Archmage Rises - the play-how-you-want mage simulator - now available on Early Access

[Haba]

[--] nice, cozy, comfy and warm. Just like in mother's womb. Or inside some peasant girl.

Inside or the insides?

That small difference is Important.

 

[The Wall]

[--] nice, cozy, comfy and warm. Just like in mother's womb. Or inside some peasant girl.

Inside or the insides?

That small difference is Important.

Inside of course. Unless you're larping as necromancer, then it might be insides. Or inside insides, if kinky necromancer.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.archmagerises.com/news/2018/2/3/update-58-inside-build-11-part-2

We continue to the hard work of making the game release ready. Archmage is ambitious and our goal is to make something as deep and interesting as Dwarf Fortress or Crusader Kings II, yet accessible to everyone. In this update we show the beginnings of character creation and customization, life aspirations, and the detailed NPC relationships view, and announce something weird that is happening with Nic.

It wasn't till this week I realized we are doing two things: making a world simulator AND THEN making an RPG game inside of that. Problems in one effect the other. Last year we spent a lot of time on the simulator, but never once on the game itself (even though Nic kept raising that exact issue).

One of the major issues is that we, the devs, know how everything works, but will a player? Probably not. This necessitates putting in the correct tooltips and helptext with detailed enough information that most everyone can figure what they encounter.

We haven't done this before, but I thought I'd share the list of 28(!) Improvements made just in this week (well, the ones we bothered documenting):

• Study of books now increases Scholarship skill
• All skills now increase based on use, no longer beholden to rolling 20's, but 20's still increase the stat
• Book titles now reflect content inside, no longer do you get a book with "Ice" in the title that is really fire magic
• Books now grant spells, spell upgrades, skills, bonus damage to certain creature types, and recipes.
• New book type, cookbook, has study length determined by difficulty of the recipe. Easier ones are shorter, harder ones are longer. Cookbooks are easier to study than spell books which we think makes the most sense.
• Updated all tooltips (that we could find) to show stamina and time costs with universal icons
• Book tooltips totally redone, now show important information like rarity, study progress,
• Updated all displays of gold with icon and correct coloring
• Massively updated the Spell screen, now matches artist mock up, includes all correct spell information: description, targeting, target pattern, damage/effect at full strength, flavor text, stackable upgrades, rarity gems for upgrades, added selector outline for schools when filtering the list
• Added basic character creation, with ability to pick gender and character sheet background
• Added 5 life aspirations and their related quest types
• Continue to update old fuzzy Hypertext text to new crisp TextMeshPro as we find them
• Equipped inventory items now have a green outline in inventory to show they are equipped (don't sell em!)
• Updated NPC portraits to use correct relationship icons
• Massively updated NPC relationship screen, added ability to left click a person to instantly see their relationships
• Darkened menus and tooltips to make text readable on all background art
• Marked screens we have no hope of finishing for build 11 as "Unavailable"
• Exploration: added detailed tooltip to tell the user what it is, what it costs, what you get, and what happens at failure
• Exploration now reveals something at half it's difficulty so you know it is there even if you can't find it until later
• Added spells Featherfall and Air Pocket. Sorta working, need more work
• Unfinished books now appear on Magic screen in Study section so you know what to finish
• Updated world generation screen to new artwork
• Reworked fish: now populate randomly in the world based on their species water type: salt, fresh, and swamp. Now multiple species can inhabit the same hex. Fish weight now correctly determined when born (all fish used to be 0.1 lb)
• Fish weight determined by hex food quality, this makes fishing for the same kind of fish in a more abundant hex worth finding
• Reduced water wiggle effect, it was too wiggly
• Added new Healer background
• Outfitter no longer sells weapons or armor. He now sells true adventuring equipment like ropes, torches, crafting ingredients, and soon to exist: rafts/canoes! He also manufactures the items himself
• Weaponsmith sells weapons directly. New armorsmith will do the same for armor

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.archmagerises.com/news/2018/2/10/update-59-inside-build-11-part-3

This week I got sick... for 3 days. And though I did try to power through by working half-days, it was only with half a brain. And since I don't have much to begin with, it was a real set back. But that was OK because I was only trying to rewrite and fun-ify a core system that has been broken for a long time: NPC conversation. In this video I show the new version of the system. It's not perfect, but I think I'm on the right track now with the accumulation, leveling, and discovery of Interests.

If you are interested, here is the list of outstanding tasks for Build 11. It used to be 35, now it's 27.

