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Vapourware Spire of Sorcery - turn-based RPG where you play a party of runaway mages - abandoned in Early Access

Space Satan

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
May 13, 2013
Messages
6,216
Location
Space Hell
Some DD debt
Caves DD
#49 – CAVES OF RUND
29 MAR @ 11:14AM - QFASA
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Many thanks to those of you who warmly welcomed Nikita, our new team member, with their comments on the last week’s blog! It makes a huge difference when you feel connected to the community. When we create games, we focus on the assets first (code, visuals, texts) – but the ultimate goal is always the user experience.

For sure, we want to make the best art possible, and write the fastest and cleanest code that we can write. However, we judge our studio’s success or failure based on the emotions and experiences that our players get through our games. As such, the community is at the center of our work. Like a chef at a restaurant’s kitchen, we keep sneaking a peek into the dining hall to see if people are happy or sad, when they eat the food that we cook for them.

Today, let’s talk about one of the twenty biomes currently in the game: the Caves of Rund.


CAVES OF RUND

Caves are an underground biome that exists within another biome: they can be found in the hills.

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As we started to search for the required “look and feel” of the caves, we focused on presenting their size – which can be huge, as caves can contain multiple sub-locations.
Caves are an explorable point of interest. Once your party of disciples discovers a cave on the map, they will need to explore it in order to locate possible sub-locations there (in this, Caves are similar to another biome – Ruins, which also require exploration in order to discover possible sub-locations that exist there).

Exploration of Caves happens faster (i.e. with more success) if the party that explores them, has someone with the skill of
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Geology.

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We ended up with this sketch, which in our opinion delivered all the right impressions. The next step was to find the right colors of this underground biome.
One of the things of interest that can be found in Caves is chests. Earlier, we showed different versions of chests that exist in Rund. Because chests are very heavy, in most cases your party will have to deal with opening (and disarming) them right on the spot, as the spell of levitation requires pretty advanced skill of
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Travel Magic (as well as considerable
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magic energy to use it).

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Here are the three color options of the biome that we explored, among many others. We also played around with just how much light there should be in the distance. At the bottom are the various types of chests that can be found there.
Caves can also hold deposits of minerals. Some minerals are easier to collect than others. For heavy-duty work, having a secondary skill of
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Mining is very valuable.

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This is the final version of Caves that you will see in the game, as well as some of the minerals that can be mined there.
Caves can be populated with Creepers, which presents a certain challenge to a party that wants to camp there.

Stingtails are also known to use Caves to sleep there during the daytime, so when exploring a new cave, the party runs a risk of being attacked by such a group – if the cave is occupied by them at the time of exploration.

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The caves feature two kinds of non-humans:

Sometimes, Pale Ones will have their dwelling set up in a cave. They are nearly impossible to negotiate with, but can be subjugated.

More often, Cyclops would inhabit a cave. Being a more intelligent species, Cyclops can be traded with – as well as negotiated with.

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Swamps DD
#50 – SWAMPS OF RUND
5 APR @ 2:43PM - QFASA
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Recently, we started working on the Encyclopedia of Rund: a comprehensive guide to the world that will be available in the game for your reference.

Some chapters of the Encyclopedia are already fully open at start (for example: the description of Rund’s factions and the basics of spellcasting) while others keep expanding as you explore the world (for example: all the chapters that describe creatures, biomes and inventory items).

As we worked on the Encyclopedia, it dawned on me that, finally, everything starts to come together in the game. Now you can read about a certain potion and click through to see its recipe; then open a list of ingredients that offer the required alchemic properties, choose one in particular and follow through to where it can be foraged or mined; then proceed to read about the specific biome and the risks associated with going there.

Each separate element occupies its appropriate place in the overall scheme of things, so that you can explore Rund from multiple directions (though there is still a ton of work left to properly edit and translate all these descriptions in all the languages that the game will support at the time of launch in Early Access).

In one of the future posts, we will review the Encyclopedia and its structure to give you a better idea of what it is. Meanwhile, today I’d like to tell you about the swamps of Rund.

