Hey there folk! You know the drill by now, Zaz here has you covered.

Hello fellow adventurers,

Today I’d like to talk about how we use Light and Darkness as a gameplay pillar and fundamental concept in the world of Solasta.

When you think D&D, chances are one of the images that comes to mind is a group of adventurers exploring a dark dungeon, torch in hand, moving cautiously to avoid traps and ready to draw their weapon the moment a monster jumps out of a dimly lit corner. Infravision - and then Darkvision - allowed some specific races to be more efficient in the dark, and 5th edition rules now clearly explain the differences between Bright Light, Dim Light, Darkness and Magical Darkness.

But this has scarcely been used in video games, notably because of the many problems involved when it comes to player experience. We too had to brainstorm a lot to find how we’d use this in an interesting way: after all, micromanaging light must not become a burden. And we're pretty sure our Art Director wouldn't be very happy if all you see is a black screen the moment your characters toss their torch away.


Ambient lighting is a very important part of our Level Design

At the very start, we discussed about how to represent each character’s own vision. As you all know, we human beings don't see that well in darkness - but for our elves and dwarves, life at night is a nice painting in shades of grey (as to how many, no one knows for sure).

We thus tried to represent the game based on the current party leader's vision... and you’d always end-up with an elf leading the path. Not that we have anything against elves, but you have to remember that the game ends up in black and white 90% of the time as you don't see colors with Darkvision. So... we decided that what would be displayed would have to differ from what the character sees. 

If you thought that was the only challenge when it comes to light, we're just getting started. Most D&D players will already have an idea of this issue, but the difference between a character with Darkvision and one without Darkvision is huge. 

If we go according to RAW (Rules as written), a character with no Darkvision can't see anything in the Darkness - so technically you shouldn't be able to see where the enemy is. If your DM isn't playing nice, you'd probably spend a few rounds just trying to find your opponent before even starting to swing at him with Disadvantage. On the other hand, a character with Darkvision treats Darkness as Dim Light - which doesn't do much aside from giving you disadvantage for Perception Rolls. You could run the entire dungeon with a group of Elves without ever busting out a torch, and probably hear our Art Director sobbing in the distance while doing so.


I don't know guys, running the entire dungeon in the dark doesn't seem like a fun time to me.

When we tried to emulate that in-game, it was excruciatingly frustrating - you knew an enemy was right in front of you (because your dwarf can see him), but your human would just be unable to target him because he was in the Darkness. We felt like the player would be punished for simply not having a full party with Darkvision - heavily limiting the interest of having a Character Creation Tool. Want to play Hard Mode? Just have a Human or Halfling in the party. 

This is why we decided to seek a middle-ground - a way to make races without Darkvision less inept, and those with Darkvision more reliant on light. In Solasta, the Light System currently works in the following manner:

• Normal Vision: Disadvantage on Perception Rolls & Attack Rolls under Darkness & Dim Light Conditions.
• Darkvision: Disadvantage on Perception Rolls & Attack Rolls under Darkness Conditions.
• Superior Darkvision: No Disadvantage under Darkness Conditions (only for specific Monsters or Darkvision Spell)

With this system, characters with Darkvision will now have Disadvantage in Darkness - meaning they'll have to start relying on Light. To balance it out, other characters will now also have Disadvantage in Dim Light - but they get to "see" in Darkness and can target enemies there. Note that Darkvision does not increase Vision Range - as explained above you'd end up with different Vision Range for different party members, adding artificial layers of complexity to party management. 

During exploration, your perception will be affected by darkness - meaning you'd better have some source of light at hands if you want to detect those traps and secret passages. Darkvision will give you an easier time of course, but you shouldn't forget the rest of the crew - who could very well notice something your Elf / Dwarf missed in the first place.

You'll quickly realize that this is twice as important in battle, as it will affect your accuracy. To keep it simple for the players, in our current system you can see if your opponents are in Bright Light / Dim Light / Darkness by hovering over them, and the cursor model will change to tell you if you'll roll with advantage or disadvantage (or simply normally). Want your Warrior to have his Shield in hand? Better make sure your Wizard has a Light Cantrip for him. By putting a heavy emphasis on Light, it adds a tactical layer to Combat Sequences - using the environment such as glowing stones, braziers or pools of flammable oil to light up your enemies, or rushing in torch in hand so your archer can pick off your enemies from afar. Want to hold a narrow corridor and only your Warrior is still up? Drop your torch on the ground, take out your shield and stand your ground!


Same situation, Human Character has Disadvantage because of Dim Light Conditions, Elf Character does not.

