Hey all! Got a few new players in the past week, I hope you're enjoying yourselves!
It's so nice to have the build out there. I have a ton of things that I couldn't touch before that build went out. The odd cut-off tree and butterfly-stuck-in-fence aside, the build seems to be working great. be sure to let me know if you run into any game-breaking issues though!
i'm so stoked to be working on what i'm working on now. there's a ton of stuff, but i want to cover a few of them. i realize up until now it's been difficult to see where the game is going, so id like to try to put out more blog-style updates, especially considering the next build will be a ways off.
Magical Stuff
the new elemental spell tree. blaze/fire spells pictured. we're currently playing with just that centre 'elementary' column.
so i was sitting in the infusion centre, getting my blood neutralized and immuno goblins replaced, and i started to map out spells to pass the time(it takes 4-5 hours). out came pouring this crazy chart of what, in my mind, each element should have as a bare minimum. so the idea is we're going to be working with 4 core trees: Elementary, Intuitive, Wave, and Support Magics.
Elementary is what everyone starts with access to, and what's in the game now. Intuitive magic will be more along the lines of fireballs in the example above. you concentrate the energy and hurl a ball of fire. whereas the core blaze 1 spell will change to a jet of fire that you flamethrow the opponent with. Intuitive magic will be magic that does not require a wand or a stave.
Wave magics will be about multi-target and battlefield changing skills, and will require staves. Support spells will be state removal/resistance, element defense/absorption, and enhancing attacks with spells. Support spells will require wands. I love this separation, wand-casters being more assist-oriented and stave-wielders waving their stave and sending cascading waves of flame or whatever across the battlefield. Will definitely add more definition between the casters in your party.
That being said! There's 9 elements. There's, what, 29 spells listed there? that's nearly 300 elemental spells total, up from the current 54. And thats just the core spell tree; Incarnates will be involved in a separate collection of spells, and spells like revive aren't counted in that list. So we've got a lot of animations to make!
It Burns, It Burns!
Element states, wounds, fisticuffs. Also the new starting spell path at the bottom-left
With the addition of the new weather system, and me wrestling with a few prototypes for a non-tedious hunger system, I've gotten into the flow of elemental states and wounds as well. 4 of the core 6 will have chains that go from inconvenienced to incapacitated and dying.
More interestingly, though, I've been trying to come up with a way to represent martial arts without a) the system sucking, and b) the user going 'uhh but why not just use a sword?' Spent a good time thinking about my own experiences as a kid, as well as prizefighting, and I've come up with a tentative system for two fellers to just beat the living shit out of eachother. There's a good many skills i'm playing with there, but up in that photo above toward the centre is a map of how you will be pushing your opponent from state to state, until they reach knockout status (separate from Lifeless, which requires a revive spell or Life shrine). If it doesn't work, it'll be cut, but it's an interesting potential path
These two areas (magic/martial arts) are the basis of what I hope will be a system that allows a player to feel like they've transcended their basic abilities, and hit an entire level that most mortals can not achieve. this has to be distinctly separate from the class system, and of course completely optional. In this regard, it kind of resembles Dragon Ball Z. The protagonists hit these levels where they're emanating energy that causes wind, flames etc, just from how focused they are. Then they hit a new tier. I've always wanted to see this as a path in games, but it's always some scripted shit. I want the player to be able to train! This will be a completely separate, but compatible, path to the mage's school in the North-East, which I intend to be an(in-game) multi-week experience for the player.
What's in a (Town)Name?
updated list of the potentially friendly buildings once each region is fully upgraded
Another thing I get to do now with this release out is start tearing apart the world. My most recent playtests went from super excited from how much fun I was having to disappointed that the towns all seem the same after about 20 hours. These improvements have always been planned, but now that I'm getting things down on paper, the stories and cultures of each country are starting to develop as well, and I'm now super excited.
We've got ostrich-riding bloodclan tribes in the west, the magic school in the north-east. The two kingdoms, meanwhile, have their own vibes, with the northwest focusing on chivalry and great monster slaying, while the south-east is more about High Court Intrigue and garden parties(at first). These are all developing super nicely. A ton of work to be done.
rough first pass of a lumber resource in the south-east, once the player builds the expansions. it now belongs to one of a few Barons who serve the King of the south-east country
Day-to-Day
left: occupations of the land. right: what makes up a dude's day?
With the new weather system, I've also expanded on the inner workings of the time system. When I previously got this far in the build I lost in 2019, I had basic day/night enemies(ghosts, mainly), but this time, in designing the storylines for the zones and companion characters, I wanted to lay some groundwork that I can just plug shit into as I go. All about the modularity.
The system runs great, as evidenced by the one creature I've designed that utilizes the system: A bird. When morning comes, the birds fly down from the sky and fade in. They fly around and chill, then as night falls they fly away and fade out. It's super cool to see in action. The system ended up being a little more complicated than the diagram above, but I think it's going to work.
The only question is can the engine handle it? I don't know of any games that really do this kind of thing for the NPCs and animals. With the addition of these buildings, there's going to be less animals in number, but they're all doing a ton more in the background. Only way to tell is to get it in the game, then scale it back/cut it if it causes too much frame drop.
Mortality
All that being said, I had a majorly serious realization the other day: my condition may worsen to the point where I can't do this anymore, and the game will remain unfinished. There's really no way for me to know. I've been getting these infusions for a few months, but it's been over half a decade since this started and it's getting pretty bad. My arms have tremors, even when resting on an armrest. Most of the week I've gotta be in bed and I can't work. It'll feel like I fell off a low wall onto asphalt, right on my tailbone. It's super difficult and scary just walking around the house with a cane, and rarely I've gotta just go 'fuckit' and army-crawl through the house back to my bed. I explained it the other day as it feels like I'm being lightly tazed during a 3.0 earthquake. What I've got is super rare, so there's not a lot of research in the area. No cure, and there's no way of knowing how far it'll go. I absolutely don't want to tie up the success of this game with some poor-me-i-sick bullshit, though. I think we all deserve this game, lots of the features should have been a next step for AAA studios 20 years ago. So I will avoid talking about this aspect of design/development in the future. Just wanted to let you all know where my thoughts are at, and be the first to bring up the possibility of my body shutting down too much to continue. This is my main art though, so there's no way I'm throwing in the towel. Serious big-boy thoughts though.
Wrapping Up
All these changes I've gone over amount to maybe... 1/5th of the design I've done since the update came out. Companion questlines/act structure, how regions interact with eachother, what happens when regions are at odds with eachother, what happens when Aelimeth counterattacks and successfully just destroys towns in the northeast and the west but the rest is successfully defended, how do patrols work, how do robberies work, how do cutscenes work, how does a cutscene triggered by what time of year it is not pull you out of your third week of magic school... Rework of peasant skilltree, how do ghosts work, accessories for all the characters, do players get tents and shit, and if so, how many colour options?
There's a ton more to cover, but that's for another (lengthy) post. For now, enjoy! Or go do something else. I rediscovered Home Movies, it's a show available for free on the Adult Swim app. Love it. Start on season 2 and loop back once you finish it.