Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Vapourware Spire of Sorcery - turn-based RPG where you play a party of runaway mages - abandoned in Early Access

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1191500/view/3052848955082517611

V181: Point men, forced retreat & drafting

This week we ship a feature that will change the way you play the campaign as well as introduce three significant upgrades of the user interface. It's been a productive week for our team, and we're really happy to see the various mechanics of the game come together!

While the game doesn't have a tutorial yet and we know that it might still be too difficult to grasp at the first launch, we're getting there – just please have some patience =). We'll add a few more key features like hunger, cooking, travel magic, upgrades and sieges first, and once these are safely in place, we'll finally start on the introduction to the game so that it's ready for the general Early Access.

Detailed release notes are on the game's forum, as well as below.

"POINT MEN" ARE IN, PRE-ENCOUNTER SCREEN IS OUT

If you've been reading modern military memoirs, you may be familiar with the terms "to walk the point" and "point men". These terms refer to the soldiers that are at the front of the party that moves through the hostile territory.

With version 181, we make the transition to using the top party panel for managing the team that goes into any new encounter while saying goodbye to the dedicated pre-encounter screen

Here's how the party panel looks –>

590817b6e9c102f622137a58a4f59979f13e8f9d.jpg


Note that the three characters on the left side have different portrait backgrounds, as well as feature encounter icons in the top right corners of their portraits. They are the party's "point men" –>

d9a7224558ccbd1986c56046c860f3b94a041fed.jpg


You can assign specific characters to this role by clicking on their portraits, to have them swap places. In the example below, I first click on the disciple on the right side (a frame appears), and then on the disciple on the left side (the exchange is complete: they swap places).

c268aa9128b53c2811fe60fbfca14730d7927078.jpg


Following the exchange, I initiate an encounter, and sure enough I get the three characters that I've just appointed to walk the point, in the same sequence as they are displayed in the party panel –>

62c35c5ef7776ff88d1a4ab8dafce94de236feb8.jpg


Overall, this new feature streamlines the preparation for any encounters, and lays further ground for introducing further personal traits that can be related to certain characters taking the risk (or being afraid to do so).


FORCED RETREAT & DRAFTING

Forced retreat and drafting are an extremely important addition to how encounters play out in the game, even though the actual user interface elements are small and blend into the existing controls.

First, let's remember the rules for retreating from combat:
  • player party may retreat at any time, if opponents are not challenging it
  • aggressive opponents (e.g. gigglers) generally prevent party from retreating in the first 3 rounds of the encounter
  • a character who retreated, receives 5 days of stress condition (which lowers their memory, courage and endurance)

With version 181, we now also allow individual retreat (check the icon in the top right corner of the character's portrait) – and it obeys the same rule, in terms of availability. You can force a party member to retreat as long as retreat is available to the whole party –>

d6de4524374f17aaff0aa5c6b27e21f97d43ffed.jpg


In this example, I had the misfortune of stumbling upon 3 opposing parties that merged together before attacking me.

I managed to survive for 3 rounds, though my leftmost character took a lot of damage and was about to die – which is when I pushed him to retreat –>

ad32d511085a7751e7636daecc40898175d9474b.jpg


Once a character has retreated or died, a spot in the party is vacant, and drafting becomes available –>

900afdad41369f69ebc740b70696f6ce5f75696c.jpg


When you hit "draft another member", a panel appears that lists those in the party who are available for drafting –>

6d7858790947687f57971e8e4eae9bad8aeb3f43.jpg


You can preview their stats by using right mouse button to open their character profiles. Once you made your choice, and confirmed it, the new party member arrives to the frontline, and is able to act, immediately.

fb0666dd7ac513a7aa0158766d18f9118a24044a.jpg


What this feature brings is the incredibly important ability to use all of your party members to challenge a larger opposing party, and to prevent deaths and injuries by forcing characters with a lot of damage or fear to retreat before it is too late. Moreover, it also allows you to force retreat characters that have, for example, accumulated too much paralysis, or fire, or acid.

In other words, more control – more flexibility – and more combinations. See if you can now challenge larger and more dangerous parties of opponents, and win those encounters despite unfavourable weather conditions!


FROST: UPDATED MECHANICS

If you ever fought a battle under the hail against a group of Shadows who dealt additional Frost tokens on top of what the weather was dealing, you would be glad to know that we changed the mechanics of this token a little:

dc05da0e903f645d630638cb60c510ca562cf46b.jpg

  • now 3 or more tokens of Frost deal 1 Damage per round (was: Paralysis)
  • now 6 tokens of Frost deal 1 Paralysis per round (was: Damage)


NEW SEASON DEVICE, NEW SEASON RULES

As a part of the overhaul of the travel mode user interface, we upgraded the device that displays the current season: it displays the current season (including the detailed tooltip, which as always is available by pressing "SHIFT" as you hover over the element) and its progress.

91647c69a79f5c5caeda380106e2db8def313583.jpg


New feature: due to unpredictable trajectories of Rund's three moons, seasons now no longer last 10 days each, but instead vary between 6 and 16 days. The exact length is determined at the start of each season, and is reflected in the season's progress bar.


TURNS DEVICE

More improvements on the travel mode: not only do we now show the total number of days since you started the Prologue, but also the current turn. The icon of the currently active turn lights up, and each icon has a tooltip and its detailed ("SHIFT") version that detail the rules (for example, do you know at which turn creatures get spawned? at environment's!).

