still being tested, but there will be an NPC handing out free, unlimited potions that last one full in-game day everywhere spiders will be. This potion turns all the spiders that spawn after you drink it into cute purple floaty balls.

Last thing for the week, we've finally decided (after much back and forth) the gems and ores going into the Windless Woods! We've probably changed them 100 times at this point so I'm hoping we're sticking to these ones (no spoilers!). The woods were decided before, but I don't believe I shared them with you all. You'll have oak wood, of course, and then the common, unique wood for Windless Woods will be Elderwood. There are some corrupted locations that need looking into, but you can grab some of the Corrupted logs from them and figure out another type of wood. Here's the Corrupted logs:



It's super exciting seeing everything come together. We have plenty of secrets waiting to be found already.

See you all next week!

-Janna

Hello everyone!

Janna here. Back and refreshed from a nice vacation. Hope everyone enjoyed Louis's update last Friday. I have a few exciting announcements to share.

First off, here's the updated Roadmap:


Here's the map for easier viewing:


As a reminder, the open areas are (in order of exploration): Castaway Rock, Azura, Farmlands, The Sleeping Glade, and a small portion of Black Rook Vale.

[h2]For our big announcement: [/h2]
Now that we've got the update out, when is Windless Woods coming out? When is the combat update coming out? All good questions. The Windless Woods and combat update will be arriving THIS SUMMER. Along with this update, shortly after it is released, our Hero Edition DLC (a support the devs DLC pack with cosmetic items) will be released.

Now I know what you're thinking. Summer is 3 months. When exactly will it come out? On our side, we have a set date with deadlines leading up to it. We need to leave some wiggle room for testing new systems, new quests, new NPCs, new items, all the fun stuff. While we do testing throughout building all of this, things pop up all of the time. As we get closer and feel more confident in our current deadline, we'll announce the official release date. Until then, we're allowing ourselves that time needed to ensure that everything flows smoothly with the least amount of stress and crunch as we can. You all will get weekly updates showing the progress.

As promised, I wanted to share some of the new crops and meals coming out. Going forward each zone will be getting small amounts of new crops and meals. The Farmlands have by far the most crops, but it's... the farmlands.... So that makes sense.

The spotlight for the first crop in Windless Woods is Garlic! You'll find some of the residents love having fresh garlic on hand.



With the garlic, I've added one of my favorite meals Meat 'n Potatoes! Simply add some meat, potatoes, and garlic and you've got yourself some resilience, vitality, and haste. Delicious.

Here's some new NPC's to find in the Windless Woods:


These are some NPC's exploring ruins. From left to right we have Scarlet, Ross, and Valence. What do you think they are looking for?

The community begged, so a quick 5 minutes later, here's some cat ears that will be in the next update (with some color variations as well):



Other things that were worked on this past week were Bone Reach towns, finishing up the traps and puzzles, more work on the combat overhaul, adding in the new resources for Windless Woods, finishing touches on the admin panel for multiplayer servers, and more work on dedicated servers.

If you aren't in our Discord, tomorrow at 12pm PST I'm hosting a multiplayer world for the community to come in and play together! Everyone is welcome to hop in and out. We'll be in a voice call on Discord just chatting and I'm available to answer any questions as well.

See you all next week!

-Janna

Hey there!

Since we've added a few new features and items, we're going to call this a small update, though the entire purpose was to fix a few more minor bugs.

New:

• Blue Hood sold in Sleepy Haven
  
• Ban and Moderator add/remove options for your world
  
• When a player is banned from a game, they get a pop up showing that they were banned
  
• Placeable Forge and Cauldron - auto unlock recipe in respective skills at level 10
  
• Placeable ladder - auto unlock recipe at level 13 carpentry
  

Improved:

• Cobalt chopping axe doesn't show weapon stats, just tool stats
  
• Astral Greatsword and Grimwick's Bane has become bigger to align with the other two handed weapon increases
  
• Quest item conditions - how items are counted towards quests has been corrected to account for dropping, crafting, getting out of chest, etc.
  
• Architecture crafting window now shows Architecture instead of Carpentry
  
• Healing staff now gains far less XP when you heal yourself versus healing others. Heal your friends
  
• Can place structures (wells, sheds, etc.) on top of stone tiles now
  
• Changed named of a job board quest to better reflect what you were asked to get
  
• Removed two testing house plots that aren't supposed to be in. If you bought these 100 gold plots, you can retrieve your items, but can't place anything else there
  
• The Collector quest - new name "The Schematic" and has updated map markers for less confusion
  

Fixed:

• Tools now show proper crit rate
  
• After defeating Harkin, you can now continue on the quest
  
• Small place you could get stuck between a rock and a hard place (another rock... of course)
  
• A flickering issue when trying to rotate building pieces
  
• Tools no longer give XP and cannot unlock skills
  
• Floating goblin leaf in goblin camp
  
• Issue with placing spirit anchor in places you shouldn't be able to
  
• When dying with any menu open, it now forces the menus to close so you can move as a ghost
  
• Various housing plots the weren't flat to place building blocks on
  
• The Big Boom loading issues
  
• Fixed a bug with displaying minimum weapon damage in tool tips
  
• Fixed a bug with radial pickup system
  

Hi there!

Louis here. Janna and Michael are taking a few days off for their birthdays, so I’m in charge of the digest while they’re gone - and boy, do I have one for you this week.

Wendy’s hard at work in Bone Reach right now, as part of our plan to keep on top of zone updates so that we can ensure they release in a timely fashion without speedbumps between each zone. As you may have heard, the Windless Woods will be our next zone. So while that’s in the detail phase (encounter design, quests + narrative, towns + NPCs) Wendy’s blazing ahead with blockout in the next zone. It’s too early to show you what she’s working on, but while Janna’s gone I’ve managed to sneak this little teaser out to you:


Whatever she’s doing, seems like it’s visible even from Hope Harbor.

Things are continuing apace in the Woods. Here’s some spots you haven’t seen before:



On my end, I’ve been busy setting up all kinds of traps, triggers, levers and devices for the team to make use of in the ruins you’ll come across in future updates.



Stream viewers will recall the tripwires and pressure plates that can be used to open doors and operate elevators, but they can also be used for more devious purposes:


Better watch your step in the ancient ruins we’re working on in the Windless Woods.

Alongside these devious machinations, I’ve been delving deep into our combat code - tidying up, pulling out the parts we’ve outgrown, and laying the foundations for the new systems we have planned. It’s a big job, but we’re nearing the stage where we can start pushing prototype content to our dedicated testing team.

Before we wrap up the digest for this week, I have a segment here from Mike, who has been helping us a TON with server management and networking behind the scenes. Take it away, Mike:



Alright folks, that’s it for this week’s dev digest. Thanks for having me as your guest host while Janna’s away! She’ll be back in charge next week.

Take care!
Louis