Update 2B: Combat Rewrite
WIP of new combat
Combat has been in development for 6+ months. 90% of our resources are focused on it: Mark, Josh, Michel, Tyler, Zach, Jonathan, Jessi, Nolan, and Rubi.
We’re nearing the end of Combat. The pieces are coming together. It’s all working. It’s been real tough to pull this off but it looks like the results will be worth it. Here’s hoping we don’t screw it up with bad tuning! Meaning, we want to ship as soon as we can, but if the tuning is off “it’s bad forever”, so we don’t want to do that.
The major Combat Work:
- Define combat data in some sort of easy to use way (JSON) ✅
- Make and cast spells ✅
- UI - with tooltips and combat log updates based on the data ✅
- Status buffs ✅
- Turn system for player and enemies ✅
- Enemy actions and abilities - Working on it
I’m pretty confident we will announce a release date later this week!
Dynamic Quests
This past week my schedule was totally consumed by employee reviews. The last one is today. This week, I return to the Dynamic Quest prototype.
Don’t know what I’m talking about?
It’s essentially using the simulator and NPC goals to generate interesting quests. The goal for Archmage was to have the game be a GM with the ability to create infinite quests.
Nolan and I are working on it. The first part of Dynamic Quest generation is coming as part of Update #3 Exploration.
Priority Tasks
It’s important to do both BIG things and smaller things simultaneously. A challenge in project management. Phil and Daniel2 are working on these improvements for this Thursday’s patch:
- NPC: Dialogue: When a new Topic (Person, Location, Quest Object) appears in text, highlight it. This is really hard, which is why we didn’t do it yet. We’re close to being able to do it.
- Tied to the above, make these new Subject topic options automatically appear without requiring you to click “Tell me more about…”
- NPC: Dialogue: we’re fixing the ordering of the options to make more sense. It will display in this order now:
- Quest related
- Service related
- Good (compliments, flatter, etc)
- Neutral (How are you?)
- Mean (Insult, Kick in the Nuts)
- General Questions: Tell me more…
- Leave
- Flatter now shows a tooltip for difficulty
And Now For Something Completely Different…
These posts are intended as an inside glimpse into the studio. So some might find this interesting and/or entertaining…
Couple weeks back I had some time off. I used to play WoW from 2005-2010. Recent work on the Dynamic Quests got me thinking about my favorite quests in Westfall at Sentinel Hill (Alliance). I decided to fire up WoW Classic and play it again… you know… for research.
Once the spiraling camera of the intro sequence started all the sweet warm memories came flooding in. It was every bit as good as I remembered! A video game is like a time machine, it brought me back to remembering simpler times, before kids, before moving to rural northern Ontario… I was in heaven, playing a game I sudden realized, I still love.
I leveled and got to Sentinel Hill (15) and kept copious screenshots and notes for Nolan and I.
Mission accomplished.
But… maybe just one more level….
I shared my experience with the team just as an FYI. Some of our team members were only 5 years old when WoW came out. I wouldn’t want to inflect 2004 3D graphics on any of them.
Yet, one by one, people started signing up to WoW Classic and playing with me… First Tyler, then Mark, then James, then Zach. Then Zach’s wife, and now James’ wife is considering jumping in. Phil is on the fence. I predict he’ll cave soon after Combat ships!
That’s 6 of us now all playing a 20 year old game in off hours… we just ran Deadmines last night (first Alliance Dungeon Instance) and it was awesome.
We finishing up the employee reviews today and the fact that we enjoy working together all day, then exploring Azeroth in the evening together is a sign the team morale is real healthy. And a healthy sustainable team is what we need to finish Archmage Rises right.
Thank you for the privilege of making this game for you!