Hi everyone,

As promised, Endless Legend will reach the Beta tonight and we are hoping you will enjoy it!

Once again, here's what it will include:

• Two new playable major factions: the Ardent Mages and the Roving Clans
  
• Multiplayer mode with up to six players out of eight in the final game
  
• Enhanced Battle system (Battle Pace / City Militia / Moral Boost / Upgraded Deployment)
  
• Ships and Harbours, you can now go explore and colonise the world beyond the ocean!
  
• Addition of Roads and Trade Routes
  
• Improved Diplomacy: new Diplomatic Treaties, AI diplomatic behaviour, Counter Proposal option
  
• Addition of Privateers: mercenaries bought in the marketplace who can attack anyone without revealing exactly whose side they are on…

However, our release notes are too long and don't fit in this announcement, so you will have to refer to the Dev Blog: [0.5.10] Beta Release Notes.


Have fun!
~Amplitude Studios

Hi everyone,

As promised, Endless Legend will reach the Beta tonight and we are hoping you will enjoy it!

Once again, here's what it will include:

• Two new playable major factions: the Ardent Mages and the Roving Clans
  
• Multiplayer mode with up to six players out of eight in the final game
  
• Enhanced Battle system (Battle Pace / City Militia / Moral Boost / Upgraded Deployment)
  
• Ships and Harbours, you can now go explore and colonise the world beyond the ocean!
  
• Addition of Roads and Trade Routes
  
• Improved Diplomacy: new Diplomatic Treaties, AI diplomatic behaviour, Counter Proposal option
  
• Addition of Privateers: mercenaries bought in the marketplace who can attack anyone without revealing exactly whose side they are on…

However, our release notes are too long and don't fit in this announcement, so you will have to refer to the Dev Blog: [0.5.10] Beta Release Notes.


Have fun!
~Amplitude Studios

Good news everyone,

You will be able to play the Beta version of Endless Legend tomorrow. Thanks to those who have dared to launch the "Beta Branch" on Steam in the previous weeks (which was pretty much a preview). Your feedback has been more than helpful and allowed us to improve the build for the public release tomorrow. We will be sharing the release notes then but here's what it will include:

• Two new playable major factions: the Ardent Mages and the Roving Clans
  
• Multiplayer mode with up to six players out of eight in the final game
  
• Enhanced Battle system (Battle Pace / City Militia / Moral Boost / Upgraded Deployment)
  
• Ships and Harbours: you can now go explore and colonize the world beyond the ocean!
  
• Addition of Roads and Trade Routes
  
• Improved Diplomacy: new Diplomatic Treaties, AI diplomatic behaviour, Counter Proposal option
  
• Addition of Privateers: mercenaries bought in the marketplace who can attack anyone without revealing exactly whose side they are on…

The Ardent Mages

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3J7WznDqSQ

The arcane power of these sorcerers can only be obtained through pain and penance. Transcending their mortal bodies through acts of self-mortification, they are able to touch and manipulate the limitless powers of Dust.

The Roving Clans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94wxW6efKWA

Traders, explorers, and adventurers, the Roving Clans are nomadic and mercantile. Traversing Auriga on their great beasts of burden, the Clans bring commerce and hard-headed negotiation to the far corners of the world.

Artwork and Screenshots

Come back tomorrow for the release notes! :)
~Amplitude Studios

Good news everyone,

You will be able to play the Beta version of Endless Legend tomorrow. Thanks to those who have dared to launch the "Beta Branch" on Steam in the previous weeks (which was pretty much a preview). Your feedback has been more than helpful and allowed us to improve the build for the public release tomorrow. We will be sharing the release notes then but here's what it will include:

• Two new playable major factions: the Ardent Mages and the Roving Clans
  
• Multiplayer mode with up to six players out of eight in the final game
  
• Enhanced Battle system (Battle Pace / City Militia / Moral Boost / Upgraded Deployment)
  
• Ships and Harbours: you can now go explore and colonize the world beyond the ocean!
  
