Hello mates! The Baron here, and delighted to finally give you some juicy information on the long awaited "Dungeons" mode. Since it has been a while since our last news, I made it an extra long one for you guys.
Some important news is that the roadmap has shifted again, but this time it's a positive thing because the plan for U10 is no more only the new home and smaller improvements, but bringing Dungeons to life!
That means we are finally able to show some progress on Dungeons, so here is the first little sneak peak of the initial dungeon entrance that will be added for U10! (as usual, everything is WIP of course!)
As you can see, Dungeons is not only about interiors, the team worked hard to make dungeons not feel claustrophobic / too dark, with "rooms" changing between interiors and exteriors. This was not an easy task, as it required a custom lighting solution, but we are really proud of the result!
The first dungeon will be called "Greenland", and it will be the first "Biome" that the player will see in-game (more on biomes later)!
But first, there was a lot of "will it, won't it" for this, and this was the cause of the big delay in getting you guys this news because as always we didn't want to overhype and then let you guys down if it wasn't gonna happen. However do note that this will not be the final version of Dungeons. It will be an early access version that will be missing rooms and areas compared to the final plans, and this version will only available from the current sandbox mode.
The player progression with the skill tree, shop, etc, will not be in U10, (more likely U11 or U12), and will probably be renamed to something else than dungeons to avoid confusion (something like "progression mode" maybe).
Our goal with this early Dungeon release is to share with you our progress, validate our lighting tech, and get the feedback of the dungeon flow and new AI to adjust our work before starting mass producing rooms and areas for further release. ːsteamdanceː
So without further ado, here is an FAQ about Dungeons!
What is Dungeons?
Thanks to the support of Early Access fans, KospY has been able to push Blade & Sorcery far beyond his initial vision for the game and add an ambitious new element that probably should have been a second game lol. ːeaglegagː This will be "Dungeons" mode - a semi-procedural Dungeon crawl mode that will come in the form of a free update, and will aim to give players some linear gameplay and sense of progression. In U10, Dungeon will remain in sandbox mode and simply be a new location on the home map. But the final goal is that the 1.0 version of the game will have two game modes: "Sandbox" and "Progression" (title not yet decided), and you will make a unique character for each modes.
What happens with Sandbox?
Sandbox will be much as the game is right now, with all maps and weapons unlocked, debug mode and cheat options available. There is no plans to change that, and sandbox is here to stay. U10 introduce Dungeons in sandbox mode, meaning you can do whatever you want in this new location.
By the time of final release, Sandbox mode will have all weapons and armour tiers will included, so the number of weapons will be approximately quadrupled from current U9 (most of these weapons are already done, but we want to keep some surprises for when the progression mode arrives). It is uncommitted how many maps will be included in Sandbox by the time 1.0 rolls around, so that will likely be dictated by the "how busy is it" factor.
Is there is any storyline to Dungeons?
Even if we are progressing on our universe building, there will be no story to Dungeons in the sense of a storyline, dialogue, NPCs, etc, but possibly there will be a very light lore flavored backdrop (think Darkest Dungeons rather than Skyrim, eg), but this is uncommitted right now. Mainly we ask that you please don't expect a campaign or something like this, as this is not our goal for B&S final release (1.0) and we don't want people to be disappointed.
Is Dungeons an infinite dungeon crawl?
No, Dungeons won't be open world nor will the dungeons themselves be an infinite crawl of never-ending rooms; each generated dungeon will have a definitive beginning and end. The Dungeon will be comprised of rooms and areas handcrafted by our team that act like "parts" that fit together, so the ultimate goal is you will have Dungeon maps that feel handmade, but don't have that blandness and arbitrariness that comes with full procedural generation, while still retaining the replayability.
But what this also means is that because all the prefabs are handmade, there will be a finite number of rooms made by Warpfrog. We will seek to make that number as big as possible of course, but if you sink hours upon hours into Dungeons then you will inevitably see everything until we can make more rooms. And before you all ask, yes, dungeon will be moddable, though the SDK may not be ready for release right away, so it may come a bit later. Nevertheless, we fully expect to see new dungeons type mods by modders on way or the other, because you can't stop the ingenuity of those guys. ːsteamhappyː
How exactly will Dungeons play and be different from current arenas?
In these dungeon maps, enemies will be pre-spawned (not waves) and will have patrols and field of view, which means playstyles like stealth may be possible, though I would like to make it clear so as not to oversell that this is not a full stealth game like Assassin's Creed or Thief, so any stealth mechanics will be surely rudimentary compared to dedicated stealth games, especially in U10.