SWAMPS OF RUND

Except for the biomes found in the Distorted Lands, swamps are the biome that’s the most challenging to traverse. Even ancient forests are easier to pass through, than swamps.

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When we started working on the concept of this biome, the most difficult thing to do was to show the proper scale of trees in the environment.
When a party travels through swamps, there’s always a chance of getting trapped in a bog. When several disciples travel together, a friend can lend a hand to the person that got unlucky. When someone travels alone, though, getting sucked into a swamp means certain death.

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After several sketches, we arrived at the look and feel that we were aiming for: a place that’s challenging to traverse, full of hidden dangers.
Because swamps are damp and cold places, prolonged travel through swamp will result in disciples falling sick – unless the party carries certain
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potions and
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ointments used to prevent such consequences.

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Once we started working on the colors of the swamp, we explored different directions.
Another risk of traveling through swamps is their poisonous flora and fauna: there’s mosquitos (who can carry diseases), there’s earth leeches (generally, not fatally dangerous – except when characters are already weak or wounded), and there’s a number of plants that can sting when touched or poison when consumed.

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[/i]This is an almost finished color version of the biome. In the game, you’ll see the same image – just with a few more details added between now and the release in Early Access.[/i]
With swamps, travel equipment becomes critical to the successful crossing. While having travel boots, travel coats and bedrolls to be used when camping is a nice bonus for navigating through both regular and ancient forests, this equipment is an absolute must for traveling through swamps in order to prevent negative events.

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Good travel equipment is the best way to prevent bad things from happening to your party.
What else can help in the swamp? Having a high
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Travel skill as well as the secondary skill of
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Survival.

Generally speaking, swamps are a dangerous to be. And because of animals and monsters that reside there, during the night swamps become even more dangerous.

Among the monsters that inhabit the swamps, there’s the Swamp Beast: a loner that controls a certain zone around its home. Sometimes, non-humans like drowners would worship such beasts, and would bring them various valuable items as their offerings. In such cases, defeating the beast will result in discovering a substantial stash of loot accumulated over the years.

Speaking of Drowners, they were created as hunters and are generally not aggressive towards humans. However, if attacked, they will retaliate.

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While the Swamp Beast is a dangerous monster, Drowners are generally neutral towards humans.
Why would anyone in their right mind venture into the swamps, then? To obtain rare resources, is the answer. Arcanite (a mineral) can only be found at the bottom of the swamp, and mandragora grows exclusively in this biome, too.

Swamps may contain numerous points of interests, including Ruins and Idols, and even Sources. While Sources and Idols are beneficial to the supply of
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magic energy for your Spire, Ruins are a good source of loot (they may hold items as well as chests, and also be inhabited by various creatures).

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Some of the points of interest that you may come across when traveling through the swamps of Rund.
Overall, you may feel like swamps are a challenging biome – but that’s only before you decide to venture east, into the Distorted Lands, where you’ll run into much more dangerous situations. In swamps, with sufficient Travel and Survival skills and with solid travel equipment and a supply of potions and ointments, feeding itself by fishing, hunting and foraging for mushrooms, a party may very well execute numerous quests with great success.

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Waterfronts DD
#51 – WATERFRONTS
12 APR @ 1:42PM - QFASA
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Some biomes are easy to compare, while others are special and stand on their own. Waterfronts are in the latter category. What are waterfronts? It’s rivers and lakes – places with abundant water and shorelines.

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Waterfronts was one of the first biomes that we created for the game. Initially, we struggled a bit with finding the right scale of the biome – just how much of the area must we show?
At this time, all the lakes in the game are impassable while all the rivers can be crossed over. A crossing may take anywhere between a day and a week (for example, a party may decide to build a raft) – depending on who is in the party, what are their skills and what events the party faces as it attempts the crossing.

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Eventually, we settled on a particular perspective that worked for both lakes and rivers.
Dangerous events at the waterfronts include death from drowning, being pulled in by a strong current, getting attacked by underwater animals and losing some of the party’s inventory items as it struggles with wading the waters, as well as catching illness from long exposure to cold water (if a character is inclined to fall sick easily).