• Addition of Roads and Trade Routes
  
• Improved Diplomacy: new Diplomatic Treaties, AI diplomatic behaviour, Counter Proposal option
  
• Addition of Privateers: mercenaries bought in the marketplace who can attack anyone without revealing exactly whose side they are on…

The Ardent Mages

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3J7WznDqSQ

The arcane power of these sorcerers can only be obtained through pain and penance. Transcending their mortal bodies through acts of self-mortification, they are able to touch and manipulate the limitless powers of Dust.

The Roving Clans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94wxW6efKWA

Traders, explorers, and adventurers, the Roving Clans are nomadic and mercantile. Traversing Auriga on their great beasts of burden, the Clans bring commerce and hard-headed negotiation to the far corners of the world.

Artwork and Screenshots

Come back tomorrow for the release notes! :)
~Amplitude Studios

Hi everyone,


We're getting closer and closer to a public update for Endless Legend. Once again, if you have missed the explanation from Mathieu, our CEO, on the update delay, please check it out. We are working on so many different things that I'll try to keep you informed with short blog posts like these.

So what's on the menu for today? The transportation system! :)

SEA TRAVEL

In Endless Legend, for ocean travel to be available, the player will have to research the “Ocean travel” technology. Once that technology is discovered, armies will be able to embark/disembark, and ocean trade routes will be available.


Ports
Ports can be made only on exploited water tiles. They will be used to embark/disembark more easily, and to create ocean roads.
There can be only one port per region.


Embark / Disembark

• With armies, you can click on the water to “embark” near any water tile without cliffs in between, then select a destination water tile (also without cliffs in between). It will move the army onto the water tile, transformed into a ship
  
• Embark will deplete all the remaining water movement points of the army

• With armies in ships you can click on the map to “disembark” near any land tile without cliffs in between, then select a destination land tile (without cliffs in between). It will move the army onto the land tile, transformed back into a normal army
  
• Disembark will deplete all the remaining land movement points of the army

Please note that this is only a first version.


Ship properties
Ships can contain the same number of units than other armies

• You can merge ships’ contents
  
• You can split ships’ contents
  
• Empty ships (or with hero only) will disappear, the same way armies do

Ships can move only between two water tiles. Their only new map action is “disembark”


Movement

• Units use a different movement attribute on water. That new attribute will be affected by different bonuses than for land movement
  
  • All units will start with the same sea movement value

SEA ROADS

The Ocean Travel technology will allow the creation of Port improvements. Ports can be made only on exploited water tiles.

Connecting ports

• Ocean roads must go from one port to another.
  
• There must be a valid path between the ports, passing through water tiles inside the 2 concerned regions and 1 ocean region max.

If such a road can be made, then trade routes can be made across the Cities of those two Ports. Unlike land roads, ocean roads will need the 2 ports to be created (no half-roads), and they will disappear immediately if one of the corresponding ports is destroyed.

SCREENSHOT

~Amplitude Studios

Hi everyone,


We're getting closer and closer to a public update for Endless Legend. Once again, if you have missed the explanation from Mathieu, our CEO, on the update delay, please check it out. We are working on so many different things that I'll try to keep you informed with short blog posts like these.

So what's on the menu for today? The transportation system! :)

SEA TRAVEL

In Endless Legend, for ocean travel to be available, the player will have to research the “Ocean travel” technology. Once that technology is discovered, armies will be able to embark/disembark, and ocean trade routes will be available.


Ports
Ports can be made only on exploited water tiles. They will be used to embark/disembark more easily, and to create ocean roads.
There can be only one port per region.


Embark / Disembark

• With armies, you can click on the water to “embark” near any water tile without cliffs in between, then select a destination water tile (also without cliffs in between). It will move the army onto the water tile, transformed into a ship
  
• Embark will deplete all the remaining water movement points of the army

• With armies in ships you can click on the map to “disembark” near any land tile without cliffs in between, then select a destination land tile (without cliffs in between). It will move the army onto the land tile, transformed back into a normal army
  
• Disembark will deplete all the remaining land movement points of the army

Please note that this is only a first version.


Ship properties
Ships can contain the same number of units than other armies

• You can merge ships’ contents
  
• You can split ships’ contents
  
• Empty ships (or with hero only) will disappear, the same way armies do

Ships can move only between two water tiles. Their only new map action is “disembark”


Movement

• Units use a different movement attribute on water. That new attribute will be affected by different bonuses than for land movement
  
  • All units will start with the same sea movement value

SEA ROADS

The Ocean Travel technology will allow the creation of Port improvements. Ports can be made only on exploited water tiles.

