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Game News Age of Decadence January and February Updates

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Tags: Age of Decadence; Iron Tower Studios; Vault Dweller

I missed the Age of Decadence January update which announced the launch of the Ganezzar beta. Probably because it was only published in Iron Tower's news blog and not in the forums. Whoops! Well, better late than never:

The beta of the third ‘chapter’ is now available to anyone who has the game in their Steam library. To access the beta build, right click on the game in your Steam library, select Properties, click on Betas tab. If it’s set on “None - Opt out of all beta programs”, change it to Test – Private Testing Branch.

Enter the Access Code (‘blacksheepwall’), click on Check Code, and wait for Steam to download the files.

About this beta. It’s a 'work in progress' build with many rough edges. It's in the same state Teron and Maadoran were when we released them to the testers, so for us it's business as usual (except for releasing it to all Early Access’ patrons rather than to the closed beta testers). For people who just want to play the next chapter expecting a few odd bugs here and there, it might be not what they expected.

To remind you, we put the very first playable build on Dec 24. We spent the next 3 weeks improving it, testing, moving things around, tweaking, etc, so the chapter is in a much better shape, but at this stage it’s still about functionality rather than form.

It would take us at least 4-5 weeks to bring it to an ‘enjoyable’ level and another 2-3 weeks to get it to the same state as Teron and Maadoran.

What makes a game city a city? In AoD it’s:
  • Interconnected faction quests that are the foundation. They are the hardest, most time-consuming development aspect. Scripting them is a nightmare.
  • Side quests that aren’t connected to anything. They are isolated situations that fill the city with activities and random things to do. They are a pleasure to write and script and can be done in 2 weeks at most.
  • Static NPCs and visual touches that would make it *look* like a city
  • Things you can click on it and read descriptions or interact with.
So far we did a rough implementation of the faction quests, which means that the city is fairly empty and lifeless, which can be jarring. So if you want more, wait a few weeks.

Now that we did release something, we will update it on a weekly basis, improving the foundation, adding all the missing things, and making it an enjoyable and atmospheric location, so stay tuned.​

Since then, the beta has received five weekly updates, which you can read about there or at the game's Steam community hub. And last month, Vault Dweller published this modest February update:

The main reason for this update is to let you know that the beta will be updated on Friday. The reason for the delay is the art changes in Al-Akia, which is a key part of House Crassus' questline. Why now? That's the beauty of our budget-free development process. Mazin, our artist extraordinaire, is working part-time as he needs to support himself, yet still finds time to help us.

His time is valuable to us, thus we have to use it 'strategically'. For example, now he's working on Hellgate, which is an ancient command center where a lot of explorers died rather painfully, so it has to look the part. We were planning to go with our old design for Al-Akia which is the best we could do but not good enough.

Mazin couldn't change the entire place in a few days but he made a couple of great suggestions, did a couple of sketches (something we can tweak in a week), so that's what Oscar is working on now. Apologies for the delay but in the grand scheme of things a week delay is more than manageable.

Overall, things are going well (more or less) and we're planning - hoping? - to finish Ganezzar by mid-March. By then all Hellgate-related art and animations should be in place. We're almost done with the faction questlines. After this week's update all that's left to do will be the 'Maadoran is destroyed' and 'House Aurelian is destroyed' scenarios as well as using the ship to break the siege. We should be able to do it in a week and then focus on side quests, npcs, visual polish, and scripting issues.

As always, thank you for your support and patience.
Check out the full update for a few images of a fearsome monstrosity that lives in the Hellgate. "The deeper you go into the ruins, the stranger things get."
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
All this polish is good but I'm seeing the prospective release date becoming farther.
Ganezzar took much longer than we anticipated but we should be done with it in 2-3 weeks, which would bring us to 19 locations out of 22. We'll need 6-8 weeks to do 2 pre-temple locations, a month for the temple and the endgame options, and a month or so to polish and fix bugs.

