Vagrus - The Riven Realms News

[h3]Hello everyone,[/h3]

As some of you may remember, roughly one and a half years ago we started the initiative known as #TurnBasedThursday. At the time, the goal was to bring together other game developers and allow them to show off their games on inclusive Twitter threads. At first, the threads were small, the engagement scarce, but these soon grew along with the developers involved with them. The developers integral to the efforts included the likes of Terra Randoma, Trese Brothers Games, Hugging Dragons (responsible for Wicked Lands), and, at the time Strateture.

After much hard work and collaboration, with a number of new devs joining the effort, we worked hard alongside these other creative indie devs, growing #TurnBasedThursday to such an extent that we felt it warranted its own event and sale on Steam. Thus, through petitioning Valve, Turn-based Fest was born. Now, we are thrilled to announce that the festival we and others worked hard to create is finally here – starting on the 8th of December and continuing through until the 12th. Naturally, it involves large discounts on a plethora of great titles, including Vagrus. You can find all the details on the Steam sale page or on the Turn-based Fest website.

More than 300 titles participate, including RPGs, sims, grand strategy, deck builders, roguelikes, city builders, and much, much more.

With all that said and done, it’s come time for us to take a look at those awesome deals ourselves, so, on that note – stay vigilant, stay safe, and conquer the wasteland!

The Lost Pilgrims Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=website&utm_content=footer
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Wanna help to make the game's launch successful so we can keep expanding and improving it? Please share our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). Appreciate it!

Fig | Website | Youtube | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Patreon | Discord

[h3]Hello everyone,[/h3]

Recently, we have shared posts pertaining to various areas of development, such as multi-platform controller support (featuring an adaptive button UI and drag & drop system), mobile and tablet porting & screen optimization of Vagrus for all mobile devices and the recently released Steam Deck, and finally, Localization in the shape of community translations. This post is going to be a bit different.



Steam has just launched its Autumn Sale as well, filled with huge discounts! This is an excellent opportunity to take advantage of an amazing deal and stock up on hundreds of hours of the splendid SRPG experience that Vagrus has to offer for the coming rainy, cold, and dark days.



In other related news, the Steam Awards nominations are now open! Allow us to ask for a little assistance here. If you feel like nominating Vagrus for the Labor of Love Award, please do so here! We have been working on Vagrus for over a year since its initial release, which has been made possible by the unwavering support of our players. Moving forward we will keep pushing to make our beloved game better, to create more content, and bring it to more people. We owe you a debt of gratitude for keeping us going; your support and encouragement is indispensable.

Stay safe and conquer the wasteland,

The Lost Pilgrims Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=website&utm_content=footer
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Wanna help to make the game's launch successful so we can keep expanding and improving it? Please share our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). Appreciate it!

Fig | Website | Youtube | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Patreon | Discord

[h3]Hello all,[/h3]

This week we’re proud to reveal a little more about what our best and brightest pilgrims have been working on here at Lost Pilgrims Studio. The first major change is something we foreshadowed in a Steam post a while back – porting. We will also be covering the integration of controller support across platforms later in this post, so read on if you’d like to know more about that.



For now, back to porting. Included under that heading is the optimization of Vagrus for all mobile devices, tablets, and, of course, the recently released Steam Deck. Naturally, the main goal of these projects has been to bring the game to a larger audience; an audience that can play on the move, which certainly suits turn-based games such as our own. So, without further ado, let’s examine what we’ve been able to achieve so far, starting as so many players do with Agos – the enigmatic vagabond who introduces players to the Pilgrims of the Wasteland scenario.

Another key aspect it has allowed us to address is accessibility. Players have, at times, expressed concerns about the font size in Vagrus, and with us focusing on porting, we have also been able to implement a zoom feature for the PC client. We are still in the process of fine-tuning and fully integrating the feature, but we are confident that in doing so we will improve user experiences across the board.