Connecting ports

• Ocean roads must go from one port to another.
  
• There must be a valid path between the ports, passing through water tiles inside the 2 concerned regions and 1 ocean region max.

If such a road can be made, then trade routes can be made across the Cities of those two Ports. Unlike land roads, ocean roads will need the 2 ports to be created (no half-roads), and they will disappear immediately if one of the corresponding ports is destroyed.

SCREENSHOT

~Amplitude Studios

<a href="http://i.imgur.com/gQbTHHf.jpg"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/gQbTHHf.jpg" width="630"></a>

Hey guys,

I know you are eagerly waiting for the new update, but as Mathieu explained the other day, it’s work in progress! I thought it could be fun if I shared with you some screenshots and explanations on what we are currently working on and that is actually coming for you. We'll start with the roads: the visual and game design explained by Mathias and the game designers.




Hi, I’m Mathias, 3D Artist/Lead Artist at Amplitude Studios.

These past few days, I have worked on the roads in Endless Legend that you will discover in the next update. I’ll let the Game Designers handle the gameplay aspect of the feature below, so I’ll just focus on the visual part.

Anyway, we are using what is called “decals” with an atlas to create and apply roads on the landscape. Indeed, it’s quite an old school technique but with all the bump/specular effects, roads are well integrated and fits with the “detailed board game” art style of Endless Legend. You could almost compare it this to re-usable pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/XIEM27W.jpg" width="630"> </img>

I have worked a lot with Timothée, (my other favourite graphic programmer ^^), he programmed a few specific things to make the roads clearer and more realistic.

• Trees are removed when a road passes through a forest
  
• We have small bridges across rivers
  
• He makes fancy transitions when paths goes from various terrain types
  
• And we created a battlement with an access to the city where the road reaches it

What are roads?
They are used to link two adjacent cities, allowing faster movement for armies and enabling trade route bonuses between them.


How do you create a road?
The prerequisites for a road to automatically appear are:

• The road improvement has been built in at least one of the two cities
  
• There must be at least one valid land path between the two regions that doesn’t go through any other region

When those requirements are met, roads will be drawn on the corresponding path inside their region. If the other region doesn’t have the improvement, then only half of the road will become complete roads (paved roads), and the other region will have pathways instead.

Roads are always made on the shortest path between the two connected points, regardless of the existing road shortcuts.


Road bonuses
Paved roads will reduce movement cost on the corresponding tile to 0.5, even on forests. However, pathways don’t have any bonus.

 
Old roads
When a city with is destroyed or moved, all roads within that region will start to deteriorate:

• Roads and pathways will disappear after 10 turns.
  
• If a player creates or moves a city (with Roads improvement) into that region again, new roads will be created, and not necessarily passing through old road parts.
  
• Any pathway on the same tile than paved road parts will be removed if needed.

<a href="http://i.imgur.com/m1uL1pG.jpg"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/m1uL1pG.jpg" width="630"></a>



~Amplitude Studios

Hey guys,

I know you are eagerly waiting for the new update, but as Mathieu explained the other day, it’s work in progress! I thought it could be fun if I shared with you some screenshots and explanations on what we are currently working on and that is actually coming for you. We'll start with the roads: the visual and game design explained by Mathias and the game designers.




Hi, I’m Mathias, 3D Artist/Lead Artist at Amplitude Studios.

These past few days, I have worked on the roads in Endless Legend that you will discover in the next update. I’ll let the Game Designers handle the gameplay aspect of the feature below, so I’ll just focus on the visual part.

Anyway, we are using what is called “decals” with an atlas to create and apply roads on the landscape. Indeed, it’s quite an old school technique but with all the bump/specular effects, roads are well integrated and fits with the “detailed board game” art style of Endless Legend. You could almost compare it this to re-usable pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

</img>

I have worked a lot with Timothée, (my other favourite graphic programmer ^^), he programmed a few specific things to make the roads clearer and more realistic.

