Alaloth: Champions of The Four Kingdoms - Gamera Interactive || Herald
Hello Champions!
Full support for mouse & keyboard is available now with the latest patch, live since a few hours, as we promised with our roadmap update. We were targeting Wednesday but we decided to go on with M&K and split the World Update in different tranches, adding contents in the next days. This allow us to go on with the world dressing the proper way and to provide support with M&K if needed. The update comes with some other fixes and tweaks we did on the way, details in the changelog belowt! Sorry for being slow in answering here on the board and on our Discord server, but we had a few crazy days, traveling here and there for some cool corporate stuff happening. We thought it was good to celebrate all of this with a Week Long Deal here on Steam! Alaloth will be 20% off until Sunday but it even means that you can get our amazing Supporter Edition Bundle with a 36% discount! It includes the Supporter Pack, our 220+ pages artbook and our 4 hours OST! Don't waste this chance to join us, Plamen awaits!
CHANGELOG
Full mouse & keyboard support is now real. Added mouse pointer support: cursor can be used both to interact with UI elements and to lock enemies (while in a fighting area).
[/b]
Added support for navigating item lists through the scroll wheel.
Fixed many consumables showing a timed icon for its healing effect despite it being instantaneous.
Now various non-healing consumables will not be usable outside of Fighting Areas; all consumables with healing effects will be usable only if the user is not at max hp.
Fixed a bug that could lead to more than one dish being able to be consumed while inside a fighting area.
Dishes consumed outside were correctly overwriting each other.
Fixed a bug that could prevent proper text input while in character creation.
Fixed a bug that could lead some consumables to show a “x0” quantity while used inside the Character UI
Fixed a bug that could lead to a permanent loss of input for a player while in a co-op session.
Adjustments to some boss introduction scenes with new lore-wise intro timeline.
Alaloth: Champions of The Four Kingdoms - Gamera Interactive || Herald
Hello Champions
It has been a while since we've published our first development roadmap and it is time to update it! As we announced last week, we have done with mouse & keyboard and tested the new features for a while. We had a bit of regression on the way but it was pretty normal, considering that we had to rework the UI entirely. We don't expect major bugs but in case, poke us as usual and we'll try to fix everything at the speed of light. In general, we have to say that we have been faster than what we've originally predicted and of course even if we have decided to stick with the original plan we've drafted, lot of new ideas have been discussed by the team, following your feed and new inputs from new partners willing to jump in and help us with the development. The result is that the contents that we are going to put in will be way more than the originally predicted ones and we hope this would be just one more proof of the effort we are putting in our work, to make Alaloth the great game we've always had in mind. We spent some time data at hand in the last month, checking other games available on the market as well and putting together a few numbers. We can say that Alaloth is currently the biggest RPG game on the market in terms of contents, considering the size of the world, the number of locations and NPC we have and so on. Proud of this! Let's go with some more info for you all!
17 patches released so far [we promised: no slow down], a major update with strongholds in and the very first round of balancing. Two months and half. We would say that these could be considered good numbers and we are happy of the results achieved in this 60+ days. The game sold very well in July, always considering that we've been forced to launch during a special sale and summer is the worst season to launch a game. But hey, no problem, big things ahead. As we said many times, no need to underline that bug fixing, new contents, balancing etc. will be on-going till the end and so, plans may change moving on with the development. By now, we've always delivered way more contents than originally scheduled and we are going like this if possible: it's our baby, it has to be your fav RPG for a long time!
