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

[ArchAngel]

Cool stuff. Too bad you have to like role-playing a mage to enjoy this fully.

I think Mage is only so you can get access to more options than a normal fighter would have and have more options during combat.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[ArchAngel]

 

[Infinitron]

We said we'd give you honest updates, so this week's update is about some of the business and financial challenges behind the scenes. Short summary: despite the risk to the current funding of the game, we are continuing on and looking for alternate sources. We want to get this game done, and done right.

Uh oh.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

We said we'd give you honest updates, so this week's update is about some of the business and financial challenges behind the scenes. Short summary: despite the risk to the current funding of the game, we are continuing on and looking for alternate sources. We want to get this game done, and done right.

Not that I'm unsympathetic but that just sounds like par for the course for indies. You bear all the risk and reap all the reward. Indies that need capital take on debt, some of which is collateralized by property.

I do wonder why there isn't a VC-type company for games. If you have a good eye and can impose some management on the process, there is probably some profit to be made.

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

Game developers are creative types who hate being managed, and video games are high-risk investments. Both factors tend to cool the heads of investors.

 

[ntonystinson]

They should just do kickstarter or release an open demo to increase the interest in the game. People interested in the game see $30 for pre-alpha test and run for the hills

 

[Infinitron]

We're in the midst of redoing the UI. We're doing it to address questions/concerns raised by fans (thanks!) and now we have a clearer view of how the game should play. In the video you'll see the first look of the new UI in combat. We'll show the rest when it is ready.

 

[Kayerts]

I do wonder why there isn't a VC-type company for games. If you have a good eye and can impose some management on the process, there is probably some profit to be made.

Game developers are creative types who hate being managed, and video games are high-risk investments. Both factors tend to cool the heads of investors.

There are a few funds that do focus specifically on indie game studios:

http://indie-fund.com/about/
https://xsolla.com/capital/

No idea how they're performing. Xsolla's a very small and very new fund.

There are also a large number of individual angel investors who've made investments in gaming:

https://angel.co/video-games/investors

But, yes, it's usually a bad match for conventional software VC, for a lot of reasons. (Short version: it's a hard sell to present a growth story promising sufficient returns to interest VCs.)

 

[Infinitron]

This week we show the completion of a missing piece from last week: the quick action bar. We also discuss additional work in progress, multiple weapon types, the super special gold box edition, special content for newsletter members and pre-orders, and some gold old fashioned Canadian Trivia.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Someone is getting sued.

 

[Infinitron]

The funding saga continues:

This week Thomas travels down to Toronto to get an update on the software company currently financing the game.

 

[Background Character]

I really want to believe in this game

 

[Lhynn]

Hopefully, if it does what it says it will right it will be glorious.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.archmagerises.com/news/2017/5/20/video-update-23-procedurally-generating-a-worlds-history

UPDATE #23: PROCEDURALLY GENERATING A WORLD'S HISTORY

At the request of fans above is a short-ish video demonstrating the feature we're talking about and below is a more detailed write up.

How do you make a procedurally generated world feel lived in and alive?

No really, I’m asking, because I don’t know.

Well, maybe I have some ideas...

I’ve been working on the game for just over 3 years. About a month ago I ran into a significant problem with the world generation. It got us this far, but it was becoming clear it won't work long term.

I started the game with the idea of “reverse generation”. A character wants a MacGuffin found. This creates the need for a place for it to be lost in. We would then generate the place, it’s history, and supporting narrative for that place. I was inspired but how Just In Time compilers compile only what they need when they need it. It is very efficient, no wasted space or data. Only generate what is needed when it is needed. This works really well except for a few fringe cases I just couldn’t solve.

For instance, generating a family backwards is conceptually really hard to get right. Take a woman running the mage shop. The player asks about her parents. She says she doesn’t know her father but her mom lives in the same village. Now, clearly, she had a father or wouldn’t exist. Perhaps she was the result of an illicit affair. But with whom? Given her age we have to backwards generate who was in the village 33 years ago and begat her. Then if the narrative generator decided her father was actually still alive, we’d have to place him somewhere in the world. This becomes a family secret (I have a daughter I have never met) the player could learn and reveal, perhaps to the elation of the mage shop woman.