• Trees are removed when a road passes through a forest
  
• We have small bridges across rivers
  
• He makes fancy transitions when paths goes from various terrain types
  
• And we created a battlement with an access to the city where the road reaches it

What are roads?
They are used to link two adjacent cities, allowing faster movement for armies and enabling trade route bonuses between them.


How do you create a road?
The prerequisites for a road to automatically appear are:

• The road improvement has been built in at least one of the two cities
  
• There must be at least one valid land path between the two regions that doesn’t go through any other region

When those requirements are met, roads will be drawn on the corresponding path inside their region. If the other region doesn’t have the improvement, then only half of the road will become complete roads (paved roads), and the other region will have pathways instead.

Roads are always made on the shortest path between the two connected points, regardless of the existing road shortcuts.


Road bonuses
Paved roads will reduce movement cost on the corresponding tile to 0.5, even on forests. However, pathways don’t have any bonus.

 
Old roads
When a city with is destroyed or moved, all roads within that region will start to deteriorate:

• Roads and pathways will disappear after 10 turns.
  
• If a player creates or moves a city (with Roads improvement) into that region again, new roads will be created, and not necessarily passing through old road parts.
  
• Any pathway on the same tile than paved road parts will be removed if needed.

~Amplitude Studios

From the Dev Blog: http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/content.php?430-Endless-Legend-Production-Update

Hi everyone,

I wanted to give you an update on where we stand on the production side of Endless Legend. We are knee deep in development of a great beta version, but you do not necessarily realize that. So here are a few clarifications.


Since the release of the alpha version by the end of April, we have delivered a number of patches for the most crucial bugs, then resumed the development of new features which were dearly missing in the game you played so far. The way we work is in sprints of 2 weeks, which result in a build review and the start of a new sprint. In parallel, we send game versions to our QA on a regular basis, which results usually (we are not perfect :)) in bugs to fix. The difficulty for us is that fixing bugs prevents us to develop more features and improvements (including the ones you requested). So for us it is a matter of balancing the time spent on fixing bugs and developing new features. Also, there is a strong temptation to become feature complete to avoid new side effects and bugs.

The bottom line is that it is difficult right now to deliver a build with the quality standards you are used to. Still, we are considering releasing a “work in progress” build in a parallel branch to the main build. It would be your choice to download this build (however imperfect) and give us feedback on the current development. We will update you soon if we choose this solution.

In any case, we are really fully focused on the game, we restaffed the team a few months ago with additional developers, so we have what it takes to reach our objectives.


Since the release of the alpha, we have worked on the following aspects on the game.

A new faction is almost complete, with graphical assets (units, cities, animations), design content (affinity, traits) as well as its specific gameplay. This faction was more complex to develop as its gameplay is really exotic and brings what some of you thought was missing in a Fantasy game (I think I revealed too much already ;)). We have also started working on the 6th faction of the game, which contains a very specific gameplay as well.

We have implemented new modes of transportation, especially with the ship navigation system, which now allows us to play on maps with several continents. Sadly we need to teach the AI how to use it, so we have to wait a bit more before we release this. We have also added a road system which can connect cities and speed up transportation on land. We are developing the trade routes aspect in addition to that, which will greatly encourage the use of the diplomatic system.

The diplomatic system was pretty well developed feature-wise in the alpha, but it was missing a proper AI behaviour. We already have developed a good deal of peace/truce/war management by the AI, and are progressing on the ability for the AI to setup contract terms and handle more complex options. The diplomatic AI has been developed with an Adaptive Multi Agent System (AMAS) which is already operational and shows good potential to emerge interesting AI decisions (we used it on the low level city management with good results). It is a huge step for us because the tools which come with this AMAS make it easier to monitor how the AI is reasoning, instead of having to understand a bunch of interconnected algorithms.

We are also developing other capabilities for the AI, such as acquiring resources on the terrain, designing units relevant to the owned resources, and assembling more consistent armies. We are working on an improvement for the military behaviour and a better interception/avoidance of enemy armies by the AI. A new city governor has been implemented and seems satisfactory. We are improving the deployment / targeting system in the battle. The deployment itself is almost done, and should take much better account of terrain elevation and defensive positions. It should greatly help the development of the new targeting system in battle, so that units choose more meaningful targets.