This week's progress:

1. Before I redesigned the conversation system, I reviewed the systems in other key games (Sims, Dragon Age/Mass Effect, Guild 2, Fable) and published my analysis notes if you are interested.
2. Removed the old Traits system and put in the Interests system. Interests will be driven by personality in the future, right now they are random per person.
3. Created 28 Interests to start with. Many map to actual things you can do in the game on purpose, later I will put in connections so an interest in Fishing and doing actual fishing benefit each other.
4. Added Interest component to the character creation screen that allows the player to select Interest "packages" or go totally random. The packages presented are randomized.
5. Created a new Conversation system which will be expanded for dating and other social outings with NPCs. It allows for multiple choice encounters with many outcomes.
6. Unified the description of spells: tooltip, castbox, magic screen
7. Converted spell damagetype from list to single value, not sure why it was list but it's simpler to just have one type. Also renamed it effectType as it is used for defense spells as well
8. Cleaned up spells and casting: Removed about 8 fields from Spell that were never used and based on old ideas. Updated Spell school power is calculated the way all other stats are now
9. Updated all 11 spells: icons, put in the necessary metadata: description, correct effect calculation, flavor text, combat targetting pattern. Air Pocket has limited use for now.
10. Spells were displayed differently in the Magic screen, Casting box, and tooltip. it was a mess. Unified the display across all three for consistency
11. Converted spells to new 6 AP system from 2 AP system. 2 AP just wasn't enough for real strategic choice. While it is not much different now (1 AP spells are now 3) it is the right foundation going forward. Combat and additional spells are coming in Build 12
12. Featherfall has limited value (really, how much falling is the player going to do?) converted it to Float. Can now be cast on enemies in combat (if power > target weight) and stops them from moving (unless they have the fly ability). So it is now a buff spell that sorta acts like a Hold Person spell.

http://www.archmagerises.com/news/2018/2/17/update-60-inside-build-11-jokes-performances

In this update I show what I was able to accomplish this week despite being out of town for 3 days. The broader context of this piece is in having many realistic ways to interact with NPCs, and many ways to build or harm relationships. All this is within the pursuit of making lasting friendships that mean something over time.

If you are interested, here is the list of outstanding tasks for Build 11. It is still at 27.

This week's progress:

1. Found and fixed a major fishing bug
2. Put in fish images, one for each species of fish, and a special image for empty hook. Fish image size can now reflect the weight. It feels really good now.
3. Spent a day refining the conversations code from last week. There were about 20 edge case scenarios that I had to sort through, write for, deal with. It's all feeling really good now.
4. I've always intended to have "tell a joke" as a conversation option (its in the Sims). So I created a joke engine that will create a joke based on several premise algorithms.
5. Jokes are generated at time of world generation and originate with certain people.
6. The player can learn any joke by hearing it. If an NPC knows a joke they have a small chance of telling it to the player through a special prompt. NPCs won't tell jokes the player has already heard.
7. The player can tell any joke they know to someone. Each NPC remembers which jokes they have heard before. Telling a joke utilizes the performance skill, which improves with each successful joke told.
8. NPCs react to jokes based on success/failure to tell, and just their own sense of what is funny (this will be connected with personalty in the future). So a successful joke can still not be funny to the hearer. Oh how i've experienced this too many times...
9. In a future build: Players can use the Composition skill to craft new jokes. For now you just have to collect the ones in the game.
10. Added the ability to insult an NPC. This will be utilized in the near future.
11. Something I've always intended was to allow the player to perform in an inn: music, poetry, singing, storytelling. I decided to see if I could use the gambling/conversation system to make a Stand Up comedy act. It didn't take me too long to do so. I'm not going to spend time putting in the other kinds, but now they are possible. All this is to fulfill the original design goal of being like Raistlin and friends supporting themselves by putting on shows at various inns along the shore of the sea of Istar.

 

[HoboForEternity]

These guys are insane

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Fuck, a joke engine is already a singular achievement. As well sell that to fund the game.

 

[ArchAngel]

Fuck, a joke engine is already a singular achievement. As well sell that to fund the game.

I think by this time the guy financing this is just set on wasting all his money and getting a game he is satisfied with and not making a game that will earn him anything back.

All these features for a 10h game (their words are that you will need up to 10h to play through one life). Normies are going to skip it all due to being not looking good enough and too complicated and the rest of us are going to skip it due to game running out of development money and being too buggy at "release".
Did anyone read if the guy got rid of his money problems he talked about for a while?

 

[HoboForEternity]

I feel like the length of a single "life" will work in favor for the game because if it was 80 hours RPG it would fall into like "only 5 % of the owners completed this" and i think it was filled with enough randomness for casuals just to fool around and having random fun.

