Greetings fellow humanoids!
In this update, I’ll talk about what we've been working on for the last couple of months since the last dev blog. As you know, we now have a properly working editor for all our content creation shenanigans.
We wanted to expand on that with the emphasis on topics such as characters, combat, and activities. On top of that, we carved a path for our lore and the scenario map opening cutscene.
Individual characters of TFM prior to our vision demo already had their five distinct stats working; Body, Mind, Heart, Soul, and Self. This helped us figure out how to approach the design of what we call “secondary stats” in terms of distinct differentiation between each character in the game.
These secondary stats are used by the characters to determine their strengths and weaknesses in certain areas of interaction, whether it’s in combat, or during their worktime/downtime activities on their settlements. One big difference from primary stats is the fact that secondary stats do not have base values that can be developed by characters, rather they’re directly derived from Primary Stats and change constantly based on their corresponding Primary Stat. More detail on these will be provided in future updates, but for now, I’ll summarize them by name and their related Primary Stats.
Haste, Resistance, and Dominance are connected to Body.
Rigor, Foresight, and Focus are connected to Mind.
Power, Adrenaline, and Ferocity are connected to Heart.
Patience, Moira, and Inspiration are connected to Soul.
Prowess, Vigilance, and Zeal are connected to Self.
In addition to Secondary Stats, we now have two new database “makers” for our TFM Builder; Traits and Skills. This literally means within our in-game editor we’re now able to create content for these via spreadsheets and test them without having to leave the game. Secondary stats and content tools of traits and skills are constantly being developed with the real-time combat system in mind. Which I think is a great segway to talk a little bit about combat and class iterations.
Skills are active abilities of a character and they can provide advantages to a character in any way during combat. A character’s skills are determined by his traits (i.e class traits, item traits, feat traits, etc.) and can be seen as buttons in the character's actions panel. There are four types of skills: Mobility, Utility, Attack, and Elite.
Attack skills derive from a character’s item of choice. Each item holds multiple attack skills and these skills on the same item trait are coherent to each other. Whenever the player changes a character’s active item through UI, a newly chosen item’s attack skill set appears on its Attack Skills panel. Each weapon also has an auto-attack skill, which determines a character’s default skill that usually does not cost anything and deals damage.
Unlike attack skills, utility skills have individual selection options. Each character has a certain amount of utility skill slots. And the player may choose any of these utility skills to any slot. The thematic difference between an attack and utility skills is that utility skills do not require whatever the character is holding as a weapon in order to be used. A utility skill’s main output could be healing, reducing resistances, removing boons, applying afflictions, summoning, and many more.
A character may only have one mobility skill. Mobility skills are designed to give characters the ability to relocate themselves more easily during combat.
Elite skills are special, unique, powerful, and rare. A character can only use its Elite skill through his Empower ability, which unlocks when a character’s Zeal secondary stat is filled.
Another mighty addition to our editor is the Decision Maker, which is a node tool to let the user create simple, or complicated character behavior trees. Whether for combat AI roles or in settlement for worktime and downtime activities.
This is one of the biggest milestones for the team in terms of what we planned for settlement gameplay. Expanding its capabilities will let us (and you) create fun activities for characters to pick up in order to gain experience, energy, prosperity, industry, traits, etc.
Since the development of our new tools to amplify the strength of worldbuilding in our new Map Maker, we figured the elevation of terrain in the sense of turning regions into subregions and three-dimensional structures would make a lot of sense. It would, because it makes exploration and the currency of “fog of war” more appealing and satisfying to unravel.
But it’s a risky business in terms of developing a new editor. Before, only our “Mountain” region could be perceived as height, but now we’re even able to create entire regions out of different biomes as heightened terrains and put multiple layers in a single region where dwellings and parties can venture and climb to. In fantasy narrative, having a sense of height grants opportunities in terms of the distribution of races, their cultures, and homesteads and makes the world richer in a broad sense.
Adam and Eve Cutscenes
Systems and mechanics aside, we’ve been experimenting with the opening cinematic of our early access scenario map. As you might’ve guessed by now, the concept of the scenario will revolve around Adam, creation, and how they might blend with a fantasy world.
We have discovered a couple of styles and ideas about how to approach the storytelling and decided on in-game cutscenes with dialogue boxes instead.
We hope that focusing on this approach will also help the development of interior designs in the future since we’ve only focused on exteriors as of now.
We’ve also experimented and shaped archetypal humanoid races who’ll represent our worlds and color wheel, apart from the humans. Here are five distinct races that represent each color and a quick summary of their information. They will probably be dealt with in a whole new dev blog, but this should suffice for now.
Leaving those races here for your taste and wishing you all a great week! You all are always welcome to join our Discord and help us develop this beautiful game!
Sylvan, Green
The Sylvan, also known as the Wood Elves are often described as wild and temperamental. This is true to the extent that these humanoids are a very emotional bunch. They live with their hearts, not their minds as some other races. Whatever they feel, they know it is the right answer. Logic plays little part in their lives, for logic cannot save one from the charging boar or the falling tree. Intuition, agility, and strength are all that counts in the wildwood.
Duregar, Blue
Duregar, also known as Gray Dwarves, are a subterranean humanoid race. They carved out an existence for themselves in the Underdark, often near volcanic mountains in arctic regions. Duregar are, as a whole, generally cruel and malevolent creatures, but as in most races that are inclined towards evil, this is as much a cultural affection as a psychological trait.
Orc, Red
Warfare infuses every aspect of orc society. When they are not out raiding and attacking their enemies (often other orc tribes), orcs train in fighting, build and repair weapons, and generally ready themselves for the next battle.
Aasimar, White
The Aasimar bear the legacy of a celestial being, holiness in their ancestry, and have incredible potential to do good in the world. They are dedicated like-minded individuals driven by religious zeal or a finely-honed sense of justice and honor. Friendship and camaraderie are important to members of The Aasimar.
Cambion, Black
Plagued by a dark and sinister heritage, cambions walk through the shadows of their race’s past, savoring the darkness. Cambions are scattered mainly throughout the blighted regions of TFM, littered geographically in a reminder of distant times when devils and demons exerted an active influence over the lands. As a race, cambions have occasionally prospered despite prejudice and preconceived notions of their evil nature among the other humanoid and civilized races. They have arisen from obscurity and darkness to become active participants in the affairs of a TFM world.