Magnus Alm
August 27, 2021
We are back in action! After a well-deserved summer break, enjoying the unstable Swedish weather, we are now hard at work with the game once more. As we are focusing on the final stretch of development before release there is a lot going on, in all the areas of development. We are still targeting an early 2022 release and that means making hard decisions, ensuring that everyone shares the same vision for the final product, and generally just kicking ass and taking names.
I’ve primarily focused on the marketing aspects of the upcoming release, making sure that we are utilizing our communication channels as effectively as possible. This might seem like a boring part of game development, but for me it is kind of like an exciting metagame, where Wishlists, followers and likes are something like XP. The more you get, the better prepared you are for the final boss (release day!).
BAM! It’s hard not to notice the new level up effect.
Other than marketing I’ve looked more into translations along with Niklas. We have quite a lot of text in the game and we are both working to refine the copy (some of it isn’t used anymore, but still remains in the localization document) as well as creating explanations for all texts. We are basically trying to give translators a good sense of what texts appear where in the game and what they represent. There are a lot of details to consider in the translation process: like creating a glossary for in-game words, technical documentation, and integration with Crowdin, a community translation tool. We hope to get the actual translation work going within some weeks, focusing on one language first, as a trial translation (ты можешь угадать, на каком это языке?).
Christian has updated the UI for the online games and the player lobby. Additionally, he’s been working on the Wielder sheet with stats, active modifiers, inventory, and skills. He also supported David with the implementation of a new purchase interface for recruiting Wielders and reviving dead Wielders. David did a whole lot of tweaks and improvements besides a whole new Wielder purchase menu. The movement system has undergone a big change, where you’ll have to double click to move, as opposed to our previous single click interaction. The inventory has changed from “you can only use as many slots as we can fit into the UI” to “your backpack is a magic endless backpack, cram everything you want in there!”. David also tweaked the level-up notification, making the VFX much more visible.
Behold the new Wielder purchase screen! Compared to the old one this gives a much more detailed overview of the Wielder and allows the player to make a more informed decision (as well as just looking much better!).
Niklas got right into the online mode when he got back from his vacation. This means that we now have a much more stable game experience when we challenge each other in our weekly online play sessions of the game. One of the great new additions to the online multiplayer features is host migration, meaning that if the host of the game can’t stay for the full game, someone else can take over hosting. We’ve also had troubles with games crashing if one player gets a disconnect, but this is now fixed. And perhaps one of the most sought-after features by the development team members who prefer to play long games: Saving and loading online games. It is now possible to pick up an online multiplayer game exactly where you left it.
Niklas did not settle for only multiplayer development but thundered on with adding a basic version of Rich Presence in Discord. We have an active Discord community and we are sure this will be a useful feature, meaning that people can see when other members are playing the game, looking for an online game, or creating something in the level editor. If there are any specific things you’d like to see, do let us know! We can’t promise it’ll be done before release, but it is always good to know what our users are asking for!
The one-man-army called Niklas also changed a few things in the level editor and improved the UX on how to select and change map entity properties. And lately, he’s also been working very much on the third option when you take over a town or a settlement. Phew. You are a true inspiration to the rest of us, Niklas! I’ll consider utilizing your effective work methods for the next sprint, but I’ll just take a short nap first.
Our artist Andi has redrawn the faction banners, giving them a bit more realistic textures and patina. The flags now look like they have seen some battle action!
Robin on the other hand told me he’d almost completed the work he started before the vacation. And to be fair, he got back to work just a few days ago, while Niklas started working a few weeks ago. Anyhow! Robin focused on getting neutral enemies on the map to have a chance of fleeing or joining you if your army is much bigger than theirs. He also started working on "scouting intel", where you get differing amounts of intel about enemy armies depending on how far away they are and how good your vision range is.
