Iron Harvest DevBlog #25 - May 2020
[h2]News: No Compromises! Consoles Update![/h2]
It has been 2 years since our successful Kickstarter Campaign in April 2018 and we are getting closer and closer to the release of Iron Harvest 1920+. With your help, we were able to collect invaluable feedback from the closed beta. We’re trying to incorporate as many ideas as possible - again we want to thank you for the amazing support! Also don't forget to say hi on our closed Backer Discord Channel. There you can share your thoughts directly with the team and the community.
[h3]If you've already claimed your early supporters game, please also join us in our Backers-only Discord Channel for all the latest news, info and discussion. You'll find the link here.
[/h3]
During our Kickstarter campaign we promised you that we will not commit to any compromises for any version of the game (Windows/PlayStation/Xbox). Each platform will get all the love necessary, and things look very promising. The closed Beta runs smoothly, and the feedback you guys gave us was overwhelming. The control schemes for PlayStation and Xbox are also up and running and we are continuing with internal testing. However, with the global Covid-19 pandemic raging for over 3 months and the resulting change of workflows, things got a little complicated.
Let’s rip off the band aid - To release the game simultaneously on Windows and consoles on September 1st we’d need to forgo many of the things which we promised you. For us, such a compromise, to force out the console version, is not an option. To give the game all the love it needs, and you deserve, we unfortunately have decided to postpone the release of the Iron Harvest 1920+ on PlayStation & Xbox Versions until Q1 2021. The Windows version releases unchanged on September 1st, 2020.
The console versions are very important for us and we strongly believe that with the extra time we will all get the outstanding console RTS we all are waiting for.
Also influenced by the current Covid-19 regulations are logistical problems we are facing concerning the physical Kickstarter rewards. Rest assured that every eligible Backer will get a digital game key on release day, however with our physical rewards production we are currently looking into possible delays that might occur due to the government lock-downs in various countries. We will do everything possible - however, we’ll have to wait for further Covid-19 pandemic developments and regulations. We’ll always keep you updated!
[h2]Info: Post-Beta, What’s Everyone Working On?[/h2]
[h3] Jan (Game Director)[/h3]
I’ve done tons of stuff in preparation for the release like discussing trailer ideas and ideas for other marketing assets. Besides that, I am testing a lot, giving feedback to our game designers, level designers and programmers regarding the feel of the game and the balancing.
I’m also working on the story / progression of the Kickstarter bonus campaign. There are many balls in the air at this point and there is a lot of stress involved, but I’m still super motivated because of the positive feedback we get! Thanks for that!
[h3]Julian (Executive Producer)[/h3]
Creating a dense battlefield of 1920+ feeling requires a lot of mixing and effects.
My focus right now is to synchronize our development with the publisher, balance creativity with business. Orchestrating our team with Jan and Nico to precisely hit all the beats on the publishing side from Age Rating to Marketing is a big challenge.
Tied to my living room and not being able to see all our partners at GDC or E3 is sad, but we are giving our best to expand our network to create cool new opportunities for Iron Harvest. The upcoming months will be BIG with a lot of cool stuff going on, so stay tuned!
Besides all that, I am also the Audio Director of the game. I have the great pleasure to work with Adam Skorupa, Krzysztof Wierzynkiewicz and Michal Cielecki from Music Imaginary on the music for Iron Harvest. So far, we have created around 1½ hours of music for the game and the mix of classic orchestra and industrial synths really shines and creates a unique soundtrack. Working with artists and choirs of all 3 representative nations from Germany, Poland and Russia is a great creative journey. Adam is also working with me on the weapon sound design, creating an authentic diesel-punk experience for every unit. My long-term buddy for SFX Clemens (since “The Book of Unwritten Tales”) created a lot of new unit animation sounds, tons of engines and scene atmosphere. Also mixing the over 1 hour of cinematic video material and processing thousands of VO files for radio and other effects.
[h3]Nico (Lead Producer)[/h3]
The entire team is working hard, pushing the game towards the finish line. Our implemented production logistics paid off and we made a lot of progress in the past months.
The Corona pandemic brought a lot of challenges that we had to tackle if we were to keep the production as smooth as possible. In my role I have to talk to a lot of team members on a daily basis and right now I have more Skype calls in a week than in the last year combined.
We now started polishing all areas of the game and it’s really cool seeing everything coming together right now.
[h3]Marilena (Assistant Producer)[/h3]
My usual duties continue to keep our project plan on track. I manage the outsourcing system; help coordinate our art department and assign tasks. All while identifying constraints and working to resolve them together with the team. Even though we are currently working from home, our internal communications methods have worked out well and I’m happy with how we have adapted to the new challenges.