72317b5023914397dd70ee5346ec1845a70b2418.jpg



ANIMATED CREATURE STATES

Once we added the sound effects of opposing parties changing their states from "idle" to "alert" and from "alert" to "in pursuit", we felt like this helped a lot I identifying the threats to player party. But sometimes it wasn't really obvious, where did the sound come from. With version 181, we introduce the animated creature states that address this issue –>

68118323ef3bc967b2c25b21d47ffc144701871c.jpg


In the plans for one of the future updates: to actually center the screen on the specific opposing party that makes the move during its turn.


CHANGE IN CONTROLS

This change may make some of our early players cringe (and we understand you!): we swapped mouse controls in the travel mode.

Now, to move, you will use the Left Mouse Button –

8d73ce8bdc5b131d4bd8842a8771ee380cba2ce1.jpg


And to access information (e.g. Character Profile, Hex Info, Discovery Cards, etc.), you will use the Right Mouse Button –

b045326d2c4fc7f1bde3da5a9242613847bc0f7c.jpg


This is a part of our general push to harmonise the controls in the game.
UPDATE: ALCHEMIC CAULDRON

As a small step towards the upgraded user interface of Alchemic Cauldron, we already introduce a new middle section with this week's version. Nothing changes much, it's just a process of a larger update that we expect to finalise in version 182.

5abc9667b7bf082e53661436b71bdf5f38bb8ce2.jpg



WHAT'S NEXT?

Next week, our team will split into two parts: one part will be fixing the small outstanding issues, of which we accumulated a good devil's dozen (cleaning up the Encyclopaedia, setting up a separate Rulebook and so forth); while another part will be busy with the prep work for a few larger features that we'll ship in versions 183-185 (including travel magic with its first real spell).

If you're a part of the Limited Early Access, please give the current version a go and share your comments on the Steam forums, on the Discord server or on the YouTube channel – we love getting feedback.

Thanks, and see you next week!
Team CO
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1191500/view/3050598424657695146

V183: Character mulligan & Improved encounters

This week we focused on improvingencounter flow and encounter UI. We were also able to throw in one new feature outside of the encounter:character mulligan at the start of the game.

In parallel, we worked on the game design for a few crucial features:mood (which will replace such lasting effects as stress and euphoria), personal traits (such as 'jumpy', for example) and foraging, cooking and consuming
cooked food (which covers the whole cycle from obtaining the food resources, such as 'locust buds', to preparing and consuming the resulting rations). These things are now ready for production, and we'll start putting them into the build in one of the following updates.

Detailed release notes are on the game's forum, as well as below.
CHARACTER MULLIGAN

When you start a new campaign in Spire of Sorcery, there's 2 things you'll have to do at the very beginning of the campaign: define your mage character (not in the game yet) and choose your initial party, which we call 'character mulligan'.

6a05362b5b0540f4b6d9a04c28c8ad177d1a487b.jpg


In this week's version 183, you see 10 characters and must select 5 to proceed to Prologue –

eb174c86898ad5ba3aedfa9369f7d4aeba85f405.jpg


Rather than displaying all the stats for each character, we show the descriptive value of the strongest and the weakest stat of each person:

38e9b22c2373fa813068f99ddd0b1d3a1bff0848.jpg


These are determined by seeing how much up or down the stats are, from the neutral value. And if several stats have the same modification (for example, the character has both Health and Digestive system that rolled "base -2"), we look at the potential of the stat (in the same example, if Health rolled +1 potential and Digestive system rolled +3, Health will be the "weakest" among the two).

Coming up in the following versions:
  • ability to edit character names right on this screen
  • information about the dreams of each of these characters (which is important for long-term play)
  • information about the personal inventory that each may bring to the initial party

UPDATED STAT TOOLTIPS IN CHARACTER PROFILE

A small thing that's been bothering us in the previous builds, is how tooltips were shown for modified stats. These tooltips were updated to look like this:

c848edb498cb39dc8b79178a161c3cf4a3f9c795.jpg


  • "Frail" – description of the current stat value
  • 7 – potential (how far this stat can be improved)
  • 5 – nominal value (what's the value of this stat right now)
  • –1 (stress) – currently active modifiers
  • 4 – current value, which is the result of nominal being offset by modifiers

One thing that's coming with the future updates is that we'll remove all the alchemic effects that temporarily increase any stats. Such effects are replaced by mood, and mood works in a different way, which makes managing character stats easier.


UPDATED USER INTERFACE FOR THE ENCOUNTER MODE


There's a number of updates in encounter UI.

fe79c2f4df16d9baa65413def6dde1a5181a959d.jpg


Let's go through these step by step:

977c03074e0e560f94d252c4a37ec330a5e72818.jpg


  • Environmental and Biome effects have moved to the top of the screen (here, you can see Hail and Ruins icons)
  • "Victory over a stronger opponent" icon got an upgrade (two trumpets on the left side)
  • Instead of banners which displayed whose turn it is, within the round, we now use the same stone tablets that we use in the travel mode – at the top of the screen
  • "Next round" button is now next to the turn indicators
  • Turn counter is right next to it
  • "Retreat the whole party" button is also there, in the same group

