KickStarter Solasta Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[ERYFKRAD]

User Interface has two purposes in a cRPG:
>To convey information
>Keep the player informed

Monko, it's more than that, it's an interface, not HuD.

 

[Pink Eye]

A User Interface has two purposes in a cRPG:
>To convey information
>Keep the player informed

You forgot the third essential purpose: to fit within the visual design of the game and to complement its aesthetic.

And by all means, Pink Eye, there are other things more important and you are free to discuss them. Just don't get your panties in a bunch over less important issues being discussed.

Ah, but this is a platform that supports freedom of speech. Just as how you're entitled to speak your mind, I as well.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Ah, but this is a platform that supports freedom of speech. Just as how you're entitled to speak your mind, I as well.

And you are free to speak your mind, but quit this passive aggressive nonsense. Instead of complaining about our complaints and derailing the thread further, post your own thoughts about the game.

 

[Pink Eye]

>post your own thoughts about the game
I already did a couple of pages back. I am just worried at how easy the game will be on release. The demo was too easy for me.

 

[NJClaw]

Inventory UI (and, to me, UI in general and items/spells icons) peaked with IWD2:

Spoiler

We are never going to get anything even remotely close.

A good UI needs to somehow evoke the general atmosphere you want your game to convey. Obviously you can have a great game even with the wrong UI, but you need to take into account that it's an element that's going to stay there right in the player's face for the entire time. It's also something you need to design just once, so there are very few good reasons not to make a good one for your game.

That said, I can accept a minimalist style like the one Solasta is going for if it manages to keep itself hidden almost all the time.

 

[fantadomat]

they either must be purged, sent to reeducation camps or corrected at every opportunity.

You make me proud, little vixen.

Maybe our little banter about him being feminine did bite him a bit .

They should rename this site to RpgCASUALdex. It's pretty obvious that some of the members who frequent this site don't even play video games, let alone RPGs.

I agree with you,too many posers lately. Tho Lacrymas is not one of them,the dude plays a lot of RPGs and other old games,it has good taste.....ignoring the black stain on his soul....of liking MMX.

Ahh the UI is not a big deal,it looks serviceable. Tho i do agree that it looks out of place,it is more of a scifi themed and doesn't mesh well in a fantasy world.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

they either must be purged, sent to reeducation camps or corrected at every opportunity.

You make me proud, little vixen.

Maybe our little banter about him being feminine did bite him a bit .

He's also being as evasive as a cloister girl to our banter, but that's part of his charm. :^)

Ahh the UI is not a big deal,it looks serviceable. Tho i do agree that it looks out of place,it is more of a scifi themed and doesn't mesh well in a fantasy world.

That's basically my only issue with it. Given that it's something that you'll have to stare at all the time, it can have quite a discordant note from the rest of the visual design and lower your immersion.

 

[Lacrymas]

It looks like this -

It's not only obscene, but your eye keeps getting pulled towards the element that doesn't belong, making you unable to truly appreciate what is around it.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Nah, but insistence on it not mattering when judging a game does.

I decided to read again my boring drivel post and try to figure out how exactly you decided that I completely don't care about UI.
UI has it's place, but if I would rank it along with gameplay, story, sound, graphics, and etc. it would be not on first place.
I can deal with game without fancy UI as long as other aspects of said game is good. I had fun with Planescape: Torment, despite it's combat was bad and I would rank combat above UI.
And I was bored in POE2 despite it having pretty UI, because plot & writing was boring. Hell, I using Total Commander instead of standard directory browser, because despite TC having look of 90s program - it's doing fine job in searching files.

You should consider one fact, before continue butthurt about UI - aggression results in aggression, the more you keep being aggressive about UI, the more devs will be resistant and edgy to idea of new UI. Psychology, motherfuckers. Not always you can achieve something by being angry on Internet.

Truth be told UI is indeed looks too sci-fi (call me crazy, no maybe there a plot twist like in M&M series? Like magic is a technology?), but devs told how they will keep it way before Lacrymas started to butthurt about it. So I decided to go along with it, because it's clear that devs already decided and no point arguing.
I hope people who don't happy with UI will be able to fix it with mods and don't butthurt about it on forum.

 

[Lacrymas]

I started complaining about the UI and the overall look before they confirmed it's going to stay the same -

I like the premise of this game, but the aesthetic and UI kinda ruin it for me. And it uses the cover system from the nuX-Coms, at least that's what is shown in the trailer.

I don't know, the visuals of this game just look ...ugly to me, I guess. Or inelegant and unaesthetic. It feels like staring into a black hole. The concept art isn't much better. Verticality sounds like a gimmick.

And that was like half a year ago, I guess time doesn't fix it.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Nah, but insistence on it not mattering when judging a game does.