Moving on from the coders to the graphic artists I’d like to point out that if Niklas is our one-man army I would dare to say that Patrik is our Swiss army knife, a jack of all trades! Though he recently started working he has already solved quite a few problems and quality of life improvements for other developers. Patrik has been working on almost every part of the game: everything from the AI to online multiplayer and he is now heading the art team focusing on technical art (shaders and cool stuff like that). This week he managed to solve team colors, which had been hardcoded to team numbers and wasn’t interchangeable. Furthermore, he started experimenting with allowing team colors to extend not only to buildings but also to the troops in your army.
Anders started off with going over some of the campaign maps, as well as wrapping up a few buildings that were in an unfinished state. Kordian has focused on the Barya faction buildings and we are kind of starting to figure out how they should look and fit together with the rest of the faction buildings lineup.
Martí has been producing a ton of new Wielder sprites and is wrapping up the final troops for the Barya faction. When he is done with that, ALL troops in the game are DONE. Will someone bring us a bottle of champagne and please spray it like a racecar driver in our face when we hit that milestone?
The Faey nobles are fashionable and won’t settle for just one pair of loincloths, oh no, they will keep on trying until they find JUST the right color.
Carl tells me he has been working hard on the campaigns and reworked game mechanics in general and spell systems in specific, much of it is based on the feedback we’ve been getting from the Alpha testers. It feels good to have a small crowd of people playing the game as it highlights a lot of problems and possibilities for the team!
And finally: A lot of you have asked about how we develop Songs of Conquest. What game engine do we use, how does the level editor work, and how do you combine 2D pixel art with 3D environments? Well, look no further! Besides the blog posts, we will start to share short, mostly unedited, clips from behind the scenes of the game development process. If you are curious about the development, feel free to check this new YouTube channel out and subscribe for more updates!
That’s it for this week, see you soon and as always: Comment and let us know what you think! We truly appreciate all the amazing feedback we are getting and it helps us make a better game!
Development update #39Another devblog just two weeks after the previous? Does this mean that we are moving back to biweekly publishing of dev news? Yes. Maybe. Definitely maybe. If nothing else we aim to give you at least monthly updates. Developing the game is the top priority, but at the same time, we want to keep you updated about the production! On that note, we have upped our presence on YouTube and started releasing short video clips showing random game dev moments. If you haven’t checked out the playlist I highly recommend you do!
Handsome and clever. Hair like a sloth. Hide all your dead, it’s Aldus of Loth.
Since last time we’ve had a new intern join our ranks! Albin will help us, mostly Carl actually, with playtesting and designing levels. We are looking forward to seeing what he will produce during his internship and he will stay with us until early next year. Feel free to say hi to Albin in the comments to make him feel welcome
Speaking of design and development schedules: The biggest news we have to share is that we have had to reconsider the number of campaigns we can realistically develop before releasing the game. Our original plan was to create four campaigns, one for each faction, but due to time and budget constraints, we have had to limit our ambitions to two campaigns. Keep in mind that we are planning for cut scenes, custom maps, and a specially composed song for each campaign. It’s lots of moving parts and effort that go into developing a full campaign.
Carl put it like this: We’ve basically reduced the number of campaigns in order to make sure that each campaign is as polished and awesome as it can be. So he’s spent most of his time these last weeks redesigning the story and campaign arcs. Carl tells me he thinks the new stuff is gonna be really great and whenever he seems confident like that I’m inclined to believe him. We don’t see this as a failure, we see it as realistic planning. We still believe that the amount of content will be enough to satisfy people who prefer a single-player experience. Especially since we are shipping the game along with a level editor that we think will be well used and give users a plethora of user-made levels to choose from!
The programmers have really focused hard on the AI by playing, analyzing the behavior, and tweaking. Making a perfect AI is near impossible, but we are working hard to truly make it great! Niklas is currently creating better visualization tools to see what's going on under the hood.