We already know graphics doesnt really determine a smaller game's success. It just really need a good marketing and some luck for it to be noticed like undertale, stardew valley, etc and i think the premise the game is unique enough to get more attention.

I dunno, but as crazy as it sounds, it may actually worked. They are busy developing the game atm, but since the main guy is actually a decently successful businessman, he probably know how yo market things, just the team is quite small and they arent keen on wasting money on hiring a dedicated PR/marketer.

It still can go both ways. I dunno if the game even gonna be finished, but at least they really love what they are doing and made some amount of personal sacrifice that i hope it turned out good and rewarding financially for them.

 

[thesheeep]

Spoiler

Yes, I came up with it myself.

 

[Haba]

Can't wait to perform the aristocrats and critically fail it. Or dead baby jokes to parents who just lost their child.

But my main worry at this point is simple: where is the archmage-ey stuff?

Shouldn't your life aspirations be magic related? Where is the exploration of magic? Spell development? Rare magic ingredients?

 

[HoboForEternity]

Can't wait to perform the aristocrats and critically fail it. Or dead baby jokes to parents who just lost their child.

But my main worry at this point is simple: where is the archmage-ey stuff?

Shouldn't your life aspirations be magic related? Where is the exploration of magic? Spell development? Rare magic ingredients?

good question. I know it has mage tower, with apprentices etc, but what does the magic does? Is it for combat only?. Or there can be alot of stuff we can do?

Charm and enslave people? Turn a whole town into a cheese wheel? Open a portal in the bottom of a lake. Then other one in the middle of a town?

Someone should ask this on steam.

 

[ArchAngel]

I am also afraid they got so caught up with realistic simulation of the game world, they forget this is a game about a mage and it should be fun first of all by letting you do mage stuff.

 

[tsiforb]

Did anyone read if the guy got rid of his money problems he talked about for a while?

Pretty sure that he mentioned a while back that the company he owns got some new contracts and things were looking ok.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.archmagerises.com/news/2018/2/24/update-61-inside-build-11-npc-brains-and-relationships

Archmage Rises is about a dream. A dream to have a "real" world which enables real role playing, more than just fetch quests and killing giant rats. To make this work the NPCs have to think, remember, and respond realistically. Relationships need to grow and evolve over time, based on decisions the player makes. This needs to be right, now, so it can be built upon going forward. It's almost there.

In this update we show how a variety of interactions can grow a relationship. And new ones become available as you increase or decrease the stages of the relationship. Repetition doesn't work in relationships, so I had to retool the NPC brain to be able to efficiently store and quickly retrieve everything that happens to them (with timestamps) so they can react correctly to someone spamming the same choices.

Something I forgot to mention in the video, but is pretty cool, is with these data driven Interactions we could allow for player generated interactions. I don't know if we'll actually do it, but the ease of the system now make it theoretically possible.

Then we do something we never did before: about half way through the video we dive into the code and show some of the efficiency gains from the refactoring. We hope this is of interest to developers out there.

If you are interested, here is the list of outstanding tasks for Build 11. It is still at 27.

This week's progress:

1. Created new class Brain, made it associative, can now be attached to anything. For instance, we can have a talking fountain or treasure chest.
2. Redesigned mood to make it based on wellbeing. They used to be separate, now they are the same.
3. Added interactions play can do to raise/lower an NPCs wellbeing
4. Discount % at shops is now based on level of friendship, and goes up as friendship increases
5. Added max memory types to tune the brain to remembering certain kind of data and ignoring others.
6. NPC and Player wellbeing moods now affect social interaction effects. So being miserable is -20% to all relationships scores. This means telling a joke when Miserable is only 80% effective
7. Converted "talk time" into hours instead of units, some interactions are free, some take an hour, some take several hours.
8. Insulting someone is a free action (they don't make time for you), but they also don't want to talk to you anymore. Talk time regenerates over time.
9. Put in a new basic interaction Ask About Day
10. Made a universal tooltip for interactions. It can read the data and display it correctly, with all the right colors, icons, indentation, etc. Took forever to get everything covered.
11. Added base stats (think D&D's base 6 attributes) to all NPCs so they can do opposed checks. Like perception vs persuasion or stealth. Will need this for guards later.
12. Add Flatter interaction which is Persuasion vs Perception with a bonus to relationship (the more they like you the more likely to accept your flattery)
13. Added gift giving. This was a big feature, the ability to give someone money or ANY item(s). NPC accepts or denies based on value of the gift and the level of relationship and remembers previous gifts and compares them.
14. Created new item transfer window that can take up to 32 items.
15. Put in Personal Questions interactions

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Talk time regenerates over time.

