Oct 1, 2019

Bright Red Skies - Violaman

For September, a variety of visual improvements were made as well as some combat mechanics improvements. In terms of the visual improvements, there was work done on combat where a victory screen, intro animation sequence, and AI action visualization were all added. Additionally, for combat since flanking is a mechanic in the game, there is now a way to set your end of turn orientation. And finally, some general UI and scene transition animations were implemented.

Combat Scene Visuals

I wanted to add some of the visual flair that a lot of other JRPGs have, so I added a victory screen for the end of combat. This screen will show the experience gained and eventually the loot dropped. I think this a great place to showcase the character art, so I made the portraits large!

On the other hand, at the beginning of combat, there's now an intro sequence that highlights both the enemy and player units on the map. This also pans around the map, so you can have a look at the landscape that you're fighting on. My guess is that seeing this will get annoying so don't worry, there's an option to skip this.

The last visual improvement to combat is with visualizing what the enemy AI actions are for the turn. I wanted everything to be more transparent so the range indicators are shown for whatever action they take, and the hex/hexes selected will now have a more obvious yellow highlight.

Can't Touch This

One of the combat mechanics that play an important role is the idea of flanking. Trying to get behind the enemy is great since they won't have their cover bonus, but if you're also within their flanking arc then you're able to have some extra stats boosts. The enemy can do the same to you though, which means that your character’s end of turn orientation matters a lot! To give you more freedom and prevent the game from unintentionally screwing you over, there is now a step at the end of turn to select your orientation.

General UI Work

Outside of the combat scene, there were additional improvements made in terms of scene loading and UI. I felt like there needed to be more flexibility when it came to the scene transitions between scenes so there is now an element that plays in the background that loads and unloads scenes and chooses the transition animation that should be used. Right now, I only have the "shutter" transition implemented, but there are many more that can be added.

The UI work done was on the player menu where a party member screen was added. It's pretty standard where you're able to select your party members and see what their stats and abilities are. Selecting a stat will give you detailed information about what the stat is for, so you won't be confused over what all the icons represent.

Behind the Scenes

This is a section of the devlog where I like to talk about the parts of the game that were improved but aren't necessarily big enough to have their own section. For September, some of the other things that were done are:

You can now select and use items.
Added Status Effects back to the character info UI.
Status effects that inflict an effect at the start of combat will visually show an animation.
Fixed the alignment and size of the icons that appear over enemy heads.
When selecting a position to move to, it now shows icons over the enemy for if it will be a flank or if you'll be outside of your effective range.
Fixed the rare issue with the image sometimes stretching.
Some Unity inspector quality of life improvements to make adding more images easier on my end.

Going Forward

Coming into the end of September I can see the game shaping up and I'm personally really happy with the progress made! I'm still hoping to get a combat demo out by the end of October, but it might be a little tight if I end up implementing everything I want to. Here are all the things I'd like to complete for October:

Destructible cover.
Enemy loot tables and corresponding UI elements.
Complete enemy AI (determine the best end of turn orientation, improve their best target selection, etc)
Make sure that the demo runs from start to finish on a new machine and release the demo!
Procedurally generated positions for the "Cover" objects (maybe, if time permits).

I'm also in the process of finding a character artist and have contacted a bunch of really talented people to see how they draw Yarden and Sofie, two of the main characters. The first gif actually had the images from one of these artists, but I still haven't figured out who I'd like to go forward with. If you follow me on Twitter I'll showcase all the art, so feel free to let me know which one you like best!

If you have any suggestions or want to give your opinion on the game, follow me on social media, I listen and respond to any comment :D

Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/vD8XYkn
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mark_viola
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/brightredskies

Oct 1, 2019

Development diary

Letters - a written adventure - 5am Games

Hi everyone! We thought it would be a good idea to share some development insides here.
Today the topic is about how we convert boring text to a fun interactive tool.

Usually text in games is ignored or even frowned upon. That's because games impress and entertain through their interactivity while text is rather a one-sided medium in comparison. We turn this dynamic around to turn text into the main interactive element of the game.

