Hey all! Happy Friday!
We’ve got a lot of news this week.
First and foremost, we’re sad to announce that Joe, our AI programmer and animator, has accepted a position with another team and will be stepping away from Swords ‘n Magic and Stuff. Joe joined the team in August of 2020 and has helped bring the world to life through his character and creature animations, boss battles, companion system and dynamic NPC schedules among many other important and impressive contributions. He also stepped into a general programming role as Louis joined the team and really helped out all around. We’re excited to see what he does with his next adventure, but sad to see him leave. At this time we aren’t looking to replace him, but may reevaluate at a later time.
What does this mean for the huge combat update we’ve been working towards? A large part of the combat update is backend work that Louis is working away on. He’s been balancing his focus between the backend programming and various other front-facing tasks like the hotbar rework (which also takes a lot of backend programming) and new job boards with repeatable, procedural quests. However, the other main part of the update included plenty of new animations for combos and abilities. With the changes to the team, we may need to adjust our plans a bit and will let you know weekly what’s happening through these development digests. We had previously said that the combat update would take a while and that’s still true, but we don’t have a good timeframe as of yet.
As we learned of Joe’s departure, we’ve shifted some priorities a bit. Wendy was working on level design for the next zone, Bone Reach. She took a tiny break from that this week to work on a Hero’s Crypt in Windless Woods. Michael (AKA Kindred) has been working on brand new map art, prepping the main questline for the Windless Woods and dipping into the AI system a bit to see what he can break make.
Speaking of new maps, this is our second huge announcement: we have a new world map! Adjusted development roadmap coming soon.
All of the zones from before are still present aside from Dragonlands, but a lot of new zones have been introduced. When the first map was made, there wasn’t really a detailed plan with what to do with the whole area, nor any idea of the time it would take to fill it out. Michael has been working on re-scoping the world map for a better story, progression, and transition between zones. This will make it easier to get more zones out faster as well. For example, Iris Lake was originally somewhere around 6-8 times bigger than Farmlands. The Farmlands took somewhere around six months to complete (it also included crafting, farming, cooking, etc. which took time). If we wanted to release Iris Lake as it was before, it would take over two years to get the one zone out! With this new layout, we can easily break up the workload.
So what’s different in the content that’s already playable?
Of the released areas, you’ll notice that the Farmlands zone has been broken into two zones. The Sleeping Glade is where Sleepy Haven and its surroundings are located (notice the river that shows the divide). Sleepy Haven used to be located in the Windless Woods, but we realized that it was super confusing having West Windless Woods, East Windless Woods, and Windless Woods (where Sleepy Haven is). The Graveyard was previously in East Windless Woods but is now located in a portion of Black Rook Vale. These are essentially just naming and lore changes!
What’s being worked on in the world?
Windless Woods is getting its first content pass. NPCs are being added, quests and dialog are in progress, mini dungeons are being built. It’s starting to come together! Ironwind Pass is about 60% done with level design. Bone Reach is about 30% done with level design. Once Windless Woods is done with content, level design in Ironwind Pass and Bone Reach should be just about finished and ready for content. This will allow Wendy to keep moving forward in future zones.
What are all the new zones?
We’ve got a Youtube video in the works where we’ll describe the new zone layout in depth, including what the feel of them will be, how they’ll play into the story, and all the juicy details. I’ll be sharing details with our Patreon supporters before the video goes out. For now, I’d like to hear your guesses! Which of the new zones are you most intrigued by? See you all in the comments!