8a64ff88731f66349e718939c300855f3a3e4ecf.jpg


  • "Force this party member to retreat" button moved to the other side of character portrait
  • On the right side of each portrait, there's now a new device (not functional yet) which is responsible for personal achievements that will positively impact character's mood (e.g. someone is excited about casting fire spells, and someone else is excited about scoring awesome loot)
  • In the line under the character portrait, we now can see the icons of lasting effects, injuries and diseases which we earlier already saw in the travel mode. Tooltips show all the details.
  • Additionally, this element now also shows the equipment icon – when some item is equipped, this icon will light up and offer details of the effect (not functional yet)
  • Concentration button became smaller, and when it's disabled, it's dimmed down and has the same "claws" locking it as all elements have, when you cannot move them
  • "Discard hand" button became round, but stayed in the same place as before
  • Spellbook's icon got upgraded. Current placement is not final, though – as we will change the way spell formulas look, and only then will integrate it there (we have some pretty crazy concept for this part!)
  • Inventory and Show deck and discard buttons got the same round treatment as we use for all new windows opening up

a958a07232692f603f77b73c821e045efcc1bf60.jpg


  • Finally, while we haven't updated the Loot icon yet, it got a round treatment
  • "Morale boost" indicator did not get a proper icon yet, either, but at least it got a more fitting progress bar – on the left side

We hope that these updates will make completing encounters more convenient for you, and we'll continue to update this screen as we work on the consistency of all kinds of buttons, as well as the way we show spell formula and Spellbook.


ENCOUNTER FLOW


The most important thing for this week's update is the hardest to describe, because it's nearly invisible: it's the flow of the process itself.

First of all, each round and each turn are now announced with proper plaques in the middle of the screen:

712c9583c6265a623a1141344f5aa2e94a2bd5b3.jpg


Secondly, when a creature starts its turn, we now highlight it with a "ray of god" – but we removed the "red sun" device as too distracting:

33491b65f443e35ce598dbf3f0d57173bebc846a.jpg


Third, whenever your party members or opponents intend to attack someone, the initiator and the intended action are shown next to the target. Here's the intended consequences of a spell –

dd9fd512ff9efa5c735bcd7bc8b839a4f138521b.jpg


and here's the intended action of the opponent –

bbecc0b0e067130a30a9bc02374eac4c59bdabfb.jpg


Next, we started to clearly display some of the mechanics of how tokens combine, and will continue making these more transparent in the next versions:

03aee8de4d536f15eda8095a6c7554376348bea8.jpg



TRANSLATIONS


A number of texts are now available in the game in Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Korean. We're catching up, slowly but surely, on the localisation. Know issue: some line breaks are broken. We'll have a fix for this next week.


WHAT'S NEXT?


There's still work left to upgrade the UI of the encounter, as well as the Recipe Book and the Cauldron.

We also want to finish with the proof of concept for the animation of how specific tokens affect characters (shown over their faces).

Finally, we need to get started on the mood system, which will replace stress and euphoria, and which currently blocks the hunger mechanics. We don't know if we'll be able to ship it within the same week, but at least we'll do the best that we can.

See you next Friday!
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1191500/view/3020200394635833183

V185: Hands, mugshots and prep work for a few big features
This week we've been busy with further improvements of how we display token mechanics during encounters. We also rolled in a completely new concept of how we show spell formulas that features hands of mages that move in the astral space! Additionally, we have a new music track for Prologue, and a number of interface additions that prepare the game for a few new big features – mood states and personal traits.

If you already own the game under Limited Early Access, we hope that you love the progress! =) And everyone else will soon be able to try Spire of Sorcery's playable demo that will be a part of Steam's Next Fest in June.

Detailed release notes for version 185: on the game's forum, as well as below.
youtube_16x9_placeholder.gif



CONCEPT

This week we continued doing our "house cleaning" and "homework", which stands for "improving UX for existing content and features" and "preparing the game for new features to come". When people think about the best parts of making games, it comes down to "new" things: new mechanics, new content, new experiences that click together. But a larger part of games development is actually seeing things through – making sure the buttons are where they should be, the tooltips reflect the actual rules of the game, and nothing of what happens on the inside is confusing or invisible to the player. Which is where we're at, this week and this month in general.

STEAM NEXT FEST

Before we dive into what's new in version 185, we wanted to share with you a bit of good news: we decided to showcase the payable demo of Spire of Sorcery during the upcoming Steam Next Fest, which starts in about 10 weeks. We see it as a unique opportunity to let everyone who's interested in the game, but is currently not a part of the Limited Early Access community, to try the game first-hand. Aside from this being a hard deadline for us to finish a number of key features, it's also a convenient deadline for our dev team to finalise the translation of the game into the 7 key languages that we plan to launch in.

45a17f5a81e8d79d7cbd17b07552531dc6e7a720.jpg


UPDATES ON CHARACTER MULLIGAN SCREEN

Character Mulligan screen, which is currently a part of starting every new game – but will in the future move to its own place in the campaign structure – got updated:
  • in addition to seeing character's strongest and weakest stats, you will now see one of the personal traits that they possess
  • every character got their own inventory, which you can fully preview when choosing party members
  • we also preview the resulting collective inventory of the chosen initial party

3dd7e9162e3433c0a9bac46fd9968c81c04ca604.jpg


WHEN EQUIPMENT ISSUES TOKENS, THIS IS NOW REFLECTED WITH ANIMATIONS

When characters have active equipment, such equipment issues tokens at the start of the encounter. Earlier, we were unable to connect for players such tokens and their origin. Now, we display the specific equipment and the token that is issued, as well as name the activated mechanics (in this case, "Added") – see below:

5fbf74295c3ac843127d08e74a90fce3a83b3954.jpg


UPDATED CREATURE MUGSHOTS

When creatures attack your party, the attacker first indicates the indented target and the token that it's about to deal. Earlier, we used a downscaled version of the whole creature to identify the attacker. Now all creatures have their own specific mugshots, like on the screenshot below.

