Swords 'n Magic and Stuff News

Happy Friday, Friends!

As Janna recovers from her week-long illness, I will be hijacking this week’s development digest. For those of you that don’t know me, I am DD, and I do a lot of quest design and writing for the game. For those of you that do know me, hello!

Before I talk about the progress we made this week, I would like to give you all a friendly reminder that Swords ‘n Magic, as well as the OST, are both currently on sale for 30% off. So if you haven’t grabbed a copy yet, now is the perfect chance to do so before the sale ends.

For starters, a lot of my work for the past couple of weeks has involved rebalancing our current Job Board system. At times, the jobs either felt too difficult to complete, or the rewards didn’t properly represent the difficulty of the jobs. I hope that the new jobs and rewards will feel a lot better in the next update! Along with this rebalance, I have continued adding more quests to the Windless Woods. Because let’s be honest, who doesn’t love questing.

Here’s where you will be able to find the job board in the Windless Woods when you are ready for more jobs!


Now for the rest of the team. Louis has continued to work on the combat system, as well as the map. Here’s a WIP mock-up of what the new map could look like. If you’re interested in seeing more of what Louis does, you can find his stream here.


Kindred (also known as Michael) has been busy making a whole ton of models. A lot of it is still too much of a secret to be shown off just yet, so enjoy this screenshot of some of the new alchemy ingredients found in the Windless Woods which can be shown off instead.


Wendy has also been a busy bee (pun intended) with work on the wasps’ nest. You’ll definitely want to explore it, but be careful not to get yourself into any sticky situations.


For those of you interested in seeing even more behind the scenes screenshots of what we’ve been working on, check out the Patreon! We have lots of cool things posted, including my personal favorite, this snail decoration.


I hope you have all enjoyed seeing all the fun things we’ve been working on this week. We can’t wait to share more with you. Until next time.


- DD

Happy Friday Friends!

Right now is the time to grab a friend a copy of Swords 'n Magic as it's on sale! We've joined the Steam Summer Sale and put the game and OST at a 30% discount.

Next round of news, if you aren't on our Discord, I'll be hosting a community event tomorrow at 4pm PST where I open up my world and have everyone join and we hang out in a voice call and chat and play! Last month, we even played checkers in-game (not kidding, a community member made a checkers board in my world). I host a community event once a month through our Discord. Come play with me! I usually end up answering questions and giving some hints about what's to come.

Now let's talk about the cool stuff. Louis has been finishing up loose ends with traps, triggers, and some combat stuff. He'll be moving onto the map next to add in the new Windless Woods map and some other details to round out the map overhaul. Here's the map Michael made:



You'll be able to zoom into it in game and see all the great details. Steam doesn't allow me to post high resolution images, so the above will have to do for now!

We've also got some magic happening over in the Eyre. Check these out:


And just for funsies, take a look at these cool new items going in. Can you guess what they are for?


Not too much to share this week. It's been a lot of bug fixing, tweaking, and technical things. Make sure you check out Louis's stream on Twitch as he works on the programming side. Michael hasn't been streaming as often since he's been in focus mode, but feel free to follow to get a notification when he does go live.

Let me know what you want to see next week!

-Janna

Happy Friday Friends!

You responded last week to what you wanted to see and I come with pictures this week!

So first off, here is one of my favorite new houses. It's called Crafter's Lodge and features a fenced in area. Here's some different shots around and inside the house:


Next, I wanted to share just a few of the plushes I made. I have more than this and more in mind to make, but we'll see how many I end up with!


Moving on to furniture, Michael is still making a lot of it, but here's some furniture from The Eyre:


And Soupy is working on different pottery decor (I may steal some for furniture!):


If you've missed the Behind the Curtain streams on Discord, here's just one of the things that was worked on today:


Around this area will be these guys:


but I wonder what other creatures lurk around here? There was a sneak peek on Discord today, but other than that you'll have to wait to see!

Alright onto the more technical aspects. Here's a snippet from Michael:

Last week I began work on a blueprint we're calling the "Corruption Event Manager" which handles loading and unloading levels for a new system in Windless Woods.

Windless Woods introduces a mysterious plague that is spreading throughout the zone and if left unchecked, the world. Around the zone there are several spots that have a chance to spawn large corrupted thorns as well as evil Shade creatures who seem to draw power from the corruption.