[h3]Tessa (Junior Producer)[/h3]
Currently, I am working on the KING Art internal management tool. During the development of Iron Harvest we have discovered many limitations and room for improvement, so we are currently adapting and improving it to be ready for the next big projects!
[h3]Max (Lead Game Designer)[/h3]
As always, I have been busy arranging tasks within the game design department and coordinating our efforts with everyone else in the Iron Harvest team. Recently, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at gamepad controls for the Iron Harvest console versions. I’ve also set up the first set of achievements (for consoles and pc) and started crunching the numbers on a lot of the metagame elements. Finally, we have been taking a close look at all your feedback, evaluating the improvements and changes, as well as prepared everything for upcoming feature updates of the game! I hope you are all excited for what’s to come!
[h3]Dominik (Game Designer)[/h3]
Over the course of the last month, the problems and challenges facing the games balance has changed a lot. With all units and features narrowing down to their final state, a lot of edge cases came up. For example, discrepancies between abilities that work perfectly fine in multiplayer, but tear any campaign map apart.
In addition, we made our first steps towards collecting and evaluating telemetry data. For example, the win ratio per faction, damage dealt by each unit type and whole lot more. This, combined with your feedback, will help us to improve balancing further and will become an invaluable tool to find the optimal solutions to our balancing related problems.
[h3]Elliott (Game Designer)[/h3]
This month I've been working on localization: helping translators ensure Iron Harvest is released in multiple languages upon launch.
I additionally worked on submitting forms to the various ratings boards across the world so we'll know which age rating Iron Harvest will have!
Between all that, I worked together with Francis to fix a long-standing issue with Victory Point bonuses to prevent exploitation. Read his entry for more information on that!
Otherwise, I've mostly been fixing minor bugs and begun looking at how we can polish our units further to make them feel even more awesome!
[h3]Francis (Game Designer)[/h3]
This past month, Elliott and I have been hard at work creating a prototype able to crunch the numbers on the effects of different victory point bonus systems. The current implemented system has (some) positive impact on matches, but it’s exploitable and this is something we really needed to address. Something we’ve finally found the time for. We have been analyzing the full extent of the system's current effects and comparing it to a "no bonus" system and different new proposals. A new design for the system has been picked and will now be implemented into the game!
Furthermore, I have been looking into everything to do with playing Iron Harvest with a controller, finding the current issues, and researching & designing solutions
[h3]Philipp (Lead Programmer)[/h3]
Most of my time was spent busy managing our awesome team of engineers. I try to come up with a good plan for whom should do what and when. We always have plenty of issues, ideas, improvements, and obligations to juggle with and it is not always easy to decide on what would be the best route to further improve the game. But, when I sometimes take a step back, and try to look at Iron Harvest from a greater distance, I can clearly see how much it improves with every week of effort we put into it. I hope you can feel that too when you have the chance to look at the game (again).
[h3]Thomas J. (Technical Director)[/h3]
Following your Beta feedback, I’ve been working on improving the responsiveness of infantry units. To allow players to feel like they are really in command of the war effort, their units should be able to abort their current action and work towards their new goals as soon as possible. This is especially important for units that are designed to be slower, like the MG infantry, which is powerful once setup but takes several seconds to deploy and redeploy.
[h3]Arne (Programmer)[/h3]
The past month was quite different at KING Art. Firstly, we had to make sure that the workflows we used to have at the office still worked with all my colleges and myself working from home. Especially, getting out daily (or sometimes hourly) builds to the team was quite a challenge. On the other hand, I was working on getting the Iron Harvest client ready to meet all the requirements of the console platforms, also quite challenging!
Lastly, I am right now working on making sure that the Iron Harvest online services function without a glitch, so you can play your multiplayer matches, get XP and level-ups. We have quite some cool features planed that will arrive soon and I am making sure that all these things don't crash our servers when it is used by thousands of players.
[h3]Lukas (Programmer)[/h3]
As well as the game being on PC-Steam and GOG, I've been working on consoles and different PC stores. We want the game to eventually be accessible on as many platforms as makes sense for our game. No exclusivity anywhere. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of fiddly details to work out for each individual platform. It’s frustrating work, but it’ll be worthwhile in the end.
[h3]Chris (Programmer)[/h3]
I've worked mostly on the A.I. and adjusting it to the needs of the level-designers. I improved the configurability and the performance especially for the campaign maps and made sure the level-designers can implement the A.I. within the structure of the specific Levels.