2481bf8f162c43a678516ebc47ea4ea160aeb45a.jpg


Another place where mugshots got an update is on the list of extra creatures waiting to join the encounter on the left panel:

f84d6803882a0c4edeb46f8b608fee009377e26f.jpg


WHEN ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECT DEALS TOKENS, IT IS NOW SHOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCREEN

Earlier, we would increase the size of the effect's icon, but this was not enough to draw player's attention there. Now, whenever an environmental effect begins to act, we first introduce it by displaying its large icon in the middle of the screen.

43301718eb8a8e5bf9b51d6b399cfa7f37299bdd.jpg


CONCENTRATION GOT ITS OWN ICON

Concentration is a mechanic that allows characters to perform more than one action per turn, during encounters. Because we already have diseases (and soon will have injuries and mood traits) that affect the cost of concentration, it was about time that the mechanic received its own icon. Here's how it looks in Character Profile (the tooltip is not implemented yet):

831a4138ff9628ab9bdad29c421a4001b2441e60.jpg


And here's how it looks in the encounter mode, on the button to the left of the elements on hand:

a59b45de6c5fcfc238aa83e545f908047fe14b1e.jpg


WE'RE GETTING READY TO ADD MOOD TO THE GAME

With one of the upcoming versions, the game will receive the Mood mechanic that will replace Euphoria and Stress lasting effects. There are 7 mood states, and each character receives (randomly) 2 mood traits that define how different mood effects them personally.

While the feature is not hooked up in the game logic yet, we already added it to the user interface. You can see the mood scale shown below the portrait of each character, in their character profiles.

7934408652365a13e671cf1dcf5d69c8d7ef4d7a.jpg


WE'RE GETTING READY TO ADD TRAITS TO THE GAME

Similarly to mood, personal traits are one of the bigger features that we "ship by parts". With this week's update, we bring them into user interface and with one of the upcoming builds we'll also enable the effects. You can currently find the list of personal traits on character profile. The list will expand as we expand the pool.

950cf977566bdfb53d5f98440ab30add7c35d91e.jpg


460e207433bfb6eff4e27a61bb54d91447ffcbc4.jpg


WE'RE GETTING READY TO ADD PERSONAL PASSION TO THE GAME

"Passions" is a new mechanic that is related to character's dream: it is something that improves the mood of a particular character, such as "casting combo spells" or "casting really long spells". While we cannot turn this mechanic on before we implement the mood, we already found a place for it in the character profile.

44c16617bc0aa6aad52d01be47aa9249289a7cb8.jpg


ANIMATED SPELLCASTING AREA

This change has been a while in the making, and we debated whether we should introduce it in this week's build – or wait until a more refined version. In the end, we decided to show what we currently have, as we like keeping the dev process transparent. In a nutshell: spellcasting area now shows 'hands' of the mages, which reflect the progress of spellcasting (idle, in process, completed). This will continue evolving as we'll fine-tune the animation as well as add a pretty cool solution we thought of, in terms of reflecting the memory stat.

23a280fbed6a5212f7a5a3545e1f3b1ff30e76ae.jpg


f98ca6f2ab19b0055470d69600dd659df3e2c0d9.jpg


NEW MUSIC FOR TRAVEL MODE, CHAPTER: PROLOGUE

We finally got around to creating the custom music track for the current chapter, Prologue. You will now hear it playing in the travel mode. It's meant to reflect the mood of the chapter.

708550ccda49f15df03d05563787b5f88cbda9ef.jpg


WHAT'S NEXT?

In general, we still have quite a lot of homework and house cleaning to wrap up: getting better at displaying encounter outcomes, improving animation of environmental effects, and so on. At the same time, we're going to move forward with a few new features: mood, mood traits and personal traits, so that we can finally get around to implementing hunger, foraging and cooking. It's hard to say what exactly we will ship next Friday as time flies so fast! We wish you all a very nice spring weekend, and look forward to your feedback on the recent version.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1191500/view/3016823329578800187

V186: New mechanics, better-looking Spellbook, updated main theme
Dear community:

We shipped version 186 last week, on Friday, but it was already too late to post the release notes here. And over the weekend we spotted a few bugs in the new features, thus instead of posting the notes for version 186, we've spent the whole of Monday working on the hotfix – and deployed it late last night (again missing the timeframe to post the update here!).

Such is the reality of the dev style that we practice since December: having committed to weekly builds, we only have 5 days in total for each of the updates.
  • One of these days is spent on communication – synchronising with others what each of us should personally focus on.
  • Another day is spent reviewing concepts and iterating designs, which doesn't produce shippable results but is crucial in helping us think all the new features and content through before placing it into the game.
  • The third day is consumed by the releasing itself: assembling candidate versions, testing, then going back to do more changes and assemble another candidate version.
This leaves "just" 2 days of more or less quiet time when we can hammer away on things. And the truth is that we all like shipping stuff to let the players play with updated mechanics, so every second week we push the limits of when we should stop adding and begin testing – such as what happened with versions 186 and 184. Anyways, here's what we managed to ship with the most recent update:
CONCEPT

This week we improved the flow of encounters, added new encounter visuals and introduced new user interface solutions that make the game better looking as well as easier to understand. We also updated design of injuries and a number of events, and deployed one new feature: environmental conditions, which are a more refined tool that replaces the mechanic of biome effects. Finally, we updated the music track that's playing in the main menu, which scratches the itch that we had for a while by now.