Now, it wouldn't be very fair if Light only affected our party. This Gameplay Pillar is called "Light & Darkness", not just "Light" - there is a duality that we want to explore. While adventurers may have issues with pitch black dungeons, the opposite applies to creatures born deep underground, perfectly adapted to the Darkness with Superior Darkvision, Blindsense or even Tremorsense. These creatures will very likely not appreciate having a torch shoved into their face, and some of them will be Sensitive or even Hypersensitive to Light - making it not only a resource to manage, but a deadly weapon too.

Imagine your party of four facing numerous creatures many time their size, kept in check by the light they wield - it’s both epic and terrifying, and this is what we want Solasta to be about. Back from your quest, you’ll enjoy the fresh air and sunlight, only to rest for your next raid underground… and into darkness.

Zaz


Unused Key Art (Classes not validated) that depicts the Light & Dark Pillar

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096530/

Hey there folks,

With only one week left before Gen Con, we've been working hard on all fronts! For the Demo, we've been adding new rooms and polishing old ones - it won't be the final experience (you will have to wait a bit more for that), but you'll be able to have a pretty good idea of what you're getting into. We've also be working on some physical goodies that we'll be giving away at our booth, so be sure to drop by!

Now without further ado, let me give you a small sneak peek of the updates (but not everything, let's not spoil the surprise). If you looked at our Game Info Page before, you might have noticed about a certain room that used to look like this:


Old version of the Ruins first room

A few weeks later, this same room now looks like this:


New version of the Ruins first room

Pretty cool, isn't it! Here, I'll share one more thing with you - remember our friendly spiders that appear in our Key Art and in one of our previous articles? Tactical Platypus, our awesome animator, has been hard at work to make them as lively as possible. Check it out! (or don't, if you're arachnophobic) 




That's it for today! As a reminder, you can find us at Gen Con from Thursday 9:00 am until Sunday 2:00 pm at Indiana Convention Center: Hall B, and the Demo Event is completely free (aside from the standard Gen Con Access Badge).


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096530/

Hey there folks! Our Creative Director & CEO is back with another article, this time going over how he handled adapting the 5e ruleset into video games.

Hi everyone,

I've been wanting to describe the philosophy we have in adapting the OGL/SRD5 ruleset to a video game for some time now. As I already mentioned in previous posts, I have played through all 5 different editions of D&D in the past 30 years - and thus seen the evolution of the Ruleset over the years. That doesn't mean I claim to be an absolute expert though, for there are many ways to play D&D on tabletop. For instance, some DMs prefer to favor roleplaying, immersion and imagination by keeping the rules behind their DM Screen, and forgoing miniatures & battle grids for the Theater of the Mind. 

As for my friends and I, we've always been playing with a player handbook for each player, a detailed character sheet and a grid with miniatures. We love the detail and accuracy that goes into tactical combat situations (though we also try to avoid power gaming and excessive min-maxing), which is a philosophy that will be reflected in Solasta.


D&D Night at Tactical Adventures Office

Like many of you, I've also been playing countless video games adaptations of D&D - starting with Pool of Radiance and the Gold Box series, then onto Eye of the Beholder, Baldur’s Gate, Infinity Engine sequels, Neverwinter Nights from Bioware... I've also tried out less successful attempts, and after spending some time analyzing the good and the bad I came to realize that the most successful D&D-type games usually were those which stayed the most faithful to the ruleset. This is why when I first started describing the project, I said we were adapting the video game to the SRD ruleset, rather than adapting the ruleset to the video game. It may sound like a marketing tagline, but that's what I genuinely believe.


The 1st of the Gold Box Games, Pool of Radiance is emblematic for many RPG fans 

The first thing I did was creating a way to input rules into the prototype. I am not sure if this has been revealed yet, but we are using Unity as a foundation for our game. The main reason for using this engine, other than a solid 8 years of previous experience (Endless Space...), is that it's good at making tools and editors. One of the very cool things Unity offers is ScriptableObjects, which allows you to define code templates (such as Character Class, Character Feature, Spell, Weapon Type...) and easily develop editing tools for this data - so we built a system to edit the database with all the Ruleset bricks needed to make an RPG. 

One big question remains: how far can you go in making the ruleset editable, and when do you need to hardcode stuff? It is a fairly common software architecture question: should you make a super generic code or go straight to the point? Since we wanted to quickly develop a minimal viable product (MVP), the solution was a bit in-between: all the individual Rule Assets (such as Races, Classes, Items, Features, Spells, Powers, Monsters, Conditions...) can be edited, while the core is implemented in the engine. To illustrate that with tabletop - this is the same idea as having a core ruleset with the Player’s Handbook, then adding additional content on top of it with additional books (SCAG, XGTE...).

Going back to the technical side, if we take Spells as an example. By taking a generic approach and implementing a wide set of parameters, the bet is that we would be able to create most spells available in the SRD. Every time a spell has some new exotic effects, we need to add new parameters - which could then be reused for other spells. On the other hand, a procedural approach would mean that each spell is individually hardcoded into the game - certainly a quicker solution, but one that would heavily limit reusability. 


