Dear community:
We shipped version 186 last week, on Friday, but it was already too late to post the release notes here. And over the weekend we spotted a few bugs in the new features, thus instead of posting the notes for version 186, we've spent the whole of Monday working on the hotfix – and deployed it late last night (again missing the timeframe to post the update here!).
Such is the reality of the dev style that we practice since December: having committed to weekly builds, we only have 5 days in total for each of the updates.
- One of these days is spent on communication – synchronising with others what each of us should personally focus on.
- Another day is spent reviewing concepts and iterating designs, which doesn't produce shippable results but is crucial in helping us think all the new features and content through before placing it into the game.
- The third day is consumed by the releasing itself: assembling candidate versions, testing, then going back to do more changes and assemble another candidate version.
This leaves "just" 2 days of more or less quiet time when we can hammer away on things. And the truth is that we all like shipping stuff to let the players play with updated mechanics, so every second week we push the limits of when we should stop adding and begin testing – such as what happened with versions 186 and 184. Anyways, here's what we managed to ship with the most recent update:
CONCEPT
This week we improved the flow of encounters, added new encounter visuals and introduced new user interface solutions that make the game better looking as well as easier to understand. We also updated design of injuries and a number of events, and deployed one new feature: environmental conditions, which are a more refined tool that replaces the mechanic of biome effects. Finally, we updated the music track that's playing in the main menu, which scratches the itch that we had for a while by now.
THE MAIN MUSIC THEME IS UPDATED
As some of you may know, music and sound effects of Spire of Sorcery are created by A.Fruit, a musician with whom we collaborate since 2015. This week, Anna updated the main music theme of the game that plays in the main menu. We hope that you enjoy this new, deeper version that now rings truer to what Spire of Sorcery delivers in its campaigns.
TEMPORARY AND PERMANENT CHARACTER EFFECTS
Earlier, we classified all character effects according to thematic groups: diseases, injuries and lasting effects. As the mechanics evolved, we realised that this is not the most optimal classification, and decided to now group all effects by their temporal nature. You will see new tabs in Character Profile that reflect this.
The same change is also reflected with the icons underneath character portraits in encounters and in the travel mode. From left to right under each portrait, the icons correspond to temporary effects, permanent effects and equipment.
UPDATED RECIPE BOOK AND ALCHEMIC CAULDRON
This is not the end of the updates for Recipe book and Alchemic cauldron, but we're getting there. What is deployed with this week's build: a more coherent way of concocting (you can only concoct based on recipes), and filtering based on selected substance (if you know the recipe, it will become selected) and on selected resources (the recipe book will then only display the relevant recipes).
UPDATED SPELLCASTING USER INTERFACE
Spellcasting part of the UI now has a new button for casting spells, that changes as the spell becomes available. We also improved animation and colouring of the "astral hands".
UPDATED SPELLBOOK
Finally, finally! We upgraded the Spellbook that's used during encounters. We hope that you like the new look.
Coming with one of the next updates: the ability to filter spells by element used, that's what the extra space on the right margin of the book is reserved for.
ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS ARE NOW CLEARLY ATTRIBUTED
When environmental effect kicks in, we now properly display it, and then attribute its actions.
BIOME EFFECTS ARE OUT, ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS ARE IN
The biggest change of this version is the removal of biome effects and the introduction of environmental conditions.
Earlier, biome effects were structured like this –
Forest
- using Fire tokens here a risk of triggering "Burning ground" environment effect
- when "Missed!" happens in this biome, there is a chance to kick in "Falling debris" effect
We did not like the randomness of this mechanic, as sometimes 6 Fire would result in nothing, and sometimes even the first Fire would initiate the "Burning ground" effect. We also didn't like the fact that you have to look up each biome's tooltip individually, to understand what is happening where.
Now such conditions are separated their own category, and can be related not only to biomes, but also to objects and specific events:
Forest
- EC Ignition (4 Fire) – once 4 Fire tokens are issued in the encounter, "Burning ground" begins
- EC Debris (9 Damage) – once 9 Damage tokens are issued in the encounter, "Falling debris" begins
- EC Brittle environment – once "Missed" mechanic happens, "Falling debris" begins and lasts for 2 rounds
We will keep balancing and fine-tuning these environmental conditions with updates to versions 187-190, and what you'll find in version 186 is just the start of the journey. But we feel that this change is important as it gives both more control to players, and more variety to events – as well as making the user interface more transparent.
WHAT'S NEXT?
In the time that remains of this week, we'll do our best to further improve the encounter flow and the alchemic cauldron screen. Meanwhile, one of us is already working hard on introducing mood and mood traits into the game with version 187.
Have a great rest of the week, people!