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Can we character create the main PC?
You can choose to build him up however you want, but his name and role will be part of the story.
Anyway, though I'd pop in an share our AD's blog post this week which showcases a lot of the art and concepts we explored going into the production phase:
http://forgedofblood.com/2016/12/10/designing-world-attiras/
2016, Development Year in Review
As the year draws to an end, I thought it would be appropriate for me to look back at what the studio has accomplished this year.
When we started the journey around mid February of this year, we had yet to form the full studio team. While we had a vision of the type of game we wanted to make (that is a fantasy turn-based tactial RPG), we didn’t quite have concrete plans or the game design ready yet. A lot of early work went into developing the game design and prototyping the tactical combat layer that would eventually help shape the vision as we moved forward.
This year, we placed a lot of emphasis on developing the tactical combat layer as that would be the heart and soul of our game. – with the strategic conquest and narrative layers existing to support this tactical combat layer.
Here’s a brief look at the progress we’ve made so far this year on the Tactical Combat Layer:
Even with the weight of the studio thrown into developing the combat layer, we haven’t lost sight of the bigger picture. For the narrative layer, we completed the worldbuilding (interesting sidenote: Merriam-Webster’s dictionary is currently looking at “worldbuilding” to be potentialy added in; Igor is pretty excited about it – enough to put this annotation in) with 5000 years of world history written up. We also have the bare bones skeleton story nodes completed and ready to be fleshed out going into 2017. For the strategic conquest layer, we had most of the conquest features done along with the basic design and UI pass waiting on full implementation and integration.
Here’s our Strategic Conquest Layer progress video for 2016:
Looking at our commit history, you can see the most frequently used words in our commit log on our main repository. As you can see, we worked a lot on ability skills implementation and cover. That comes as no surprise really as those are the two main components of our tactical battle implementation this year.
Also, if you would like to see the commit flow of our main repository, gource produces a pretty cool video that you can see below. Just ignore the 2009 timeline on top as we had a power loss in the mid of March that caused the server to reset its BIOS time which we didn’t notice and correct until early April.
We end this year with a studio-wide soul searching – gathering around our meeting table and discussing what went right in the past year and what could have been improved on. The idea is to improve our studio next year so that we could make a kick ass game that we all enjoy playing.
Here’s a picture of the whiteboard we had while we are discussing it:
Going forward, our plan is to launch our Kickstarter campaign early next year. We think kickstarter is an amazing avenue to engage with our players and help us to shape the game we all will enjoy playing. It is also very likely that we will have an opportunity to show our game in Pax East 2017 in Boston, MA.
To that end, one of the key milestones we would be doing in the first quarter of next year is to have a full game loop to play. This is the integration of the strategic conquest layer, the narrative layer and how it will feed into the tactical combat layer. We hope to show a vertical slice of our game on a wider stage of Pax East.
The journey ahead is still long, but that’s so we can make the best game we can with the resources we have. We aim to release our game some time in 2018.
Thank you for joining us in this journey. We hope you would feel that the journey is as gratifying to you as it is to us. I’m sure all of us are looking forward to the proverbial pot of gold at the end of rainbow, when we release our game at last. We look forward to playing this game as much as you do.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
-Joe
Long overdue check-in, and narrative design breakdown
Hello and happy 2017 everyone!
It’s been a long while since our last post – my bad – so I’ll try to make this update a little more packed with information that usual.
The studio has been back from break for a month now and we’ve been gearing up for both PAX East and Kickstarter in March – let’s just say it’s been a hectic month to say the least. The build we are looking to showcase for both milestones will feature an expanded game loop to what we’ve shown so far that will showcase the strategic map and quest system for the main game.
On the narrative front, we now have a full summary for the main plotlines and have begun expanding and writing out specific quests. For our RPG elements, the way we’re structuring the narrative section of the game will vary a little from the usual Choose-your-own-adventure (CYOA) format to take into account player agency on the Strategic Layer with the format evolving between Acts I and II.