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The overall feeling of this biome is that of a place with abundant water.
Bridges provide a convenient way of crossing the rivers: not only fast (just an hour), but also safe from the dangers related to open water. At the same time, bridges may be guarded by garrisons, and in general are a place with a higher probability of encountering other parties, which poses a different set of risks.

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As we started to work on the color concept, we explored different hues of water.
What helps with crossing the rivers as well with using the waterfront biome in general? Having a high
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Travel skill as well as having the secondary skills of
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Swimming(belongs to
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Travel) and
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Fishing (belongs to
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Monstrology). Swimming helps cross rivers faster and safer.

And when a character’s
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Travel skill is high enough, they can even cast a temporary magic bridge over the water, made of ice (such bridge holds for a time sufficient for the party to cross over, then dissolves in the river).

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Finally, we had the “flowing” image that everyone on the team liked. Here you can see how a color concept turned into the final asset that you will see in the game, as lots of details were added.
The easiest use of the waterfront biome is fishing. A more challenging ambition is to harvest pearls that are extracted from snarers (pearls, like precious stones, can be sold or traded in towns and villages). Waterfronts are also a source of lake nettles, a stinging plant that is nevertheless a useful alchemic ingredient.

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Some of the resources that can be collected in waterfronts.
Mermaids are currently the only non-human dweller to live in waterfronts. If you succeed in negotiating with them, then you can have them provide you with both nettles and pearls, taking away from your parties the risk of extracting these resources.

However, originally mermaids are not too friendly. Unlike drowners, they don’t need a “god” to worship, and thus are harder to convince to cooperate. On their own, they like to play with humans (regardless of age or gender: mermaids are long-lived hermaphrodites and don’t distinguish between different humans), with most of such games ending in drownings – hence their bad reputation with human settlements, who see them as a threat to young or naïve.

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You can choose to trade with mermaids, or you can choose to hunt them and use their tentacles as a valuable alchemic ingredient.
Mermaids are a source of “mermaid tentacle”, an alchemic ingredient that you might eventually require. But killing a mermaid opens a direct confrontation with the species, driving up the chances of having your parties attacked during any future waterfront visits or crossings.

Waterfronts are one of the biomes that we plan to further expand during the Early Access period, as we have a few more creatures specific to this biome that are already designed but not yet in production as we wait for the main campaign to be complete before balancing the world with such additions.

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Space Satan

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
May 13, 2013
Messages
6,216
Location
Space Hell
Hills and Plains DD
#52 – HILLS & PLAINS
19 APR @ 3:41PM - QFASA
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Sometimes people ask about our plans for the Early Access period: what exactly is going to happen during that time with the game, and how long do we expect that period to last?

Our current expectation is to spend about a year in Early Access, depending on how quickly we exhaust all major opportunities to significantly improve your player experience. As long as we see the potential for significant improvements, we will remain in the Early Access state.

As to what do we plan to do – there are three big areas that we expect to focus on:
  • user interface and localization. Our experience shows that the community will definitely discover parts of the interface that can be improved, as well as parts of translations that can be more precise.

    Even with Gremlins, Inc., a game that is three years old, we keep receiving excellent suggestions on adding certain elements to make the experience better. Not to mention the occasions where we introduce a new card and immediately hear from the community a suggestion for a better name for such card.
  • modding tools. One of our biggest ambitions with Spire of Sorcery is to empower the community by providing an easy-to-use editor that allows creative people to try new things with this game.

    Whether it’s about new game events or about new types of skills or new types of rooms in the Spire, we’d like to give the community the opportunity to experiment. And we have no doubts that some of the funniest and original experiences will come through modding!
  • more content. At the moment, for every creature that we already have in the game, we have two more creatures on the designer’s board – waiting for their chance to come to life.

    Because we do not know yet how you, dear players, will play the main campaign, we leave a lot of things open for the moment, to have the ability to fine-tune and balance the game in the Early Access period through adding new creatures and new resources.

And now let’s talk about today’s topic: Hills and Plains of Rund!

