Hello all and welcome to the very first Rank: Warmaster Steam Newsletter! We plan to use this space to bring updates on our progress every two weeks. Since this is the first newsletter it may run a little longer than the others since we have a little more to cover. We're very excited to start sharing updates through Steam so without further ado, let's jump into it.
From the coders
We've recently started using Articy: Draft 3 for our narrative scripting purposes. The intent is that this software will allow us to create and implement scenarios written by our content writer, Jorden, with a minimum of fuss. Naturally, just using the program doesn't create the scenarios in our game so the majority of Arthur's time in the past few weeks has been spent designing and implementing an import for Articy, which is just about done. This has also necessitated the creation of a new campaign engine for the game.
Previously scenarios (such as the tutorials) were created by first writing them up on our project wiki and then manually creating them in the game's scripting engine. The scripting engine is a very powerful and flexible tool, but inherently slow. Doing things this way was a ton of work at a glacial pace with a high rate of error. When the team got fed up with that they looked into new solutions. Articy and the campaign engine are specialized tools designed specifically around the narrative aspects of the game, or more specifically, the aspects of the game that aren't the direct results of player actions. In addition to being easier to work with directly, the campaign engine also runs much faster than the scripting engine allowing us to use the scripting engine in specific places where it is necessary rather than for the whole scenario.
At the same time, Matt has been focusing on adding some of the final, critical game mechanics needed to complete the core game loop. Namely the salvage, repair, and cargo systems are near-fully implemented into the game. It has always been our goal for salvage to be a critical aspect of Rank: Warmaster, both in the sense of reclaiming the resources lost when a ship goes down but also in the sense of stealing enemy wreckage to take their resources and gain insights into their technology. With salvage we can add a whole new layer into the game in which every conflict generates new resources to fight over, in the form of derelict ships. Regardless of how well the fight goes the matter is never fully resolved until the field is picked clean of all the leftovers and players should think twice before committing too many resources to a fight with poor odds of success. Since we always wanted salvaged resources to come back in the form of Component Materials (or CMs) this also made it necessary to actually bring CMs into the game for the first time as well as designing a proper cargo system for ships to carry these resources.
From our content writer
On the narrative side of development Jorden is working hard on ensuring that the tutorials and early scenarios of the game are entertaining. With Articy as a tool it should be much faster and easier to implement everything from the original outlines and more news is expected to come very soon. Jorden has also been working to improve the public face of Rank: Warmaster with adjustments to the Discord server and work on the script for our final launch trailer.
That's all we have for this first newsletter. Stay tuned for more updates on these aspects as well as progress from the rest of the team!