The corruption manager keeps track of all of the Shade spawners it creates and whenever one is cleared, it triggers an effect to sink the thorns back into the ground and unload the level, adding it back into the shuffled queue to spawn again after some time.

The system is a pretty fun new addition to the game and gives the Windless Woods a totally new feel and even a sense of danger, considering these enemies are the most challenging in the game so far. We can't wait to see if you can clear all the corruption from the woods.



And a snippet from Louis:

Hello! Louis here, to check in with some updates from the programming side of things. A big focus this week has been an overhaul to our damage calculation and how it's handled in multiplayer. I've put together a "payload" system, which packages all the relevant damage data into a neat parcel before sending it across the network. This ought to fix some of the lesser-known (but still annoying) bugs once we get it patched into our existing weapon types, but most importantly it's an integral part of the new magic system we're building. This week has also been the first time our three-hit combo system has been hooked up - it still needs some tweaks to damage and timing, but it's feeling great so far.





And there we have it! A little bit of everything. There's still more enemies I haven't shared and furniture being made. This update is huge, to say the least.

See you all next week!

-Janna

(P.S. Here's a little blooper while the wasps were getting their AI working)

Happy Friday Friends!

I just need you to know that I just realized something amazing. Like less than a minute ago. I was adding the Shrubrian furniture to be items you can place in your house. Well Shrubrians are small. So I wanted to see how tiny the furniture was because I liked it small. They are the perfect size for the plushes! AHHHHHH! (I also made a ton of new plushes)



How stinkin' cute, right? Kindred made me all of the base races for plushies and I've been making different professions for them. Above you see a treasure hunter and a detective. I think making the plushes is one of my favorite things to do.

In other, not as adorable, news, Kindred has gotten a new mechanic working that is a part of the main storyline in Windless Woods. There will be these, let's call them "places", that will have unique things happen that are randomly spawned. These places will have a unique resource and have a backstory as to what they are and why they are there.

Wendy has been setting all the traps for you. You'll have to find your way through a tomb and make it past all the secrets and traps before getting to the treasure.

We've got a lot of new models going into the game and one is more structures for The Eyre.



Honestly, we have so much going on right now. New furniture, new quests, main questline, new enemies, new attacks, combat, map overhaul (plus reviewing each quest in game for map markers), items, mounts, outfits, shops, npcs, traps, puzzles, magic system, dedicated servers, job boards, weapons, and any bugs for all of those. It's a busy time! I've probably missed like 10 things for that list.

I want to know what you want to see next week. More furniture? New enemies? More overview shots? Some traps? Do you want to read all the technical details of the programming going on? Let me know so I can tailor our weekly chat more to you!

See you next week!
- Janna

I need a catchy Friday catch phrase here.

*Insert phrase*

After our non-clothed NPC fiasco last week, I'm happy to say they've all found their proper attire again and confirmed by testers to be clothed. Phew.

If you aren't on our Discord, Michael/Kindred does some Behind the Curtain streams where he just shares his screen and works on new items. It's very chill and any "talking" is through text. One of my favorite things he made in the last session was new base races for our plushies!



I'm so excited to add new plushes to the world. They are my favorite furniture item by far.

Something else on our Discord is our ideas channel. We get so many great ideas all of the time and then our long time members let people know that those ideas have already been submitted. Well we wanted an easier way to see all of the ideas and allow for people to upvote. That's where Canny comes in. You can submit ideas, comment on others, and upvote your favorites. It's easier to see what everyone wants to be added. We can then add top items to the roadmap which will make their way into the game. Check it out here!


As the game grows, we've been wanting to do a rebranding of our logo and key art. We're happy to say we've found an amazing artist who has made art for games like Delver and Minecraft! His name is Sam Cube and here's the new logo he made:



We'll be transitioning the art around our Windless Woods summer update.

In other news, Louis has finished up the map overhaul and it's ready to go out to testers this week. It'll get some polish and tweaks with feedback from testers, but it's a much better system. Still more can be added to it, but those are quality of life changes that we'll add over time.

Other than a lot of new models, art, mechanics, quests, bug fixing, and general work, that's the big stuff for this week. I'll leave you with a new picture though and let you guess what it's for!

-Janna