HILLS & PLAINS

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When we started working on the Hills, we tried different options.
Hills is a biome that offers long-range visibility but is not so easy to pass through due to all the climbing up and down that one has to do as one travels across the region. Because of this, in terms of speed of travel, hills are comparable to the regular forest.

Plains are much easier to pass through and offer a high speed of travel (even though roads would be still faster).

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This is the final color sketch of the Hills. What you’ll see in the game is the same image, but with a bit more details.
Tasljuks, Gigglers and Stingtails live in both of these biomes.

Stingtails pose a risk if encountered during their feeding time. Such risk is significantly higher on the plains (because there’s nowhere to hide from this predator).

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Plains were quite easy to conceptualize. Finding the right color for this biome proved to be much harder.
Because of the long-range visibility, traveling through plains poses the risk of being easily spotted by unwanted parties who also travel through these lands. The risk is, however, smaller in the Wild Lands, where there are no villages or cities, but only occasional camps of outcasts (closer to the Distorted lands one may also encounter mutant camps and settlements).

Hills are mostly used for mining (they are home to a wealth of minerals: almost every mineral known in Rund can be found there). Hills also often contain caves, some of which may have explorable sub-locations.

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Here are the first three color solutions for plains that we explored. We did not like any of these.
Most of the plants on hills and on plains are rather common for Rund, with a few exceptions. Dwarf everlast can be found only on Hills. Sleep grass, thorn apple and thistle can be found only on Plains (sleep grass, by the way, poses a danger of its own: unsuspecting travelers that cross the fields of this grass during its flowering season can fall asleep for much longer than desired, leaving them defenseless against the other common dangers of the biome).

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Going through three more color options, we really liked the last one, number six. You’ll see it in the game, with a bit more detail.
Finally, we think that both plains and hills will eventually get their own unique non-human dwellers and animals (hills are quite likely going to become the home of Stone Eaters) – but that will happen much later in the development process, once we come around to balancing these regions during long runs of the main campaign of the game.

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Here’s work in progress (and final results) on two inventory items relevant to these biomes. The first is a Giggler’s Egg, which can be collected from the nests of these animals. It’s used as food (when cooked), as well as an alchemic ingredient. The second is an exotic fruit, which grows in abandoned gardens left from the Age of Mages. These gardens can only be found on the plains of the Wild Lands. The fruit is a delicacy on its own, and is also used to prepare more elaborate food rations.
–––
Status update DD
STATUS UPDATE
31 JUL @ 1:18PM - SERGEI KLIMOV
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It’s been a while since we posted any news here on Steam, so I thought I’d share a status update on where we are with the development process at the end of July.

In a few words, we are on the last direct stretch of the road towards releasing the first 1,000 keys under the Limited Early Access program.

We’re currently busy with user interface and world events, as well as locking down the content and balancing a few dozens of game systems. Nothing among these tasks is crucial on its own. The game is turning out just as we imagined it more than two years ago. What’s important to us is not to rush at this last step, so that we can save some trouble by eliminating known issues before the game lands in the hands of our players.

Our test for progressing with the release: when we remove all the issues that we ourselves know about, and which we consider to be annoying enough – then we’re good to launch.


VISUALS

Of the 20 types of creatures and dwellers that will be in the game at its release in Early Access, 18 are done. It’s just Needlebacks (animals) and Oorls (sentient dwellers) that remain unfinished, and we look at this task with pleasure as creating new original species is one of the highlights of working on Spire of Sorcery.

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As to the inventory items, we already have so many that I keep losing track of all the new stuff. Among the recent creations are extra equipment and crafting resources (torches, ropes, flax and wool, paint) as well as individual visuals for different potions, ointments and alcohol (we have beer, wine and strong liquor).

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We also keep polishing the look of the world map, where a few biomes and objects could use an update. But nothing here would stop us from releasing the game as it is tomorrow, or on Monday, as even where we lack some assets, we already have enough extras to use as alternatives.

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In other words, on the side of art assets we are totally ready for Early Access.