We will start the game off with a more structured CYOA path in the introductory act as it is designed to direct the players towards the starting location of Act II and to give them a more controlled path that will serve as an expanded tutorial for the game. The plan is to layer the different mechanics and gradually increase the complexity of the core game loop to allow players to acclimate themselves to the mechanics at play.
Once we get to Act II the story becomes a wholly different beast and we start layering a few more mechanics to the game loop. After a quick introductory series of quests that follows a more rigid CYOA structure (pictured above), we open up the whole world map to the player, along with the Party Management and Castle layers that will help them progress through the game.
The rest of Act II no longer takes the direct CYOA form, but instead works with a series of checks that will happen at regular intervals. These checks take into account the player’s actions and trigger certain story quests if a particular value like the Personality Plots, Region Counts, or other factors have been met. This method of storytelling can be classified as event-based storytelling and is a method that we think is perfect to drive our story forward while still allowing for player agency as part of the story. Given that events only trigger as a consequence of player action, an event-based storytelling system puts the flow of the game firmly in their control. Naturally, this means that we have to take into account their potential choices and craft the stories around those very possibilities. The biggest challenge to this method – especially for a studio and writing team of our size – is scope creep. While the ideal situation accounts for every possibility, the reality of our budget and ability dictates we approach the story within the confines of the mechanics, with the next challenge being the creation of unique and meaningful choices without an explosion of possibilities that will bog down the writing process.
To be perfectly honest, this is probably going to be an ongoing challenge for me personally: having to balance my goals as the writer, the goals of the story itself, and the finite resources at hand. Still, this is the challenge at hand and one we are more than happy to face to create the narrative experience we want out of the game.
Anyway, as we expand on the story, we’ve also started to explore the implementation of the Personality Plot system we had in mind for the characters. In the UI mock up of the system below, you can see the circle that denotes the PDT or Personality Distance Threshold around the white Personality Plot Point of the player character. Other characters’ Personality Plot Points are shown as different colors, with unique symbols reserved for important characters like Leivan.
The Personality system we have for the game works to achieve a number of functions. In the context of the world and lore, it serves to punctuate the point that this is indeed a “morally grey” world. This is probably the biggest sticking point for me as a writer as I want to create a game world where actions are not judged as “good” or “evil” and “light” or “dark.” To me, there is no right or wrong, just people and the actions that define them. In terms of the narrative, the Personality system allows us to explore the interpersonal relationships between the characters as part of the story – in particular that of the main character and his brother, who assumed the throne. To that end, we went with three personality traits that we feel don’t necessarily point one way or another in terms of morality, and allow the actions to be judged on a combination of those three factors: Empathy, Hedonism, and Wisdom.
I think, I’ll dedicate a more detailed breakdown of the system for another day but in terms of the game mechanics and the narrative, the PDT will determine the characters that will align with the player. This means characters can leave or take action when they are no longer within the threshold and will have dramatic impact on the player’s choices in managing the makeup of their parties in Act II.
I’ll wrap it up here for now and we’ll have a few more updates as we near the Kickstarter and PAX dates over the next few weeks. For now, we’re excited to anounce that we have officially partnered with the awesome folks over at Gamepedia for our public wiki, which you can find our wiki page here: http://forgedofblood.gamepedia.com/Forged_of_Blood_Wiki
Stay tuned for updates!
– Igor
You bet!When the game has enough content and it's in beta, send the codex a preview code and I'll preview it if they are okay with that. All I have to say if that happens is: I am sorry for the poor bastard who will have to proofread and edit what I write.
Codex doesn't do shit like this. Go apply at Kotaku instead.All I have to say if that happens is: I am sorry for the poor bastard who will have to proofread and edit what I write.
Why should I go to a site I never visit? My Expeditions: Viking preview got proofread and got some grammar corrected. It was better for it.Codex doesn't do shit like this. Go apply at Kotaku instead.All I have to say if that happens is: I am sorry for the poor bastard who will have to proofread and edit what I write.
Codex doesn't do shit like this. Go apply at Kotaku instead.All I have to say if that happens is: I am sorry for the poor bastard who will have to proofread and edit what I write.