FULL SUPPORT FOR MOUSE & KEYBOARD
Here we are. We started with just partial support for M&K and yes, we knew you hated us. We updated the game introducing some improvements and we promised full support for September. We've finally added mouse pointer support: cursor can be used both to interact with UI elements and to lock enemies while in a Fighting Area. We have added support for navigating item lists using the scroll wheel and all now works properly. Hope to get people waiting for this back on board and hope to get some thumbs-up from people that were rightfully criticizing us at the beginning [but again: we've been forced to go like this, running out of time for the release]
GRIFFINS AND SHIPS
Nope, we are not introducing fast travel, no worries! Simply, each race has a unique character doing unique things [Forgeback, The Red Mage, Nohrged-Kin...] and elves have Kellis, which is way more a char created for everyone [no spoilers but you know]. We thought that would have been cool to introduce something to balance things a bit and Griffin Riders will be available very soon! The Riders will allow elven champions to travel in Larastir riding a griffin, avoiding random encounters and saving precious time while searching for the shards. Only elven champions could be able to use them and only after proving their strenght in battle. The Riders' HQ can be found in Edhenen and it is one of the first new indoor location we are going to add to each city in the future updates. Ships will be available for all instead, just paying money to one of the various organizations connecting ports of The Sea of Solitude. On boarding will be possible in Baystone and Rockstarn and routes will connect these cities with Na'Sharak, the port of Vhoken-Mahl. This is just a first step to set-up new coastal cities and areas in the bottom part of the map that will be developed soon with super cool FA and POI we are going to share asap!
NEW FIGHTING AREAS AND BOSS FIGHTS
Easy as it is. We are working on new FA and boss fights to increase the number of unique fights you are going to have during your run. We are focusing on areas bringing in a bit of puzzling and Indiana Jones-like sections and all of this will come along with a bunch of new mobs we are working on right now. Design in progress but of course we are building up everything to keep a good balance in terms of options for each kingdoms so if we are going with 4 new FA and 4 new boss fights, everything will be splitted among kingdoms as usual. Sligthly postponed dragon fights in our schedule. They are not appearing in the new roadmap but as for anything else: we can suddendly patch the game and you can find dragons in. It really depends on iterations on the way.
COMPANIONS, CHAMPIONS, PERMADEATH
We are slowly iterating every single item, char, mob in the game. Companions and champions are one of the prio as well and we are going to rework them shortly. We think that the first bunch of fixes for companions has been useful, having the chance to bring back them in action if wounded. We are on numbers now, customizing them by lore, increasing poise for chars like Khoran or making dex-focused chars like Vaden or Zian way more lethal. Same for the others, of course. Champions are prio as well, aiming to create unique duels with each of the 40 warriors available, to increase difficulty in Competitive Mode. A lot of people is asking about difficulty settings and we are on this. Permadeath will be introduced soon and we are thinking about a way to offer new challenges as requested.
ARENA, NEW TRAITS, CRAFTING, ALCHEMY
Arena Mode is going to happen. First of all, we are adding The Bleeding of Hashak in-game. It will be the first available arena to test stuff, using the location as part of the campaign. Hashak will be sligthly modified and the arena will be available at given conditions, considering that it is an orcish environment connected by lore with The Hunt and other major celebrations in Baga. The Arena Mode will follow and will be a stand-alone mode of course. Going to give more details as soon as we'll have details to share for the first iteration! We are adding 12 new traits to customize your char as well. Customization is one of the most requested feature and we are starting with this but new stuff will pop-up in the future [can't say anything now about BG-like portraits but hey!]. Crafting will change: new blueprints will be available and the process will be simplified a bit, changing specs of crafting materials, their availability and prices. Alchemy will be available, giving champions the chance to create potions.
Warm-up here...
...die here
MISC
By the end of the year we are hopefully going to have the full picture for the future of the company and the future of the brand. The end of the year is even the deadline set to have the final round of balancing, using the next months to go through every system. Achieving this, we could focus on new massive features we have in mind and you've asked for. By now, it's a slow process that forces us to constantly iterate even with small changes happening. With the right numbers in place, we'll be able to work on new stuff with solid foundations and in a faster way, starting to consider all the ideas you've sent and all the proposals we are evaluating internally. No worries, we are not revolutioning the whole thing just to put in random stuff because they have been requested. We are not going to turn the game into an online game or such. We hope to develop our community more and more, to work using a partecipative design flow, as we've always wanted. If you want to help now, just talk about the game on socials, share your experience, point people to our Steam page or Discord server and if you enjoy the game, drop a review here. It really helps at this stage! Write soon
Alaloth: Champions of The Four Kingdoms - Gamera Interactive || Herald
Hello Champions!