USER INTERFACE

A while ago, we gave up on trying to polish the look of the game’s user interface – because to us, it’s a waste of time that can at this stage be better spent elsewhere. We made the decision to focus on “functionality” (can you assign the research of a Special Knowledge to a specific person while she’s still out of Spire, completing her previous quest?) and for the moment, forego “beauty” (once a specific part of the interface will stop changing, we will, with pleasure, make it shine).

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In this area, lots of changes happen daily. Including what we call a “reactions & warnings” approach: we try to warn players about possible risks before those risks become impossible to counter, thus saving them from disappointment when their campaign is unexpectedly lost. For example, yesterday I kept killing my mage by overspending his magic energy on the ritual “Call of the Spire” that attracts new disciples. The result? We decided to insert a warning for when players first try to overspend the energy, explaining that it will lead to irreversible harm to the mage.

Most of the work on user interface is rather painful: we play the game for hours, then analyze and discuss the points that felt the most frustrating, and then seek better solutions. Just this week, a few of us were stressed out because we occasionally had idle disciples in the Spire – those who finished their quests and tasks and were simply hanging around – without a good detection system of such characters. And so, we now highlight “idlers” in a separate list, so that when you’ll play, you won’t miss the chance to get absolutely everyone busy with something.

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There is still some work left on this front.

If we release the game now, and ask you for your feedback, we’re certain that the first 20 issues with user interface will be already known to us – and so it’s still too early to launch yet.


GAME MECHANICS

There is a lot of pleasure in seeing different game systems work together, creating some very enjoyable moments. Yesterday I tasked a disciple who hated Domestic Magic to read a book on this subject. Within hours, his mood turned sour. In the same session, I really needed someone to study Healing, and so I asked my mage to read a book called “Horrible Diseases of Rund”, authored by one of the Inquisitors. The next morning, my mage was truly unhappy. Hovering over the mood icon, I read: “I’m reading an awful book”.

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One of the two major efforts that we currently undertake with game mechanics is removing the features that are not a “must have” while adding the features that are essential to the core gameplay loop. Healing was first removed, then brought back – and thank gods of Rund for that, as otherwise campaigns would end in a matter of weeks, with everyone dead because of parasites, snake bites and food poisonings. Diplomacy, on contrast, was among the core features of the game, but now has been moved to after Early Access release.

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The other major effort in this area is balancing – and re-balancing, and re-re-balancing. In the current build (version 116, as of this morning) I sent a party of three to hunt for meat in the habitat of a Forest Cat. The party returned without any incidents. We feel that the outcome should have been different, and so we’re tweaking a bunch of probability values between biomes, creatures and party events to arrive at the right mix. The same applies to how the resources are seeded throughout the world, to how many mushrooms can be collected per day by a person who is low-skilled in Herbology, and to pretty much every other action that you can carry in the world.

From the side of game mechanics, balancing is not a crucial concern: we believe that players who are willing to join the Limited Early Access period are experienced enough to understand the shortcomings and to actually help us with their feedback.

What is crucial, though, is the work on the things that we ourselves already know to need a change. If a daughter of a scholar and a teacher who spent years in the Guild of Magic escapes with a zero value in the skills of Social Magic and Alchemy, we know this is not how we see it, and we want to fix all such issues prior to releasing the game.

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HOW TO FOLLOW DEVELOPMENT PROGRESS?
  • Every Friday we run a development stream here on Steam. The recordings are available on the studio’s YouTube channel.

  • Almost every day we share snippets of our work in progress on the game’s official Discord server[discord.gg].

  • Every few days, we post more information about the game and the world of Rund on the game’s official forum[spireofsorcery.com] (e.g. description of dwellers and biomes).
While we do not have a certain date locked yet as the date of the Limited Early Access release, we’re on the last stretch of the road that leads there. It may be a long road (months, not weeks – no promises in this regard!). But it’s a very straightforward path, and we’re absolutely confident that we will deliver a game that will be quite fun to play with.

Thanks for staying with us – and see you around!
 

Andhaira

Arcane
Joined
Nov 25, 2007
Messages
1,868,965
OK I am trying to wrap my head around this, it looks really sweet but what is it? A CYOA visual/text adventure thing? A strategy rpg?