So we place a protagonist - Sarah - inside the text and give her the ability to interact with some of the words. For example, players can take the word “blue”, carry it around and use it on a drawing. This is how you get a blue drawing! Sometimes words are hidden inside other words, so players can break those apart to extract what they need. (drawing = dra + wing)

“Letters” is centered around words and text. But text is still too boring for many players, so how do we defeat this problem? First of all we make each and every word interactive. There always is some feedback when the player kicks a word - audio and visual. If the word is not highlighted and doesn’t have any other words inside of it, it shakes and jitters. This way players understand that their input worked and it was just a wrong word to kick.

Kicking words is fun and something new, but is still not enough to keep players' attention on the text. In this game it’s critical that players actually read the text, so we are encouraging it as much as we can. Words are animated or have special behaviors depending on the narrative of the level. It’s more interesting if words are handwritten before your eyes. People don’t want to read walls of text and even become frustrated if they have too much information at once. This is why we decided that these letters will be written letter by letter while you play and progress in the level. No more than three-four new sentences at once.

Thank you fore reading!
Team Letters

Oct 1, 2019

Dev Log October 1

Hammerting - Darakir

Churning out lots of new things this week. I know you are in a rush to play, I get questions, but we only have a handful of early testers in right now, you can not buy the game anywhere yet. :)
If you want to be a tester at some point too, our Discord is the best place to be.

Code
Grappling hook fixes
Notification improvements
Simple random loot drop from enemies
Health fixes
Improved content generation tools, to ensure data is valid and that designers don’t need to enter data in more places than necessary
AIs will now raycast to check if they should attack.
Preparation for performance profiling
Dwarf AI now tries to avoid standing in water
Hungry dwarves will find delicious cake and eat it
Fluid improvements

Content
New crafting Interface in the works
More missions
Better structure in the item database, so adding becomes easier. More stuff for everyone!
Buildings and recipes added.

Art
Made concept art for rooms such as cook house, tavern and brewery.
Building models for level 1 rooms, we have the following so far:
Tavern, Cook House, Whitesmith, Arcane Workshop, Infirmary.
New torches
Some tweaks to creatures and enemies

You can also find us here:
Reddit
Discord.
Twitter
Facebook
And don't forget to wishlist!

Oct 1, 2019

Game Update (V0.42) 01. Oktober 2019!

Civitas Nova - DieHexe

Hello everybody,

we are happy to announce our latest update.

Here are the key improvements:

Unit Manager:

Army administration has been renamed to Unit Management and redesigned to allow new features.
Unit types: The first new unit type is the settler who joins the already available infantry.
Barracks now have their own stock and get raw materials such as weapons, tools, etc. from the cities.

Establish cities:

Settlers can now build cities. At least 10 settlers in a unit are needed for a city.
More settlers reduce the construction time. Settlers are converted into inhabitants during town construction.

Follow and field fight system:

Units can now track own or foreign units by clicking on them with a selected unit.
If two enemy units come close, a battle standard is now set and a fight begins in the area.

Diplomacy extension:

There is now a conversation simulation in the negotiations that allows you to talk to other realms.
Of course, conversations have a big impact on your relationship with the other realm. Furthermore, empires can now together declare war against another empire, but also denounce, praise and propose peace is possible.
In addition, many of the diplomatic functions have been redesigned or updated.
The GUI for negotiations was adjusted accordingly.

New water system
We changed our technical background to the water because the old shader was causing visual problems and poor performance.
The new system also adapts better to weather and day / night cycles and will offer more options in the future.

Artificial intelligence:
A lot of time has gone into this point and the code has almost doubled in the area.
The AI now reacts to more things than before and of course to the new features, and it has been prepared for the next updates.
Since there are so many ways that the AI can react, we will continue to monitor this and if necessary fix it with a hotfix before the next major update. We also welcome feedback.

Performance:
Many things could be optimized next to the water system and in many areas the game should run much smoother.
The largest bottlenecks are currently still deform terrain for buildings and so on and autosave take 1-2 seconds to get done.
Both will be looked into with the upcoming updates and improved to make our cities more lively. (Visible inhabitants, more types of buildings, etc.)

First steps:
In the title menu, "Getting started" has been added. It's not a complete tutorial yet, but hopefully will help some of you to get started.
Please feel free to use the help while you play (via ? reachable) or write us on Steam, in the game under "Feedback" or info@civitas-nova.com, if it is needed.