I decided to read again my boring drivel post and try to figure out how exactly you decided that I completely don't care about UI.
UI has it's place, but if I would rank it along with gameplay, story, sound, graphics, and etc. it would be not on first place.
I can deal with game without fancy UI as long as other aspects of said game is good. I had fun with Planescape: Torment, despite it's combat was bad and I would rank combat above UI.

And on this we agree, but your insistence on us not talking about the UI specifically (or focusing on it if you prefer) gave quite the defensive vibe on your part.

Anyhow, I don't believe that the devs will care about our opinions either way. Usually it is the sycophants that get their voices heard (and often to disastrous effects).

Truth be told UI is indeed looks too sci-fi (call me crazy, no maybe there a plot twist like in M&M series? Like magic is a technology?)

On this point, you're overthinking things. It's simply a ripoff from the Endless series out of convenience.

 

[Lacrymas]

They had quite a while to whip up a presentable UI that doesn't look like a mobile game at best, but they just think this one is fine. That speaks volumes about the overall art direction of this game.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

They had quite a while to whip up a presentable UI that doesn't look like a mobile game at best, but they just think this one is fine. That speaks volumes about the overall art direction of this game.

Pretty much. Though I'm afraid that our views are falling on deaf ears, since some people are so content starved that they'll only formally acknowledge such issues, yet ignore them otherwise.

 

[Lacrymas]

I also forgot about this little gem -

This is a spell of the second circle. They thought it required not 1, but 2 explosions. Michael Bay called, he wants his gimmicks back. Everything about the visuals of this game is a disaster.

 

[Darth Canoli]

That's why i'm skeptic, in my experience, the more the gimmicks, the less interesting the gameplay and the less content there is.

Them : -- If you pay 15k to get to the next stretch goal, you'll get a new monster but the retarded spell animations, you get that shit for free ...
Me : -- Thank you so much ...

That's exactly the kind of shit MMO-tards are expecting, meaning grognards and people who like good mechanism over bullshit are not the target audience.

 

[Harthwain]

What's the logic behind the demo being available only for a limited period of time?

They had quite a while to whip up a presentable UI that doesn't look like a mobile game at best, but they just think this one is fine. That speaks volumes about the overall art direction of this game.

Pretty much. Though I'm afraid that our views are falling on deaf ears, since some people are so content starved that they'll only formally acknowledge such issues, yet ignore them otherwise.

One of the developers said they are going to change the icons, so I don't know about that (and the icons were my biggest complaint about the UI).

 

[Lacrymas]

Using the 5E OGL kinda insured the underlying mechanics are going to be at least fine, so I'm not overly concerned about that. I'm concerned about them ruining it with trash fights after trash fights which take forever because they thought a single spell should take 4 seconds to cast and remove any semblance of good taste with it in a TB game.

 

[V_K]

Well, given the Vancian magic and 10 level cap, it's not like you're going to cast terribly many of these in a given encounter.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

second circle. They thought it required not 1, but 2 explosion

Oi, second circle two explosions, it helps keep count.

 

[Elex]

What's the logic behind the demo being available only for a limited period of time?

demo is already old and outdated, i think they reactivated the demo because the demos on steam initiative was a replacement for another indie dev event.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tacticaladventures/solasta-crown-of-the-magister/posts/2793709

Dev Journal | March 2020 - New Gameplay Footage & Magic Weapon Design Contest!

Hey there everyone,

The current situation may not be ideal, but it's not going to stop us from making our scheduled Dev Update! We hope you're all doing well out there - on our side we've all switched to working from home. The good thing about being a small team is that it makes us a bit more agile, so we're still able to make good progress on Solasta as we speak!

As you can see our productivity remains unaffected.

March Contest - Design Your Magic Weapon
Little reminder: you still have one week to submit your Magic Weapon Design for a chance to have it implemented in-game at launch! On March 31st, we will select our favorite submissions and the voting phase will begin!


Don't miss your chance to make your magic weapon a reality in Solasta!

Solasta Alpha Footage!
We all know it's been forever since we've released gameplay video footage of Solasta outside very short gifs in our Dev Updates. Thing is, you always wonder: when is your game "good enough" to show to the world? Is the lighting too strong here? Does this bug really look bad? Will people understand that X and Y are temporary? So on and so forth.

However, with the Steam Game Festival: Spring Edition making its sudden appearance and Solasta's Pre-Alpha Demo once again being available (although not anymore, the event ended yesterday morning), we wanted to make sure people understood that the game had evolved since our Kickstarter. This is why we made a short video bundling quite a few previously unavailable features on Twitter last Friday, which you can enjoy in Full HD here.