 Fireball, when diplomacy is no longer an option (well, it does count as Intimidation, right? Can I roll with advantage?)

The most challenging and thrilling part in making the most out of the SRD is using rules that are often neglected in video games adaptations, such as lighting and verticality (climbing and flying). Some games tried to implement these rules in a limited manner, but we've come to realize that this is a large investment you need to plan from the start. The reward however, is that you end up with crazy and funny situations - especially when implementing the 5th edition ruleset accurately (who wants to see a mage lose concentration when hovering over a deadly pit?)

That being said, there are still some elements that we need to adapt to work properly in a video game - especially when playing from a top down perspective. For example, a character could easily spot an enemy 500 feet away... But that would correspond to 10 game screens in distance. It notably becomes very hard to provide a meaningful and intuitive stealth experience with this in mind, so we have to reduce the distance to make the game manageable. There's also some simplification in displaying distance, using cells (5' x 5' x 5' block) instead of feet to avoid confusion and conversion problems for countries using the metric system. That said, while we are working on securing the core experience now, it is totally possible to include a setting to display distances in feet for the fans who prefer it.

Hope this post was interesting to you, stay tuned for more in the coming weeks and do not hesitate to ask questions or add feedback below!

Cheers,
Tactical Archimat

Hello again folks! You've been many to ask what we mean by Verticality, so Zaz (Game Director) is back with some answers!

Hello fellow adventurers,
As you already know, Verticality is one of our Core Pillars. But what hides behind that word?

From the very beginning, we decided that we wanted our players to be able to do things other Tactical RPGs wouldn;t allow them to. Things like flying, climbing walls without being limited to ladders, pushing enemies over the ridge... and of course we wanted enemies to do the same! Flying, climbing and even burrowing to give your party a rough time. In essence, we wanted to recreate all the crazy stuff you can do in a tabletop game using all the magic and powers of the 5th edition.

Our engine was developed for this. Our world really is 3D - even the “air” is actually part of the game’s grid - allowing you to accurately track movement while flying. On top of that almost every type of surfaces can be scaled using Spider Climb, and the battle grid even goes below the floor to allow specific creatures to burrow and move underground. 


Cubes... Cubes everywhere!

This enables us to create very interesting levels and combat situations, and is the reason why we call Verticality one of our Key Pillars. The world of Solasta has been designed to foster many vertical locations for our players to fully use their abilities to move around in 3D space... and they better be careful, because our monsters will surely do so! In the other hand, one of our biggest challenges is to give the players the right tools to play in this vertical environment. The camera system is critical, to let you see what you need while moving around the battlefield. Efficient controls are also essential, since you will need to give orders not only on a flat grid but also in space.


Our current "See Through" System allows you to see your characters through walls when needed

Expect to experience vertiginous rooms, fight flying creatures harassing you while you try to climb up a fragile flight of antique stairs, fall to your doom when shoved over the ledge by massive monsters, and get your ankle tenderly nibbled on while crossing a sandy area.


Prototype of some slightly more extreme cases of Verticality in Level Design

But how does it work with Stealth? Well, that will be for another time...
Zaz

Hey there folks! Today we'll have our Gameplay Director Zaz give you a bit of insight on the Game Design side of things. If you want to know how we at Tactical Adventures are adapting D&D OGL 5e into video game rules, you're at the right place!

Hello fellow adventurers,

Here’s the first of a series of game design articles where we will be sharing some of our ideas, decisions, questions and philosophy with you. As you may already know, it's not always easy to adapt a Pen & Paper rules to PC. Sometimes though, it can be surprising how the rules of the 5th edition naturally fit into a video game system.

Today we'll take a look at the reaction system, introduced in the 5th edition. It is a great feature and helps to add variety in combat, to provide cool moments and finally let you fully exploit specific spells like Shield or Feather Fall. Would you know, these were actually one of the first features we showcased in our early prototype! Now, we can’t wait to play with Counterspell - that's going to be quite something.



But reactions are not only used for spells - and if you're a fighter or a rogue, you'll be wanting to dish out opportunity attacks. Say you build an AI that only focuses on efficiency, you may never get one since the enemy might never walk out of attack range. That... would be a bit sad, wouldn't it? We want the AI in Solasta to not always do the most optimal action. They might simply get too scared to stay and try to escape, or decide on a whim that they have a more important enemy to attack than the one facing them, thus taking the risk of receiving an opportunity attack. Which is fine, as long as is doesn’t look stupid. But if we start talking about AI we won't ever be done, so we'll save it for another article - there’s plenty to say about it.