If only my phone did this.

 

[Haba]

Uh oh. That code will be a nightmare in the future.

And once again, not very magey - not to mention archmagey. I mean, telling jokes and passing on compliments is pretty much apprentice level stuff. One should naturally become "above" such mundane stuff quite early in the game.

Maybe they should change the name of the game.

 

[ArchAngel]

Uh oh. That code will be a nightmare in the future.

And once again, not very magey - not to mention archmagey. I mean, telling jokes and passing on compliments is pretty much apprentice level stuff. One should naturally become "above" such mundane stuff quite early in the game.

Maybe they should change the name of the game.

And also add non mage classes into the game. This game sounds like a dream come true for Rogue or Bard like characters.

 

[ArchAngel]

Can't wait to perform the aristocrats and critically fail it. Or dead baby jokes to parents who just lost their child.

But my main worry at this point is simple: where is the archmage-ey stuff?

Shouldn't your life aspirations be magic related? Where is the exploration of magic? Spell development? Rare magic ingredients?

good question. I know it has mage tower, with apprentices etc, but what does the magic does? Is it for combat only?. Or there can be alot of stuff we can do?

Charm and enslave people? Turn a whole town into a cheese wheel? Open a portal in the bottom of a lake. Then other one in the middle of a town?

Someone should ask this on steam.

Your wish was fulfilled.
I asked this

Spoiler

I am here as a representative of the most prestigeous RPG community - RPGCodex. I want to ask some questions that some of the members really want to know (but are afraid to face the world outside).
After all these updates about world simulation some of the people started asking questions about where is the Mage and Archmage content?
They are wondering why a Mage should concent itself about mundane things that his magic should easily overcome.
Will Mages be able to Charm, Dominate, Confuse people or towns? Will they be able to turn whole towns into their army of the undead? Will they be able to control the Mayor and have him do your bidding? Can they go in Invisible, burn the town with Fireballs and use Illussions to blame someone else? Create Illusion of Dragons to get the Mayor to post a bounty for someone to kill him so the Mage can fake it and get money?
Or 1000 different way to use magic in a game called Archmage?
Maybe the game should be renamed to Master Thief or ArchBard because all this mundane simulations seems to fit those archtypes much more.

on Steam

 

[Brancaleone]

Maybe they should change the name of the game.

Arch[Insert Player Class] Rises.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Maybe they should change the name of the game.

Arch[Insert Player Class] Rises.

ArchBridge rises.

ArchEyebrow Rises

ArchFall rises.

ArchWindow rises.

Yeah, could work.

 

[ArchAngel]

Ok, we got a fast answer:

LordYabo [developer] 23 minutes ago

Lol. Good question! And not the first to ask! Love the RPGCodex community!

I get it, right now the world simulator and mundane tasks are taking up all the cycles. And here is why: We need to get the mundane world working correctly before the fantastic can be introduced.

As you wrote, the spells all do reality distorting things. So if the player were to cast an ice spell on a hex, the crops have to respond to the drop in temperature and be ruined. That means we have to get the crops growing at regular temperatures working first.

Invisibility is another great example. In order for invisibility to work as one would expect and be valuable, the following has to occur:

1. People have to be able to see one another
   
2. People have to be able to hear one another
   
3. Guards have to know who they are looking for
   
4. Guards have to be able to search for someone they are looking for
   
5. Guards have to monitor the traffic of people coming in and out of the town
   
6. Taking something has to have a perception check

By having all the above, then when you cast Invisibility to stroll into a town you are Wanted in, now it feels really good and exciting. Another option is to use the Fly spell to go over the wall and bypass the entrance all together.

By having baggage wagons pulled by animals, the value of the Float spell becomes clear when you can double your carrying capacity or forgo the animals altogether.

I've designed up 25+ spells but only implemented 4 so far. Spells, combat, and dungeons are the focus of the next build/release Build 12. That doesn't mean you'll see 21 more spells in the next build, just that the magic will be more front and center and you'll start to see real progress on it.

By the time of release we will have illusions, burning down towns with your fire storms, ruining or saving crops with weather spells, and constructing a Flying Citadel.

One of the challenges of "transparent" game dev is these troughs of mundane work. But stick with it and I think the wait will be worth it.

If there is something specific you'd like to know, or if I haven't answered to your satisfaction, lemme know!

PS. I'm going to go TM ArchBard right now. I'd totally play that.