Speaking of the battle, we have already applied numerous improvements to its behaviour, for example the display of the units list in deployment. We still plan on adding a game option to select the number of resolution rounds per order phase. For players avid of complete tactical control, you will be able to give orders for each execution round. However we hope that the new battle AI will be greatly improved and will allow less tactical players to enjoy the battle just as well. We are spending a great deal of time improving the feedback and understanding of the battle, especially displaying exact stats in real time, which is missing right now. It is a complex task, because we are transforming a round-based simulation to an almost real time simulation, and I suspect that will not make things easy for multiplayer synchronisation…

There is a number of smaller features that I will enumerate rapidly and which are complete or all but complete: an immersive faction selection interface at game start (instead of a droplist), improved Vaulters holy resource gameplay, improvement of the Siege system, city militia to avoid losing your city to a single scout, several visual improvements and animations.


This is the one big feature we want to release for our beta version. We have been working on it for months now, and even before then we built a new messaging architecture from the ground up. The architecture is solid and we have been able to play the game for tens of turns without desync. However desyncs do occur from time to time, as new added features do not always take multiplayer into account. It is a tedious task for our multiplayer developer to track all these mishaps. Our new architecture seems to be robust enough (much more than Endless Space) and we also have developed specific tools to track desyncs and fix them faster.

Again, the temptation is strong to complete as many game feature as we can before we deliver the multiplayer, to avoid regressions, but we cannot wait forever and are impatient to see you play the multiplayer. And besides, that is what the Games2Gether is all about: adding new features. On a very positive note, we have a much better management of the host dropping the game. When this happens, a new host is elected and all remaining players enter a new lobby, ready to restart the game. We have considered having an auto migration, but this could result in an unwanted loading time when the host leaves the game. Instead we prefer that players decide to continue or not, in the lobby. Of course we will listen to your feedback when you try it.


As I stated in a previous post, it is difficult for us to deliver a Mac version right now, as it would slow down our QA and build delivery processes. Adding features and improvements is the priority right now. Still, our engineers have started looking into the Mac version. The biggest issue usually consists of making running on Mac the external components used by the game (DLLs, video and sound playback). The game is running on Mac now, although we have to fix some graphical shaders for OpenGL. Also, we had a small setback as a burglar (for real) stole our development MacBook last Friday… So a new Mac is coming, we are on it, but we need more time to avoid jeopardising the development of the full game.


As stated above, it is difficult for us to deliver a new version right now with sufficient quality. However, we will look into a “Test” branch for the bravest ones. For the rest of you, we will probably deliver a new build between 2 to 4 weeks, depending on the quality of what we have in 2 weeks.


Thanks for your attention!

~Amplitude Studios

From the Dev Blog: http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/content.php?430-Endless-Legend-Production-Update

Hi everyone,

I wanted to give you an update on where we stand on the production side of Endless Legend. We are knee deep in development of a great beta version, but you do not necessarily realize that. So here are a few clarifications.


Since the release of the alpha version by the end of April, we have delivered a number of patches for the most crucial bugs, then resumed the development of new features which were dearly missing in the game you played so far. The way we work is in sprints of 2 weeks, which result in a build review and the start of a new sprint. In parallel, we send game versions to our QA on a regular basis, which results usually (we are not perfect :)) in bugs to fix. The difficulty for us is that fixing bugs prevents us to develop more features and improvements (including the ones you requested). So for us it is a matter of balancing the time spent on fixing bugs and developing new features. Also, there is a strong temptation to become feature complete to avoid new side effects and bugs.

The bottom line is that it is difficult right now to deliver a build with the quality standards you are used to. Still, we are considering releasing a “work in progress” build in a parallel branch to the main build. It would be your choice to download this build (however imperfect) and give us feedback on the current development. We will update you soon if we choose this solution.

In any case, we are really fully focused on the game, we restaffed the team a few months ago with additional developers, so we have what it takes to reach our objectives.


Since the release of the alpha, we have worked on the following aspects on the game.

A new faction is almost complete, with graphical assets (units, cities, animations), design content (affinity, traits) as well as its specific gameplay. This faction was more complex to develop as its gameplay is really exotic and brings what some of you thought was missing in a Fantasy game (I think I revealed too much already ;)). We have also started working on the 6th faction of the game, which contains a very specific gameplay as well.