If the father died, when? And why? Most games don’t care about these details, but it is precisely tracking and knowing (at least internally if not externally shown to the player) that makes Archmage Rises special as a living breathing world. I can’t just throw up a curtain and ask the player not to look behind it.

The above scenario is much easier to do forward:

A woman and man of roughly the same age are in the same town. Say the woman works in the fields and the man is a travelling trader. The romance engine can cause sparks between these two NPCs and the result could end up being a one night stand. Sex has a percentage chance of leading to pregnancy (instead of tracking menstrual cycles for every female we simply roll an internal d20. We won’t disclose if pregnancy is the result of a critical success or fail). The simulator continues as normal: The trader continues on his regular work route. He may end up being killed by goblins, captured by bandits, or simply changing jobs and living somewhere else never aware of the consequence of one night of NPC d20 passion.

This was a small example, but the issues become larger when applied to a whole town with armies and battles. So there was nothing to do but bite the bullet, pivot, and rework the generating engine.

So far, so good.

Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal
When looking for ideas, rules, even roll tables for kingdom generation I came across a Pathfinder supplement I forgot I owned: Ultimate Campaign. Of the 258 pages a good quarter of it is dedicated to rules on founding, managing, and growing kingdoms and the mass combat that flows from kingdoms in conflict. It is a great resource to study for my immediate problem and something I plan to utilize in my next house D&D campaign. It even has color cut out buildings to paste onto a town grid as the players build them! Never seen that before.

Ultimate Campaign was ultimately helpful. I took their core concepts and translated it into what Archmage Rises needed. Below I’ll explain some of the crunchy bits going on behind the scenes.

Lord Mayors
A town is run by a Lord Mayor (formerly I called them nobles). A Lord Mayor has a personality type and goals that are civic, economic, or military minded. Diplomatic relationships between towns are personal: it’s Lord Mayor to Lord Mayor. Decisions are made by the Mayor. If there is a spat between them it could lead to all out war. Conversely, if they get along well, their towns help each other out. Events and the player can affect the relationships between mayors. It’s cheaper for a mayor to be killed through assassination by an adversary than all out war, but you wouldn’t want to do that would you? Of course not!

Lord Mayors can lose their jobs through peasant revolts, and a new leader (usually from the nobility) will be installed in place. The player can affect peasant revolts and know ahead of time who is most likely to fill the vacant position.

Town Stats
The next most important aspect of a town is it’s “stat block”.

Economy – how open, powerful, lucrative, and far reaching the town economy is. Economy drives Build Points which is the residual “stuff” used to build things

Order – While it does represent law & order, it is not just how enforced the law is by constables and guards but the citizens themselves. It is also how organized a town is in maximizing it’s resources and working together. The opposite of Order is chaos or anarchy. The player can do things to increase or decrease Order in a town.

Military – How powerful, well trained, organized, and well led the military units are. Building a barracks, town walls, or a castle increases military. When something requires force, a check is made against the military value. For instance: a town is in revolt. Can the Lord Mayor stay in power by having the soldiers quell the rebellion? A military check determines the result.

Unrest – expressed as a percentage it is the different between Unrest points and Order. Once Unrest passes 50% Unrest Events can begin happening. One obvious one is a peasant revolt. Many things can lead to unrest: starvation, being attacked by town or monsters, or player actions. Players can be agents of chaos throughout the land, but you wouldn’t want to do that would you? Of course not!

Build Points – A representation of how many resources are at the towns disposal for taking actions. Actions can include building new buildings, recruiting armies, passing an edit, special holidays, sending out trade caravans, and more. Nic has pointed out we already have a currency, gold, so why not just use that? OK he wins, we will. But for now it uses Build Points because Pathfinder did and the numbers are smaller.

Consumption – as the population increases the drain on the economy increases. This is called consumption. A large town may have many buildings and resources but be breaking even because of a high consumption. Consumption allows a town or player to undermine a large town by cutting off it’s food/resource supplies and watching.