As you can see above, we’ve optimized the formatting of the text to be legible on handheld devices. But what about in-game? Is it possible to read all the wonderful prose that players have come to expect from the Riven Realms? Absolutely! Just double-tap to zoom in, as shown below.



For the sake of following up, we’ve also included another screenshot of a closer view – after the player has used the double-tap feature, of course! Check it out below.



Luckily, that’s not all. Because we want to make sure that players’ user experience does not suffer even slightly while using a small screen, players will also be able to scroll or swipe to navigate the UI, as captured below with the journal.



And since we’ve set a precedent of following up, here’s the subsequent result of the player swiping left…



Multi-platform Controller Support

We are working on full controller support for standard controllers and gamepad layouts including PCs, mobile devices, and – at some point – we hope we can get things working on hand-held and desktop console ports as well.

It is important to note that all this is still very much work-in-progress, most of what you are about to see and read is subject to change, and the implementation is quite time-intensive, so please bear with us. That said, PC players are likely to be the first ones to enjoy controller support.

We have created a modern navigation system on UI and for all functions from scratch, specifically for controllers. In other words, it isn’t simply the existing cursor-based system repurposed for controllers.

Direct buttons will be assigned for specific functions to make things easier.



Selecting and switching between UI elements during gameplay will also be comfortable.



What about analog stick use? We’ve come up with a radial menu to best tackle that issue.



We are also working on an easy drag & drop system to be implemented at various points of gameplay.

We are simplifying Perk selection and trading functions in settlements, too.



Though they are deep in the pipeline currently, we hope that when released these changes will help improve player experiences across all platforms. In the coming months, we will be able to share more and more of what we’ve been working on and intend to release.

Vagrus is also currently taking part in Steam's Autumn Sale, so if you or a friend is looking to pick the game up for a discount, the time is now, pilgrims!

As always, stay safe – stay tuned – and conquer the wasteland!

The Lost Pilgrims Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=website&utm_content=footer
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Wanna help to make the game's launch successful so we can keep expanding and improving it? Please share our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). Appreciate it!

Fig | Website | Youtube | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Patreon | Discord

[h2]Hello everyone,[/h2]

Good news, everyone: Lost Pilgrims Studio will once again be participating in Adventure X’s Narrative Convention. For those not in the know, the event is held annually in London and its primary goal is to bring together devs and gamers passionate about interactive storytelling. As it stands, AdventureX is the UK’s only convention dedicated to narrative-driven gaming, which is why we attended in 2019, and are ecstatic about being a part of it again, if only online this time. Aside from the in-person event, there will also be a live stream that you can check out here, and if you’d like to follow updates from the organizers, you can do so via their Twitter account here.

Perhaps most importantly, this also means that we’ll be running a sale as part of the event, so if you have got a friend who is a little on the fence about purchasing any narrative games, now is the time!



For those interested in a little trip down memory lane, you can also find some pictures of our attendance in 2019, with the first featuring a wonderful snap of our creative director and world builder, Geri:



The second shot below shows our amazingly talented graphic artist – clearly deep in an explanation – Szonja:



That’s all for today. Be sure to check the convention out, and of course – stay safe, stay sane, and conquer the wasteland!

Take care and conquer the wasteland!

The Lost Pilgrims Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=website&utm_content=footer
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Wanna help to make the game's launch successful so we can keep expanding and improving it? Please share our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). Appreciate it!

Fig | Website | Youtube | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Patreon | Discord

[h2]Hello everyone,[/h2]

This one is going to be an update on localization. A while back, we cited the game’s complexity, size, and it being a niche game that resulted in a relatively low sales volume as factors that made any kind of localization unlikely. Despite that, we have been encouraging players to still wishlist the game and let us know what languages they would like to see it translated into in a dedicated localization thread and promised to reassess the situation after a while to see what is desired and viable and what is not. A year has passed since, and it is time for us to do just that, which led to a good and bad news kind of situation. The bad news is that sales figures and declining wishlists in non-English-speaking regions made the prospect of official translations not viable.