 

[Infinitron]

When one does weekly update videos, some are going to be amazing and some are going to be less-than-amazing. This is such a one. With nothing really to show, we address a key fan question, the elephant in the room so to speak, of where is the magic in Archmage Rises?!

If you are interested, here is the list of outstanding tasks for Build 11. It is still at 27.

This week's progress:

1. Everything was going along swimmingly until it wasn't. The new menu interactions worked until they didn't, and I spent hours and hours trying to fix it to no avail. Requires a rewrite. Crud.
2. Added Cheer Up - to console NPCs grieving or miserable
3. Added Deep Conversation - same as conversation, but with higher rewards and failure cost
4. Added Local Info - NPC can tell the player about things, resources, places around the town
5. Added Hug - friendly hugs boost wellbeing of both parties
6. Added Borrow - when the relationship is high enough, the player can borrow money for a period of time at varying interest levels
7. Added Teach Skill - if they like the player enough, they can teach their best skill to the player
8. Unburden - if the player is feeling down, instead of seeking alcohol, you can share your problems with a good friend
9. Added Receive Gift - Best friends will give the player valuable items
10. Updated the Treasure Tables to create large items: weapons, books, and bacon

 

[ArchAngel]

Ok, so this video was also about the question some of you asked.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.archmagerises.com/news/2018/3/9/update-63-inside-build-11-equipment

I finally finished that torturous menu rewrite mid Wed. Hallelujah. I then returned to knocking off tasks and improving the gameplay of Build 11.

I took on the Equipment task, something content oriented that is as far as one can get from systems rewrites. Equipment is the equipable gear you can buy, find, receive, or craft. For this build I put in items for Head, Body, and Feet slots.

People have different ideals for how a magic user dresses and behaves. From the simple flowing robes of Gandalf to the full suit of solamnic plate of a spell casting Death Knight like Lord Soth. Based on this Steam Forum Discussion I implemented Cloth, Leather, and Plate armor. Each is designed around a different need/purpose.

• Cloth grants abilities that enhance research, relationships, spell casting, and specific spells.
• Leather is about adventuring, doing, and working. It will enhance your skills, provide resistances to ill effects, while providing adequate mobile protection.
• Plate is about attack and defense. It will greatly reduce any damage taken, enhance your weapon use, and boost damage against certain races. But at the cost of making casting more difficult.

Players are able to mix and match as they please, and collecting 3 pieces that all stack their bonuses I think will be a worthy endeavor.

Finally I put in the code for Unique items. This allows specially designed unique equipment to be created by NPCs or found in dungeons. These pieces can be designed by me or the team, but also enables fans who have bought the Artificer level of the game to have their designed piece appear.

I finally finished 3 tasks on the outstanding tasks for Build 11. It is down to 24!

Oh, and here is that hilarious Boots of Escaping video!

This week's progress:

1. Created a new menu system. Gutted the old 4 year old one, it didn't meet our needs.
2. Damage reduction was % only and on character, moved to a stat for either % or armor
3. updated eventcard background to make it more legible
4. Created 9 types of armor: cloth, leather, plate X body, foot, head
5. Created Economy.stat valuation of each stat in the game so pricing will be consistent.
6. So something that gives spell school +1 has the same value no matter where it comes from
7. Created a universal pricing algorithm for all equipment
8. Created a universal way to display a stat. Some need a % at the end, or a spell school at beginning, and code like that was spread all over. Tooltips and Character sheet will now all match.
9. Added icons for plate, leather, cloth armor
10. Changed the equipment slot display font to fit 6 lines and be clearer at smaller sizes
11. fixed bug where spell book didn't display spells outside of combat or dungeons
12. Action Point and Cast Stamina buffs now work
13. got spell enhancements to work. Equipment (or anything else) can make a spell more powerful
14. put in alcohol resistence, and grinding bonus
15. added uniques
16. added armorer building
17. added armor to large treasure table

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.archmagerises.com/news/2018/3/17/update-64-inside-build-11-its-the-economy-stupid

This week Thomas tackled one of the big outstanding issues: the realistic supply-demand economy doesn't work. Nothing to show yet. Nic shares an update, and we ask you what you think of having a world editor.

If the ability to edit a world, from the hexes, monsters, and towns down to the individual people, jobs, and personalities, is a 10 out of 10 must have feature for you, let us know by saying so on this thread:

World Generation

Sadly the outstanding tasks for Build 11 remains at 24.

This week's progress:

1. A lot of whiteboarding and design work on what is wrong with the economy and how to fix it. Two big ideas surfaced and i'm currently trying to implement them.