Spoiler

What is this Spell?
One feedback that stayed with us ever since we released our Kickstarter Demo was that Spell Icons were not clear. You would look at your spell bar and go "alright, I'm pretty sure my cleric should have cure wounds, but where is it..."

Aside from a few of them that are fairly obvious, would you be able to name all these spells from their old icons alone?
While they all looked quite beautiful (at the very least I really liked them), our Art Director decided to change the art style of our spell icons - to improve glance value and readability. Here is a side by side comparison of a few of these spells, which are all going to receive the same treatment in the coming weeks.

It's hard to deny that the new ones are much easier to recognize.

Speaking of spells, we've just added Fog Cloud to the game. Time to obscure those lines of sight!

Character Creation Update
You've seen quite a few updates on our Character Creation Tool, and today's Dev Update is not going to be the exception! Our goal is to have it completely done soon, so we can set it aside and focus on other parts of the game.

The High Elves join the fray in our Character Creation Tool...

And so do the Half-Elves!

Now all that remains are the Island Halflings and the Hill Dwarves, and we should have a complete lineup for our races!

Environment Update
One Snow Alliance Embassy, ready to go! Here is how it looks in-game compared to its original Concept Art.

Pretty impressive rendition of the original 2D concept art, isn't it!

We'll also share with you a couple of screenshots of an external location that your party will have to explore fairly early in their adventure. Watch your step, you don't want to fall in that ravine...

Giant Eagles Join the Fight!
Our second flying enemy just joined the roster of foes you'll have to face. Give giant eagles a warm welcome!

Tactical Adventures assures you that no eagles were harmed in the making of these gifs.

Bloopers!
You may have noticed the lack of Thunderwave so far in our Spells FX updates. Truth be told, we did have Thunderwave in-game (you may remember it was available in our Pre-Alpa Demo) - but the format wasn't quite right. The spell was automatically centered around the caster, which a few players made sure to inform us about! So we fixed it. And by that I mean, we introduced a new bug while doing so. Here is a little demonstration of what happens after you get hit by Thunderwave.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh!

We also just hit 2,000 followers on Twitter, which was the perfect occasion for me to sneak behind the back of our Producer and ask our Lead Animator (father of many horrible and hilarious gifs) for a little something for the occasion. And trust me, he delivered! Alas, poor goblin - you were never supposed to do things like this.

Goblins doing thumbs-up, check. I may yet win this bingo game.

That's it for today! Hope you enjoyed our Dev Update, see you next time for more Solasta goodness!

Read our previous articles here:

• Dev Update #9 - Flinging Spells at the Environment
• [March Contest] Design a Magic Weapon
• TL;DR #8: So you want to run a Kickstarter Campaign?

Article by Tactical Myzzrym

 

[Dorateen]

Rather than design a new weapon, I'd like to see the developers include some classics from D&D compatible with 5th Edition rules. Like a +3 Dwarven Thrower hammer.

Dwarven Thrower
Requires Attunement by a Dwarf

You gain a +3 bonus to Attack and Damage Rolls made with this Magic Weapon. It has the Thrown property with a normal range of 20 feet and a long range of 60 feet. When you hit with a ranged Attack using this weapon, it deals an extra 1d8 damage or, if the target is a giant, 2d8 damage. Immediately after the Attack, the weapon flies back to your hand.

Show Attribute List
Attributes
Dwarven Thrower
Melee Weapon

• Category: Items
• Damage: 1d8
• Damage Type: Bludgeoning
• Item Rarity: Very Rare
• Modifiers: Weapon Attacks +3, Weapon Damage +3
• Properties: Range, Thrown, Versatile
• Range: 20/60
• Secondary Damage: 1d10
• Weight: 2

 

[Lacrymas]

Burning Hands, Cure Wounds and Hold Person were better before, lol. Magic Missiles were ok too. The others are just really unclear what they are supposed to represent, like Levitate, Healing Word or Bless.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Rather than design a new weapon, I'd like to see the developers include a some classics from D&D compatible with 5th Edition rules. Like a +3 Dwarven Thrower hammer.

Dwarven Thrower
Requires Attunement by a Dwarf

You gain a +3 bonus to Attack and Damage Rolls made with this Magic Weapon. It has the Thrown property with a normal range of 20 feet and a long range of 60 feet. When you hit with a ranged Attack using this weapon, it deals an extra 1d8 damage or, if the target is a giant, 2d8 damage. Immediately after the Attack, the weapon flies back to your hand.

Show Attribute List
Attributes
Dwarven Thrower
Melee Weapon

• Category: Items
• Damage: 1d8
• Damage Type: Bludgeoning
• Item Rarity: Very Rare
• Modifiers: Weapon Attacks +3, Weapon Damage +3
• Properties: Range, Thrown, Versatile
• Range: 20/60
• Secondary Damage: 1d10
• Weight: 2

This weapon sounds like fun, but in case if classic version can't be implemented there sneaky plan for you:

Spoiler

1) rename weapon & add fancy description
2) using form send your candidate
3) Profit!!! Perhaps under different name, but people still can enjoy throwing hammer around.