BUT the good news is that we have been – and still are – eager to reach people to show them the world of the Riven Realms. We would like to ensure that even those whose level of English proficiency represents a language barrier can have a chance at adequately understanding and enjoying the game. Thus, we have already started working on things that would help them. Sadly, the way we built the game and stored data were unconducive for effective localization. We had to restructure our Event Editor tool and change several things in Unity, etc. This was quite tiresome and the process has been ongoing for months now. However, we’ve been gladly dedicating working hours to pave the way to localize larger chunks of text. Smaller things in the UI, however, are very tedious work, so we cannot promise to make it work for every little detail. Admittedly, our focus lies in making the story and the most used elements translatable.



Since the base game and the DLCs combined contain about 1.3 million words’ worth of text, volunteer translators are unlikely to pop up. As a result, our approach was to subscribe to a machine translation tool called DeepL and generate localization files in various languages that will be made accessible and editable in order to facilitate fan translations through polishing said files. We are still not entirely sure as to the demand for such an endeavor or if the underlying technical facilities are indeed there. In case it could work and it garners sufficient interest, we are planning to allow fan translation groups to add their own translations and improved machine translations through Steam Workshop. Signups for such groups will be open for whoever wishes to undertake translations. This is all still subject to deliberation along with the exact details and the way of going about the entire process. A reason for this approach is that we are not planning to actually incorporate the fan-translated texts into the game proper, merely to facilitate translation for community translator groups who would be actually working on them and under whose banner their respective addons will run.

As a result of all that outlined above, we still don’t know how much interest this project will generate and how enthusiastic our players will be, so we are not expecting quick developments in the matter. Naturally, the quality of machine translations is very far from the level of an official translation, making them rather unfit to create the kind of atmosphere and immersion we believe is needed to fully enjoy the game. Thus we cannot in good conscience recommend using them as the main language, of course. In short, these machine translations are more likely to be a sort of an aid for those who, from time to time, wish to look at raw translations in their native tongue. The player will first have to acknowledge a disclaimer stating that what is to follow is machine translated and not intended to be taken as a full-fledged official translation for the game. Once that is out of the way, the player will be able to set a primary and a secondary language through the UI. All events and codex entries will be displayed in the primary language and the secondary language texts will assist in understanding the primary language texts.



The machine translation tool DeepL has its limitations and so we go as far as the subscription options go. Thus, initially, only some supported languages will be covered. We aim to create this localization model in a way that will allow contributors to set up files that match the structure. The game itself will then be able to manage these files and make new languages selectable as primary and secondary languages in-game. Due to versioning, every non-translated text will automatically be displayed in English.

[h3]That said, we are looking for community translation coordinators for each language. [/h3]
Since we are not going to have adequate capacity or competence to review translations, we welcome volunteer groups to form and start working together, but we cannot take on the role of an arbitrator either. Eventually, if enough progress is made and the files become available through Steam Workshop, they can be submitted and maintained by said volunteers as well. Coordinators will receive beta branch access to the game to cooperate with us to set up this localization file system. During the selection of coordinators, prior participation in such projects and credentials will play important roles to make sure they are reliable and competent, as they will be responsible for the translations and reviews. In order to improve translations based on machine learning, compiling a dictionary of specific words and expressions for the machine would go a long way, so that the AI does not come up with its own strange translations. Teams working on such a dictionary will also be encouraged.

Last, but not least, we are overjoyed to have been able to afford long development hours to lay down the groundwork for the localization environment and for the whole thing to even be able to kick off. The whole venture, however, will be tons of effort and consist of countless iterations, so we kindly ask for your patience.

Take care and conquer the wasteland!

The Lost Pilgrims Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=website&utm_content=footer
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wanna help to make the game's launch successful so we can keep expanding and improving it? Please share our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). Appreciate it!

Fig | Website | Youtube | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Patreon | Discord