Septaroad Voyager, like Final Fantasy 12 if it were built in the Octopath Traveler engine. Early Access on 1 June. Anyone want to review or test?

[Nathaniel3W]

Kaivokz thanks so much for the detailed feedback and bug reports! I'll get started on that right away.

As for the customized characters, I was debating whether to let you make only the main character customized, and then making everyone else pre-made. Maybe I'll do that for another campaign once I have fixed all the bugs and added more content to the procedurally generated campaign. I think having premade characters could also appeal to the gacha crowd.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

OK Kaivokz the resolution bug is fixed. And if you want to run past enemies, hold down shift. Or if you're using an Xbox controller, hold down X. I'll see about making your party members not run around and draw so much agro. And I'll see about not getting stuck so often.

Also, I think I can change some settings on Steam Input. There's a "how long to wait before counting a press as a hold" and a "how many presses per second do I send when holding" setting. Should I decrease the first and increase the second? Do you think that would improve the controller scheme?

 

[Kaivokz]

Confirmed that the widescreen HUD is fixed. Also, not sure if that was an existing feature but being able to hold down shift or X to run past enemies is great: it might be good to add that to a tutorial if it isn't already.

For the controller, I’m not really wise on game design so while I can point out something I found bothersome as a player, I hesitate to prescribe a solution.

The main place it felt slow was scrolling through the tactics vendor. I think a lot of games will have the left and right keys skip a page up or down to make navigating big lists easier—to be honest, at the moment I can’t remember if I tried that. Just booted up the game and it looks like left and right don't skip down pages. Another common approach seems to be to speed up the rate of button presses upon holding up or down for a certain amount of time. Out of curiosity I timed how long it takes to scroll from the top to the bottom of the tactics vendor and it was just under 9 seconds. edit- that was for self target, for enemy target it took almost 21 seconds to scroll to the bottom.

My layman's take would be that you don't need to decrease the amount of time it takes to count as a hold, but maybe increasing how many presses per second while holding would help if implementing a paging feature or a delayed speed up isn't easy (and content is likely more important than a minor control problem).

 

[Kaivokz]

Possible bug:

• There doesn't appear to be a way to stop displaying quests on the HUD using only a controller. I needed to use a mouse to access the checkbox.

I've gotten my third party member now (the young paladin in the waterfall city) and I put the clues together for the first random dungeon (to find the farmer's wife). But, I can't figure out how to actually find it! There appears to be a quest marker on the map, but I've looked all around that quadrant and don't see anything. I also can't reference the treasure map I put together again (though it seems like that might not correspond to the real location of the dungeon?). How am I supposed to find the dungeon?

 

[Maxie]

Unlock skills, set up your tactics, send your party into fast-paced battles.

OK, that's it for the marketing-speak. I don't have the energy to sound excited, even over a keyboard. Because I am absolutely insane, I am releasing Septaroad Voyager into Early Access on 1 June. I haven't even tested it thoroughly and I'm trying to get it out to streamers and stuff. I have a good reason for doing this. Or at least, it seemed like a good reason until maybe yesterday. But! I can still salvage the game and my sanity maybe if I could get some help with something. Any weeaboos here want to help me with testing or writing a review on the Codex? There's a free key in it for you. That's all I can offer right now. That, and maybe some gratitude typed out with my last remaining minutes of consciousness.

Um. Some other stuff, because people will want to know what makes my game different. What makes my game different from or better than the games I'm stealing from inspired by.

Infinite dungeons: Talk to the townsfolk to learn legends. Fight enemies to pick up maps, journals, and artifacts. Take the legends and the maps and stuff to the library, and combine them to find the location of a hidden dungeon.

Party of up to seven, all fighting in realtime battles at the same time. This makes battles more hectic than a lot of other games. It's kind of like a World of Warcraft raid if you don't have any friends.

Modding. Totally moddable, with all the source code, and an editor. Some people made a lot of mods for my last game. This game should be even easier to mod, and hopefully some people will have fun doing things I never imagined.

I'm sure there's more, but I'm too tired to think through it right now. I'll be back here soon, hopefully with a new trailer or something, and maybe some more playtesting to make sure the game isn't completely broken somewhere. Until then, any chance I could beg one of you to test it for me? And instead of me telling you why you should play my awesome game, maybe a brave soul could give it a try and write a review, and then he can tell you why you should play my awesome game.

OK, hopefully I'll have more energy tomorrow to tell you some more. Or no, Friday I'm going to busy all day with other stuff. Saturday though, I should be able to get my head above water on Saturday. See you soon.

why am i to pay for beta testing your game
send me a build and i will do it for a small fee

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Possible bug:

• There doesn't appear to be a way to stop displaying quests on the HUD using only a controller. I needed to use a mouse to access the checkbox.

I've gotten my third party member now (the young paladin in the waterfall city) and I put the clues together for the first random dungeon (to find the farmer's wife). But, I can't figure out how to actually find it! There appears to be a quest marker on the map, but I've looked all around that quadrant and don't see anything. I also can't reference the treasure map I put together again (though it seems like that might not correspond to the real location of the dungeon?). How am I supposed to find the dungeon?

Sorry about not being able to find the dungeon entrance. It should be where the map says it should be. You should be able to find it if you go southeast of the village. Look around the edge of the map, along the hills.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Maxie if you don't want to pay for early access, that's fine. You can wait until I release the battle pass, and you can get the season 1 skins for an additional $20.

By the way, is Diablo IV charging $90 for early access? People are paying Blizzard extra to be their beta testers.

 

[Maxie]

Maxie if you don't want to pay for early access, that's fine. You can wait until I release the battle pass, and you can get the season 1 skins for an additional $20.

