Development Info Knights of the Chalice 2 Development Update

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Heroic Fantasy Games; Knights of the Chalice 2

Pierre Begue prepared a substantial KotC2 development update, this time in his public forum, free for all to see, and thouroughly describes the progress he's been making while solitarily slaving away at the KotC2 engine implementation.

Hello, turn-based RPG fans!

Between questions of health, nutrition, sports and a fridge breaking down on me, in the last few days my attention has constantly been diverted away from the good stuff, which is KotC 2 development.

Nevertheless, here is the promised update with lots of new screenshots and new design pages for your consumption.

Regarding combat, as I mentioned recently, I have finally implemented the most basic actions: moving in combat, taking a five-foot step, ending one's turn, delaying, standard attack, full attack, charge attack and attack of opportunity.

My plan is to continue implementing combat actions one by one, fixing bugs as I go. Today, while preparing this update, I harvested a good number of fresh bugs that I will have to correct first.

After that, I will focus on ranged attacks, opening the inventory in combat, grapple, bull rush, the other combat manoeuvers, the basic spells, ready versus spell, ready to counterspell, using a magic item in combat, using a class or racial power in combat, and using a spell-like ability. Spells, their interface and their graphical implementation will of course be a big part of the job. Afterwards comes the artificial intelligence.

In the following pictures, you can see the combat engine in action. We will review some of their details below. Click on a picture to enlarge it.

New subraces, new classes and class features, read all of it here.

 

[Volrath]

Looks pretty great. Too bad it'll never be released

 

[Andhaira]

Is he really going towards this graphical style or is it too much to hope it's for internal testing purpose only? I know he probably cannot afford to spend much on art and the like, and KOTC probably did not sell well enough because even pnp rpg fans are 'tards who salivate over AAA akshun bullshit rather than a quality game like KOTC, but if he is going with this I would rather he not continue. I much preferred KOTC 1 style art and animations, especially since they were evocative of the old SSI Darksun games. This looks way too much like a board game aesthetically, even though I know it's not.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Is he really going towards this graphical style or is it too much to hope it's for internal testing purpose only? I know he probably cannot afford to spend much on art and the like, and KOTC probably did not sell well enough because even pnp rpg fans are 'tards who salivate over AAA akshun bullshit rather than a quality game like KOTC, but if he is going with this I would rather he not continue. I much preferred KOTC 1 style art and animations, especially since they were evocative of the old SSI Darksun games. This looks way too much like a board game aesthetically, even though I know it's not.

I too prefer KotC1 style graphics & animations, but yes, that board-game like presentation is how KotC2 will be. Considering the wealth of classes and spells and the like compared to the first game it really boils down to a resource issue I presume.

 

[felipepepe]

Mods will fix it (I hope).

 

[Jack Dandy]

I actually like the boardgame aesthetic.

Would be neat if he allows you to import custom "token" portraits.

 

[getter77]

The visual situation will definitely be distinct, but the strength of the systems and whatnot should hopefully carry the day. There's definitely a tremendous amount more to account for across the spectrum versus the first game.

 

[Dickie]

I think a lot of people were disappointed that there were only three classes and three races in the first game. I don't think anyone said that we need 22 classes and 32 races in the second one. God damn. I worry that he's biting off more than he can chew with this.

I guess it's admirable in this day of rampant DLC that he didn't release class and race packs for a few bucks each, but I wonder if that would've been a better route to take. He's already separating the story into modules to sell separately, so it's not like he's totally opposed to selling packages to add to the game.

At least there are finally some other games to play these days, so waiting isn't killing me. Still, I'd prefer to have the game sooner, even if it means only having eight classes and six races.

 

[Volrath]

Boardgame aesthetic looks much better then KoTC

 

[TigerKnee]

Considering IIRC he's aiming for a modular approach and maybe banking on having a lot of "mod" support, I'm thinking tokens and icons portrayed in this manner are probably a lot easier for fans to create their own content than having to create entire KOTC1 type spritesets

 

[Dyskolos]

I keep the faith, but I can't help laughing at how casually this progression plan is set out.

After that, I will focus on ranged attacks, opening the inventory in combat, grapple, bull rush, the other combat manoeuvers, the basic spells, ready versus spell, ready to counterspell, using a magic item in combat, using a class or racial power in combat, and using a spell-like ability. Spells, their interface and their graphical implementation will of course be a big part of the job. Afterwards comes the artificial intelligence.