We have implemented new modes of transportation, especially with the ship navigation system, which now allows us to play on maps with several continents. Sadly we need to teach the AI how to use it, so we have to wait a bit more before we release this. We have also added a road system which can connect cities and speed up transportation on land. We are developing the trade routes aspect in addition to that, which will greatly encourage the use of the diplomatic system.

The diplomatic system was pretty well developed feature-wise in the alpha, but it was missing a proper AI behaviour. We already have developed a good deal of peace/truce/war management by the AI, and are progressing on the ability for the AI to setup contract terms and handle more complex options. The diplomatic AI has been developed with an Adaptive Multi Agent System (AMAS) which is already operational and shows good potential to emerge interesting AI decisions (we used it on the low level city management with good results). It is a huge step for us because the tools which come with this AMAS make it easier to monitor how the AI is reasoning, instead of having to understand a bunch of interconnected algorithms.

We are also developing other capabilities for the AI, such as acquiring resources on the terrain, designing units relevant to the owned resources, and assembling more consistent armies. We are working on an improvement for the military behaviour and a better interception/avoidance of enemy armies by the AI. A new city governor has been implemented and seems satisfactory. We are improving the deployment / targeting system in the battle. The deployment itself is almost done, and should take much better account of terrain elevation and defensive positions. It should greatly help the development of the new targeting system in battle, so that units choose more meaningful targets.

Speaking of the battle, we have already applied numerous improvements to its behaviour, for example the display of the units list in deployment. We still plan on adding a game option to select the number of resolution rounds per order phase. For players avid of complete tactical control, you will be able to give orders for each execution round. However we hope that the new battle AI will be greatly improved and will allow less tactical players to enjoy the battle just as well. We are spending a great deal of time improving the feedback and understanding of the battle, especially displaying exact stats in real time, which is missing right now. It is a complex task, because we are transforming a round-based simulation to an almost real time simulation, and I suspect that will not make things easy for multiplayer synchronisation…

There is a number of smaller features that I will enumerate rapidly and which are complete or all but complete: an immersive faction selection interface at game start (instead of a droplist), improved Vaulters holy resource gameplay, improvement of the Siege system, city militia to avoid losing your city to a single scout, several visual improvements and animations.


This is the one big feature we want to release for our beta version. We have been working on it for months now, and even before then we built a new messaging architecture from the ground up. The architecture is solid and we have been able to play the game for tens of turns without desync. However desyncs do occur from time to time, as new added features do not always take multiplayer into account. It is a tedious task for our multiplayer developer to track all these mishaps. Our new architecture seems to be robust enough (much more than Endless Space) and we also have developed specific tools to track desyncs and fix them faster.

Again, the temptation is strong to complete as many game feature as we can before we deliver the multiplayer, to avoid regressions, but we cannot wait forever and are impatient to see you play the multiplayer. And besides, that is what the Games2Gether is all about: adding new features. On a very positive note, we have a much better management of the host dropping the game. When this happens, a new host is elected and all remaining players enter a new lobby, ready to restart the game. We have considered having an auto migration, but this could result in an unwanted loading time when the host leaves the game. Instead we prefer that players decide to continue or not, in the lobby. Of course we will listen to your feedback when you try it.


As I stated in a previous post, it is difficult for us to deliver a Mac version right now, as it would slow down our QA and build delivery processes. Adding features and improvements is the priority right now. Still, our engineers have started looking into the Mac version. The biggest issue usually consists of making running on Mac the external components used by the game (DLLs, video and sound playback). The game is running on Mac now, although we have to fix some graphical shaders for OpenGL. Also, we had a small setback as a burglar (for real) stole our development MacBook last Friday… So a new Mac is coming, we are on it, but we need more time to avoid jeopardising the development of the full game.


As stated above, it is difficult for us to deliver a new version right now with sufficient quality. However, we will look into a “Test” branch for the bravest ones. For the rest of you, we will probably deliver a new build between 2 to 4 weeks, depending on the quality of what we have in 2 weeks.


Thanks for your attention!

~Amplitude Studios