Oscar and I are working on quests and visuals. Now that DS is out, Ivan and Nick have more time. So Ivan did that specter thing that Mazin drew and Nick's working on the AI and that armor change I mentioned in the last update.
 

Goral

Arcane
Patron
The Real Fanboy
Joined
May 4, 2008
Messages
3,552
Location
Poland
All this polish is good but I'm seeing the prospective release date becoming farther.
What's 3-6 months delay at this point? This game doesn't age, it will be as good in 10 years as it is now, i.e. exquisite. In fact it might even be better if they decide to add some things later (assuming it sells well).
 

Crescent Hawk

Cipher
Joined
Jul 10, 2014
Messages
642
I dont care how long it takes, the games seems to have incredible potential. I hope everything turns out okay and you guys dont stop here.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
All this polish is good but I'm seeing the prospective release date becoming farther.
Ganezzar took much longer than we anticipated but we should be done with it in 2-3 weeks, which would bring us to 19 locations out of 22. We'll need 6-8 weeks to do 2 pre-temple locations, a month for the temple and the endgame options, and a month or so to polish and fix bugs.

Oscar and I are working on quests and visuals. Now that DS is out, Ivan and Nick have more time. So Ivan did that specter thing that Mazin drew and Nick's working on the AI and that armor change I mentioned in the last update.

16-19 weeks from now? So that's more like July then.
 

Kem0sabe

Arcane
Joined
Mar 7, 2011
Messages
13,076
Location
Azores Islands
All this polish is good but I'm seeing the prospective release date becoming farther.
Ganezzar took much longer than we anticipated but we should be done with it in 2-3 weeks, which would bring us to 19 locations out of 22. We'll need 6-8 weeks to do 2 pre-temple locations, a month for the temple and the endgame options, and a month or so to polish and fix bugs.

Oscar and I are working on quests and visuals. Now that DS is out, Ivan and Nick have more time. So Ivan did that specter thing that Mazin drew and Nick's working on the AI and that armor change I mentioned in the last update.

Good, there arent enough summer releases as it is. I'm always on vacation by then and hardly have anything to play.
 

Elhoim

Iron Tower Studio
Developer
Joined
Oct 27, 2006
Messages
2,878
Location
San Isidro, Argentina
http://steamcommunity.com/games/aod/announcements/detail/230020442608536930

This week's changelog:
  • Added 'House Aurelian is ruined' scenario
  • Added two NPCs in Ganezzar (a philosopher and a preacher in the Temple district)
  • Added option to break the siege with the ship and a proper chapter ending
  • Fixed issues in 'Maadoran is destroyed' scenario
  • Combat AI changes - the enemies will target unprotected heads
  • Block changes aimed to support lightly armored blockers (wip):
    - Increased the base defense for block for each skill point from 10 to 15.
    - Block is affected by armor defense penalty.
    - Increased chance to fully block attacks.
    - Decreased dodge mobility bonus per tile.
We're almost done with the faction questlines. One last quest and we can start working on the side quests, the visuals, and the journal.

So roughly, we'll add that faction quest and some side quests next week, the remaining side quests the week after, the journal and possibly achievements by the end of the month.

As always, we thank you for your support and patience.
 

oscar

Arcane
Joined
Aug 30, 2008
Messages
8,036
Location
NZ
Oscar and I are working on quests and visuals. Now that DS is out, Ivan and Nick have more time. So Ivan did that specter thing that Mazin drew and Nick's working on the AI and that armor change I mentioned in the last update.

Yep, I'm really busting my chops out there.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
>- Block is affected by armor defense penalty.
RIP juggernauts
The idea is to increase block's defense bonus and introduce penalties. Thus if you're wearing heavy armor the new bonus will be canceled out by the penalties (i.e. the new bonus won't make the blockers more powerful), but if you're wearing light armor, you'll be able to use shield more efficiently. So in a nutshell, the change is about making light armor blockers viable (until now if you wanted to block, you had to use medium-heavy armor).
 

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