Marcus has restructured some parts of the AI to fit in our essential debugging tools. He added more build plans that the AI uses when it plans its kingdom. Furthermore, Marcus updated parts of the AI movement logic, and currently he’s still focused on that (since we've been experiencing issues with it). One tangible improvement has been choosing the closest tile when it has several to choose from.
Marcus also fixed some unwanted behavior and tweaked how the AI mood changes over the course of a game. We can now nudge the AI a bit if it benefits the build plan we have designed for it. We have also modified how the AI builds up the need to recruit units over time. The speed can be modified depending on what the AI has seen. If it encounters a strong opponent it will start to recruit units more aggressively.
Do you have some favorite type of AI behavior or unexpected moments from other games where the AI surprised you in a good way? Drop a comment below and let us know!
We now have better tools to analyze the path of the AI Wielders. This way we can make better design decisions to improve their decision-making and movement.
The graphics team is mostly focused on Rana, even if Martí is still working on finishing the final Barya units. He’s got Rana Wielders next on his list, and judging from the few designs Kordian has done, these are going to look awesome! Placing the Frogs right next to the Human Wielders gives a lovely contrast and a reminder of the diversity of the game world.
Anders, along with Kordian, is striving to get all the buildings done for Rana within a few weeks. It is a hard task considering all the production steps. Keep in mind that most buildings need to be done in several layers due to the 3D perspective and then animated. They will also need to cater to re-coloring with team colors and look equally good in all zoom levels.
Patrik has, per usual, done a little bit of everything, including adding basic mod support to the game along with Niklas. We are very early into this work and not even sure if it will make it into release, but we do hope that we will be able to get into the hands of users as we think people could create amazing (and wonderfully horrific!) things with it!
Patrik also animated our 2D banners with some clever tech art magic and added proper UI portraits for all Loth buildings.
Yes, she’s big. Yes, she is a badass. More questions?
We’ve also done a lot of work to prepare for proper translations. Niklas and the programmers have created a font replacement system to enable translating to languages with characters that our current fonts do not support (like Russian). I’ve been making sure that we add descriptive texts that explain all parts of the game to translators, so they won’t have to guess in what context a text appears in the game. A big thank you goes out to one of our most hard-core fans, Monday from our Discord server, who has helped us with a lot of the context descriptions!
Let’s see, what more? We are recruiting a new VFX artist. The look and feel team is working on the siege UX and improving the movement interactions. The Arleon campaign map is now finally done and I just might share it in an upcoming blogpost or perhaps just parts of it. We might also just save it for the actual campaign scenes in the game. Some things are best unspoiled, right?
Anyhow, until next time, take care my friends!
/Magnus, CEO of Lavapotion
It is impossible for our graphics artists to know exactly how their building assets will look in the game engine. Simply because we add a lot of post processing effects that sits "on top" of the pixel art. Things like bloom, dust specs, shadows, weather effects, etc.
Because of this our technical artist Patrik has developed a tool where you can toggle things like team colour, wind, day/night and other settings that effect the look of the buildings.
If you look closely, this video also contains a sneak preview of some Rana and Barya buildings!
Visualizing the AI movement path helps us analyze and optimize the AI behaviour. You can see me toggle of the Fog of War in the video and then pan over to watch the AI Wielder movement. The red lines drawn behind the enemy Wielder is the path visualisation, which I for some reason forgot to mention in the video!
Ok, just to be very clear: This feature is not planned for release, it is merely an example of what can happen when the developers (in this case Patrik) want to do something that is not in the backlog, and need a break from regular development. All of a sudden a magic axe appears in the game! Things like this has happened in the past and I'm sure it will happen again! A lot of people have asked us to release a mod containing the axe and while we think it is probably not a good idea, because it truly breaks the balance in weird ways, a mod might still happen if enough people request it
Anyhow, hope you liked this summary! Is there any specific part of the game or development process you want to see more videos about? Please let us know in the comments!
(And here is a bonus GIF of an Arleon Milita troop knocking the living daylights out of a Barya Sassanid)
/Team Lavapotion / Magnus
