Development Digest January 29th - March 16th
Hey everyone! Here's a little dev digest for you all to keep you up to date on what's been going on with Swords 'n Magic the last 6 weeks.
So Janna and I had our new baby on February 1st! It was a crazy, hectic event, but everyone came out safe and sound. Quin is now 6 weeks old and is doing great! We're struggling to find time to sleep and are slowly settling into our new lives as fresh parents again, but I'm sneaking away as much as I can to get work done on Swords 'n Magic.
This week I spent my time working on finally hooking up our buff bar (where your food, drink and potion buffs show up) to all status effects. This means that in the next update you'll finally be able to see when you're on fire, wet, poisoned, cursed, etc. and exactly how long those statuses are going to last and if they're stacking or not. I bet you didn't even know we had stacking status effects in the game. Sorry about that.
I've been trying to tie up loose ends with systems like these to prepare for dungeon content, which is also in the works and should be the next major update. We'll likely roll out dungeons one at a time as they get finished. We have some plans for at least one procedural dungeon to allow as much replayability as we can. We're hoping that these procedural dungeons will be a great way to challenge you and your group with multiple difficulty levels and corresponding loot. Dungeons will be able to be solo'd as their difficulty will also scale dynamically based on how many players you bring to the meeting stone at the start of the dungeon. Each player joining the dungeon will interact with the stone, then the group will be teleported into the dungeon.
Dungeons will vary in experiences, but for the most part you can expect clusters of enemies, traps, a few puzzles, and obviously a boss at the end of each one. Boss fights are clearly going to be the most challenging aspect here and some of these boss fights will be more like the Frostfall golem and less like Grimwick or the Gatekeeper. Meaning, they'll likely have phases, but probably won't have many environmental obstacles or requirements to defeat the boss.
As we get closer to that update and know more about exactly how the system will work, we'll share a more comprehensive update on dungeons, which one will be released first, how the procedural dungeons will work, loot, experience, etc.
As you all know, when the Windless Woods update launched, healing magic was still quite frustrating due to having to deal damage to gain XP to level your life skill. This has finally been set up correctly and healing not only gives the player XP but also generates additional threat so healers need to be careful that their tank is generating more threat than they are or the enemies will switch targets!
And yes, this also means that the threat generation system has been overhauled entirely. Enemies will switch targets more often now based on a number of factors such as distance to the player, player health, and most of all, the amount of threat the player has generated, which is based mostly on damage and the rate at which you deal it. Threat decays over time, so if you do pull aggro, hang back and let your team get some hits in and the enemy should get bored of chasing you rather quickly. Tanks have a few extra tricks up their sleeve using shields. Shield bashing and parrying will automatically generate a good chunk of threat right off the bat, but simply having a shield equipped will help tanks generate additional threat as they deal damage with their primary weapon. Future trinkets with the "Threatening" passive will earn you an additional 50% threat from all sources.
We're really excited for this new threat system to come into play as we think we'll finally see a glimmer of the holy trinity you might be used to from MMO's working in Swords 'n Magic. With these new systems in place, dungeons are finally looking like they'll be a core aspect of the game.
On another note the game is now on sale for the Steam Spring sale for 30% off. This is a great opportunity to pick up the game if you haven't already, or to gift it to a friend!
Thanks again for all your patience through this slow point in development. Things are picking up and we'll be making progress on the game more and more as we settle in and get used to this new chapter in our lives. We're glad you're here with us.
So Janna and I had our new baby on February 1st! It was a crazy, hectic event, but everyone came out safe and sound. Quin is now 6 weeks old and is doing great! We're struggling to find time to sleep and are slowly settling into our new lives as fresh parents again, but I'm sneaking away as much as I can to get work done on Swords 'n Magic.
This week I spent my time working on finally hooking up our buff bar (where your food, drink and potion buffs show up) to all status effects. This means that in the next update you'll finally be able to see when you're on fire, wet, poisoned, cursed, etc. and exactly how long those statuses are going to last and if they're stacking or not. I bet you didn't even know we had stacking status effects in the game. Sorry about that.
I've been trying to tie up loose ends with systems like these to prepare for dungeon content, which is also in the works and should be the next major update. We'll likely roll out dungeons one at a time as they get finished. We have some plans for at least one procedural dungeon to allow as much replayability as we can. We're hoping that these procedural dungeons will be a great way to challenge you and your group with multiple difficulty levels and corresponding loot. Dungeons will be able to be solo'd as their difficulty will also scale dynamically based on how many players you bring to the meeting stone at the start of the dungeon. Each player joining the dungeon will interact with the stone, then the group will be teleported into the dungeon.
Dungeons will vary in experiences, but for the most part you can expect clusters of enemies, traps, a few puzzles, and obviously a boss at the end of each one. Boss fights are clearly going to be the most challenging aspect here and some of these boss fights will be more like the Frostfall golem and less like Grimwick or the Gatekeeper. Meaning, they'll likely have phases, but probably won't have many environmental obstacles or requirements to defeat the boss.
As we get closer to that update and know more about exactly how the system will work, we'll share a more comprehensive update on dungeons, which one will be released first, how the procedural dungeons will work, loot, experience, etc.
As you all know, when the Windless Woods update launched, healing magic was still quite frustrating due to having to deal damage to gain XP to level your life skill. This has finally been set up correctly and healing not only gives the player XP but also generates additional threat so healers need to be careful that their tank is generating more threat than they are or the enemies will switch targets!
And yes, this also means that the threat generation system has been overhauled entirely. Enemies will switch targets more often now based on a number of factors such as distance to the player, player health, and most of all, the amount of threat the player has generated, which is based mostly on damage and the rate at which you deal it. Threat decays over time, so if you do pull aggro, hang back and let your team get some hits in and the enemy should get bored of chasing you rather quickly. Tanks have a few extra tricks up their sleeve using shields. Shield bashing and parrying will automatically generate a good chunk of threat right off the bat, but simply having a shield equipped will help tanks generate additional threat as they deal damage with their primary weapon. Future trinkets with the "Threatening" passive will earn you an additional 50% threat from all sources.
We're really excited for this new threat system to come into play as we think we'll finally see a glimmer of the holy trinity you might be used to from MMO's working in Swords 'n Magic. With these new systems in place, dungeons are finally looking like they'll be a core aspect of the game.
On another note the game is now on sale for the Steam Spring sale for 30% off. This is a great opportunity to pick up the game if you haven't already, or to gift it to a friend!
Thanks again for all your patience through this slow point in development. Things are picking up and we'll be making progress on the game more and more as we settle in and get used to this new chapter in our lives. We're glad you're here with us.