To improve iteration-speed, I tried to adjust our internal tools to give the level-designers the up most freedom to configure and customize the A.I., as well as debug-Tools to better understand the decisions it is taking and which tasks are tackled at certain points in time. Otherwise, I’ve worked on general bug fixes and improvements regarding scripting, tools, and overall game play mechanics.
[h3]Patrick (Programmer)[/h3]
I've spent the last month mostly fixing bugs and supporting our level-designers. As a part of that I've improved the sequence-system that we use to stage and script the single-player missions. It now causes fewer delays, and is way better suited for skipping cutscenes, which is why we will now enable the skipping of cutscenes for players in a future update to Beta.
[h3]Janek (Programmer)[/h3]
I’ve been working on a plethora of different things: For instance, on the possibility to play the campaign co-operatively, on the localization of the game's texts into different languages, implementing a way for players to choose and configure their favorite hero and some call-in reserves in multiplayer matches. All exciting stuff to come.
[h3]Christoph (Graphic programmer)[/h3]
I‘ve made the environment more interactive: Vegetation now has a dynamic wind system with changing directions. Trees and grass react to explosion shock waves. Grass can be burned or trampled down. The terrain becomes beaten by craters, burned earth and oil spills. Units also leave trails in the snow.
I also made performance improvements to make the game run faster. For example, I altered the rendering pipeline completely for destructible buildings. Shadow lengths are pre-processed, and dynamic occlusion culling discards all hidden parts from rendering, such as interiors of buildings and fronts that are turned away from sight.
[h3]Thomas B. (Programmer)[/h3]
I implemented a music system that can crossfade between two similar music tracks with different intensities. This can for example be used by our scripters to make the music more intense when a battle is starting without interrupting the music. I also fixed some bugs regarding shouts, savegames and other things.
[h3]Alexander (Programmer)[/h3]
I have been working on implementing and improving (fixing bugs) several different abilities for heroes and mechs. Working closely with the designers and animators to make the abilities function like they imagined.
[h3]Anh Tuan (Programming Intern)[/h3]
I am an intern starting to get to grips with this cool project. Currently, I am working on implementing a redesign for a better player experience and fixing some bugs.
[h3]Stefan (Art Director)[/h3]
Over the past weeks I’ve been busy adding, polishing, and finalizing vegetation tools and assets, so our level artists have everything they need to finish the campaign maps. I’ve also worked on more visual polish and fidelity like systems for rain, snow, and cloud shadows to breathe even more life into the world of 1920+.
It has been 2 years since our successful Kickstarter Campaign in April 2018 and we are getting closer and closer to the release of Iron Harvest 1920+. With your help, we were able to collect invaluable feedback from the closed beta. We’re trying to incorporate as many ideas as possible - again we want to thank you for the amazing support! Also don't forget to say hi on our closed Backer Discord Channel. There you can share your thoughts directly with the team and the community.
[h3]If you've already claimed your early supporters game, please also join us in our Backers-only Discord Channel for all the latest news, info and discussion. You'll find the link here.
[/h3]
During our Kickstarter campaign we promised you that we will not commit to any compromises for any version of the game (Windows/PlayStation/Xbox). Each platform will get all the love necessary, and things look very promising. The closed Beta runs smoothly, and the feedback you guys gave us was overwhelming. The control schemes for PlayStation and Xbox are also up and running and we are continuing with internal testing. However, with the global Covid-19 pandemic raging for over 3 months and the resulting change of workflows, things got a little complicated.
Let’s rip off the band aid - To release the game simultaneously on Windows and consoles on September 1st we’d need to forgo many of the things which we promised you. For us, such a compromise, to force out the console version, is not an option. To give the game all the love it needs, and you deserve, we unfortunately have decided to postpone the release of the Iron Harvest 1920+ on PlayStation & Xbox Versions until Q1 2021. The Windows version releases unchanged on September 1st, 2020.
The console versions are very important for us and we strongly believe that with the extra time we will all get the outstanding console RTS we all are waiting for.
Also influenced by the current Covid-19 regulations are logistical problems we are facing concerning the physical Kickstarter rewards. Rest assured that every eligible Backer will get a digital game key on release day, however with our physical rewards production we are currently looking into possible delays that might occur due to the government lock-downs in various countries. We will do everything possible - however, we’ll have to wait for further Covid-19 pandemic developments and regulations. We’ll always keep you updated!
[h2]Info: Post-Beta, What’s Everyone Working On?[/h2]
[h3] Jan (Game Director)[/h3]
I’ve done tons of stuff in preparation for the release like discussing trailer ideas and ideas for other marketing assets. Besides that, I am testing a lot, giving feedback to our game designers, level designers and programmers regarding the feel of the game and the balancing.