We also have reactions that naturally work very well with a cell-based tactical game, like the Protection Fighting Style which allows you to impose disadvantage on an attack roll targeting an ally next to you. We liked the system so much that we added new reactions in our custom Solastan archetypes, and we’re still working on cool ways to use the reaction feature extensively so that smart players can optimize their efficiency by putting their characters in situations where reactions will be triggered.


The system also works for decisions you take after certain conditions are met, such as Divine Smite

Please note that while we like to give the player some time to think about whether to use their reaction or not, they still have a limited time window to make their decision. For something like an opportunity attack, you might think there’s no way you’re not going to take the reaction, so why are we not making automatic? Well... For instances where the reaction consumes a spell slot, you might want to think about it…for a few seconds. That’s why we have a countdown so you can take your time to decide, but not too much. Once the sandglass is empty, the reaction is cancelled, pure and simple. 

This is it for today, we hope you enjoy reading our train of thoughts! Don’t hesitate to toss in some comments and ideas.

Best,

Zaz

Hey there folks, today's something a little different for you! How does an idea comes to life? What comes before a fully manned studio? I'll be leaving the stage to our Creative Director (and CEO), who will be answering all these questions and more, writing about the genesis of the Solasta project.

Hi everyone,

First of all, we are very happy and excited about our official announcement. It always feels great to come clean and tell everyone about what you have been working on for so long. Thanks a lot for all your kind words and genuine interest in the project. It means a lot to us. We have been eagerly reading all your comments on our various community channels. We love getting involved in those topics, but we see a lot of questions asked already; some of which we will try to answer in the coming weeks / months.

On a personal note, I am delighted about revealing our game. This project has been an old dream for me. I have developed and released 11 games in the past 20 years with many different genres and platforms, and making a tactical RPG brings me back to the early 90s and the Gold Box series of games. 


Gold Box is a series of CRPGs based on AD&D (image from Luzur, RPG Codex)

I worked on Solasta (before it was even called that!) in my “garage” for quite some time before starting this new company. I started by building a database of rules, character races, classes and powers. Then, I built a character generator. After that I made a first dungeon, a combat system, a magic system... all that leading to a first minimum viable prototype. We are still building on top of this prototype (the architecture was thankfully pretty sound), and it has been playable for about a year now. 

With a prototype in hand, more people started to be interested and believe in the project: future potential partners, employees, investors... It may be hard to believe, but when you start a new company - even with a good track record - you still have to prove what you are claiming. Bouncing this creative vision and prototype on the new team members, early testers, etc, also helped us clarify and finalize the vision of the game we are making.


Brave Baern taking on 4 skeletons in this very early "minimum viable" prototype

I have been very lucky with the team members who joined Tactical Adventures. Both talented and experienced people, many of them playing tabletop RPG on a regular basis. We are a small studio of 15 people, and it sometimes feels weird to claim we are making a CPRG of such a size. But a team of talented and motivated people can do wonders, and we also have the support of excellent partners who greatly complement us.


Even our carpet design is based a Battle Grid, we just need to roll initiative and we're ready to go

After the team was hired and got settled in our new office in downtown Paris, we have started building on my initial prototype, adding real art, features, and game content. We have already performed first playtest this winter, and learned a lot from our first players. Obviously, I can’t wait to get such feedback from you, and as explained in our Dev Diary Video we are working on a demo for you to get your hands on. As you imagine, our final game will offer a full storyline and campaign, which will introduce the original universe of Solasta. In order not to spoil all that, the demo is built specifically to put our Key Pillars to the test, and will feature a hand-crafted level that will not be part of the campaign.

As you may have guessed, we will have a busy summer working on that demo. We will also be touring on several Conventions, starting with Gen Con in Indianapolis. Obviously we will not go there just to show our good looks, we will have some cool stuff to boot: an early glimpse of the demo which we'll release later on.


We've polished the entrance of the Demo Level, time to play Spot the Differences!

Thanks for your attention. Stay tuned for more updates this summer!

Cheers,
Archimath

You said "We want to see more Gameplay!", we answered "We will do that and more, there will be a demo!". You said "When?" and we answered "Soon!". How soon you may ask? Well... What about... One month from now? 

That's right, Tactical Adventures will be at Gen Con 2019 August 1-4 2019, Indiana Convention Center: Hall B, with a Pre-Alpha Demo - which everyone will be able to play at our booth! For those who won't be at Gen Con, worry not - we're still planning on having a Demo available to everyone at a later date!


What will our four heroes find in these ruins?

More Information:

• The booth will be open from 9:00 am to 7:00pm Thursday to Saturday, and from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm on Sunday
• This Demo Event is completely free of charges, no need for tickets (outside the standard Gen Con Access Badge) 
• You don't need to register either, just drop by whenever you want
• Keep in mind that this is going to be a Work In Progress, Pre-Alpha Build - so please forgive us if the ride's a bit bumpy at times!

Where to find us:



You will be there? Great! Drop us a word on Discord!