THE MAIN MUSIC THEME IS UPDATED

As some of you may know, music and sound effects of Spire of Sorcery are created by A.Fruit, a musician with whom we collaborate since 2015. This week, Anna updated the main music theme of the game that plays in the main menu. We hope that you enjoy this new, deeper version that now rings truer to what Spire of Sorcery delivers in its campaigns.

6894f2f861c5a79d6cd826e37c6f293d11590c5d.jpg


TEMPORARY AND PERMANENT CHARACTER EFFECTS

Earlier, we classified all character effects according to thematic groups: diseases, injuries and lasting effects. As the mechanics evolved, we realised that this is not the most optimal classification, and decided to now group all effects by their temporal nature. You will see new tabs in Character Profile that reflect this.

8a29df30acbc1bc695d7cfe42295c996e2ad680b.jpg


The same change is also reflected with the icons underneath character portraits in encounters and in the travel mode. From left to right under each portrait, the icons correspond to temporary effects, permanent effects and equipment.

4c172a812c01529157bb702d9c66a87082a03948.jpg


UPDATED RECIPE BOOK AND ALCHEMIC CAULDRON

This is not the end of the updates for Recipe book and Alchemic cauldron, but we're getting there. What is deployed with this week's build: a more coherent way of concocting (you can only concoct based on recipes), and filtering based on selected substance (if you know the recipe, it will become selected) and on selected resources (the recipe book will then only display the relevant recipes).

9fadd6aaefb2fc8169e58e86a67d4a41f8610961.jpg


UPDATED SPELLCASTING USER INTERFACE

Spellcasting part of the UI now has a new button for casting spells, that changes as the spell becomes available. We also improved animation and colouring of the "astral hands".

52ee2d7c1b6060681ec5c3151753c0845b24fb24.jpg


UPDATED SPELLBOOK

Finally, finally! We upgraded the Spellbook that's used during encounters. We hope that you like the new look.

fbc777b570bf98a15d8831e5fb98742b9549d803.jpg


Coming with one of the next updates: the ability to filter spells by element used, that's what the extra space on the right margin of the book is reserved for.

b45de5058a069037ce53e38a9c0c449fcf233cb8.jpg


ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS ARE NOW CLEARLY ATTRIBUTED

When environmental effect kicks in, we now properly display it, and then attribute its actions.

53c63f1747f31ec1fc926ae29e6032c36d9abcb5.jpg


BIOME EFFECTS ARE OUT, ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS ARE IN

The biggest change of this version is the removal of biome effects and the introduction of environmental conditions.

b4b823f6d6248d7d336bc7fe0db6b2e6173bedca.jpg


Earlier, biome effects were structured like this –

Forest
  • using Fire tokens here a risk of triggering "Burning ground" environment effect
  • when "Missed!" happens in this biome, there is a chance to kick in "Falling debris" effect

We did not like the randomness of this mechanic, as sometimes 6 Fire would result in nothing, and sometimes even the first Fire would initiate the "Burning ground" effect. We also didn't like the fact that you have to look up each biome's tooltip individually, to understand what is happening where.

Now such conditions are separated their own category, and can be related not only to biomes, but also to objects and specific events:

Forest
  • EC Ignition
    (4 Damage) – once 4 Damage tokens are issued in the encounter, "Burning ground" begins
  • EC Debris
    (9 Damage) – once 9 Damage tokens are issued in the encounter, "Falling debris" begins
  • EC Brittle environment
    – once "Missed" mechanic happens, "Falling debris" begins and lasts for 2 rounds

We will keep balancing and fine-tuning these environmental conditions with updates to versions 187-190, and what you'll find in version 186 is just the start of the journey. But we feel that this change is important as it gives both more control to players, and more variety to events – as well as making the user interface more transparent.

WHAT'S NEXT?

In the time that remains of this week, we'll do our best to further improve the encounter flow and the alchemic cauldron screen. Meanwhile, one of us is already working hard on introducing mood and mood traits into the game with version 187.

Have a great rest of the week, people!
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1191500/view/4462480173939325514

V188: Mood, taste & new tokens!
Last week, very late on Friday, we shipped the update to version 187 – but had no time to post the proper release notes; this announcement covers both what changed then, and what changes with today's update to version 188.

And today's update brings some big changes: the mood mechanics is in, including all the mood traits; all resources and substances items received their "tastiness" values, which affects the mood of those who consuming them; Memory is now reflected with precise number of rings on the hands of the caster, spellcasting got its first animated effect, and there's a number of new sound effects.

Last but not least, nearly every alchemic substance had its effects revised, and the game received 4 new types of tokens as well as the first alchemic items that produce results immediately when used during encounters. Have fun exploring the new version!

MOOD MECHANIC IS IN!

The mood mechanic is in, replacing earlier constructs of "euphoria" and "stress" that we classified as "lasting effects".