Time for a new update, fall is coming and we can't wait to show you what we are working on! The good news is that we've been incredibly fast during the summer, so the stronghold update has been released before leaving for GamesCom and we had the chance to gain some extra time for the next features scheduled. Mouse & keyboard is the next big thing. We already explained why we had to release with partial support only, so we are not talking about this once again. We are testing right now and even if we were expecting a bit of regression and UI-related issues, everything seems to be fine now. We hope to be able to release the new patch next week, just let us check the last changes we did. We are running an extra week of testing on our internal branch.
No worries, mouse cursor will be bigger
September is even the month of the first world update. As we already said, we are going to add 4 new areas with new NPC and new quests and we are at work to dress each area the coolest way right now. We had a lot of meetings to discuss how to set things properly and we are thinking to split the upload of the new locations as soon as we'll have ready what we need, instead of sending out a massive patch. We'll probably be back on this in the next days because once again, we ended up in something bigger than expected [with the same time budgeted, kudos to the team]. We are going to update the roadmap soon, because we've already finished these areas, other new locations [arena anyone?] and we've just started working on new FA as well. Not talking about dragons, completely new FA with more puzzle elements, traps and so on, introducing new mobs and features that we thought would have been a great addition to the gameplay [more details in the next updates].
Rockstarn
To summarize: no secret that we had a great GamesCom and we were there to catch-up with new potential partners to help with the future of the game and the brand. After the issues we had in the past, we decided to set-up meetings with trusted people only, big guns and people we really feel could help to make Alaloth great. We have now data and info validating what we've always thought and what we've always said when pitching the game: we have something unique here and there is nothing else like this on the market, which is something that everyone knows, apparently [at least who knows about games, you know...]. No rushes on our side and again, we are not going to promise things that we can't deliver but we have a ton of options to consider now and many cool ideas to work on. Full coop campaign, multiplayer, online features, battlegrounds, sieges, new companions, new modes, DLCs... everything is constantly under discussion and be sure that we'll give 110% as usual to move on and be able to improve the game as much as possible.
Giulia, our Producer, with Rick from Fextralife and a very promising young Game Designer sharing some prosecco at our booth!
Last but not least: we've received hundreds of messages, mails, DM with suggestions, feed and precious comments and we want just to confirm once again that we are trying to answer to everyone as usual. Many were asking about three main things: special sales, console versions and retail. About sales: yes, we are going to discount the game in the future of course, because special sales are the best thing to raise numbers and it's pretty normal doing like this for any studio in the world. For sure, we are not going to discount the game more than 20% at least for the first year and yes, we can confirm that the full release is not going to change the price point, despite the huge number of contents we already put in/we'll put in in the future. That's because we thought it was due to the people that supported us at the very beginning and because we are not going to undersell a product that we think is worth the price, considering that we are talking about one of the biggest indie RPG on the marketin terms of contents/repliability value. Just facts. This is the best moment to start your adventure in Plamen, then don't wait!
We have to say that we are working on a very special anniversary sale and something could happen at some point and of course we have to evaluate special events from time to time, to set-up things properly but again, no promises and new info as soon as possible. along with the community-related activities we've teased a few weeks ago. Consoles? We have very good options with top tier publishers willing to port the game on every existing platform [as announced ages ago] but we've been super clear about this: focus on EA and full release on PC first. Retail? Yep, work in progress: we are partnering with a top player for this, hope to share something very soon!