Town Demands
With the lord mayors in place, leaning towards civic, economic, or military agendas it was time to test the world history. Every 40-60 years a mayor would die of natural causes and be replaced by a new person with a new agenda. Unfortunately the government ran about as effectively as the US. A military minded mayor would single mindedly build a castle, walls, and moat during his tenure then watch as the town starved itself to death and fall into anarchy. Only a crazed roman emperor would be so detached from the needs of the people. Something had to be done.

Sim City 4.  The good Sim City.

Sim City 4. The good Sim City.

I was inspired by Sim City where demand builds up in RCI. While not the same, the idea is that people and buildings create demand for different types of buildings/actions in one of the three types: Civic, Economic, and Military.

So while a mayor may be military minded, if the demand for civic is at a critical threshold he’ll do something about it.

This leads to a much more balanced government and though simple, provides a lot of opportunity for interaction with the player to affect how a town behaves.

Great People/Events
Over time great spells will be discovered, breakthroughs in schools of magic will occur, powerful weapons or artifacts will be forged. When these happen, a new “treasure” is created that now exists in the world and can be found by the player. Like how Raistlin had Magius’ staff centuries later, so to it is possible for the player (or rival adventurers) to hunt down these powerful artifacts.

Wars and Rumors of Wars
Towns can recruit armies to defend themselves (ya right) or to smite their enemies (more likely). When a town is attacked (by civilized town or monsters) it will take damage and lose population. This creates a rich history to the town where you can see the result of their triumphs and defeats.

How Does This Make a History?
All of the above goes into crafting a world with history of over 1,000 years. Totally unique to each player and each play through. We do have a loose grand narrative it adheres to, but the specifics are always different.

Time passes in months, years, or decades. There are reasons some towns survive and thrive and others fail miserably. People go about their jobs, monsters do their monstrous things, armies battle, and mayors try to govern it all. All the points of conflict and interaction are tracked creating a world of color and depth.

I’m still working on the systems and AI involved in all the above. It is mostly working but I still have to get the monsters in. Then I have to test it by simulating millions of years of history.

All this should lead to a game world that feels real. Just like at the tabletop.

Questions?

Oh, and if you are interested in the background/lore to the magic system this thread on Steam may be of interest.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.archmagerises.com/news/2017/5/27/video-update-24-first-person-hex-view

VIDEO UPDATE #24: FIRST PERSON HEX VIEW

A living breathing world. Our goal: to make a world of depth worth visiting and living a life in. It's hard to think of the world as "living breathing" when the player simply looks at a bunch of static hexes on the map. Enter the poorly named feature "Hex View".

Every hex is brimming with adventure, secrets, resources, monsters... possibilities. ,Hex view lets you see each hex within it's context and each one is totally unique. There is are 20+ actions you can take within a given hex, but the first step was to get showing the hex working.

So this is what we are showing you this week. It's taking longer than expected on the art side, and getting the time-of-day stuff working correctly was finicky but we've made good progress this week.

More will be coming in two weeks since Rogier is off goofing around Croatia this week.

PS. The hex view reminds me of the old SSI game Stronghold, one of my favorites from the 90's because of how it melded D&D and strategy gaming. I'm not trying to make it like that game, but I can't help but be influenced by what i loved in Stronghold.

 

[thesheeep]

My wrists hurt.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.archmagerises.com/news/2017/6/3/new-features-from-idea-to-coding

UPDATE #25: NEW FEATURES: FROM IDEA TO CODING

(Sorry for the bad audio quality on Nic, didn't notice till we were done. Fortunately he doesn't say much. )

For our 25th episode we are not only showing some new features in the works, but also how we do it. Like really, how do you go from idea to coding? It's actually a long and somewhat scientific process. We show you the steps and the tools involved in indie game dev.

Spoiler

The Process
STEP 1. UNDERSTAND SOURCE MATERIAL (OR START WITH THE WHY)
We're lucky Archmage Rises is inspired by Pen&Paper RPGs because there is a wealth of source material to draw from. This step isn't "feature X in system Y is cool, let's chuck it in". That's a recipe for disaster. It's deep thought about WHY in that system X is cool. What emotions does it elicit? How does the player feel specifically, is it: smart, powerful, clever, wise, in control, pushin-it, etc? How can we get that feeling into our game.