AKA the meat of the game.

But I'm liking the board game feel more and more, though the temple of lsd-laced evil probably isn't the best sample to put out for converting doubters.

 

[Codexlurker]

Boardgame aesthetic looks much better then KoTC

It really doesn't matter as long as the combat and such has depth and is as fun as the first game.

 

[Excidium II]

Looks like a really ugly maptools setup. Crowdfund an artist contract or something

 

[Metatron]

Why didn't he just continue with the engine and easthetics of the first game? I mean, it's not like we expected some insane AAA production value models for the new races and/or classes. Just some small modifications et voila, perfectly serviceable. New game engine looks very unappealing and unnecessarily so considering he already had a better thing going for the prequel.

 

[Angthoron]

Really hating the new look. Some of the backgrounds are intensely ugly.

 

[Gregz]

Too bad it'll never be released

This.

I'm in the middle of replaying KoTC for the 3rd time...and frankly...the game is perfect.

KoTC is about combat, strategy, theorycrafting, etc. right? The story is nice, but it's hardly the cornerstone of the game. So, what you can do is change all kinds of settings to drastically change your gameplay experience.

You can randomize hit dice or max them, same with ability scores, choose not to craft, limit campfire use, turn hardcore mode on/off, monster spawning on/off, world map encounters on/off. One or two of these settings makes for a completely different playthrough. Not to mention all the different party, feat, weapon and spell compositions you can try.

KoTC 1 is lightning in a bottle, and I think it's very unlikely (based on the updates we've seen) that lightning will strike twice. KoTC doesn't need a sequel. Granted it would be nice to see the game expanded...a few more character classes perhaps, a level cap raise to 25 or 30, an extended story-line within the engine...but Pierre is not going that route, and noone is going to change his mind. We should be grateful that we have KoTC, it really is perfect for what it is.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

"Romances and the avatar

Romances between the main character and an NPC seem quite popular in CRPGs like Baldur's Gate 2, so I wanted the game to support that. For it to work, there has to be a main character. However, party-based games do not have a permanent main character.

So I've decided that one of the characters created by the player will be the player's avatar, the main character. It is selected in the party-creation screen and cannot be changed afterwards. This way, whenever NPCs say something personal, it is intended to be addressed to the avatar character. Romance dialogue scripts will have to check that the avatar character is not dead, though."

 

[J_C]

This looks awful. I might not be a fan of the first game's graphics, but at least it is something. This looks like playing the game from the map view all the time.

 

[Dorateen]

It's probably best to think of this, not as a sequel to Knights of the Chalice, but as an entirely different game that happens to be made by the creator of KotC.

 

[deuxhero]

The weird prospective in KotC 1's demo made me sick. I actually like the new style, especially if it enables zooming in an out.

Classes seem massively imbalanced. As there are no interesting feats for melee characters like core 3.5 (even less, as Power Attack has been cut) melee classes are 1 level dips.

Even against eachother, Champion looks straight up superior to Mage Knight for no reason: they get more spells, armor, ability to select Zen Archery to use bows well, have races that give them a 20 and 18 in their main ability scores.

 

[Elim]

What is the problem with the art style? Looks like 90% of the online maps for pen and paper. If this game is moddable we will be in for a great fucking ride!

 

[hoverdog]

tl;dr: Pierre Bague still hates money.

 

[Galdred]

Actually, the indoor screens look good, but the colorsprayed backgrounds or whatever he is calling it is horrible. That said, I got used to Battle Brother board gamey look pretty quickly, so I doubt it would be a problem.

 

[Elhoim]

The portraits in the token look quite bad, and yeah that "temple" looks horrible as hell. It's not a bad choice per se, but it would be better something like this:

Or this:

 

[TigerKnee]

Classes seem massively imbalanced. As there are no interesting feats for melee characters like core 3.5 (even less, as Power Attack has been cut) melee classes are 1 level dips.

Well, this is 3.5E done by someone with no real firm grasp on what the nature of 3.5E is like... or a firm grasp on reality, for that matter.

Also AFAIK, multi-classing is not going to be in this game. That's why you get things like how Rogue is getting minor-spellcasting as a class feature in KOTC 2.