More stuff:
- Graphical revisions.
- Bugfixes
- Fine tuning
- Many more small things.
- Code optimizations

Finally, first information about the next update:
- Expansion of research opportunities.
- Change in resource management.
- Another new unit type.
- Structures next to cities that can be placed in the world.
- Many more small and bigger things of course.

In addition, another feature is planned, which we will announce later. So stay tuned. :)

The whole update is planned for December.

So now we wish you a lot of fun playing! Feedback is, of course, very welcome as always. So write us!

Oct 1, 2019

GRAL patch 0.7.5 - New Team Released!

GRAL - Three Souls Interactive

GRAL patch 0.7.5

A NEW TEAM IT'S READY TO GO. TRY THE HOTRAS TEAM!

A new full team has been released.
It's fast, it's incredibly fast! Extremely light frames, extremely fragile, they can make very long and flat jumps on the track. Stay in the air for as long as possible to avoid missile attacks and mines.

BUGFIXING

Completely new jump phisics.
Overall Gameplay balancing
Improved car handling for all Platinum cars (still working on it).
Improved VFX quality.
Improved overall performance.
New collision effect between cars (you can enable it in the graphics setting)
New engine light (you can enable it in the graphics setting)
New team Hotras (3 new cars)
Fixed issue in the splitscreen mode preventing you to correctely use 4 gamepad after re-entering the splitscreen player selection menu.
Fixed some jump ramp.
Fixed workshop timeattack ghost download.

Stay tuned and follow as on our New Twitch Channel.

A new update is coming soon with 3 new tracks!

Oct 1, 2019

The Debug currently in progress, and the progress of the process.

Souls of Blades - 离忧先生

1: Load the scene, continue the game directly after the death through the ground - the new version has been resolved.

2: Some players leave the game because they have not completed the tutorial directly, but leave directly from the teaching level. After opening the new game to cover the archive, I can't re-enter the tutorial and start the whole game directly—the new version has been solved.
(The solution that players can do themselves when the version has not been updated, move or delete "C:\Users\{change to your username}\AppData\Local\SoulOfBlade\Saved\SaveGames" in the directory "GameInfoSave.sav "(Archive) file will enter the game again)

3: The button prompts to summon the falling magic weapon is changed from "Recall Magic" to "Long Press Recall Magic" - the new version has been replaced.

4: Fixed a bug in the scene where there are multiple death drop magic weapons - the new version has been resolved.

5: About some configurations of PCs often or occasionally flashback situation - I am currently working on positioning and dealing with this problem.
(If the version has not been updated, or if the problem has not been solved, the player can reduce the probability of flashback by appropriately reducing the effect of the screen option. After the actual test, the lower screen effect is more stable. If the position of the game starts A little bit of Caton, I hope that players do not want too much in the Caton position, leave the Caton position as soon as possible, this may be the dynamic loading boundary of the level.)

6: Novice to guide the teaching part - the expression of the content in the book is more straightforward and concise, highlighting the key - pending

7: In the introduction of special effects props, add the description of the exact two methods of the props ---- Pending
(How to solve the problem of teaching experience in the current situation that has not been updated or not yet processed, I hope that players will watch the two teaching props with a little patience, and delete or remove the current deposit order, and carry out a teaching level, if only the learning mechanism The text itself can be ignored, only watching the video and button prompts can also be rewarded , hoping to ease the play experience to a certain extent)

In dealing with bugs and problems found, I tend to prioritize the bad bugs that "cannot guarantee that the player is playing normally."
Then I will optimize the experience. If I encounter any gameplay and experience doubts during the game, please come to my live room to communicate.
I understand the big gap in experience due to the simplification of the novice guidance and the gap between the systems behind the game. The content related to the guidance and teaching will be dealt with first after the completion of the vicious bug. However, the number of individuals and brains is limited. Can only be handled one by one, thanks to the patience of the temper who still gives the recommendation, the players who are willing to wait for the sword to slowly optimize, and understand the players who have carefully listed the factors that provoke themselves. . These problems can be solved.

Also welcome everyone to my live room [/] to find me chat ~ by the way to monitor the game's debug progress ~