This step is also based on already having done the research: hundreds of hours of playing and reading a variety of sources. This step is about already knowing something exists that I want, not finding it anew.

New ideas are no good because they haven't simmered long enough. It's like making Chicken Stock. The ingredients have to boil under low heat for a long long time, then you have something potent and delicious. You have the essence, and that is what we are shooting for: essence.

For purposes of example let's use what I was working on this week: Land ownership and management. Why? Because I think it is compelling to earn property in the world. That is a cornerstone of a medieval world. I think it helps ground and expand the experience of "being there". It also provides another entirely different revenue source of gold.

STEP 2. ANALYZE OTHER’S SOLUTIONS
Now that you have a why, it's time to dive into what everyone else has done. This will give you several things:

1. How something that actually works works
2. Possible new ideas on implementation you may not have thought of
3. Problems/considerations you hadn't thought of. For instance, the reference game doesn't have to do what you want to do well. If you don't like it you have to know why you don't like it.

In our case D&D, Pathfinder, D20 have rules for land ownership especially in A Magical Medieval Society. Computer games like Pirates and Pillars of Eternity have land ownership in them. So does Sid's lesser known game Colonization. I don't like Pillars implementation, I really like Pirates but wish there was more.

STEP 3. BRAINSTORM ALONE FOR 25 MINS
I accidentally follow the Pomdoro Technique without even knowing it. If you struggle to come up with ideas, or conversely struggle with too many ideas, I find this technique very helpful to get stuff done; to move forward.

Spend 25 minutes brainstorming everything you can think of that would be awesome to have in the game. Do it in your tool of choice, whatever is fastest and presents the least barriers. For some it may be a yellow pad of paper, or notepad, I prefer XMind cuz it's easy and free.

25 minutes is long enough that you can get a "good think" in, 5 mins is useless. Yet it is short enough in that it creates "good stress" (yes there is such a thing). It forces you to get the core idea down and nothing more, because time is ticking away!

Oh, and the best way to brainstorm is to do it alone first, then compare notes with others. Much more productive.

At the end of my brainstorm I had a list of features. Here are just some:

• assignment of workers
• workers and slaves vary
• races of captured slaves matter
• spells to terraform
• spells to enhance worker productivity
• seasons matter
• different kinds of land behave differently, some random some steady income
• short/long term considerations - chopping down forests for immediate cash but becomes Waste

It doesn’t matter how long/short your list is. Whatever you got is what you got. Your subconscious has provided you with what is really important to you. If your list is pathetically short, you now have a clue this feature isn’t as good as you thought or you don’t love it enough. Go back to Step 1 and repeat or abandon.

I call this list of stuff a feature list even though that is confusing since they are sub-features of a single feature. Hope it makes sense.

STEP 4. WRITE OUT CONCISE RULES
This is a bit like the old time software technique of writing pseudo code. The point is it forces you to think logically about your feature list. For instance “seasons matter”. Ok how exactly? What land types are affected by what seasons? Be as specific as you can. Text in Word is 83x cheaper than code or graphics, this is the place to iterate, drop, revise as much as you can.

In my land ownership I made a table in word and wrote out all the land types I wanted. It included gem mines, flax fields, marble quarries, sheep pastures, and livestock pens. Unfortunately none of that made the final cut and it makes me sad right now to write them here again. I loved those ideas, but once I saw my table I knew it was too complicated for the player to care the difference between planting cotton, flax, food, etc. But I persisted and kept it all in there for the next step.

Don't study this too hard, it's all going to change.

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Don't study this too hard, it's all going to change.

STEP 5. VISUALIZE IT (IN A MOCKUP)
Time to see what your new feature will look like with a mockup. Hurray for Programmer Art! Also known in the industry as “greyboxing”. You want to see your feature idea in 2d/3d space. It’s very easy to write “drag and drop workers on land” but when you suddenly have to show all the different land types on the screen (icons? Text? Lists?) and different kinds of workers (hirelings, slaves, constructs) important questions come up:

Where do I put the list of workers available?

How can I immediately know a land is being worked or not? (tooltip is not a sufficient answer. I’m looking at you Paradox!)