By the way, is Diablo IV charging $90 for early access? People are paying Blizzard extra to be their beta testers.

what do i care about Blizzard? I haven't played any of their games since the Frozen Throne, buck
don't see Blizzard shilling their products on this forum either
you best remember you're not on kotaku while posting here

 

[Kaivokz]

It should be where the map says it should be. You should be able to find it if you go southeast of the village. Look around the edge of the map, along the hills.

Is there a way to view the map again? I thought when I was placing the clues it looked something like this:

XXXDX
XVPPX
XXXXX

V = village, P = plains, D= dungeon, X = empty space

So I was looking north-east of the starting village, but all I found were the dock bandits.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

One thing you might want to improve is this part, it's not clear how much of it is in the game right now or will be added along the year of early access.

"What is the current state of the Early Access version?"
“The Early Access version of the game will offer you a full world to explore, with access to the full selection of equipment, abilities, tactics, and recruitable characters. The world will not yet be filled with quests, and some zones might have noticeable repetition until we can add more dungeons and battle maps.”

 

[Kaivokz]

It should be where the map says it should be. You should be able to find it if you go southeast of the village. Look around the edge of the map, along the hills.

Is there a way to view the map again? I thought when I was placing the clues it looked something like this:

XXXDX
XVPPX
XXXXX

V = village, P = plains, D= dungeon, X = empty space

So I was looking north-east of the starting village, but all I found were the dock bandits.

Ah, I think you meant where the world map says it should be, not where the treasure map says it should be (which is what I was interpreting). I was able to find it just by heading toward the dot.

The combat and character building is pretty fun so far. The quests/world are a bit rough, but the core of the gameplay loop is there.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Kaivokz Yeah, I meant the world map. The clue-placement-map is more of like a minigame that doesn't really affect where the dungeon gets placed. Maybe I should add a message like "Check your map to find the dungeon" when the quest starts. I'm glad you're enjoying the game. Yeah, the quests and the world definitely need some more work. I'm glad to hear that the core of the game is good though.

Clockwork Knight Thanks for the suggestions. I'll go add more details there later today.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Real-time with pause is now an option! You can set it with the console command "SetPauseGameWhenActionMenuOpen true." For now it's only available through the console. I'll try putting it into the options menu soon.

 

[WhiteShark]

Real-time with pause is now an option! You can set it with the console command "SetPauseGameWhenActionMenuOpen true." For now it's only available through the console. I'll try putting it into the options menu soon.

This seems like it should be considered a difficulty option rather than a regular game option.

 

[Rahdulan]

Just popped up on my Steam recommendations. Not bad. I do like seeing those FF12 influences.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Just popped up on my Steam recommendations. Not bad. I do like seeing those FF12 influences.

Thanks! It's kind of surprising how good FF12's gambit system was, and that was the last time we saw it. And I'm also glad to hear that my game is getting recommended. Maybe my game won't disappear as fast as I thought it would.

 

[Jinn]

Hey, Nathaniel3W! Sorry if this was already addressed elsewhere or in a previous post, but does Septaroad take place in the same world as Himeko Sutori?

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Hey, Nathaniel3W! Sorry if this was already addressed elsewhere or in a previous post, but does Septaroad take place in the same world as Himeko Sutori?

Kind of, yes. Same factions, same place names, but no obvious connection on any timeline. Maybe kind of like how the Zelda games all take place in Hyrule, and all feature Link and Zelda, but for decades there was no specific timeline or explanation for how the games were connected.

I'm still working on the game. Now that we have some bugs and balance issues fixed, and enough content to keep people occupied for a few hours, I'm getting started on the main campaign.

I completely remade the game's art.

I added resource nodes. Right now mining is working. Also, random treasure chests. I can use the exact same system for herbs and other stuff.

Maybe I need to make the mining nodes smaller.

I added a new persistence skill to the casters' skill boards.

It's the hourglass icon. It increases the power and duration of your status effects. And it adds an extra little something for casters to work toward on their skill boards.

I don't think I posted about this here. Did I? Some of the areas were kind of hard to see behind trees and stuff. So I made the leaves disappear using a kind of cool screen-space effect.

I'm starting at the very beginning for the main campaign. Here is the character selection screen. I'm going to try to make the characters (and character classes) more unique. I'm planning on making the player spend some other thing to unlock character classes, so that you'll have to put more thought into specializing your characters.

Spoiler

The character customizer was fun. And I think I'll leave it in. But I'll add these characters as the default.

Hopefully this isn't all a giant waste of time. The game hasn't really gotten much attention through early access so far. Maybe when the main campaign is finished, people will enjoy it and we'll see what happens.

 

[Delterius]

kinda agree with the one review that talked mentioned ragnarok online. at least in terms of artstyle thats what first sprang to mind.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I have a fully playable, but plotless, procgen campaign. I'm focusing right now on the main campaign. I have prologues for 3 of the 7 characters and I hope to have 7 prologues and 7 first chapters done by June. Here's a preview of the (tutorial- and exposition-heavy) prologues I've done so far.



I've been making tons of little improvements and bug fixes, trying to get the game to feel smooth and polished. Here are some of the bigger and better spell effects I've been making.

Here are some of the towns in the campaign. I'm trying to make the areas feel unique, and not like Generic Fantasy European Town #5.

World map made in Inkarnate. City icons, roads, and other decorations still to come.

I think I'm at the inflection point now where most of the groundwork is laid and I can focus on adding new content. A few weeks ago I had zero prologues done, and now I have 3. And the most recent prologue only took me a couple days to finish. I should be able to do the remaining prologues faster. After that, chapter 1 for each character.

I'm hoping the game won't be crap, it'll sell a million copies, and I can retire on the tropical island of my choice. If you buy it now and tell all your friends, I'll let you come and hang out on my private beach. But if you would rather wait for chapter 1, that's fine too; we can still be friends.