And as promised: here's a gif of one of our spell casting sigils.
(Thermal, Expel, Single Effect)
Weapon Design Philosophy
Hello, Milo here. I’ve been lead game designer here at Critical Forge over the last year while we worked on getting Forged of Blood to its current state. As we are getting a more solidified tactical game design, I thought I’d share the basic weapon ability design philosophy and how it will affect game play.
About a year ago, our studio opened and the founders sat around and discussed the type of game that we would like to make. Having recently finished a two year run of Pathfinder’s Kingmaker campaign and decades of enjoying turn based tactical and RPG games, we decided on Forged of Blood, a fantasy tactical RPG with some kingdom elements. Over the first few weeks, the scope and concept of the game was solidified and we knew we wanted the player’s characters to progress fairly consistently throughout the game. We also decided to try to avoid the typical tank/healer/DPS roles that most games default to. While it is a tried and true system in RPGs, I believe such a design would be too limiting for a tactical game. Throughout the design process, these things have stayed consistently in the forefront of my mind and were core factors in many decisions that were made.
Rather than focusing on class builds, our game is designed around play style, which is reflected in weapon choice, weapon ability builds and a plethora of other decisions made during character progression. Each character can pick a primary and a secondary weapon and switch between the two throughout play, effectively switching how the Character will play. As the character progresses through the game, the player is able to spend Weapon Skill Points on Weapon Abilities for the weapons they are using and each weapon will have abilities that support differing play styles. While tank, healing and DPS roles can be built, they are not mechanically superior options and are just some of the many different viable builds. With nine different types of weapons to chose as primary and eight different weapon options for secondary, the players can effectively make 72 different weapon combinations, not counting dual wielding, shield options, and magic. In all, each of these different combinations can be built to facilitate a different manner of play, allowing for greater variations.
For instance, the dagger, a range five light weapon, has inherent differences in play-style by dint of its range and the possibility to be dual wielded. Characters using daggers will usually be less impacted by cover than the longer range bows as characters using daggers will be closer to their targets, therefore be more able to position themselves to attack around cover. This will help to facilitate a switch hitting play style in which the player can change targets quickly and easily. A character progressing down one side, the Tempest track, of the Ability Tree will focus more on rapid numerous light attacks, relying on speed and attack frequency to compensate for lighter hits. This would be good for a more mobile switch hitter used to chase down or finish off light and medium targets. Meanwhile, a character building down another side, the Hellion track, would be a good support unit that could switch between targets to maintain debuffs and Damage Over Time. While those are two possible builds, there are numerous other viable dagger ability builds that players can discover.
To add to the variation, you can decide on whether you want to focus on having more attacks by dual wielding or if you want to use a shield for more protection. You can choose to be more mobile but squishier with lighter armor or choose heavier armor and give up some damage output and mobility. You can also choose your secondary weapon that you can switch to during combat to change up your play style. For instance, you could choose to be heavily armored and use the Hellion abilities to debuff your target before switching to a shield and sword tank build as you close in. You could also choose to be lightly armored and use the Hellion abilities to debuff targets before switching to a Maul area denial Warden build to keep threats away if they try to engage your character. There are literally hundreds of distinct viable play-styles.
In addition to the various weapon combinations and weapon ability progressions, weapons can be crafted from 5 different materials, have up to 4 distinct quality modifiers, and imbued with 6 distinct possible enchantments. To give a sense of the variations possible, each weapon can be created 32,790 distinct ways to allow for further refinement of your playstyle. (For those who want to understand how I got that, you can have between 0 and 4 quality modifiers chosen from 13 different quality modifiers, 5 different materials, and 6 different enchantments; we are not counting different levels of the same enchantment as being distinct.) When you consider the variations in primary and secondary weapon choices, you have 2,360,880 distinct weapon combinations (excluding dual wielding & shields).