I’m also working on the story / progression of the Kickstarter bonus campaign. There are many balls in the air at this point and there is a lot of stress involved, but I’m still super motivated because of the positive feedback we get! Thanks for that!
[h3]Julian (Executive Producer)[/h3]
Creating a dense battlefield of 1920+ feeling requires a lot of mixing and effects.
My focus right now is to synchronize our development with the publisher, balance creativity with business. Orchestrating our team with Jan and Nico to precisely hit all the beats on the publishing side from Age Rating to Marketing is a big challenge.
Tied to my living room and not being able to see all our partners at GDC or E3 is sad, but we are giving our best to expand our network to create cool new opportunities for Iron Harvest. The upcoming months will be BIG with a lot of cool stuff going on, so stay tuned!
Besides all that, I am also the Audio Director of the game. I have the great pleasure to work with Adam Skorupa, Krzysztof Wierzynkiewicz and Michal Cielecki from Music Imaginary on the music for Iron Harvest. So far, we have created around 1½ hours of music for the game and the mix of classic orchestra and industrial synths really shines and creates a unique soundtrack. Working with artists and choirs of all 3 representative nations from Germany, Poland and Russia is a great creative journey. Adam is also working with me on the weapon sound design, creating an authentic diesel-punk experience for every unit. My long-term buddy for SFX Clemens (since “The Book of Unwritten Tales”) created a lot of new unit animation sounds, tons of engines and scene atmosphere. Also mixing the over 1 hour of cinematic video material and processing thousands of VO files for radio and other effects.
[h3]Nico (Lead Producer)[/h3]
The entire team is working hard, pushing the game towards the finish line. Our implemented production logistics paid off and we made a lot of progress in the past months.
The Corona pandemic brought a lot of challenges that we had to tackle if we were to keep the production as smooth as possible. In my role I have to talk to a lot of team members on a daily basis and right now I have more Skype calls in a week than in the last year combined.
We now started polishing all areas of the game and it’s really cool seeing everything coming together right now.
[h3]Marilena (Assistant Producer)[/h3]
My usual duties continue to keep our project plan on track. I manage the outsourcing system; help coordinate our art department and assign tasks. All while identifying constraints and working to resolve them together with the team. Even though we are currently working from home, our internal communications methods have worked out well and I’m happy with how we have adapted to the new challenges.
[h3]Tessa (Junior Producer)[/h3]
Currently, I am working on the KING Art internal management tool. During the development of Iron Harvest we have discovered many limitations and room for improvement, so we are currently adapting and improving it to be ready for the next big projects!
[h3]Max (Lead Game Designer)[/h3]
As always, I have been busy arranging tasks within the game design department and coordinating our efforts with everyone else in the Iron Harvest team. Recently, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at gamepad controls for the Iron Harvest console versions. I’ve also set up the first set of achievements (for consoles and pc) and started crunching the numbers on a lot of the metagame elements. Finally, we have been taking a close look at all your feedback, evaluating the improvements and changes, as well as prepared everything for upcoming feature updates of the game! I hope you are all excited for what’s to come!
[h3]Dominik (Game Designer)[/h3]
Over the course of the last month, the problems and challenges facing the games balance has changed a lot. With all units and features narrowing down to their final state, a lot of edge cases came up. For example, discrepancies between abilities that work perfectly fine in multiplayer, but tear any campaign map apart.
In addition, we made our first steps towards collecting and evaluating telemetry data. For example, the win ratio per faction, damage dealt by each unit type and whole lot more. This, combined with your feedback, will help us to improve balancing further and will become an invaluable tool to find the optimal solutions to our balancing related problems.
[h3]Elliott (Game Designer)[/h3]
This month I've been working on localization: helping translators ensure Iron Harvest is released in multiple languages upon launch.
I additionally worked on submitting forms to the various ratings boards across the world so we'll know which age rating Iron Harvest will have!
Between all that, I worked together with Francis to fix a long-standing issue with Victory Point bonuses to prevent exploitation. Read his entry for more information on that!
Otherwise, I've mostly been fixing minor bugs and begun looking at how we can polish our units further to make them feel even more awesome!
[h3]Francis (Game Designer)[/h3]
This past month, Elliott and I have been hard at work creating a prototype able to crunch the numbers on the effects of different victory point bonus systems. The current implemented system has (some) positive impact on matches, but it’s exploitable and this is something we really needed to address. Something we’ve finally found the time for. We have been analyzing the full extent of the system's current effects and comparing it to a "no bonus" system and different new proposals. A new design for the system has been picked and will now be implemented into the game!