Alaloth: Champions of The Four Kingdoms - Gamera Interactive || Herald
CHANGELOG
The Mountain Horns quest marker in world map pointing to wrong location has been fixed
Shadow of the Mudar quest rewarding 3x Skyfeater trinket is now working properly
Boss encounters are now introduced by a quick intro timeline to go deep with lore. Timeline will be polished and iterated with next updates [bosses updated: Bogromon, Alaloth, Akidaan, Kariasha, Jarzothan, Ahromon and Ilzeborth]
Item, weapons and equipment iteration is still in progress. A new set of stats has been implemented, changing weapons, shields, armors [resistances/bonuses]
Gems rarity and market value fixed
Dialogues and barks all around Plamen improved [showing now variations for each race, previously not working properly 100% times
Minor bugs fixed [missing icons, card data, descriptions]
Alaloth: Champions of The Four Kingdoms - Gamera Interactive || Herald
CHANGELOG
Fixed a bug interrupting companions’ bow skills and freezing the behavior of all AI in the scene
Removed 2H weapons leftovers from strongholds’ blacksmiths stocks
Fixed some enemies’ AoE skills breaking when aiming at a non active target
Description fixed for Earthquake, Leaping Strike, Force Wave, Rain of Arrows skills
Fixed Tutorial UI getting cut when using wide aspect ratios
Fixed a bug making the bounty board unresponsive from time to time
Fixed a bug causing wandering vendors’ dialogue options lead to Vendor UI despite the choice
Fixed a bug causing player-controlled companions being unable to parry enemies’ attacks
Parrying arrows with weapons with perfect timing allows now players to deflect the projectile
A first round of iteration on weapons has been completed. Base damage of all weapons has been reworked and CritChance is now different for almost every weapon in-game
Alaloth: Champions of The Four Kingdoms - Gamera Interactive || Herald
CHANGELOG
Achievement ‘Snail’ will now unlock on the 5th year as by description (4 years in-game); achievement ‘Sloth’ description updated to the 2nd year (1 year in-game)
Fix Solemnwood navigation inconsistently breaking on scene load
Fixed a quest related special vendor spawned notification
Fixed Masterchef of Baga quest markers
Moved a QG in Goldport night layout
Fixed Desert Scales’ QG availability
Revised cost and rarity for stronghold upgrades
Fixed a bug that could make the councilor spawn two times during the king summon’s chronicle.
Strongholds items and servants prices iterated. Servants have now rarity. New servants with different stocks and skills will be available through the Councilor from time to time
Monday morning and here we are, back in action, after a super crazy week in Germany. The team took a short break but a couple of heroes [[url=https://www.instagram.com/eldacar79]Alberto[/url] & Giulia] drove to Cologne for the most important event of the year, 3 years later. Meeting old [and new] friends has been amazing, we missed IRL stuff so much. Sorry for being slower than usual in answering on Discord but hope you had a good time playing the game or just enjoying some vacation before September's restart. This update is just to inform you that we are fully operative, working on features announced with our first draft of the roadmap. Full mouse & keyboard support is our prio now, happening next month along with a very first update of the world map and new other features we are going to explain in details later on next week. Back to GC topic, a lot of people asked why we were attending the event and we are posting this to answer this question as well!
Making games is about the long term and we had the chance to meet many potential partners to plan the future of the game for years to come. When we started pitching Alaloth a few years ago, we were pretty sure to have a very unique concept. The point is that every single dev in the world is basically convinced to pitch something unique and 99% of the time it is not true. Validation comes with users playing the game and giving feedback and that's the reason why now, data at hand, we are pushing so hard and we are asking for support as never before. "It's like Baldur's Gate and Diablo had a baby". This is what people say the most of the time when reviewing Alaloth and this is why we're convinced that the full release has the potentials to be huge with the right partner jumping in. So it's about finding the one open to discuss the next steps toward 1.0 and beyond, with a few DLC already planned and so many ideas on our desk [yes guys, we know everyone is asking for proper multiplayer and online features...]. We'll be focusing on balancing for the next weeks, expect a new patch later on today, fixing a few strongholds-related issues [wrong prices for servants] and some other cool stuff. Thank you all!
Sunday is not the best day to deliver a massive update, said the PR experts, but hey, we were aiming to deliver strongholds before leaving for GamesCom and we did it! This is the first part of a major update which is super important considering the long term and the whole process in terms of balancing and polishing. This patch includes changes to the global economy sys and some other adds and fixes but doesn't require to start a new game!