 

[fantadomat]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tacticaladventures/solasta-crown-of-the-magister/posts/2793709

Spoiler

Dev Journal | March 2020 - New Gameplay Footage & Magic Weapon Design Contest!

Hey there everyone,

The current situation may not be ideal, but it's not going to stop us from making our scheduled Dev Update! We hope you're all doing well out there - on our side we've all switched to working from home. The good thing about being a small team is that it makes us a bit more agile, so we're still able to make good progress on Solasta as we speak!

As you can see our productivity remains unaffected.

March Contest - Design Your Magic Weapon
Little reminder: you still have one week to submit your Magic Weapon Design for a chance to have it implemented in-game at launch! On March 31st, we will select our favorite submissions and the voting phase will begin!


Don't miss your chance to make your magic weapon a reality in Solasta!

Solasta Alpha Footage!
We all know it's been forever since we've released gameplay video footage of Solasta outside very short gifs in our Dev Updates. Thing is, you always wonder: when is your game "good enough" to show to the world? Is the lighting too strong here? Does this bug really look bad? Will people understand that X and Y are temporary? So on and so forth.

However, with the Steam Game Festival: Spring Edition making its sudden appearance and Solasta's Pre-Alpha Demo once again being available (although not anymore, the event ended yesterday morning), we wanted to make sure people understood that the game had evolved since our Kickstarter. This is why we made a short video bundling quite a few previously unavailable features on Twitter last Friday, which you can enjoy in Full HD here.

Spoiler

What is this Spell?
One feedback that stayed with us ever since we released our Kickstarter Demo was that Spell Icons were not clear. You would look at your spell bar and go "alright, I'm pretty sure my cleric should have cure wounds, but where is it..."

Aside from a few of them that are fairly obvious, would you be able to name all these spells from their old icons alone?
While they all looked quite beautiful (at the very least I really liked them), our Art Director decided to change the art style of our spell icons - to improve glance value and readability. Here is a side by side comparison of a few of these spells, which are all going to receive the same treatment in the coming weeks.

It's hard to deny that the new ones are much easier to recognize.

Speaking of spells, we've just added Fog Cloud to the game. Time to obscure those lines of sight!

Character Creation Update
You've seen quite a few updates on our Character Creation Tool, and today's Dev Update is not going to be the exception! Our goal is to have it completely done soon, so we can set it aside and focus on other parts of the game.

The High Elves join the fray in our Character Creation Tool...

And so do the Half-Elves!

Now all that remains are the Island Halflings and the Hill Dwarves, and we should have a complete lineup for our races!

Environment Update
One Snow Alliance Embassy, ready to go! Here is how it looks in-game compared to its original Concept Art.

Pretty impressive rendition of the original 2D concept art, isn't it!

We'll also share with you a couple of screenshots of an external location that your party will have to explore fairly early in their adventure. Watch your step, you don't want to fall in that ravine...

Giant Eagles Join the Fight!
Our second flying enemy just joined the roster of foes you'll have to face. Give giant eagles a warm welcome!

Tactical Adventures assures you that no eagles were harmed in the making of these gifs.

Bloopers!
You may have noticed the lack of Thunderwave so far in our Spells FX updates. Truth be told, we did have Thunderwave in-game (you may remember it was available in our Pre-Alpa Demo) - but the format wasn't quite right. The spell was automatically centered around the caster, which a few players made sure to inform us about! So we fixed it. And by that I mean, we introduced a new bug while doing so. Here is a little demonstration of what happens after you get hit by Thunderwave.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh!

We also just hit 2,000 followers on Twitter, which was the perfect occasion for me to sneak behind the back of our Producer and ask our Lead Animator (father of many horrible and hilarious gifs) for a little something for the occasion. And trust me, he delivered! Alas, poor goblin - you were never supposed to do things like this.

Goblins doing thumbs-up, check. I may yet win this bingo game.

That's it for today! Hope you enjoyed our Dev Update, see you next time for more Solasta goodness!

Read our previous articles here:

• Dev Update #9 - Flinging Spells at the Environment
• [March Contest] Design a Magic Weapon
• TL;DR #8: So you want to run a Kickstarter Campaign?

Article by Tactical Myzzrym

That black puss made me all hyped for the game,it is massive incline!!! It is well known fact that catdevs are far superior to the rest of devs!


Also lol,didn't know that elfs are out of touch eurocrats and half-elfs are brooding emo goths,buahahahahaha.