Tons of problems come out of this step. Those 34 land types I thought were so great? Ya they don’t fit on a screen in any comprehensible way. Trust me, I tried.

To make fast easy to modify mockups I use Balsamiq 3. The guys at Balsamiq live and breathe software mockups: They even provide recipes on their website so you can make a quick dinner and get back to designing mockups. Awesome!

It's ugly and horrible, but it's a start!

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It's ugly and horrible, but it's a start!

When your terrible lopsided, crammed, ugly mock up is done it’s time for the next step.

STEP 6. THROW IT AWAY, START OVER
In the classic 60’s book Mythical Man Month about software dev, Fred Brooks states:

“You build one to throw away.
— Fred Brooks
Modern thought, like that of Lean Startup, says essentially the same thing: fail fast, validate learning, pivot, move forward.

The principle is the first time you do something you make tons of mistakes you wouldn’t repeat. This is why I always build my Ikea furniture twice (unintentionally I assure you). The learning from doing is invaluable. The second version of everything is always better than the first. So let’s jump right to V2 and forget about V1 forever. I miss you copper and gem mines!

I don’t find it necessary to re-brainstorm but maybe you do. I don’t like bad ideas to cross contaminate good new ideas, so I start with a fresh page in Word and a new blank mockup in Balsamiq. I also try not to refer to the previous work because if I can’t remember it it clearly wasn’t very important to me. It’s a little trick I use to filter the ideas and strive for essence.

Remember Edison and the light bulb filament? You now know what doesn’t work. So gather up all that validated learning you just got and make a super awesome V2. Or V3, V4, etc.

STEP 7. PRESENT FIRST DRAFT(V2) FOR FEEDBACK
Now you’ve got rules and mockup you are proud of. Could it be better? No! Because you sweat and toiled over it and it is perfection incarnate.

Now show it to the team (or just one team member depending on confidence level) and they’ll tell you everything that is wrong with it:

• Our tech doesn’t support that
• It’ll take too long to implement this
• It’s ugly
• It’s confusing
• It’s overly complex/simple

What a bunch of jerks! If only they knew everything you knew then they’d see how clearly awesome it is.

But they don’t know what you know. And neither does the player.

This is why their feedback is more right than wrong. If people who are actively working on the game, who know it better than any reviewer or player ever will, “don’t get it” then they’ve done you a great service and saved you from making a colossal mistake.

“Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
— Habit #5 Stephen R. Covey
Never defend: seek to understand. If someone says it is too complex ask why questions until you get something actionable. Perhaps the font is too small, or the list box shows 20 items when if it was only 8 at first it would be more easily assimilated. If they say they don’t like something provide them with “what I was trying to do here was X…” That’s not defending yourself, that is sharing your goal and maybe they can how suggest how you could better achieve that same goal.

STEP 8. REVISE, ITERATE, REVISE AGAIN
When you get back to your workstation, and after you stop crying, take allllllll that wonderful feedback and make V3 or V4 or V10. Keep to your initial vision but achieve it by solving the problems they pointed out. This is easier said than done which is why I simply wrote the above sentence and didn’t provide a picture.

STEP 9. PRESENT V3 TO EXPANDED TEAM
You worked through the feedback problems and now you have something you’re proud of, again. And truth be told, this version is better than the previous one. You wouldn’t have gone this extra mile if you hadn’t been pushed so hard. Now that I think of it, I should probably thank them for their criticism and helping forge me into a better designer. Come to think of it, this really is a great team we’ve got here!

Nah! It will only encourage them to be more critical next time. Plus acknowledging their efforts makes it that much harder to take all the credit once it is released. Best to keep these mature thoughts to yourself.

Present v3 to the same person and maybe some others. See if there are more holes that can be poked in it. Maybe it’s bulletproof, or maybe you missed a few.

V4 mock up of the Relationship screen.  We'll see what happens at step 11.

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V4 mock up of the Relationship screen. We'll see what happens at step 11.

STEP 10. REVISE, ITERATE, REVISE AGAIN
Inevitably something will come out of showing others that can be improved. Your lucky if it is only minor tweaks.