The end result is that the characters are built around how you wish to play them rather than a defining class. The challenge, of course, is keeping them balanced. While some weapons are better than others in specific matchups, there is currently no dominant weapon or play style that is simply better than the others; I am quite happy with how the game currently plays. This design has facilitated a system of play in which the players are rewarded for creative play rather than min/maxing their tanks, healing, and DPS.
Next week, I’ll discuss Magurite, the system of magic we are using in Forged of Blood.
Ohhhh sweet. Thanks man - magic breakdown next week... and its going to be uhh... magical.CritiestBunny Feel free to copy-paste. You'd be surprised at the amount of energy required to click on a hyperlink.
Environment Design & Set Dressing
Hello, this week, we’ve got a triple tag team blog post from our artists: Lienny, Jennifer, and Ken. Ken, you’ve already met. Lienny is our lead modeller in charge of doing a lot of stuff, from character and environment modeling to any art-related technical or engine difficulties. Last but not least is Jennifer; she is our modeler in charge of handling most of the environment art.
For this blog post, Lienny and Jennifer have picked some of the maps that they have worked on. Then we will go through and explain some of our process of making those maps pretty, including the quirks, workarounds, and solutions used and/or encountered.
Initial Environment Creation
Environment creation was initially a confusing process, since we only have a limited talent to work with: one multi-function Art Director and two 3D Artists in the studio. Thus creating a scarcity in environment concepts. A bunch of references given by Ken were very broad overviews of what the final environment ought to “feel” like instead of what they should look like.
The Game Designers would pass us a grey box of the map layout and stage. As the blocked out maps make their down the pipeline to Lienny and Jennifer, the onus fall on us to interpret the gray and colored blocks. With little to go on, this process actually gives the environment team a lot of freedom in approaching the map design.
As with any experiment, it does go through a lot of iterations, screenshot paintovers, and additional custom assets as requested by the level designers, concept artist, and environment artists.
Making the first map
As we experiment with the visual overview of the environment and how much we can push the quality, the level designers were also working in parallel to design maps according to the play style (or in some cases visual style) they were trying to achieve. Which brings this to the first issue: visual limitation. The maps are designed based on a grid system, which means that the set dressing will also need to follow the grid. Unique stage designs and placements do not translate well to the set dressing stage. Here is where a lot of creative solutions need to be discussed and brainstormed so we, the artists, are able to give the best visual according to the stage design.
This is a sample of one of the very first maps after a few iterations. Since this map is designed as a generic map with a smaller playable area, and there was not much requirement for looks or guideline asked by the Game Designers for us to follow. They only asked: desert/arid type map and “the grid position SHALL NOT be changed”.
With more experience, comes a great responsibility
After a few maps under our belt, maps with much larger playable areas with more custom and specific themes were created – which also means new problems and a different approach for each.
Theme 1: The Three Statues
The Three Statues map (or The 2 Statues map as we initially called it) was quite a challenge. Joe wanted this map to have two giant statues that the player could stand on. With this, two problems have arose: one, we need large scale custom assets for the statues, and two, the statues need to also be platforms. We discussed how to tackle the problems and Ken made several design solutions approach issues at hand.
Once the final design has been picked, the concept is then passed on to Lienny to model.
There are a lot of specific design and tweaks for this map, and the concept artist, level designer and environment artist worked really closely on this particular one.
Theme 2: Dresthon
Dresthon is designed as a medium-large town built on cliffs. Unlike the Three Statues map, even though this map was specifically designed to be a cliff city, there wasn’t as much visual requirement aside from this being a town.
Jennifer, who worked on this particular map started off as a 3D artist who was more accustomed with working on detailed concept references, and being given the freedom to explore the visual style of the map with almost no specific references threw her a bit out of her comfort zone. The curse and blessing of this map is probably the freedom that is given by the design team.
Issue1: Transitioning from props
Other than being more accustomed to detailed concept references, another issue Jennifer faced was creating any custom assets, material management, deciding on what props will fit in which type of scene/style.
Issue 2: Seemingly empty spaces.