Will it have combat, and if so how is that handled?
 

PrettyDeadman

Guest
OK I am trying to wrap my head around this, it looks really sweet but what is it? A CYOA visual/text adventure thing? A strategy rpg?

Will it have combat, and if so how is that handled?
Sergei Klimov [Разработчик] said:
That's correct, there is no direct combat except when your Spire is attacked and your mate actually engages with the enemy. And even then, it is the mate character who determines the actions.

The game is all about indirect control. Think of coaching a soccer team. If your disciples are happy and healthy and strong in their skills, they will perform beautifully. If they also like each other and have proper inventory :).
https://steamcommunity.com/app/637050/discussions/1/1743342647551928189/
 

Axioms

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
1,485
OK I am trying to wrap my head around this, it looks really sweet but what is it? A CYOA visual/text adventure thing? A strategy rpg?

Will it have combat, and if so how is that handled?
Sergei Klimov [Разработчик] said:
That's correct, there is no direct combat except when your Spire is attacked and your mate actually engages with the enemy. And even then, it is the mate character who determines the actions.

The game is all about indirect control. Think of coaching a soccer team. If your disciples are happy and healthy and strong in their skills, they will perform beautifully. If they also like each other and have proper inventory :).
https://steamcommunity.com/app/637050/discussions/1/1743342647551928189/

I am so confused...

Mate? Is this a typo or bad english or something?
 

Haba

Harbinger of Decline
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Land of Rape & Honey ❤️
Codex 2012 MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
It does not. It is a game about managing the tower and the disciples. The over-map part is a digital boardgame.

They have never called it an RPG. But Infinitron & co. wanted to move it to GRPGD because autism.
 

Space Satan

Arcane
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Space Hell
02/09/2019. Last week, we had a difficult moment when we realised that we may miss an Early Access release in 2019 altogether.

A part of it is that one of us is expecting a baby in a couple of months – and when that happens, we'll send the young father home for a month to help his wife; so between now and 2020, there will be at least 4 weeks that we will spend without a person who is core to the development process, and that will happen about 8 weeks from now (maybe even sooner). So rather than having 16-17 weeks before the end of the year, we actually have 7-8 and then 4 more weeks at the end of the year. And we very much – very, very much! – want to enter Early Access before our friend and colleague goes home to spend quality time with his new baby. This makes the price of mistake in planning (i.e. in dev process) higher.

Another part is the usual human tendency to disregard process and focus on the results. Our studio exists since mid 2013, and every year we repeat the same mantra: great games happen because of great development process, not because of individual sacrifices. We are much better at recognising the importance of the process in 2019 than in 2018, or 2017, but it is still a challenge. Like a smoker who quit 10 years ago but still wants occasionally to light up a stick of poison, we at various times still want to just curl up on our desks and dig into some area of the project without telling others, and without coordinating our work with the team at large.

The balance is delicate.

Send one person from a team of 8 for holidays, and suddenly it turns out that we stopped running daily playtests, did not update production plan for the week, and generally are unaware of what each of us is doing. Was the missing person responsible for the process? No, but somehow he was one of the people who passed the ball around, and without him the constant motion of updates in the team has dried up.

One day last week, I woke up at 4 in the morning because I realised that I don't know the status of the book mechanics: we wanted it changed, we spoke about it, but we did not set goals on what we want to achieve, nor when we want it happening. I then checked #release_notes, a channel that we use in the studio to post updates in the build, and found it lacking any activity in the last 3 days. So, basically, some decisions went undocumented, and at the same time everyone dug into some work that did not result in game updates. Which, as we know by now, is a recipe for disaster AKA "creating something which you will discover to be redundant by the time when you finish". And so we had an all-hands meeting, and returned to the very basic line of reasoning:

  1. At which stage of development can we make the game available in Limited Early Access?
  2. What do we currently lack from that stage?
  3. What among this list of missing items should we work on, in the next few days?
It is the second point that is crucial to us meeting the expectations of our community to have the game out sooner rather than later: can we launch without a user interface system that suggests to you, which spells would be beneficial to know for a specific quest? (such as "Repel Insects") We think, yes. Thus any time spent on such a system now, is the time wasted.