Furthermore, I have been looking into everything to do with playing Iron Harvest with a controller, finding the current issues, and researching & designing solutions
[h3]Philipp (Lead Programmer)[/h3]
Most of my time was spent busy managing our awesome team of engineers. I try to come up with a good plan for whom should do what and when. We always have plenty of issues, ideas, improvements, and obligations to juggle with and it is not always easy to decide on what would be the best route to further improve the game. But, when I sometimes take a step back, and try to look at Iron Harvest from a greater distance, I can clearly see how much it improves with every week of effort we put into it. I hope you can feel that too when you have the chance to look at the game (again).
[h3]Thomas J. (Technical Director)[/h3]
Following your Beta feedback, I’ve been working on improving the responsiveness of infantry units. To allow players to feel like they are really in command of the war effort, their units should be able to abort their current action and work towards their new goals as soon as possible. This is especially important for units that are designed to be slower, like the MG infantry, which is powerful once setup but takes several seconds to deploy and redeploy.
[h3]Arne (Programmer)[/h3]
The past month was quite different at KING Art. Firstly, we had to make sure that the workflows we used to have at the office still worked with all my colleges and myself working from home. Especially, getting out daily (or sometimes hourly) builds to the team was quite a challenge. On the other hand, I was working on getting the Iron Harvest client ready to meet all the requirements of the console platforms, also quite challenging!
Lastly, I am right now working on making sure that the Iron Harvest online services function without a glitch, so you can play your multiplayer matches, get XP and level-ups. We have quite some cool features planed that will arrive soon and I am making sure that all these things don't crash our servers when it is used by thousands of players.
[h3]Lukas (Programmer)[/h3]
As well as the game being on PC-Steam and GOG, I've been working on consoles and different PC stores. We want the game to eventually be accessible on as many platforms as makes sense for our game. No exclusivity anywhere. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of fiddly details to work out for each individual platform. It’s frustrating work, but it’ll be worthwhile in the end.
[h3]Chris (Programmer)[/h3]
I've worked mostly on the A.I. and adjusting it to the needs of the level-designers. I improved the configurability and the performance especially for the campaign maps and made sure the level-designers can implement the A.I. within the structure of the specific Levels.
To improve iteration-speed, I tried to adjust our internal tools to give the level-designers the up most freedom to configure and customize the A.I., as well as debug-Tools to better understand the decisions it is taking and which tasks are tackled at certain points in time. Otherwise, I’ve worked on general bug fixes and improvements regarding scripting, tools, and overall game play mechanics.
[h3]Patrick (Programmer)[/h3]
I've spent the last month mostly fixing bugs and supporting our level-designers. As a part of that I've improved the sequence-system that we use to stage and script the single-player missions. It now causes fewer delays, and is way better suited for skipping cutscenes, which is why we will now enable the skipping of cutscenes for players in a future update to Beta.
[h3]Janek (Programmer)[/h3]
I’ve been working on a plethora of different things: For instance, on the possibility to play the campaign co-operatively, on the localization of the game's texts into different languages, implementing a way for players to choose and configure their favorite hero and some call-in reserves in multiplayer matches. All exciting stuff to come.
[h3]Christoph (Graphic programmer)[/h3]
I‘ve made the environment more interactive: Vegetation now has a dynamic wind system with changing directions. Trees and grass react to explosion shock waves. Grass can be burned or trampled down. The terrain becomes beaten by craters, burned earth and oil spills. Units also leave trails in the snow.
I also made performance improvements to make the game run faster. For example, I altered the rendering pipeline completely for destructible buildings. Shadow lengths are pre-processed, and dynamic occlusion culling discards all hidden parts from rendering, such as interiors of buildings and fronts that are turned away from sight.
[h3]Thomas B. (Programmer)[/h3]
I implemented a music system that can crossfade between two similar music tracks with different intensities. This can for example be used by our scripters to make the music more intense when a battle is starting without interrupting the music. I also fixed some bugs regarding shouts, savegames and other things.
[h3]Alexander (Programmer)[/h3]
I have been working on implementing and improving (fixing bugs) several different abilities for heroes and mechs. Working closely with the designers and animators to make the abilities function like they imagined.
[h3]Anh Tuan (Programming Intern)[/h3]
I am an intern starting to get to grips with this cool project. Currently, I am working on implementing a redesign for a better player experience and fixing some bugs.
[h3]Stefan (Art Director)[/h3]
Over the past weeks I’ve been busy adding, polishing, and finalizing vegetation tools and assets, so our level artists have everything they need to finish the campaign maps. I’ve also worked on more visual polish and fidelity like systems for rain, snow, and cloud shadows to breathe even more life into the world of 1920+.
No better setting than an abandoned WWI factory complete with an air-raid shelter and Pretzels!