Progression through the different generated sections will be random, so for example there may be three different ways to leave a room. So let's say the library room spawns in your playthrough and has three potential exits A, B and C, where A is a doorway, B is a crawlspace hole in the wall, and C is a hatch on the ceiling, but in the iteration you are playing the exit to continue the dungeon crawl is A. Next time perhaps it is B. The next time, you might not even get that room generated at all. So this is how the randomized generation element works.
There will be situations where physical progression though the map may require climbing, or even magic later (skill related - still working this out). Sometimes a little climbing can be a 'shortcut', though generally there will be a non difficult path for people who are less physically able for the climbing in VR. The balance for us will be encouraging player innovation and exploration without forcing frustrating mechanics on the player. We will also later add a "parkour" difficulty rating to each Dungeon map, to display the likeness of generated rooms requiring climbing.
What is the "progression" part?
Some players don't like the unstructured "make your own fun" of sandbox games prefer goals or objectives to drive a sense of progression, so that is what we hope to provide with the help of Dungeons.
As mentioned, Dungeons will stay in sandbox mode for now, but later the progression mode will add looting mechanics which will allow you purchase new weapons and armour from a shop linked to the home where you return after each run. The Home will be your hub, if you recall the most previous news.
You will also unlock skills, which is a major part of the progression element and something we haven't really discussed yet... and are not going to do now either lol. The reason is because it is still WIP, but news will come, so don't worry.
But while skill trees have not yet been discussed or revealed, I can assure you it wont be lame. Like other 'gamey' mechanics we sought to avoid, we are trying to avoid as much as possible skills that give you +5% damage. Then the next level up is +10% damage, etc. We are not a fan of these types of "progression", and a much more interesting skill tree to us is something like in Dark Messiah, where when you unlock something it is actually something new and exciting that will change or give options to your playstyle, as opposed to just a boring stat crunch.
And lastly, the mechanics for interacting with the skill tree should be rather different from most games; KospY himself is working on this and he is pretty much hyped about it, so this is a good sign for something more interesting that look as boring text-based skill tree. ːwftogrinː
So all this stuff will be released in U10?
NO! We can't stress that enough. The U10 release of Dungeons will be missing tons of features like progression (skills, purchasable equipment), rooms, polish, and the AI will probably be a derpy on the first pass as it will all be new and untested by a wide audience. Instead of it being the proper unique progression gamemode as planned, for now you will enter a Dungeon map by accessing via the usual Sandbox map, and all the dev options will be available etc. So we are essentially considering this like "Dungeons Sandbox" and this will be a full blown WIP beta.
The reason for doing this is a few things -- If we hold off and continue to work on Dungeons until it is 100% ready, you guys may be waiting a long, long time before you see any update. Also, it will be useful to get performance feedback on how Dungeons is running and see exactly what is broken before going too far, versus releasing a super-massive update and suddenly realizing tons of things are broken. We have been there before, lol. ːsteamdeadpanː So it will be easier to fix things in a piecemeal way and make sure things are stable as we go.
As such, early access enthusiasts who enjoy betas, seeing unfinished WIP stuff, and helping the game develop will enjoy this. But players who want the final product right now or hate seeing unfinished or broken things may not enjoy this! And in that case, I would encourage those players to avoid playing until full release if you can resist it.
You mentioned biomes, what is that?
For now and up to B&S 1.0, we are only planning one kind of dungeon biome "Greenland". But new dungeon "biomes" are definitely planned post 1.0. How it will be added is still not decided yet (free update, expansion pack, etc...). Speaking about that now would be surely too soon, but the idea is to keep expanding the game as long as players support us, and KospY really hopes that it will be the case because he still has a lot of ideas to expand the game, as he said there is still many, many game mechanics that we didn't explore in VR yet!
Will Dungeons be modder friendly?
Yes of course! While it might not have full support or documentation straight out the gate, it is always the plan to make Dungeons as easy and open as possible for modders to make their mods (like everything else). We love modders and mod communities bring tons of vibrancy, variety and life to a game. ːluvː
For U10, we also added some new moddable elements to the game, but we will talk about that at a later time! You may be pleasantly surprised. ːpraisesunː
When is U10 planned for release?
You know the drill - there is no confirmed release date! But if you twisted our arm for a ballpark estimate, based on current pace it would probably be around Q3-Q4 2021.
So that is it for now, folks! Hope you enjoyed this news and plenty more juicy stuff to come on new weapons, Dungeon AI, the skills system, and more. ːsteamsunnyː We'll also have more previews of Dungeons in the future of course, including video of the actual room-gens, patrolling AI, etc. Cheers!