IMPORTANT NOTE The game is playable usiing old saves as usual but issues can occurr from time to time. We are working try to prevent it, new saves will be bug free so if you spot something wrong, please consider this [i.e. Entering Free Mode could not stop enemy pawns or some UI elements as portraits or texts could be wrong[/i]
STRONGHOLDS
We were aiming to have strongholds by the end of the month, but we decided to speed-up things and go on with a first iteration of the sys, which is pretty cool. The stronghold has been thought to be a customizable personal hub, allowing players to plan their moves in a safe environment with the help of many different servants. The stronghold will be open to visitors, new characters will be available and new quests will be unlocked on the way. Taxes will be collected granted 10k gold per year.
Councilor: the Councilor is in charge to recruit servants on your behalf. When the Councilor is tasked and a new servant is hired, players will have to wait around one week to see him in the stronghold
Chef: the Chef grants the player the chance to cook recipes available in the cookbook in the comfort of a private kitchen
Priest: the Priest will unlock the private shrine to respec your character using Orbs of Chaos
Debt Collector: the Debt Collector is the one in charge to take care of taxes in your feud. A good Debt Collector can raise the amount of tax collected up to 50% per year
Architect: the Architect is in charge to provide upgrades to the stronghold and to make it better and better with fancy furnitures. Fancy stuff will pop-up in his store time by time. Upgrading a stronghold will take 2 weeks
Special Chars: unique characters will visit the stronghold granting new quests or asking for something from time to time [i.e. a special vendor with a unique stock, a unique QG and so on]
GAMEPLAY
We've put in a few important quality of life improvements, following your suggestions on our Discord server. We've worked on quests and the very good news is that we've finally put in all the contents we wanted, having more than 150 quests in place, now in their final shape with their final rewards. We've implemented the last 25 missing rewards today and there is just a bunch left still giving out money only [that were placeholders to let quests work]. This is a very important thing, because many players will notice big changes in their inventory as with everything in place, we've been finally able to determine the [almost] final level of rarity of each item. This means that what you see now is coherent with quests and tasks you can find all around Plamen and even if stats are not matching the real value/fancyness of the item/weapon, this will happen soon with the second part of the update. Moreover, we've added a new tracking sys with a cursor showing the direction for your tracked quesst [if any] that will be visible in the infobox of cities and places on the map.
As we said, saves are still working but we suggest to start over a new char to check what is changed and enjoy what is in now. We've even given a first pass to Grand Masters, changing their rewards. Not still working 100% but now they grant cool items basically lowering all cooldowns and in the future, they'll grant extra bonuses for the skillset linked to the respec of choice. Durability and repair costs have been iterated once again. Repair now costs 15% of the item value while selling an item to a merchant, will grant 40% of the item value to the player. Workbench have been iterated as well, considering the work done on all the items in-game. Repairing will be cheaper and workbench have been reworked accordingly.
ECONOMY
This is probably way more important than anything else at the mo. We've iterated every single item in-game, adjusting numbers a bit but working on in-game values to start. Doing like this is a bit weird, but for a number of reasons we're forced to do this kind of work to balance things properly. So, as we already said, this first round was mostly to align available rewards and avaialble items with a ratio, focusing on the progression of all systems together blending the proper way. Prices have been generally lowered and made consistent even if you are going to find items that will be still higher/lower in terms of stats, with the proposed value/rarity.
This will be fixed in the second round, but you can already see improvements around, making the whole thing way more coherent. Consumables, weapons, shields, armors, trinkets, belts, rings, cloaks: everything has had a first rework and even if we've tested things a bit, this week will be useful to gather feeds and data for the future updates. As usual, don't panic if something seems broken: we can revert and even if we'll be out for GamesCom and the team is going to take a break, we'll be available for emergencies.