How does the mood work?
  • every character has their current mood, which is static
  • certain events (retreat or consumption of substances) changes the mood
  • the neutral mood is between -15 and 15, while the overall limits are set at -100 and 100
  • each character has their own unique set of mood traits, positive and negative, which kick in in different mood states
  • The current mood of each party member is reflected on their portraits, top-left corners –

69ba4c63bf2626d5ccdfaa65580a61c221c6e40f.jpg


With the tooltips reflecting the name of the current state of mood, and the resulting mood trait –

044d133323b48c49e3ac58b964b41df61878b4e1.jpg


The description of how the specific mood trait works in all the different states of mood is shown as a tooltip in the character's profile –

9de1fcff8cb569ac03d1920929bc6a58355c95e0.jpg


While the range of each mood state is displayed as a tooltip over that state's icon, including the mood trait effect that kicks in:

f9f9a294e25a2ebcc793873d783dae1566a302ea.jpg


This mechanics is a big thing for us, because it opens up a whole range of connections with cooked food (coming), personal traits (coming) and relationships (also coming!).


EVERY ITEM THAT CAN BE CONSUMED, RECEIVED A TASTINESS VALUE

You might remember that characters complain about certain items having a good or a bad taste – and this is also reflected in the corresponding sound effects. Well, we gave the taste a mechanic of its own now!

You will see the values next to the values of toxicity of each item:

c2082b1bfbc62f6c41f76cd42881dd52054ab051.jpg


How does it work: whenever a character consumes something with the value of N, their mood changes by N. So drinking a bottle of Throatburner (tastiness: 15) will give you +15 on the mood scale, while eating a giggler egg (tastiness: -5) will result in -5 on the mood scale.


STRESS AND EUPHORIA AS LASTING EFFECTS ARE NOW REPLACED WITH MOOD CHANGES

In all the cases where we used "stress" and "euphoria" as lasting effects (such as retreat, victory over a stronger opponent or conversion of fear tokens at the end of the encounter), we now use changes in character's mood. Here, for example, you can see that forced retreat now results in -5 to the mood of everyone who retreats –

c40644583429d752901247e3bea517f528843c12.jpg



CHARACTER'S MEMORY IS NOW REFLECTED IN THEIR HAND RINGS

For a while now, we wanted to add this cool little feature: now, character's memory stat (which determines the spells that are accessible) is additionally reflected in the hand rings that the character wears. Here, you can see that one character has memory 4, matched by 4 rings, while another has 6 and therefore wears 2 extra rings.

eecc43b4aa3c6d5dd6650c483ffde41149bf04e5.jpg



ANIMATED SPELLCASTING

Finally, we found some time to add a bit of "wow" to the process of spellcasting: now there's a ball of magic leaving the hands of the spellcaster, as the casting begins –

29792656429c247ecd3c31adf20d6d7fe74064e8.jpg


And a bolt of magic that hits the target before the tokens are dealt –

e1d2eed32b2ffb79f1a54a74db765144a2d13dc8.jpg



UPDATED SELECTION OF HEX

We're getting ready to update the window that shows what's in a hex (you can call it up with right-mouse button), and the first step was getting rid of the annoying yellow sci-fi selection style :). Now, when you select a hex to look up its info, it's highlighted in blue, with a bit of animation around it –

c7976165be872549f15e6a68deb20b64161afcc9.jpg



NEW TOKENS AND CHANGES IN ALCHEMIC SUBSTANCES

We're overhauled the whole range of alchemic substances. The main changes are as follows:
  • there are no longer any substances that have different effects in encounter (e.g. starting a fire) and in travel mode (e.g. giving immunity from fire); we did not like the complications in user interface and discovery that resulted from this approach.
  • we removed "immunity" as an effect, because it was connected to a timer (10 days, 15 days, etc.) and managing time in this sense – "I should attack spitters while I'm immune to their tokens" – wasn't really fun.
  • in general, we removed the timer-based effects from all substances (such as "euphoria for X days").
    there is now a new group of substances that provide protection during encounter, by issuing specific tokens – and there are new tokens: protection from frost, protection from fire, protection from fear and protection from blindness. We find this to be a better solution than timer-based immunity.
  • we changed the effects of items which created short-lasting environmental effects, and now allow certain alchemic substances to have the immediate effect; for example, when you use "Captive spitters", it will no longe create an environmental effect, but rather it now immediately deals damage to the opponents.

b79a09267bab9d0f64e6803274d685f05a425fd9.jpg


Some of these changes still require an update to the user interface, which we'll look at in version 189.


WHAT'S NEXT?

Personal traits and cooking are up next, while we continue to fine-tune the interface. And then we're on to building a real campaign – with the map of the world, and a sequence of chapters. But first, some rest and sleep over the weekend =D.

Have fun, peoples!
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/637050/view/3079876894670301094

Last night we released version 191, which brings a lot of good stuff into the game: grow a moustache, cook some slugs on skewers or grill ribs – and serve them with the spicy maggot sauce!

In this video we review the key features that we added in the last 3 weeks:

* personal traits – YES!
* sustenance, hunger and starvation states
* cooked food and cooking food, as well as food resources
* changes in concocting (appoint alchemist, spend fatigue)
* animated tokens in encounter flow
* a re-worked system of portrait changes after consuming all sorts of items

Altogether, this improved the game a lot – and we're now on the last stretch before Steam Next Fest commences in mid June. Soon, very soon, we'll go public with the playable demo, and then it's just a few more weeks until we hit the general Early Access release. Whoa!
 