STEP 11. SEND IT TO ART FOR AESTHETICS
It’s solid enough for a prototype. It’s time to see how it will actually look in game with the right colors, backgrounds, UI, buttons, etc.

Goodbye programmer art!

STEP 12. FINAL TEAM REVIEW
When the final mockup is done, it’s time to review with the team. The artist may have found problems he/she didn’t realize until actually working with it. Revise as necessary, usually there aren’t big changes here.

STEP 13. ASSIGN TASK FOR CONSTRUCTION
With a solid mock up showing what the feature should look like in game, and concise rules explaining functionality and limitations, it’s time to let the real work begin.

Wait, what?!

Yep, this was all just preparatory work to have an actionable task for someone to do on the game. In SCRUM you’d call it a Story. Now the hard work of seeing how it plays in the game, and seeing if it matches the feeling/experience you were trying to get at in step 1.

If not, well time to iterate! Yeehaw, isn’t game dev awesome?! Of course it is! But certainly not for the faint of heart.

For the last couple features put into production it has been about 40 hours of work including my time and the teams.

The process above is how we do things. It means we aren’t doing art or coding on something until it is V3+ which I think saves us time; we are building only solid vetted ideas. All the ideas that died along the way probably weren’t worth doing anyway. It’s a bit like the sperm and the egg, many start the race but only one makes it to construction. Construction is it's own magical process.

And with that awkward illustration, I’ll bid adieu!

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.archmagerises.com/news/2...-1-when-is-next-build-and-other-fan-questions

UPDATE #26: FANISODE #1 WHEN IS NEXT BUILD AND OTHER FAN QUESTIONS

This episode is for the Fans! We appreciate you! In this episode we answer 4 major fan questions:

1. When is the Next Build (11) Coming?
2. Slavery & Daenerys Anti-Slavery
3. Questions on Romance, Relationships, Marriage, Move-ins
4. When is Character Creation Coming?

And here are two additional ones that didn't make the cut this week but are still good:

1. Options Outside of a Town
2. Thoughts on Player Skills

Thanks for the dialog this past week, sorry for the delay on some of the questions.

 

[Infinitron]

Cool:



http://www.archmagerises.com/news/2017/6/17/update-27-new-town-view

UPDATE #27: NEW TOWN VIEW

After weeks of trying, we are finally ready to show the new data driven town view. The data is driven by the simulator so every town is different. As towns grow buildings will be built, and as it shrinks they will be abandoned. Every building displayed means something: it's an inn, or a specific person's house you can visit with cookies (or rob). This is all part of our initiative to show the living breathing nature of the simulated world.

Hey cool, we made medieval sim city by accident!

The inspiration comes from the depictions of cities in RPG campaign setting and adventure books. Anyone who's played D&D or Pathfinder is familiar with this:

There is even PC software that will help you "auto-draw" the above for your pen & paper campaign called City Designer:

But I prefer the isometric look, it feels a little more "like being there":

So here are examples of where we are going with it:

Small Village

Town

City

Nic and Rogier have put a ton of time into building the tech for this. As you'll see in the video we still have some ways to go (like no stilt towns in the water!), but we thought it was good enough and exciting enough to show you.

 

[Haba]

Those guys are positively insane.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.archmagerises.com/news/2017/6/24/update-28-your-character

UPDATE #28: YOUR CHARACTER

This week we dive into the newly designed character sheet (mock up), core skills, stats, and equipment.

It's starting to look like a real game!

Inspiration for this part of the character display is the character sheets of Pen & Paper games like D&D and Pathfinder. Here are some examples:

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.archmagerises.com/news/2017/7/1/update-29-wealth-npcs

UPDATE #29: WEALTH & NPCS

This week we dive into the design of the Player Wealth screen and NPC's with all their various relationships. These are mockups we are showing before the real artwork is finished.

Happy Canada Day, eh!

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.archmagerises.com/news/2017/7/10/update-30-managing-minions

UPDATE #30 MANAGING MINIONS

In this historic update we reveal land management, slaves, apprentices, workers, constructs, and hirlings. Truly Archmage Rises is the RPG with more to do than combat!

 

[mondblut]

I hope it won't end up like That Which Sleeps...