NEXT
We are leaving for Germany today, have a great week! We have 50+ meetings for Alaloth and we hope to come back with enough info to be able to draft the long term plan heading to the full release. A few publishers would like to jump-in, investors are asking about our future projects and we are in the middle of a huge puzzle, trying to find the best way to solve it. Considering our past experiences and the actual situation, we'll be very careful with the next steps. The game is doing well, feeds are cool and we feel, now more than ever, to have something unique to push here. So no rushes and we'll keep you posted as usual [we realized just yesterday how many updates & patches we've sent out in one month and how many channels we handle real time trying to answer to every single question we receive...]. Happy to confirm that we are completely aligned with the roadmap we've shared and we'll probably be able to speed-up things in September, with the things scheduled [M&K anyone?].
CHANGELOG
Strongholds are here! [with 7 achievements]
New quest available Venomous Strike
Overviews are now shown in a frame, supporting all resolutions the proper way
A new pop-up shows now the total required cost when repairing the equipment
Quest icons in World Map are now bigger
Active quests titles and their statuses are now shown in the locations' info boxes on the World Map
A new marker has been implemented on your pawn, to show you the right direction to the tracked quest [when possilbe]
First round of iteration for global economy has been done. More than 700 items checked
Quest Woe of a Stubborn can be completed as intended
Quest A Whole New World had a typo in one of the characters name, now fixed, and its update notifications are now properly shown after each step completion
Lesser Cloak of Vigor can now be equipped properly, showing the right cloak model on you character
Quest The Hunt has been fixed and now do fails when conditions occurr
Quest Imperial Intolerance makers have been fixed and now the quest is doable as intended
Grand Masters' rewards have been iterated and are now more powerful and unique. More on the way
In Thilaris a Quest Giver, not showing the proper 3D model, is now fixed
Some POIs names in Codex have been fixed, as many other typos around. Proof in progress
Blacksmith showing doubled blueprints in Winterleaf has been fixed
VFX and SFX for eating/drinking actions are now shown in Inventory view, making it more clear when you eat/drink something directly from that UI, out of the FA
The Citadel overpaint and navmesh have been improved, some unwanted obstacles to the player navigation have now been removed
The Harbingers have been iterated to have more challenging fights
Hashak overpaint has been iterated and improved [do you see the arena?]
Timelines in strongholds have been improved
Quest Troubles of a Merchant removes QI correctly when completed
Frostsong has now its icon and card properly displayed
Quests The Wold Rider, The Woods Keeper, Condemned, Accused, Exiled, have now their markers correctly displayed
A Northern Voyage interactable item is no longer interactable during combat, as intended
Bosses Xamoth and Drag'Drimin aren't spawning anymore if their FA has been already claimed by anyone, as intended
Quest Nature's Keepsake reward is now as intended [showing 3 rings of the same kind]
A few 1H weapons showing wrong assets in size, have been fixed
Quest Lost on the Frozen Trail interactable in Silvermoor is now properly working
Quests A Lovely Gift and Queen of the Dead have now their day/night indicators properly shown in World Map
Cosmetic improvements on almost every in-game environment
Alaloth: Champions of The Four Kingdoms - Gamera Interactive || Herald
CHANGELOG
Unity updated to a new stable version allowing us to put in custom tool to get useful data for balancing and iterations. Small issues could pop-up despite the intensive testing sessions before the switch. Just be sure of send over dumps if weird things happen
Dhara’Ahzim codex entry now works properly
Leaping Strike attack making the player ‘bounce-back’ when used on a wide enemy now works properly
Shaba-Ku quests’ order switched (House of Orphans, Baga’s Shame, Mirrored Vanities)
Brewdall Family Crest Quest dialogue is now fixed
See-through outlines of players when behind some NPC now fixed
Warlord skills not working properly with an unarmed char now fixed
Polearms are now correctly held with both hands while in fighting stance
Pad now works properly when remapping mouse & keyboard
North-East corridor navmesh in Stonechair now fixed [behind Xamoth]
Spawn point and irregula navmesh in Rot Finger now fixed
Tentative fix of the cage’s glitch in Black Heart deployed