Greetings Knight-To-Be,
We would like to take a moment to thank all of our players since the launch of Early Access for your continued support, feedback, reviews and suggestions. It has been a humbling and rewarding experience for us at Chashu Entertainment. Whether a comment is found in the Steam Discussions, Steam Reviews, the Sands of Aura Discord, or even in video reviews, we are actively paying attention to them all. So while we may not be able to respond to everything, please know that we hear you and take your comments seriously.
After the release of our latest content patch, The Rotted Throne, we began moving towards the final stages of development. What this entails are the final chapters of our story where our Knight delves deeper into the mystery surrounding Talamhel and how it came to be a world of sand. As we hit the final stages of development, we will actively inform you of our progress and share with you some of the challenges we’ve encountered along the way.
Ishular, The Ancient Kingdom of Man
We would first like to introduce you to Ishular:
Youngest of the ancient kingdoms of men, the holy city of Ishular was once a bastion of faith in Talamhel. With an ever-present gaze upon the celestial spheres, every action, every consideration, was entrusted to the Goddess Leisis and her prophet Atnael, The Prime Radiance. But that which was luminous has diminished, and the grace, the absolution, which once flowed abundantly through city streets, has mutated into a desperate miasma that now threatens to smother those it once served.
And while we would love to share more lore with you, we’ll keep it close to our hearts for now. Instead, we’ll share some concepts as well as some work-in-progress for Ishular!
And of course, Ishular, would not be complete without its deadly denizens:
A lot goes into bringing these locals to life for our small team. And for the curious, here is some insight into our process.
We begin with a concept for our creatures, some adorable and some horrifying. Then our animator and modeler (yes, the same person) is first tasked with creating these beautiful, yet deadly, beings for the most worthy of challengers. Next up, they’ll be given some love from our VFX and SFX specialists to really get them ready for the dance. Followed up by our AI mastermind that’ll find the most devastating way to send you back to Leisis. And finally, they’ll be sprinkled into the world for our Knights to run from defeat.
This is but just a taste of what we have in store for Ishular and there is plenty more work to be done. We cannot wait for you to experience these challenges. Throughout the rest of development we’ll be sharing with you how far they have come along in our Discord, Twitter and Dev Blogs. In the meantime, please let us know what you think so far!
Camera, Camera, Camera
Sands of Aura’s camera is probably one of the more difficult problems for our team to solve. It is also one of the most discussed features by our players. One of our goals for Sand of Aura was to encapsulate a souls-like combat with a top-down camera, instead of the more familiar, over-the-shoulder camera you’d find in most souls-like games.
This design goal of ours presented us with quite a few challenges and limitations. One of the essence of souls-like combat is being able to read and understand your opponent’s actions based upon their animations and move sets; to be able to time your strikes, blocks and dodges in such a manner that you can eliminate your foes unscathed. In a more traditional over-the-shoulder camera, your view is much closer to the action which allows you to ‘read’ the actions more easily. This becomes a problem in a top-down camera where your view is much further from the enemy and your character. Thus, the question we asked was “How do we ensure the player’s and enemies’ actions are readable with this view”.
To tackle this we first attempted to simply adjust the zoom factor and pitch values of the camera. Initially it looked like it would be the solution to our problem. However we quickly realized that trying to find that perfect spot for the camera is not as simple as we had hoped. The problems that arose throughout the adjustments had a trickling effect on the environment, enemy visuals, and combat. If the pitch was too high or too low and if the zoom was too far or too close it would affect the overall gameplay design of different levels. Players could easily miss certain areas, characters or items due to these values. Additionally it would have a large impact on combat visuals. After extensive testing, we had believed we came up with the perfect solution. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Everyone has a preferred zoom and pitch value, and we have had long discussions on what is best for our game.
The immediate reaction would be, “Why don’t we allow the players to control the zoom and pitch?” At that point in time during our development when this question was asked, this presented its own set of challenges. Many of our decisions in level designs and combat animations revolved around a fixed zoom and pitch factor on the camera. Then we also had way too many actions tied into the controllers that presented its own user experience issues as well. So while it would have appeared to be a simple enough solution, at the time it was a bit more complicated than we had imagined.
Throughout the development of Early Access, we wanted to eventually allow the players to have more control of what they can see, while still achieving our design goal of a unique top-down souls-like combat experience. In order to get there we began making adjustments to existing and new animations to improve readability, improved our visual effects, adapted and improved our level design philosophy, and focused heavily on the core mechanics of combat to simplify controls. As we continued development we implemented other changes along the way that would lead us to a much more flexible camera view.
After a year of working towards this goal we are extremely excited to announce that we have added more functionality to our camera. Players can now adjust the pitch and zoom of the camera within our design philosophy and goals for Sands of Aura.
While it is not in its final state, we believe it will be a significant improvement in what players can experience as they explore and fight their way through Talamhel. Please let us know what you think after experiencing the camera changes in full.
Animation Canceling
Animation Canceling is probably the most misunderstood term found in the feedback from our players. We say misunderstood because oftentimes what we consider as Animation Canceling may not necessarily be what our players are expecting. We are essentially receiving conflicting thoughts and opinions that have caused some confusion within our team on how to effectively address this challenge.
On the technical level, Sands of Aura DOES have Animation Canceling for attacks. The animation of an attack can be broken up into three stages: The wind up, the swing, and the recovery. The wind up stage is the initial movement of the weapon up to a certain point of no return for a swing due to its momentum. The swing stage is where the weapon has crossed a certain point in momentum that can not be stopped, players have committed to the attack. The recovery stage is the end of the swing or animation and will send our players back into a ready stance for the next action. Players can cancel the ‘wind up’ animation stage of attacks by dodging and blocking. It is also possible to cancel the ‘recovery’ animation stage of attacks by dodging and blocking, as well as attacking to chain the attacks into a combo.