Here's a high-level list of systems that we consider crucial for the Limited Early Access, and their status:

  • Generating mage character –
    2705.png
  • Generating 3 disciples who run away with the mage –
    2705.png
  • Generating the world –
    2705.png
  • Placing the Spire in the right position – we still have some work here, as sometimes it doesn't feel as it should be
  • Generating starting inventory –
    2705.png
    , though needs further balancing as to what exactly you have at start
  • Foraging for food and resources, cooking food – mostly done, but we need to also add "Automate" option to such quests
  • Healing – there's a de-sync between what's in the game and what's shown in interface, First Aid doesn't work, healing Wounds doesn't work yet
  • Prediction of level of danger for quests/tasks – doesn't work yet, and is pretty critical for mid-game
  • Research & Experiment mechanics are mostly –
    2705.png
    , but we need some balancing of individual knowledge items
  • Exploration – done except for sub-locations, which kills a lot of game (cannot access caves, catacombs) – this is a must
  • Trade is not done, and there's no money in the game – as much as we like to push it back, we feel like we must have it prior to LEA release
  • Global events – most of these can be done after release, but at the very least we need to have "A visit of Inquisition"
  • Spells & Rituals – we have the plan, but it's not in the game yet
  • Game log – it does exist, and is somewhat informative, but we decided to complete a "visual language" system to show more information and make it easier to understand
  • Events – we have a basic set but we want more, before we show the game to players; this is now becoming the focus of our game designer, really.
Some of these issues are simple and some are complicated. Some relate to user interface and some relate to game mechanics.

And while we don't see here a single thing that we cannot do, what is obvious is that almost everything requires a team effort.

Basically, developing a game, as a team, is a lot like riding a bicycle. When you're there, it feels effortless and you can even climb some pretty high hills. When you start getting distracted, though, it's pretty easy to miss the right turn, or get stuck with the wrong gear.

To summarise what I wanted to share in today's update: the next 8 weeks are absolutely crucial for us, if we want the game to come out in 2019. We're doing our best, which may – or may not – be enough to succeed. Thanks for your patience, and for your interest in this project!
https://spireofsorcery.com/forum/in...mited-early-access/&tab=comments#comment-2138
 

Axioms

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
1,485
I don't get it. To me making the spell effect, especially of a basic healing spell/action, is the least intensive part of the process. The UI is way more work. Why would you have the interface for First Aid or Heal Wounds done but not the actual effect?
 

Dr Skeleton

Arcane
Joined
Nov 9, 2014
Messages
811
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
It's not just in random events, evil is absolutely a lifestyle in Eador, you can hire brigands and thieves as your units, plunder provinces, hire gangs or evil warlocks instead of militias to guard provinces (their upkeep is low but you'll deal with uprisings more often), sacrifice population for magic gems, ally with evil races, conquer and oppress elves and halflings, send demons, undead or disease to enemy or neutral provinces, lots of options for evil playstyles. Don't know if they transferred that design philosophy to SoS.
 

Space Satan

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
May 13, 2013
Messages
6,216
Location
Space Hell
Early Access on October 30

Panzerlings + Early Access!
Introducing another non-human race + sharing update on launching in Early Access!



We continue to develop the game at full speed, each week moving closer and closer to the date of its Limited Early Access release. And while we do this, we also continue to record weekly development streams where we show the latest version of the game and explain various game mechanics that already function. Our goal is to be completely transparent with you about the state of the project, as well as to get any feedback that you may give us after seeing us play the current version of the game.

Above, you can see the latest development stream (available in English & Russian languages). We apologize for not being able to support other languages with these streams.

We broadcast every Wednesday around 22:00 Tokyo time / 21:00 Beijing time / 16:00 Moscow time / 15:00 Berlin time through Charlie Oscar's account on the following platforms:

The recordings of the earlier streams are available at our YouTube channel as well as on the game’s Steam community hub.

_________



Spire of Sorcery – Character Generator
Official Discord server
Official forum
 
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