The first major mapmaking challenge would mostly revolve around the aesthetic point of view of the map, which can affect a lot of factors in map making. Since people have different views on what looks good and what does not, changes has to be made on the map. Moreover, there are times the layouts can be such a restraint on how the artist visualize it to be.
There were times when Jennifer had to sit back and stare at the map because it looked unsatisfactory somehow, despite seemingly having done everything she could think of. Sometimes, the lighting needed to be tweaked over and over because it looked too dark, or too bright, or the shadows being too strong. Other times, there were new things implemented, and there would be changes made to the maps. All in all, making a map is a continuously evolving process.
Another challenge came from the technical side. In more than one occasion, there were changes from the programming side and the blueprints had to be re-done in order to get the game running well. Then there could be updates on assets and blueprints that had to be implemented urgently as map making progressed. These could be time consuming, and they ultimately pushed back our deadline for other priorities.
Perhaps the more jarring solution for these issues is more communication between each the teams. Since people have different inputs, more ideas are presented, which means it is so much easier to come up with new ideas on layouts and the overall look of the map. The second solution would be working efficiently and spare some buffer time, in case sudden changes must be made. By working faster and setting a personal deadline a day or two before the actual deadline, there is still a margin of time to spot errors and making changes on the map itself.
Hope you enjoy this week’s meaty blog post. ‘Til next time. So long. Lienny, Jennifer, and Ken signing out.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
News from Critical Forge
March 4, 2017
Contact: Igor Tanzil, +62 815 815 1940, igor@criticalforge.com
Forged of Blood Kickstarter goes live, March 6, 2017
JAKARTA, INDONESIA, March 4, 2017 - The Critical Forge team is proud to announce that their Kickstarter campaign has been approved and will be launched on Monday, March 6, 2017.
The following preview link will take visitors to the Kickstarter preview page:
The studio will showcasing updated gameplay footage, brand new screenshots, and an in depth look at game’s deep mechanics in their Kickstarter page, and have a build ready to show at PAX East in Boston, that will feature an early look at the gameplay loop from Strategic Layer to Tactical Combat.
The team working on Forged of Blood will looking to raise S$150,000 (Singapore Dollars) in this campaign with
To receive access to the Press/PAX build, please reach out to contact@criticalforge.com directly.
Forged of Blood Game Details:
A Fantasy Turn-based Tactical RPG, Forged of Blood places the fate of an entire world on your every decision. Engage in challenging tactical combat as you find your place in a morally grey fantasy world and decide whether the ends will ultimately justify your actions.
Key Features:
- Tactical Fantasy: Take to the field with sword and shield or cast powerful spells in deep turn-based tactical combat against monsters and men.
- Classless Warfare: With 9 unique weapons and a vast magic system, Forged of Blood lets you build your characters the way you want - without being constrained by the typical tank/DPS/healer roles.
- Science in Magic: Explore the freedom and mysteries of one of the most complex and unique magic systems ever attempted in video games. With 60 Effects, 18 Effect Modifiers, and 18 Global Modifiers to choose from, the possibilities for spell crafting are vast.
- Kingdom at War: Command up to three parties of heroic characters on the strategic layer in your fight to reclaim the empire you lost.
- Meaningful Choice: Your choices matter. From character building to your choices in the game narrative, your decisions will reverberate across the Strategic and Tactical layers of the game.
- Your ends; your means: In a world of grays and unique perspectives, it is up to you to decide what is “right” and “wrong” for the future of Attiras. Forged of Blood will introduce a new Tri-Axis Personality Plot (TAPP) system in lieu of the traditional Good vs. Evil scale common in most RPG settings.
Game related links:
Forged of Blood Website: http://forgedofblood.com/
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fobthegame
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ForgedOfBlood
About Critical Forge:
Critical Forge is a young studio with an old soul, looking to make the games we grew up playing. We are a small independent team based out of Jakarta, Indonesia, currently in production of a fantasy tactical RPG: Forged of Blood.
Mammamia! This game is shaping up better than what I anticipated.
Good luck with the KS, will there be a Codex campaign for this? I'm backing for the closed beta tier!