Now while technically the Animation Canceling mechanic is present, the feel of it might not actually hit where we would like it to. So to better understand this, one of the first questions we ask our players is “What weapon are you using?” when they ‘feel’ that we do not have Animation Canceling or it is lacking. Most of the time, the answer seems to be on the slower moving weapons, such as a two-handed slashing weapon or combat style.
Animation Canceling in Sands of Aura is not equal in timing for every combat style. Each combat style has their own unique set of animations and timing. For example, using the slower two-handed slashing weapon the player would be locked into their attacks, or be in the ‘swing’ stage for longer than the faster one-handed stabbing weapon. Conversely, you would have more time to cancel an animation with a two-handed slashing weapon during the ‘wind up’ stage than a one-handed stabbing weapon.
So first, it is important for us to know which combat style was used in a player’s feedback to better understand their critiques. Once we have that information, we are able to more effectively dissect the usage of the term ‘Animation Canceling’ for their particular feedback.
Combat feel is the core focus of Sands of Aura, and Animation Canceling is a large part of that, which is why it is important for us to better understand the feedback and make adjustments and improvements that would elevate the experience.
In this patch we have added more options to cancel animations during the appropriate stages of an animation. Players will now be able to cancel animations during the ‘recovery’ stage for special attacks and dodge attacks.
Additionally, players can cancel animations in the appropriate stages by healing and jumping as well.
By creating more opportunities to cancel animations, we hope to create a more free flowing combat experience that will still capture our combat design philosophy.
Combat
Our philosophy in combat is that it should be deliberate and punishing. Deliberate in the way that your choice in that split second of combat can deliver victory or defeat. Punishing in the way of choosing to swing your weapon in the midst of an enemy attack that could cause you a great deal of harm. Should you attack, should you combo the attack, do you heal, how about block, or what about dodging? These are choices that players should make with every action they take during combat and this is the goal of our designs. Therefore, we are constantly striving to achieve that and the feedback from the community has been the beacon towards that goal.
With the changes to the camera and improvements to Animation Canceling, we believe we have improved the combat experience in a meaningful way. Aside from those changes we have also increased the invulnerability frames (iframes) of dodging. We have also improved the turn speed of the player during attacks. This change would allow players to quickly turn and face their enemies during attacks, and prevent them from feeling locked in place.
There are also small changes that we continue to make to improve the overall experience, such as improving the jumping momentum to increase the distance covered.
And some quality of life updates to our user interface, such as a Equipped icon on the pieces the players have equipped in their inventory.
As well as updating icons such as the rune dust icon found when deconstructing runes.
We will continuously find ways to improve the player’s experience and your feedback is invaluable to us, so please let us know what you think! We would love to hear it. You can find more information about the changes in this patch in the notes below.
0.04.25 Minor Patch Notes
Gameplay
Player
- Added ability to adjust zoom and pitch of camera
- Adjusted momentum when jumping to make jump feel more natural and consistent when platforming
- Increased iframes during a dodge
- Added ability to cancel attack recovery with healing & jumping
- Added ability to cancel attack recovery for special attacks & dodge attacks
- Fixed issues with sprint to idle blending in certain circumstances
- Greatly increased player turn speed during attacks to more closely match player input
- Changed block action queuing to remain in queue as long as the block button is held down
Boat
- Set player camera to match boat camera when docking boat
NPCs
- Set NPC's to only take damage if the player is alive and not loading to prevent issues from occurring with the gamestate when NPCs die while the player is dead.
- Fixed bug causing NPCs to throw projectiles behind themselves in certain circumstances
Islands
Black Rot Pit
- Fixed issue where multiple copies of the Aeon Crest (Inactive) could be acquired, causing a soft-lock to quest progression.
Flare Forge
- Added the option to forge up to Tier 8 armor with Pleonexis at Flare Forge if siding with him instead of Cathexis.
Colossus of Radiance
- Fixed an issue where dying after opening the sarcophagus at the Colossus of Radiance would cause it to permanently close, preventing items from being retrieved.
Ruins of Hurwell
- Danthea can no longer be killed in Ruins of Hurwell.
Starspire
- Fixed issue where Lawrence and Galina could get stuck in an unintended state if fast traveling back to Starspire after completing the quest "Well Run Dry".
User Interface
General
- Updated sorting for upgrading items to push equipped items up.
- Fixed scrolling in the storage with gamepad and keyboard being unresponsive
- The storage window infographic keys update between keyboard and mouse and gamepad properly now
- Added an icon to show items that are equipped in upgrade windows
- Corrected the rune dust amount that players get when breaking down runes.
- Updated the texture of rune dust to use a new custom icon instead of the sacrumite placeholder
- Fixed the display showing the player the wrong amount of runes available in the deconstruct view
What’s Next?
We hope you enjoy the changes we have made in this patch and are excited for the content we are creating. What we have shared with you about Ishular is just a taste of what’s to come for the final stretch of Early Access and into the Full Release. We have been developing Sands of Aura for nearly 6 years now and we are so very close to the end. Throughout the final stretch of this journey we will provide you with more updates on our progress, so stay excited and stay tuned! Follow us on Twitter, wishlist if you haven’t, and join our Discord. And please let us know what you think!
As always, Thank you for playing!
-Chashu Entertainment