Last edited:

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


If you're playing Spire of Sorcery's demo during Steam Next Fest, this video will help you get the basics:

* what's a campaign mode
* how to move around the map
* how to get information about objects
* how to cast spells
* how to concoct and cook
* how to change visual appearance of characters

If you have any further questions, please shout in the comments section or ask them on Steam Forums and on the game's Discord server!

Spire of Sorcery's is on Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/637050/Spire_of_Sorcery/

The playable demo is available to everyone in English, Japanese, Russian, Korean, German, French and Simplified Chinese from June 16, 2021. The link to download will appear on the game's page!
 

udm

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 14, 2008
Messages
2,752
Make the Codex Great Again!
Just completed the demo. Apart from the fantasy setting, this game has little to do with traditional RPG tropes. At its heart, it's a hand management game with resource management mechanics. Like Eador Genesis, it's balls to the wall difficult* because of how outmatched you are against the rest of the world, including roaming creatures.

Is it fun? I would say it's ok. I might get it when it's on sale, but not at full price (whereas I got Eador at full price). The mechanics are interesting. Nearly every encounter is a "combat encounter", where you must try to stack up specific runic symbols to overcome the obstacle. I don't want to go into specifics as that'll result in a TLDR, but I'll say this: if you don't like puzzle games that are abstractions of combat mechanics, then this isn't for you.

I thought this member in my party was pretty hilarious. "Eats sparingly" :lol:

8rAVPDj.jpg

*: I'm not kidding about the difficulty btw. By the end of the demo, my party was either in a constant state of stupor or chills with broken ribs, perforated lungs and skull fractures. Dust is also a bitch for causing constant blindness :argh:
 
Last edited:

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,083
Location
Bulgaria
It looks interesting,shame that the dude is that bad at the game :lol:
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Alpharius

Scholar
Joined
Mar 1, 2018
Messages
585
Played the demo for a few hours and removed it from whishlist. :negative:
Didn't get to see the strategy part but the tactical part that i assume makes up most of the game is full :decline:.
About the same as your regular shitty card-based system with a twist that you get random resources per round that you can spend on spell preparation instead of random spells.
 

Latelistener

Arcane
Joined
May 25, 2016
Messages
2,579
Eador: Genesis creator (Alexey Bokulev) left the project and moved back to Kiev some time ago, before they reworked the game into something else. After that he was finishing his mod for Grimrock 2: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1712260093

There are a few bits in this blog that can give you a few ideas of what happened: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1191500/announcements/detail/2939126088437432965

Our main mistake was that having successfully released and operated Gremlins, Inc. for a number of years, we never prototyped the new project, or even documented our game design: we simply relied on our game designer’s “vision”, which we would follow until the game is ready for release.

Unfortunately, only while crunching for release, have we discovered that the “vision” was too vague and undefined and could not be completed in any predictable timeframe, because it was never properly defined. In the games industry, people call such projects “ghost ships” – it looks like a ship, but you can never board it. Ultimately, we ended up working on a game that was “fun to develop” – as opposed to creating a game that is “fun to play”.

We started to take seriously the need to document, and structure, our game design, which lead to some conflicting emotions internally. After weeks of discussions, we finally let go of our game designer, who couldn’t see himself working in the “new” way, which required documenting every mechanic before it was actually put into production.

Looking back from today’s perspective, at that time we still did not recognize the fact that the game lacked the very main thing: a concept.

Sure, we had tons of beautiful content, and dozens of mechanics (my favorite was character’s mood, which changed because of so many other mechanics that is almost always remained neutral, going through ups and downs with every turn to settle at zero: a pointless exercise). But we lacked the definition of what “playing Spire of Sorcery” should feel like.

Regardless, I just saw the demo and realized that I don't even want to download it. It's not the game they presented a few years back.
 

PrettyDeadman

Guest
Eador: Genesis creator (Alexey Bokulev) left the project and moved back to Kiev some time ago, before they reworked the game into something else. After that he was finishing his mod for Grimrock 2: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1712260093

There are a few bits in this blog that can give you a few ideas of what happened: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1191500/announcements/detail/2939126088437432965

Our main mistake was that having successfully released and operated Gremlins, Inc. for a number of years, we never prototyped the new project, or even documented our game design: we simply relied on our game designer’s “vision”, which we would follow until the game is ready for release.

Unfortunately, only while crunching for release, have we discovered that the “vision” was too vague and undefined and could not be completed in any predictable timeframe, because it was never properly defined. In the games industry, people call such projects “ghost ships” – it looks like a ship, but you can never board it. Ultimately, we ended up working on a game that was “fun to develop” – as opposed to creating a game that is “fun to play”.

We started to take seriously the need to document, and structure, our game design, which lead to some conflicting emotions internally. After weeks of discussions, we finally let go of our game designer, who couldn’t see himself working in the “new” way, which required documenting every mechanic before it was actually put into production.

Looking back from today’s perspective, at that time we still did not recognize the fact that the game lacked the very main thing: a concept.

Sure, we had tons of beautiful content, and dozens of mechanics (my favorite was character’s mood, which changed because of so many other mechanics that is almost always remained neutral, going through ups and downs with every turn to settle at zero: a pointless exercise). But we lacked the definition of what “playing Spire of Sorcery” should feel like.

