Hey Everyone! We want to give you an update about all the stuff that’s coming up and what is getting done on the game!
First, we’ve been invited to Play NYC and will have our second public beta on August 10th =D (We’re pretty excited)
We are also releasing our combat devlog today below or on our website (562Interactive.com)
Another update I wanted to run through is that we hit 1500 wishlists!! We’ve been waiting to update everyone until we knew what new goals were going to add. So feel free to check out all the new wishlist goals on Discord (Discord.gg/BSB)!
On the topic of wishlist goals I’m happy to announce that our very own Ray will be streaming the community designed fish that we unlocked really early on! Come tell us what you want in your very own artisanal Discord-crafted fish this Thursday @ 5:30PM EST
Our next two weeks are dedicated to wrapping up some polish we want to put on the stats and combat systems as well as creating our first mine levels! All of that will be playable for the PlayNYC build. Clearing the 1500 wishlist target so early was clearly something we hadn’t anticipated so we wanted to do something really spectacular as a giveaway reward. It should be finished for PlayNYC so we’ll do that giveaway during that event!
The theme of this 2-week development cycle was combat!! We couldn’t help ourselves so we wanted combat to be one of the very first things we tackled on Blacksmith Bay =P. We all sat down and talked about what type of combat we wanted to accomplish and all quickly came upon the same idea.
Basically, the rolling, blocking, stagger, and strafe systems of Dark Souls mixed with rewarding combat experience of Breath of the Wild. The time stopping in BOTW allows you to take a quick second and really feel rewarded for landing a hit. It's something we hadn't seen in all that many games and when we started playing with it in Blacksmith Bay, we knew it was here to stay.
Yes, indeed we dooooo! Another huge element was making sure that the animations were different for every weapon class in the game! That means they attack differently and even will roll differently. This all will have huge gameplay implications for you! Heavy hammer wielders may not be able to nimbly roll out of harm but can easily stagger even some of the more menacing monsters. But not only that, but parameterized animations =O. Want to be a daring rouge with weapons that can beat a lightning bolt? Well, I mean, you can’t make it that fast, but you can make it pretty darn quick. Grab some lighter materials from Cole and think about using a piercing weapon like a dagger or spear.
This was a big step for us to pave the way for the alchemy/cooking system later but it was still important for combat. Basically, monsters and items can apply buffs/debuffs to you that can make your life easier or harder. Spiders can throw webs at you that apply a slowing debuff. But if you plan ahead and go fishing you can get the upper hand by eating some speed boosting fish. Don’t ask me why the fish makes you go faster, we’ll figure that bit out later. Like everything, we’re still pretty early on this system so there is loads of temporary art on it. Our goal is to have it a bit more wrapped up by the time you all get to play it for PlayNYC.
Prepare yourself to square up against some challenging foes! It’s pretty important that all the monsters you run into are pretty different. So, for us that meant building bespoke behavior trees for each one! My personal favorite is the spider who will try to scurry away from you and lob more webs unless it feels like you are too close.