Swords 'n Magic and Stuff News

Happy Friday! Another fun thing that happened this week was the team had a full day design meeting going over the magic and weapon overhaul that is starting in January. It was a very productive meeting and they figured out a lot of great new systems and details. More information to come!

Working on:

• West Windless Woods
  
• Balancing Frostfall for all players
  
• Rigging and animating new creatures
  
• Frostfall loot
  

New:

• Weapon Rack furniture display item to unlock at level 11 carpentry
  
• Display Case furniture display item to unlock at level 20 carpentry
  
• Various rugs to unlock in tailoring
  
• Merchants in Frostfall
  
• Frostfall exclusive mount
  
• Furniture and home plan in the Sleepy Haven furniture shop
  
• Bakery furniture items
  
• Frostfall weapons
  

Improved:

• Ella’s Bakery now sells a variety of things needed for baking
  
• Display improvements and network optimizations to damage numbers
  
• AI perception responsiveness and performance improvements
  
• Fixed up paintings throughout the world to not take up so much memory
  

Fixed:

• Typo in Erma’s dialog
  
• Typos in Frostfall dialog
  

Here's a few pictures of new things!


See you all next week!

Hey everyone! We're excited to announce that our Frostfall update will be launching December 22nd. You'll be able to visit Snowpeak, grab some seasonal attire, hats, masks, furniture, and more. Just like our Witch's Eve update, this will be a two week event. During the last two weeks, we've also done a lot of clean up in the project and a bit of refactoring which is a bit harder to add to the below list.

Working on:

• West Windless Woods
  
• Balancing Frostfall for all players
  
• Models for new furniture items
  
• Rigging and animating new creatures
  
• Frostfall loot
  

New:

• Animal companion overhaul - now able to level up and rename companions
  
• Two festive house plans
  
• Seed makers and cauldrons now have radial progress bars
  
• Festive glider
  
• Festive weapons
  
• Festive masks and hat
  
• Plantable crop
  
• Analytic being tracked: any file errors, even if players don’t know they had an error
  
• Merchants in Snowpeak
  
• Non-seasonal furniture sold in Sleepy Haven, Ramshackle, and Farmlands
  
• One house plan sold in Sleepy Haven
  
• One new buildable furniture item
  

Improved:

• Changed Red and Pastel backpacks to unlock at level 20 instead of 18 to match the ingredients that unlock at level 20
  
• Changed the ingredients needed to craft the Maple Bow to reflect the correct level items for the bow
  
• Increased Cotton yield from 1-2 to 2-3
  
• Milk now has a unique icon and model (was previously using the Eggnog icon and model)
  

Fixed:

• Rug patterns to be centered
  
• Rugs so they weren’t floating off the floor
  
• Typo in mailbox description
  
• Forge widget now updates if people remove from output
  
• Picking up a bed that someone else is sleeping in no longer gets them stuck
  

That's it for now. I'll get some more snazzy screenshots for next week's update. See you all then!

Have you picked games for all of your award categories? If not, please consider voting for Swords 'n Magic and Stuff in the "Labor of Love" category. Just check that box above and you've nominated us!

Nominations are only available until 10am PST on the first (which is in less than 11 hours!).

Be on the look out this Friday for news on when the Frostfall update will be launching. This will be included in our normal development digests.

Thank you all for your support! See you Friday.

It's FRIDAY!

A fun new addition was added last Friday during a Twitch stream:


Yes, that is a hot tub. It will be a furniture item added to our Frost Fall update.

Something I've been working on this week is cleaning up the levels in the project to make sure things were where they needed to be. That took a few days, but it was worth it! This needed to happen to be able to start properly looking into more performance optimization.

Another success this week is that Michael set up Kickstarter rewards! We're so close to be able to get those out!

A fun placeable item that's coming is a Frost Fall Tree! What's cool about it is that you can place your own ornaments on it!


Everything in that above picture is a placeable item. The presents have their own storage, too! Something else, non-seasonal coming is display cases:



Another furniture item that you can use to show off your coolest prizes. Weapon racks and wall mounts are still in progress.

The animal companion overhaul is still going strong and getting ready to wrap up for testing. I don't have any cool pictures as that's a lot of spaghetti code.

If you noticed from the pictures above, there is snow in Tirawyn. Last year we only had snow in Frost Fall, but this year, the snow is coming to Farmlands and East Windless Woods. We've had a bit of material clean up to do to make sure the proper things are getting snowed on.


What are we working on next?
-models and icons for new items
-adjusting the frost golem and snowmen (can you hear their cries already?)
-new housing blueprints

That's it for this week! See you all next Friday. And happy holidays!

Hey everyone! It's that time again. This week is going to be a bit different since we just released a patch on Tuesday. This week I'll share some pictures!

If you haven't seen, I recently updated our roadmap:



The tutorial menu went into the game with Tuesday's patch, but we still have plenty more tutorials to add. We tried to get the basics in to help new players. Joe is working on the animal companion overhaul currently and that will be included in the next update, which is our Frost Fall holiday update. The detailed stats panel is about 20ish% done right now. That leaves us with the holiday update! I've been busy adding recipes and furniture and outfits. Soupy has spoiled us with 5 new outfits and the outfits that were on the NPC's last year will be available to purchase this year. Here's a sneak peek at one:



Last year's Frost Fall food will be back along with 2 new holiday specific foods. Also added 14 new foods at various levels. Waiting for the models and icons before sharing these ones!

I think my favorite thing though, is the furniture! Look at some of the fun items!



This is not everything that's being added. We have a Frost Fall Tree, wreath, and plenty more. I've also added in more non-holiday items including more plants, rugs, and decor. But the thing you'll be most excited for is that the dressers, armoires, cabinets, etc. have their own storage now! They are not going to be anywhere near as much storage as a chest, but it adds to the RP element and allows for more customization.

Things that are being worked on:
-Ensuring Frost Fall is working 100%
-Adjusting the difficulty in Frost Fall
-Decorating Sleepy Haven for the season
-Animal companion overhaul
-New items

Next Friday should go back to our normal lists. Or maybe I'll mix it up again. See you then!