Roadmap update!
Hello, Wielders! Since the development team is now back from vacation and hard at work we figured it was time to provide you with a roadmap update. But, before we get into the roadmap we want to send out a huge thanks to all players who have bought or wishlisted the game so far! We had no way to anticipate such a huge interest in the game already in Early Access and we are now in a position where we can support the ongoing development for a long time!
The full crew recently sat down to plan the development up until 1.0. We had a long good look at all the user suggestions over at our Feature Upvote page and discussed both the top suggestions as well as interesting ideas with fewer votes. The team also reviewed the first version of the roadmap and considered if it still would hold up. After a long and constructive meeting, some follow-up planning, and discussions, we are now happy to release an updated roadmap!
The roadmap is also available in text format on www.songsofconquest.com/roadmap. You can also click the image above for a larger version.
Major changes?
The only real major change is that the next campaign has been pushed to early next year. We are still looking for a new Lead Artist and figured it would be hard for us to deliver within our previously estimated timeline. We have set the bar high when it comes to cutscenes and it simply takes a while to produce this level of content to spice up the campaigns!
Other changes
Smaller changes to note are for the scope of the rest of 2022. Spells will be updated, and we are working on more unit traits and abilities. However, a richer siege battle experience has been moved to 2023. Also, what we previously called Lobby facelift and updates have been moved into the UI & UX improvements section. More skirmish maps will come as they are designed, crafted, tested, and refined during 2022 and 2023.
New features!
Oh yes. As you might have noticed, we have listed a whole new game mode in the during 2022 column. Battlegrounds is a game mode where you can test your mettle against the AI, friends, or strangers online. It is a way to jump straight into combat without having to play adventure at all. So you’ll be able to try out late-game strategies, untried army builds, or just have a quick and fun match against a stranger online! We look forward to hearing your feedback on this new game mode, which will be released next week!
We have also bumped up the visibility of the ongoing AI development slightly, to make it clear that this is of the utmost importance to the team. It’s an aspect of the game that is not done in chunks or increments but rather something that is continuously worked on. Our AI lead, Marcus, dropped an AI development Steam post last week, which I suggest you check out if you haven’t already!
Upcoming roadmap changes
Going forward, we will label all the revisions of the Roadmap so you can easily check when it was last updated. As we have stated before, the roadmap can and will change. Sometimes with delays and sometimes with additions of new features or content.
Building this game is a dream come true and the road to 1.0 will be truly exciting! We have lots of cool things to come and we can’t wait to show it all to you! Do you have any feedback, game-related anecdotes, or just something that you want to share about your game experience? Please drop a comment below and stay tuned for next week's update with Battlegrounds, big AI improvements, and more!
/Team Lavapotion
The full crew recently sat down to plan the development up until 1.0. We had a long good look at all the user suggestions over at our Feature Upvote page and discussed both the top suggestions as well as interesting ideas with fewer votes. The team also reviewed the first version of the roadmap and considered if it still would hold up. After a long and constructive meeting, some follow-up planning, and discussions, we are now happy to release an updated roadmap!
The roadmap is also available in text format on www.songsofconquest.com/roadmap. You can also click the image above for a larger version.Major changes?
The only real major change is that the next campaign has been pushed to early next year. We are still looking for a new Lead Artist and figured it would be hard for us to deliver within our previously estimated timeline. We have set the bar high when it comes to cutscenes and it simply takes a while to produce this level of content to spice up the campaigns!
Other changes
Smaller changes to note are for the scope of the rest of 2022. Spells will be updated, and we are working on more unit traits and abilities. However, a richer siege battle experience has been moved to 2023. Also, what we previously called Lobby facelift and updates have been moved into the UI & UX improvements section. More skirmish maps will come as they are designed, crafted, tested, and refined during 2022 and 2023.
New features!
Oh yes. As you might have noticed, we have listed a whole new game mode in the during 2022 column. Battlegrounds is a game mode where you can test your mettle against the AI, friends, or strangers online. It is a way to jump straight into combat without having to play adventure at all. So you’ll be able to try out late-game strategies, untried army builds, or just have a quick and fun match against a stranger online! We look forward to hearing your feedback on this new game mode, which will be released next week!
We have also bumped up the visibility of the ongoing AI development slightly, to make it clear that this is of the utmost importance to the team. It’s an aspect of the game that is not done in chunks or increments but rather something that is continuously worked on. Our AI lead, Marcus, dropped an AI development Steam post last week, which I suggest you check out if you haven’t already!
Upcoming roadmap changes
Going forward, we will label all the revisions of the Roadmap so you can easily check when it was last updated. As we have stated before, the roadmap can and will change. Sometimes with delays and sometimes with additions of new features or content.
Building this game is a dream come true and the road to 1.0 will be truly exciting! We have lots of cool things to come and we can’t wait to show it all to you! Do you have any feedback, game-related anecdotes, or just something that you want to share about your game experience? Please drop a comment below and stay tuned for next week's update with Battlegrounds, big AI improvements, and more!
/Team Lavapotion
We've started to add the concept of wielder roles. So, now the AI will start looking at its wielders in the terms of roles, and from that it can take certain decision. I.e. who should get the strongest troops or what skills to pick when leveling up. This is in an early stage still, but we are quite certain it's going to affect more and more decisions. The inital roles we have created for the first iteration is Warrior and Explorer, more will come after the system has matured a bit.
We've made a fundamental change to how the AI traces items nearby for pickup/claiming. The previous solution started out well with what we had available at the time (without making the AI even slower, it did not need that ...) but it has scaled poorly and created lots of edge cases.
The AI is now better at determining if something is on the way to where it wants to go and interact with it on the way. This is being verified currently and the initial tests look great, it also has better scaling capabilities when it comes to improvement and performance so we expect this to improve even further.
Team Lavapotion, at our offices (and elsewhere), celebrating the start of the Early Access period!
A lot has happened in the last five years. This is how the adventure map used to look five years ago, and how it looks right now!
The combat screen has also undergone a lot of iterations in the last five years. Makes you wonder how it will look after a few more years in development!