Songs of Conquest News

Greetings Wielders!

2023 is going to be a big year for Songs of Conquest and for everyone here at Lavapotion. Not only is this the year when we will launch our full game (at the end of Q3) but there are many exciting features and things planned throughout the year that we are thrilled over!

Fully refreshed after a Swedish winter holiday we have dived into 2023 with vigor. Plans have been drafted and a new roadmap has been finalized for your enjoyment!

Try clicking it to get a bigger, cooler image.

Now, we want to emphasize that this is a living document. Things might be added to the plan as we move forward, but the things listed are the key elements towards the full release.

So what exactly are the key elements?

In the first quarter of 2023 we are introducing a much asked for feature with the new artifact market where Wielders can buy and sell their hard earned items. We are also improving the Beacons so Wielders will be able to use them as portals and travel across the adventure map.

The artifact market. Your one-stop-shop for everything artifacts. Graphics, implementation and name in the image above is still tbd. Tbd is an abbreviation for “to be decided” btw. (see what we did there?)

We will be adding more skirmish maps of varying sizes continuously throughout the year. Some of them have been under construction for a while now and we are eager for you to try them. A coming highlight includes the launching of our largest skirmish map yet!

We anticipate this map taking a long time to complete. So get your snacks ready and get comfy, you are in for a long ride.

The second quarter of 2023 is all about the Barony of Loth. We’ll be releasing our third campaign and you’ll get the chance to understand how and why the Barony became the necromancers they are today. We are also introducing brand new unit traits and abilities for many of the faction units as well as more hostile neutral units.

Here you can see some of our devs hard at work with the new Burrow ability! Did you watch Tremors back in the 90's?

During the third quarter our eyes turn towards the sandy dunes of Barya as we introduce our fourth and final campaign. Our mercenaries, scientists and contract-following merchants finally get their time in the sun (literally!). You’ll get to follow their Wielders as we tie together the story that started with the Arleon campaign.

We will also be adding many new artifacts and introducing support for creating fantastic campaigns of your own through mods. Of course we will be adding achievements so that you can really brag about all that you have accomplished!

The icons above may, or may not, be related to achievements. If you squint hard enough you’ll see all of them perfectly crisp and sharp.

And what about AI improvements? For sure! They are on-going and will be portioned out with our monthly updates. Enhanced strategic reasoning, battle tactics and difficulty parameters are just some of the improvements planned before release.

Now thats a very friendly looking bunch! And look at those shirts!

We are overwhelmed over the love and support that we are getting and we hope you are as excited for the year ahead as we are! If you have any questions we recommend our active and fantastic Discord Community where you can ask questions, share tactics and hype. But do feel free to drop a comment here on Steam. We read it all and try to reply as often as we can!

/The lavapotion Team


Twitter Discord Youtube Instagram Facebook

Hello Wielders!

Today we are releasing an update containing a little bit of everything. We are about half way through adding lots of new unit abilities, and you can expect them to come early next year. So, a lot of the work done during the last few weeks is not really visible in this update, but one thing definitely is: the new map editor! To celebrate this release we’ve asked a few questions to our UI designer and Art Director, Christian. If you have any questions for him, don’t be shy to ask in the comments!

If you are looking for the Release notes only, simply scroll to the bottom.



Tell us a little bit about yourself please!
– My name is Christian Knutsson – UI and visual design is primarily my thing on this project. If you want to know more about me there’s actually an old dev spotlight of me when I was a freelancer back in 2020: https://www.lavapotion.com/blog/2020/6/25/developer-spotlight-christian-knutsson (the text still holds up, but the artwork and assets have come a long way)

Why did you overhaul the visuals of the map editor?
– The visual update was more of a result of that we wanted to make it visually a part of the Songs of Conquest game and experience. The Map editor is first and foremost a tool, but we also want the map creator to feel that they are in the Songs of Conquest world while creating. The biggest and most important part for me was to make a UX (user experience) overhaul, to make it a better editor from an interface perspective, how do we layout the tools, how do we categories the panels and make all the properties clearer to understand. The Map editor is something we use internally to create our own maps and entire campaigns so it has been great to make it something that we are also proud to release externally and have everyone be able to create maps for the game.

What are the main differences in this released version, vs. the old one?
– I think the first thing you will notice is of course the new UI, with the Songs of Conquest colors, typography, icons and other graphical UI-elements. But the new layout of tools and properties is what makes the biggest difference. We have tried to follow standards and best practices of where to place elements to lower the cognitive load for a new user. Which basically means that things like the file menu, the tools menu, the draw tools, properties panel and the status bar are all placed similar to what you would find in Google Slides, Adobe Photoshop or similar creative software. Then we have used our visual style to create a clearer visual hierarchy that should guide the map creator in making beautiful and fun maps.

Is there any design element you are extra proud of?
– I love the color palette and the typography of Songs of Conquest so it was really fun to be able to create a new interface based on those elements. I needed to expand the dark-red/blue/purple color palette (titled “Plum”-color by Robin) but otherwise I created very few new elements for the map editor. So I’m extra proud that we could build the updated UI using the game assets and style we already had established. However, one feature I really like in the new Map editor is something that Patrik added when he rewrote the menu system. I was working on the UX and UI, while Patrik was rewriting map editor code, fixing bugs and doing updates all over the place he added the Focus view mode. This will remove as much of the UI as possible and focus the screen area to the map. And if you turn off all the map gizmos you will almost get a clean fullscreen view of the map you are creating. I also need to mention another thing that is not a design element, and that is the the random map generation. It can be hard to start with a blank canvas and when you create a new map you can choose to use random map generation as a base – this is extremely fun to play with and makes getting started so much easier.

Can we expect more updates for the map editor?
– This release is what we call a “Map editor UX/UI update”, we have been focusing on taking the old map editor and making it more beautiful and easier to use. We have fixed bugs, rewritten a few underlying systems and mostly rearranged and redesigned the UI. Even though it has been internally tested during our development I’m looking forward to having more people use it and help us improve it further. And of course we have a list of features we would like to add and there’s always things we would like to polish. So yes, 2023 will see more updates for the map editor.

That’s all for this update folks! Lot’s more to come during next year, including an updated roadmap (we know the current one is slightly off mark by now, but we’ll get to that soon enough!). Have a great Holiday and see you soon!

/Team Lavapotion

• Discord
• Twitter
• Youtube
• Facebook
• Instagram

Changelog v0.80

Additions

• Battlegrounds can now be played hotseat
  
• Added Buildings and Research to Codex
  
• Added ability for Sappers and Artificers to select which adjacent hex they want to place their palisades/mines on
  

Notable bugfixes

• Fixed issues with animations and positioning on troops hit by Faey Fire ability
  
• Fixed threat level calculations often vastly overestimating a Wielder’s spell casting ability
  
• Fixed confirm popup position when disbanding troops with large HUD
  
• Fixed issue that caused modded random map blueprints to throw an exception
  
• Fixed issue causing exception on some dialogue triggers
  
• Fixed issue when multiple players in a simultaneous turns game tried to initiate battle at the same time
  

Gameplay changes

• Dead wielders now drop a chest containing all their lost equipment instead of each piece of equipment separately
  

Map editor

• Map editor has seen a major update in UX and UI
  
• Map editor will be localized to all available languages, however that work is still in progress
  

UI

• Added (dead) suffix to dead player names in team queue HUD
  
• Show spell name and icon in battle when opponents cast spell
  
• Hide leave lobby button while game hosting is in progress
  
• Show troop income in town tooltip even if current amount in pool is 0
  
• Show “out of movement” notification if trying to pillage without any moves left
  
• Added new centered notification type used for major notifications, such as when player enter/exit battle in simturns
  
• Updated world color when an opponent is in battle during simturns
  
• Random events can now be closed with ESC
  
• Added info about rounds left for a construction in town tooltips
  
• Enabled double click on skill buttons in level up menu
  
• Validate if spells have valid targets and update button state and tooltip
  
• Allow loading saves from within battles
  
• Move occupy details into a tooltip instead of the mini menu
  
• Added cost to troop tooltips in build menu
  
• Codex main navigation bar has been changed from text to icons to accommodate more options
  
• Update minimap (and the ping) to be more responsive when enemy wielders are walking
  
• Fixed graphical glitch causing the furthest battle water to look weird
  

Multiplayer

• Once again allow a single computer to join multiple teams in online games
  
• Fixed online game being softlocked if a player disconnects while fighting an AI team on the AI’s turn
  
• Battle
  
• Fixed graphical glitch causing the furthest battle water to look weird
  

AI Adventure

• Fix underlying check for troop inventory that made the AI think it had room for troops when it did not
  
• Generic fix for AI to avoid broken portals
  

AI Battle

• Fixed AI troops too often choosing to use the Aim ability over shooting
  
• Fixed AI troops not attacking and clearing blocking map entities
  
• Made Hellroar cannons more likely to attack rather than wait for better opportunities
  

Random Map Generator

• Fixed spawn issue for regions resulting in players being isolated from each other
  
• Win conditions can now be specified in layouts using eg. “win_conditions” : [“Beacons”]
  
• Win and lose texts can now be specified in layouts using “win_text” and “lose_text”
  
• Optimizations
  

Known Issues

• Sim-turns is at version 0.1
  
• Co-Op (Teams) is at version 0.1
  
• All traits and abilities for troops are not yet implemented
  

This update fixes the bug reporting tool, as well as an issue with AI troops stopping in battle when triggering mines/entering gas clouds/etc and potentially softlocking the game.

This update fixes an issue with The Lion's Den map which caused AI teams to get stuck and softlock the game.

(Note: Only applies to new games started on The Lion's Den map)