Regardless, I just saw the demo and realized that I don't even want to download it. It's not the game they presented a few years back.
64f557e23e87ad5453e2808ff4dade25df7319ee_full.jpg
 

Demo.Graph

Arbiter
Joined
Jun 17, 2018
Messages
990
There are a few bits in this blog that can give you a few ideas of what happened: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1191500/announcements/detail/2939126088437432965
This's actually fascinating to read from an anthropological and managerial standpoint.

- First they had a prophet figure who legitimized himself via previous success story (like, ahem, Hitler) and the team had followed him without questions. Charismatic leadership and all that.
- After two years they saw that they got a set of weakly connected mechanics instead of an alpha. For a 2d game. They've tried to patch them, predictably failed and then, instead of rework, they've dropped the product altogether, along with the Hitler Bokulev. I guess that was the time when Mr. Klimov became the lead dev.
- In the end of 2019 they took a several months long pause to look for "a new vision" - i.e. to create a proper design document. The team was so concussed by the experience of wasting two years, that Klimov ditched off everything except the media assets to distance himself from the first version and try to find a new legitimacy.
- Those several months turned into half a year of concept work and a year of development. During that time they've backtracked to a card-based system from a previous product (Gremlins) because it already worked and they lacked new ideas. Then, to make their product somehow stand out from a market competition, they've switched from random effects to random resources, copying inadvertently reinventing the card-based resource system (Solium Infernum anyone? Countless deckbuilder tabletops like RFTG?). They also switched from an item-based interaction system (alchemy) to a cooldown-based system (skills).
- They also stopped talking about the goal of the game or strategical resource management and focused on "party-based" single unit action. They also seem to want to release it on mobile for eastern markets, because UI is atrociously big and they cling to chinese translation. They insisted on making "the big game" in that december press release, but half a year later they've ditched the global map in favor of mission-based structure.

All of that betrays a serious lack of management talent or design planning. They've moved from a prophet-based chaos to mumblemumble.
I saw similar things happen to some big companies with bad governance structure. Top management wanted KPI-based results, because they couldn't manage properly. Middle management was interested only in demonstation of labor for a paycheck. Their goals were disconnected from each other and that led to the labor for the sake of the labor. How can a small company exist with a similar behavior is beyond me.

Our main mistake was that having successfully released and operated Gremlins, Inc. for a number of years, we never prototyped the new project, or even documented our game design: we simply relied on our game designer’s “vision”, which we would follow until the game is ready for release.
This is particular. How can anyone develop a product without a design document or at least an MVP? How can you spend half a year to make one of those?
All of that is especially infuriating, considering that Internet is filled to the brim with how-to management guides from clueless little shits that are still better than those self-mutilating dev diaries. And if one doesn't want to listen to them, one is able to read a book. There're management manuals in every goddamn book store. And if you can't find a book in Vilnius, it's only 2-3 hour bus ride to Minsk or Riga. I've been in their bookstores, I can guarantee that stuff is sold out there.

That's it, I'm offering my services as a game designer.
I have 20 years of gaming experience with more than 300 titles played or analyzed.
I'm M. Soc. and spent my time researching rules-based behaviour (including gaming) and its psychological aspects.
I have a portfolio of 1 (one) two pages long design document I did for free when I was 16 (it was actually accepted for some time-filler bullshit on a web page long forgotten). That is, if I manage to find it after all this time.
But more importantly I have a proper full-time job in data analysis and financial modeling. So a) I'm not interested in milking you for paychecks for all eternity and b) I shuffle numbers for a living and get paid for it by large banks.
Do you want to have a document that would describe the mechanics you need for your dream game and do it in detail?
PM me. I might save you a million dollars.

Edit: typos
 
Last edited:

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


In this stream we start half-way through "Prologue" and manage to finish it without getting injured or catching diseases. Don't mind the lack of sound in the first minute, the microphone batteries died – but we fixed that! :-D
 

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
Patron
Joined
Mar 27, 2016
Messages
9,174
Location
Disco Elysium
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
This is the onlt game out of 7 demos i played so far that i outright hated.
Go play vagrus. Also why did you dislike it ?
The card based spell system. I just want to cast fireball, why do i need rng for the right card to appear? The random resources thing, movement system is tedious.

Serious, cssting spells feels like you're playing lamer version of poker.
 

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
Patron
Joined
Mar 27, 2016
Messages
9,174
Location
Disco Elysium
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
The card based spell system. I just want to cast fireball, why do i need rng for the right card to appear?
It's not card-based. More like a board game. You are rolling dice, not drawing cards.

From the Steam page:

Spire of Sorcery is designed and developed by Charlie Oscar, the team behind the digital board game Gremlins, Inc..
I don't care if it's card, or dice or fart, the point is casting spells is a pain in the ass and the system just boring despite cool concept.

I would design it like this: eliminate all the rng elements casting spells, you start off with 1 type of the runes each, as the game goes, earn different rune.

Or

Have 1 of every type of runes always available so you can cast all basic spell, have a second rune slot you can equip, and the 3rd slot is rng based for each character.
 

Harthwain

Magister
Joined
Dec 13, 2019
Messages
4,688
I don't care if it's card, or dice or fart, the point is casting spells is a pain in the ass and the system just boring despite cool concept.
It comes together when you're working on casting three different spells, because there are various interactions between spells and effects.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom