The Hand of Merlin - turn-based Arthurian/cosmic horror roguelite RPG

[Tyranicon]

Damn Merlin, at least you could've invented some laser guns too.

 

[Lacrymas]

Did they get rid of the silly nu-XCom cover mechanics and fix the rote combat?

 

[Chippy]

This looks pretty awesome. Good year to be a fan of the Arthurian legend. Also seems like the eastern europeans have more respect fot the tale than the British do. But then that's to be expected....

 

[Infinitron]

Coming to GOG: https://af.gog.com/game/the_hand_of_merlin?as=1649904300

 

[Infinitron]

Should be out soon.

 

[Infinitron]

https://af.gog.com/game/the_hand_of_merlin?as=1649904300

https://www.gamespress.com/ru/ROGUE-LITE-RPG-THE-HAND-OF-MERLIN-AVAILABLE-TODAY-STEAM

Baltimore, MD – May 11th, 2021 - Independent developer Room C Games in co-production with Croteam and in partnership with indie publisher Versus Evil are excited to announce that their rogue-lite RPG game The Hand of Merlin will be available today on early access for PC via Steam, Epic Game Store and GOG.

The Hand of Merlin is a turn-based rogue-lite RPG in which Arthurian legend clashes with sci-fi horror. Players recruit three mortal heroes on a desperate journey from Albion to Jerusalem to explore richly-imagined medieval lands on the brink of apocalypse - assaulted by an otherworldly evil. Written by Jonas Kyratzes (The Talos Principle, Serious Sam 4) and Verena Kyratzes (The Lands of Dream, Serious Sam 4). The Hand of Merlin is a story inspired by Arthurian legend but with an unusual twist that introduces a wholly unique sci fi element to its storytelling.

"We wanted to create a player focused, rogue-lite RPG that merged two complete contrasting genres but in a uniquely rewarding way. This forged a whole new universe for players to explore and craft their destinies. Creatively it gave us the scope to bring something really exciting and fresh to the turn-based and squad based RPG genre“ said Robert Sajko, Creative Director at Room C Games.

Utilizing squad-based and turn-based combat, players can employ tactical cunning to use cover, set up ambushes and coordinate attacks with ranged, melee and spellcasting combat to conquer both human and demonic foes looking to do them harm. Additionally, players can utilise relics they purchase or are rewarded with, some of which are imbued with magical power. These abilities will be important as players weigh the risk and reward for the paths they choose.

In The Hand of Merlin choices are permanent depending on the decisions players make as they carve a path across the lands of Albion, Marca Hispanica and Al-Andalus. Combat is inevitable and mastering the tactics of squad-based and turn-based combat is essential to survive in a world where evil never rests. Players can seek out towns to improve their arms and armor, or trade with hermit artisans in the wild. Renown is the backbone of progression and can be used to level up party Heroes, and players can choose between a randomized set of new skills or improved attributes to balance out the combat prowess of their party to improve their chances.

With a large focus on exploration and encounter, mortality is the consequence of existence in human form, but even in defeat, players retain collected arcane knowledge as they jump from one parallel dimension to the next. No two worlds are ever quite the same, and each journey will be unique. Defeat is not the end in this realm, only a new beginning.

There are as many worlds as there are stars in the sky. In each stands Camelot; in each there is a Grail. But there is only one Merlin, and his eternal burden is to stand against the horror from beyond. Each world that is saved is saved forever; each world that is lost is lost for good.

The Hand of Merlin will be available today on PC via Steam early access priced $24.99 / £18.99 / €22.49 for the Standard Edition with a Deluxe Edition priced at $29.99 / £22.49/ €26.99, A soundtrack of the game is also available for $7.99/ £5.99 / €6.99.

Versus Evil has a 20% launch discount in place for its first week on sale during early access and Room C Games aims to add more guardians, heroes and encounters for the games full launch later this year.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Fedora Master]

I played around with this for a bit - I'm impressed despite myself. My very first fight left a bad impression because it was a 3 vs 7 or so but after I got the hang of the game and it's "intent", it seems fairly interesting. They also seem to handle the Arthurian Myth with a bit more respect than I would have expected in currentyear. Yes, there are female adventurers and such but the overall style sticks surprisingly close to the literature. It's just that there is a LOT of it and there are some weird details barely anyone knows.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Jonas Kyratzes is a good writer.

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/600610/view/2968421682197832182

Dev blog 81 - Fun with gamepads​

Hi folks!

This week we won’t be pushing a patch out because we don’t have any notable changes done. Mat is on vacation so there are no balance changes, and I’m still busy with gamepad support, tho I’m getting into the finishing stages of the core functionality so hopefully soon I’ll go back to some gameplay stuffs.

Since there’s no other topic we could talk about, I’ll continue talking about gamepads from last week.

The current state of the support is fairly complete. All the main screens are fully usable with the gamepad in a way that, at least to me as a non-console user, feels relatively normal. There are a few places that are janky and weird, most notably selection of spells in the core, node selection in the overworld map and the tile picking in fights. Basically, anything that has to do with 3D elements, which is probably not surprising since 2D UI interaction with gamepads is much more intuitive (and simple!) than anything to do with 3D that requires picking.

When I envisioned spell selection in the core, I thought that it would make sense to use the up/down stick or d-pad movement to move between spell tiers, and left/right would move between the individual spells in that tier. After implementing it, I’ll say that my vision was entirely wrong, and it feels very unintuitive and crap. So I’ll be changing that so it works more like a directional thing where UP selects the first spell that’s above the currently selected one, and so on.

The world map node selection is a bit better, but still weird. It works by requiring you to push the stick in the direction of the node you want to select relative to the current node, but this has 2 issues. The first is that when two nodes are in a relatively similar direction, it’s hard to precisely pick which one you want to really go to because the margin for difference is very small. The second is a bit of unintuitiveness stemming from the first issue: you can’t push UP to select the top node, but have to push in the, for example, right-and-up-a-bit to select it. This is another thing that will be tweaked once I get some feedback and ideas for a fix.

Lastly, the combat tile picking is the weirdest one. I’ve tried 3 solutions so far, and neither felt good The main problem I’ve identified is that our game doesn’t use a pure isometric projection (which would keep the vertical lines parallel to the screen), but a very narrow perspective projection. The camera is very far away from the map and is using a small FoV for a sort of telescopic lens effect. The other part is that the camera is looking down at an angle. So the issues I saw were:

• When the hit tile (or the screen point that defines which tile is hit) happens to be on the edge of the screen, pushing the stick UP actually moved the hit world point towards the up-and-left/right (depending on which side of the screen you’re on), which is caused by the perspective projection having a vanishing point, towards which all points will move to when going away from the camera.
  
• The speed of moving the hit world point up or down is not the same as moving it left/right, which is caused by the camera angle: moving 1 meter away from the camera will move a shorter vertical screen distance than moving 1 meter left/right and keeping the same distance from the camera.

Both issues are a natural byproduct of our setup, but they do have a solution which will just take a bit more thought put into it, or a moment of epiphany to hit me like a truck and make me feel stupid for not thinking of it sooner.

If you have some ideas for how any of these might work from a user perspective, I welcome the feedback. I don’t own any consoles and only play games with my gamepad when it feels it would fit (like platformers), so having good feeling gamepad controls is a bit outside of my experience range. I can also answer any inquiries regarding how any other part of the game works with the controller, in case you wanted to know.


MarkoP

 

[Fedora Master]

Behead those who prefer gamepads over M/KB

 

[Lagole Gon]

Okay, I'm intrigued. This looks pretty good.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Fucking youtubers...
Have they never heard of video editing to cut it down to a 20 minutes watch/skippable video?
And also commenting the video after the edition with a prepared text instead of running their mouth as they go.

 

[baud]

Fucking youtubers...
Have they never heard of video editing to cut it down to a 20 minutes watch/skippable video?
And also commenting the video after the edition with a prepared text instead of running their mouth as they go.

too much work

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/600610/view/2950407917995247345

Dev blog 82 - Enemy Updates​

This post is written by Mat, our gameplay designer.


Hello there! Mat is back to talk design.

If you guys ever read our soft roadmap, you’ll remember that another major content patch that we want to do is the addition of a few new enemies - a chunky new abomination, and some support bandits.

It's great to be able to design a whole new enemy set after seeing the game live for a few months. We learned a lot about how players engage with the game, their favorite strategies and skills, etc. We can now create a creature specifically tailored to challenge the meta!

So, let me introduce you to the Basilisk, our new abomination!

It serves as a chunky sniper-type. Very high range, likes to take cover, and has some damage-over-time properties, choosing to lay down some poison-type abilities while growing its own power with the
Toxin Buildup passive, which increases his damage every turn. It’ll be featured on Marca Hispanica onwards, taking the same “slot” as Thorntoad. (if you didn’t like the chunky guy, then rejoice!)

However, he is not without limitations. His Toxin Buildup passive can be reduced by melee attacks, giving your Warriors another way to deal with the threat.

To accompany that new addition, we are also introducing two Mystic Bandits, the Enchanter and Witch for Albion and Marca Hispanica respectively.

While not particularly resilient, they can heal, empower and even give more AP to the other bandits, requiring your attention at all stages of a match, and offering a bit of a different strategy for your human enemies.

But that's not all. As we introduced some power creep when redesigning skills and passives, we gave the players a lot of new toys to play with, but the enemies didn’t keep up. Yeah, we made them a bit stronger, but we could do better. I’m not going to spoil everything, but we changed how some of the enemy passives work a bit, from the dreaded Wyvern’s Elusive, to Behemoth’s Bloodlust, making them more in line with the current direction of the game, and addressing some of the more common feedback we received.

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/600610/view/2950407918020139936

Dev blog 83 - Making New Enemies​

This post is written by Mat, our gameplay designer.


Hello guys and gals! Today I wanted to share with you a bit about how we go about adding new stuff to the game, particularly content.

The Hand of Merlin is what I like to describe as a “rectangular” game, meaning it is validated not by its systems, but by its content. A roundabout way of saying that the game is fun or not depending on what you face, discover, and do in the game.

That means that we have to take extra care in creating cool encounters, enemies and skills for you to use and recombine, and the processes we use to go about creating said content needs to be constantly revised.

In the context of enemies and skills, its a three-stage process.

1. We identify a fantasy or a niche. This is the verbal stage. It’s usually down to a sentence or two. In the early stages of the game, they were mostly aesthetic, like “Bashing someone with a shield sounds fun” or “I had this image of a big, beetle-like monster”, which would evolve into Bash and Behemoth respectively. Nowadays, so close to full release, we tend to find more mechanical or thematic niches to fill, like “The Warrior could use some self-heals” and “So many enemies punish the melee characters, how about we do the reverse?” turning into Malice and the upcoming Basilisk
   .
   
   
2. Then, we
   Systematize - my personal favorite! We have to translate the idea into actual game terms. What does it mean to push someone with a shield? How is it different from a basic attack? Why would you pick it? This stage is still theoretical, but we have to start thinking about how to implement it in-game, often checking with MarkoP to see what’s possible, or making some small tests in-editor. A great example is how Thorntoad’s
   Bristleback passive went from a desire to “dissuade the player from focusing fire”, into a process: whenever he is hit, he’ll deal melee damage and become more resilient to damage, via the addition of another status effect,
   Thick Skin. As a side note, Relics can often start in this step. Whenever we are doing a new skill or fix, we “discover” a possibility in the design and come up with a relic’s functionality first, before finding a fantasy/historical element to it.
   
   
3. Then, we Implement. For most skills and enemies, we could give the artists and programmers a heads-up in advance, so by the time the design team reaches this stage, we have the assets ready to slot in and see them in-engine. We can find out some impossibilities in current technologies, or discover some inconsistencies with our plans: that’s normal, we just go back a step and try again. After a bit, we have something testable. For the Basilisk, we actually were lucky enough to be able to use some pieces of other enemies, like Mandrake’s movement AI and some lessons we learned from Wilfred’s Nonchalantpassive, and the implementation was quite quick.
   
   
4. Then, Internal playtest! Up until this point, the skill or enemy was built in a vacuum, with theories and desires alone. We thought it would be a neat idea if, say, Redcap’s Ooze, that ground effect he leaves, actually could heal other abominations. But once you actually see it happening in live play, with 2 Redcaps and a Mandrake, you notice that it doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s not properly explained, the player’s can’t do a lot about it, and Ooze is already a hassle on its own… Often, the ideas are scrapped or retooled.In this stage, it’s very important to bring other members of the development team into the loop, since the people that developed the idea from concept to implementation can become numb to its issues, or only see the results from a specific angle. I often gloss over poor descriptions or AI mistakes in the content I implement myself, and have to be reminded by my fellow devs, simply because I’ve been seeing the thing for so many hours that the small details don’t strike me as odd anymore. This is a great piece of advice to any designer: Designing something in a vacuum is dangerous! Get someone else to see and approve your deliverables
   .
   
   
5. Then we can move on to
   Iterating. Very rarely do we actually see a piece of content go from concept to seeing live play without at least one touch-up. As an example, an early implementation of Redcap had passive Evasion, meaning that no matter what you did, there was always a 10% chance that you’d miss it. When I designed it, it made perfect sense: The players have it, and it’s good that you build redundancy in your plans, to account for the randomness factor. But other devs played it and found it frustrating! So we iterated: maybe the Gaze ability could introduce the same randomness and require the same redundancy, but in a more straightforward way, that the players can play for. Maybe we can make another enemy gain evasion only if you attack them, like Wyvern turned out to be. We re-systematize, re-implement, retest… until we find it acceptable.
   
   
6. Then you come in. Live feedback is the greatest (and most overwhelming) thing to happen to our game dev process! We show our content piece to you, the players, and see what you think. Sometimes you think that
   “The boss fight is a bit meh”, or that “A specific map in Zone 2 is the worst”, or, in a brighter light, that “cooldown reduction makes you feel powerful” and “dealing direct health damage is cool”. We take that into consideration, try to account for it, and fix whatever bugs and errors you (or our extended QA team) find out. This step can happen over and over and is still ongoing for many aspects of the game, but it's one of the most important ones too, as it makes the game a better product for you!

So there you have it! The process of how we add content. Now that you know how important your voice is in our development process, be sure to show up on our Discord server to share your feedback with how the game is turning out, so we can keep improving it!

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/600610/view/3101292457662721895

Dev blog 102 - Abilities Glow Up​

*This post is written by Mia, our gameplay designer.*

Hello there!

With 1.0. release on the horizon we’re digging in and trying to polish the game on as many fronts as we can. A big part of this is in the hands of Will, our VFX artist, as he’s got a plate full of going over all the abilities and status effects and giving them a fresh face.

As we did not have a dedicated VFX artist before, there’s plenty of room for improvement and adding new effects to those we considered good enough as is with animations alone.
The Hand of Merlin is more sci-fi orientated than fantasy - the heroes that you select are still only human. The Mystic, for example, is not a wizard or a mage, they’re more of an alchemist or a shaman who can create these effects not through magic but through knowledge. We want the VFXs to properly communicate this difference as well.

The first thing we did now was to go over all the abilities and try to categorize them depending on 3 factors.

• Gameplay Effect
  Eg: Damage, Buff (damage, movement, evasion, etc), Debuff (damage, movement, evasion, etc), Movement, AP, DoTs, etc.
  
• Manifestation
  An in-character look at how the ability works (eg: physical, emotional, alchemical, corruption..)
  
• Animation Used

Next, we set some visual expectations on certain categories. The best example being the difference between ‘Physical’ and ‘Emotional’ manifestation.

‘Physical’ we want to keep as grounded and realistic as possible while still looking good and distinct. This includes motion blurs and lines, sparks of metal hitting metal, blood splashes and such.
‘Emotional’ on the other hand has more liberty in its visualization since it would not be possible to try and detect which facial expression a unit has (not that we show emotions on their faces or plan to) due to their size. Here the Gameplay Effects influence which color pallet should be used.

The abilities should mostly end up looking quite grounded, but not dull. We hope.
It’s the status effects which will pose a real challenge, as we need to make them stackable, readable, and recognizable while keeping the color pallets consistent.

If you’ve got any questions or are interested in the game feel free to drop by the steam forums or join us on our Discord server[discord.gg]!

Mia

P.S. here are some gifs!

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/600610/view/3101293098307976963

Dev blog 103 - Ranger VFX​

Hey folks!

Continuing a bit with the VFX updates
Will worked on the ranger lately, so i’ve recorded a few gifs to show them off. There’s really not much to say in this post, so i’ll let the gifs speak, even tho they don’t actually have mouths.

 

[cyborgboy95]

Dev blog 105 - Warrior VFX​

Hey folks!

As we’re trying to finalize the next patch, we wanted to finish up the VFX showcase trifecta with the Warrior skills. We asked Will to type out something to accompany the gifs we’ve prepared, and here’s what he wrote.

Will: When doing the visual update of the Warrior, I have been challenged to find a grounded and realistic way to show their abilities. I have tried where I can to keep the effects subtle and I have worked to revise some of the "placeholder" effects that were in place. For the most part it has been a case of reducing the colour saturation and emissive strength of the effects we had in place. A few places I got to really rework the current effects and so, skills such as upgraded Haste's and Warcry have had a fairly complete visual overhaul.

Here’s how some of them look!

Warcry

Haste

Stagger

Since our game is set in a low fantasy setting with no actual magic (remember the quote that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” ?), having grounded and subtle VFX fits perfectly with the game. Not that we’re always doing so, some aspects do need a more overt VFX to indicate stuff is happening, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to indicate that a unit gained a status effect that changes a stat that has no external representation!

In our previous post, we mentioned a patch coming this month and we’re working on getting it out next week. Legendary questlines, more relics and a few QoL changes based on feedback!
We hope you try it out, and encourage you to join our Discord server[discord.gg] and tell us what you liked and didn’t like, and any other changes you feel would be beneficial to the game!

MarkoP

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/600610/view/3097917293910181671

Whispers of Doom Update Available Now!​

Whispers of Doom introduces a complete overhaul of the games VFX for the games hero and enemy classes. Core to the VFX upgrades was the ability for the game to show the sci-fi orientation of the game more clearly. Cosmetically, the visual overhaul now better represents the distinctions of character skills such as the Mystic, who creates effects through knowledge rather than magic like a traditional wizard or mage would.

Also added in this latest update are legendary questline encounters which may reward relics of legendary power, as well as a new Guardian Core from Siglorel. The “Corrupted core” is awarded to players once they defeat the doomed world scenario, beating back the corruption in Jerusalem in Hard Mode with all Curses activated. This features 9 new and unique spells.

Alongside a whole host of bug fixes and performance enhancements, the ‘Whispers of Doom’ update now splits easy mode into two options, easy story and easy roguelike. Easy story mode presents the easiest option for players looking for a more narrative led experience with very little challenge. Easy roguelike on the other hand presents a good starting point for newcomers to tactical or roguelike games but who still want to be challenged.

Additionally, the option to create a randomized party when starting a new game run based on the heroes a player has already unlocked has also been integrated in this update, this also automatically picks Prowess unlocks if available.

Last but not least, 3 new achievements have also been added, Can't Run Forever (unlocking Atlantes' Core), Faevoured (unlocking Oberon's Core), and Legendary (obtaining a legendary relic through a questline).

“Our early access journey with The Hand of Merlin is now complete as we look to align our full version 1.0 launch. Being able to harness valuable community feedback has been immeasurable to us, and has helped us deliver six updates that have enhanced balance, challenge, meta progression and skill sets, not to mention lots of exciting new game content added as well,” Said Robert Sajko, Creative Director at Room C Games.

Spoiler

Patch Notes - Early Access Build 677290


New features:
• Added a new Guardian Core: Siglorel's, with 9 new and unique Spells. It can be unlocked by winning the doomed world scenario: beating back the Corruption in Jerusalem in Hard Mode+ with all Curses activated.
• Added new questlines which may reward relics of legendary power.
• Visual Effects overhaul: Hero classes' (Warriors, Rangers and Mystics) and enemy abilities' VFX updated where appropriate.
• Easy Mode is now split into two: Easy (Story) and Easy (Roguelike). The former is meant to hardly present any challenge at all, and is meant for those seeking a narrative experience above all else. The latter is a good starting point for newcomers to tactical or roguelike games but who still want to be challenged.
• Added 3 new achievements: Can't Run Forever (unlocking Atlantes' Core), Faevoured (unlocking Oberon's Core), and Legendary (obtaining a legendary relic through a questline).
• Added the option to create a randomized party when starting a new run. The selection is made from the Heroes you have unlocked, automatically picking Prowess unlocks if available.
• Added several new encounter illustrations.

General fixes:
• Fixed an issue on macOS where the game could have issues starting in fullscreen mode on Retina displays with resolution scaling enabled in OS settings.
• Fixed an issue on macOS where the Journal could sometimes appear solid red.
• Fixed an issue on macOS where in-game clickable URLs did not work (such as the button to join our Discord server).
• Fixed an issue on macOS where the Command button did not expand tooltips (like Alt does on Windows/Linux).
• Updated hints and tooltips on macOS to refer to the correct keys for that platform.
• Fixed a crash in the Lobby when removing Heroes from the party.
• Fixed a rare crash when using a gamepad during an encounter on the World Map.
• Fixed an issue where the run would be lost if game is stopped and started again during a certain encounter in Al-Andalus which interacts with the Holy Grail.
• Fixed a bug where force-closing the game during a transition between zones could leave that run in an invalid state, causing it to be lost.
• Fixed a bug where the fast-forward feature in skirmishes would affect the menus as well.
• Fixed a bug where enemy wave spawning in the battle of Roncevaux Pass didn't work correctly.
• Fixed a bug where the Blacksmith prices were not reset when arriving to a new Blacksmith.
• Fixed an issue where Salim's Measuring stacks would sometimes not get removed upon moving.
• Fixed an issue where Dire Thorntoad did not use Blast and Jump abilities as often as intended.
• Fixed an issue where the setting to confine the mouse cursor to the screen wasn't saved/restored when quitting/starting the game.
• Fixed a bug where multi-target abilities couldn't be used with the mouse on the same tile without first moving the tile away (i.e. it wasn't possible to double click a single tile).
• Fixed a bug where enemies that die affected by an aura didn't properly unregister themselves from the aura, potentially causing a crash or other incorrect behavior.
• Fixed a bug causing Wyvern to not trigger its Opportunist passive in case it was spawned in an ambush scenario.
• Fixed a bug where the auto-targetting logic of Morgan Tud's Druid Physician passive would not work correctly in certain situations.
• Fixed a bug where some effects could be applied to a unit after it died, if the sequence happened as part of the same ability use.
• Fixed an issue in Mallorca corrupted alternative skirmish map causing a potential AI chokepoint.
• Fixed an issue with the Blessings/Curses screen elements not scaling correctly on 4K / TV mode.
• Fixed an issue with the Blessings/Curses screen where the back button could be repeatedly triggered to constantly restart the animation.
• Fixed various cases of text clipping in Big Picture mode.
• Fixed a bug where the camera could still be manually controlled during the short cinematic momement of revealing the final boss in Jerusalem.
• Fixed a bug where screen fading would sometimes not work correctly when transitioning between game states.
• Fixed an issue where the Bestiary bookmark could reopen itself when not intended.
• Fixed an issue where bookmarks could sometimes not be clickable.
• Fixed an issue where reroll or cancel buttons were not reachable by gamepads when selecting skill cards at rank-up.
• Fixed "The Pen Is Mightier" encounter which would offer recruitment if party is full, rather than if not full.
• Fixed a bug where the portrait tooltip attribute breakdown didn't correctly show the base attributes for heroes with an active prowess unlock.
• Fixed a bug when gaining status effects where the scrolling combat message would show an incorrect number of stacks gained if they were higher than the max possible for that effect.
• Changed the description of Holy Desecration to note that it deals damage only to abominations.
• Changed the wording in the nourishment descriptions from past tense to present tense for the health/armor increased/decreased state, since they indicate state, not change.
• Fixed several typos in various tooltips.

Optimizations:
• Cleaned up and optimized several combat maps, to reduce memory usage and improve performance.
• Greatly reduced the impact of all destruction effects on performance, without noticeable visual differences.

Quality of life changes:
• The intro cutscene is now automatically skipped after being viewed at least once. It can be re-watched by clicking the Intro button in the Lobby.
• The vision pool in Merlin's Cave (the Lobby) will now show a view of the correct zone for the current run, rather than always Albion.
• Relic tooltips will now state the item's rarity, as well as use a color scheme to further help distinguish item rarities.
• The Guardian Core UI can now be accessed even during an encounter.
• Added separate icons for quest start and quest turn-in nodes. In addition, quest turn-in nodes will display the quest name.
• In addition to clicking the Shuffle button, random event cards can now also be clicked directly to initiate shuffling.
• The Hide Cards button, shown while selecting skills during rank-up, now says Cancel to make it clearer what it does.
• The Reroll button for skill cards is now disabled when the player doesn't have enough essence to use it.
• When selecting a skill upgrade, the current (base) skill is shown in the middle, with animated arrows pointing left and right to the skill cards available as upgrades. This should make it easier to compare the choices.
• Improved the Blacksmith tooltips to make it more clear that each upgrade tier is a replacement of the previous tier, rather than a stacking bonus.
• Improved Bestiary gamepad navigation, which should now feel more intuitive.
• Improved the presentation of the card selection screen in Big Picture mode.
• Skills with 0 AP cost which are self-cast now require the specific Hero to be targeted and clicked (or double clicking the ability itself) to activate it. This is to prevent accidently activating an ability when a hero is left with 0AP and is selected.
• Bandit enemy types now have names which should be more evocative of their signature skills, such as Executioner (Execute). This should help make them (and the threat they pose) more recognizable.
• Added prowess indicators to Hero selection screen in the Lobby, to make it clearer which type of Hero is selected for the run.
• The post-run report will from now on also show the modifiers (Blessings and/or Curses) that were affecting the run, if any.
• Changed the wording of the rendering resolution options to make it clear which resolution they represent.
• Added new sliders to the Options / Sound menu, for master volume, overworld music volume and combat music volume.

Gameplay balancing:
• Changed the Fey Touched achievement to have a lower fey reputation requirement (7, down from 10). This will apply to all new runs started with game version 677290 or higher, but not on-going ones.
• Changed the Well Stocked achievement to use nourishment instead of hunger damage for the condition.

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/600610/view/3097917927537322747

Dev blog 107 - Porting Fun, Vol. 3​

This post was written by Robert, one of our programmers.


Hi again!

Robert here, programmer at & founder of Room-C. At long last, it's my turn to write a blog post again! A while back, I wrote about porting the game to Linux and macOS.

In the meantime, we decided to expand into consoles as well. But rather than talk about consoles themselves, I wanted to make an overview of all the great things that came out of the console porting efforts that made the PC/Mac version better, too! So, here goes:

• Gamepad support
  
  Well, duh! Can't have a console port without them. But I daresay, after several iterations, we got the gamepad controls to a point where it's quite nice to play with a controller even on PC/Mac.
  
  
• UI improvements
  
  There's a couple of big things that happened here.
  1. Dynamic UI scaling
     
     We knew we wanted to support resolutions like 1080p and 4K. So instead of just keeping the UI tiny and small on 4K, or scaling it up naively to cause blurry text, we made sure to support this properly and deliver crisp, legible UI and fonts on any resolution.
     
  2. TV mode
     
     But what if you play the game on a TV? For me at least, my TV is a lot further away from my eyes than my PC monitor. So even though the TV is bigger, the picture still seems smaller. And that means we had to upscale the UI even further, to make sure our text-and-UI heavy game is legible even when played from the couch. How does this benefit PC players, you ask? Well, there's Steam's Big Picture mode, which we were able to add support for easily.
     
  3. UI clutter reduction
     
     Last but not least, simply scaling the UI up revealed design problems. We had a lot of stuff on our tooltips! Too much for it all to fit, in fact. It took some creative thinking to reorganize and simplify, to reduce clutter while still being informative. That alone was a major improvement for all players anywhere!
  
  
• Optimizations
  
  Now, this is a huge topic. In short, we were able to get pretty big gains in performance, while also reducing memory usage quite a bit. On top of that, we made sure there are no performance swings - all areas of the game, even during spell casting and wrecking the destructible environment - retain consistently good frame rates. This means the game now runs better and smoother than ever, even on older PC/Mac hardware.

But let me break down a few techniques we used!

1. Code optimization
   
   Good ol' profiling your code, looking for bottlenecks. Rewriting slow functions, getting a few FPS here, a few FPS there. Consoles helped here because they amplify problems. What might be a tad slower on PC, ended up being noticeably slower on consoles.
   
   The hottest topic here was probably AI, which on most PCs would take no more than a few seconds, maybe five at most, per enemy. On consoles, you'd be waiting up to 15 seconds per enemy!
   Through careful optimization, both in code and in AI config, we were able to reduce AI think times by 50-70%, so again, even on PC/Mac, it should feel much faster and smoother.
   
   
2. Texture optimization
   
   Oversized textures mostly have to do with wasting precious memory, but they also affect performance. By "oversized", I mean using textures which have too many pixels for the size of the object on the screen.
   
   Imagine a small rock, which uses up a small area on the screen, say 100x75 pixels. It makes no sense to apply a 2048x2048 texture to it, right? You can't even see those pixels.
   So, I created a tool in our Editor to visualize texture density in shades of gray. The lighter the image, the higher the density. That made it easy to spot light (dense) spots in any scene, at a glance.
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Mesh optimization
   
   With meshes, it's a similar story. Why waste thousands of vertices on an object which only takes up a small area on the screen? Also, excessively dense meshes affect performance more so than memory, so there were big gains to be made.
   However, decimating a mesh is not as simple as downsampling a texture. Luckily, our Editor already had a powerful QEM (Quadric Error Metric) mesh decimator built-in.
   
   But - we have upwards of 800 unique meshes in the game. How do we process them all, making sure we decimate each one just enough, but not too much to introduce visible artifacts? Well - we write a tool, of course. And so, I wrote an automated tool which tries to guess an appropriate decimation factor, applies the decimation, and takes screenshots of the mesh from all six cardinal directions (north, south, east, west, up, down). If the before and after screenshots don't differ by more than some percentage of pixels (say, 3%) - the decimation factor is accepted.
   
   
   
   
   Then it's a simple matter of trying an increasingly or decreasingly aggressive decimation factor until a sweet spot is found. Voila! You let the tool run for a day, and you have meshes guaranteed to use up as few vertices as possible without visible artifacts.
   This gave us FPS boosts of up to +50% on lower end hardware.
   
   
4. Shader optimization
   
   We have a custom terrain system which allows level designers to directly paint layered materials on the terrain, such as grass, mud or rock, via a special mask texture. The shader then applies these materials and the transitions between them, using the mask.
   We were able to reduce memory usage quite a bit by compressing the mask, and optimizing the shader itself. This also made loading times faster, not to mention rendering itself.
   
   
5. Misc optimizations
   
   Finally, there's lots of things which don't fit any of the big categories. For example: destruction effects! We noticed these can cause performance drops, and identified the issue to be physics-engine-related, due to spawning large numbers of inter-colliding physics-driven objects. Rather than just reducing the number of said objects (which would make the effects look flat), we found ways to reduce the impact on physics computations without sacrificing the number of visible object parts. So much so, that performance drops due to destruction FX are now negligible on any platform.

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/600610/view/3097918562527563844

Dev blog 108 - Improving the Ultimates
This post was written by Will, our VFX artist.

Hi, Will here! Today I'm talking about some of the exciting work I have been tasked with.

When I joined there was a very large backlog of effects the team wanted to have created or tweaked and it has been my great honor to go through and rework and reinvigorate the games already existing effects.

My most recent task however has been to come up with a new way to represent a very dangerous interaction for players; the prepared ultimate abilities of our Abominations. This is a place where the team feels the peril of the abilities were not being shown clearly enough to our players. I was as such given the freedom and time to really explore some options and come out with an effect that fulfills 3 key criteria.

1) Players know at a glance that the enemy is building up to a powerful attack.
2) Players should feel like they must deal with the impending threat in some way (either by focusing down the enemy or running away from its impending attack)
3) After the ability fires players should recognize how that attack was much more powerful than a regular attack.

To that objective here are a couple of gifs to show off the difference between the old and new Wail ability.

Before:

After:

We're making sure that all enemies that do a similar dangerous ability get a proper visual indicating so. This is all still work in progress, but at least it's a glimpse of what we're working on.
As always, be sure to let us know what you think, either on Steam or our Discord server[discord.gg]!

Will

 

[Serus]

Looks interesting, will follow but no early access for me.

 

[cyborgboy95]

Dev blog 109 - UI improvements​

Hey folks!

A little while ago, we were working on improving the skill upgrade process. The idea was to show the base skill on the screen during the upgrade. Even though this information was already there (through a tooltip on an icon between the cards), it wasn’t very intuitive or obvious.

When I was working on adding the middle card (which you can see in the game today), I was hanging out with a friend on discord and chatting about our work. She’s a UX designer, so she started giving me ideas for improving my situation. When I passed the ideas along to the team, after a bit of back and forth, we decided to hire her for freelance work to go over the UI/UX in the game.

Now, a month later, we have a bunch of suggestions to improve the games’ UI. A lot of these are changes to font usage, text sizes and small layout tweaks, but there are a few that are a bit larger.
Here’s a list of items I consider notable changes:

• Difficulty selection screen will have all difficulties on the same screen instead of in sub-screens
  
• Hard mode + modifier selection screen gets a new layout
  
• Core selection screen gets a new layout
  
• Hero selection screen gets a new layout
  
• Codex hints will be rewritten to a different format
  
• Victory screen after combat gets new information
  
• Cards will be changed to a better information layout
  
• Warband book page tweaked layout
  
• Blacksmith tweaked layout
  
• Unit portrait tooltip tweaked layout

Most of these will be part of the next content update slated this month, with some bits maybe spilling into a few smaller patches afterwards, depending on how much time i get to focus on this. A lot of the main menu is already done and just needs to be finalized.

Finally, here’s a preview of some of the suggestions.

Before -> After

Before -> After

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/600610/view/3097919831953598288

Dev blog 110 - Endless Mode
*This post is written by Mia, our gameplay designer.*

Hello there!

In ‘Dev Blog 104 - Release when?’ you may have noticed that we mentioned a new game mode is in the works. The work-in-progress name for it is ‘Endless Mode’, and as the name suggests, it is a mode in which you can fight the abominations, in theory, forever.

In Endless Mode Merlin sends his puppets into the Void itself, sealing their fate. It’s a one-way ticket and a noble sacrifice in an attempt to curb the Corruption at its source. There is no happy ending for the heroes here, the only goal is to cull as many abominations as you can till you ultimately fall. This sacrifice comes in hopes that it may save a world one day. For while there are infinite worlds, there is only one Void.

The story here takes a back seat though, as the focus and point of this mode is to just test out different builds and enjoy the combat strategy. It’s meant for all the players who aren’t that interested in the journey and stories experienced on the path from Albion to Jerusalem. In Endless Mode, the pages between fights are short and more focused on the mechanical needs. After each fight there’s a random gear upgrade available, and after every other fight, there’s a relic available. Survive long enough and you could have your whole warband “pimped out”.

Difficulty wise, it is not going to be easy. While it may start off as such, the difficulty ramps up steadily and continuously (up to a point). The main issue you’ll face will be managing your health, as it is the Void there is no friendly face around that could assist in healing your wounds. Good use of spells here will be important, to mitigate that, each fight rewards 1-3 mana.

It’s a work in progress, but the base has been set up and we’re now entering the testing phase and modifying accordingly. What we do have is some pretty new maps we’d like to show off!

If you have any good ideas on how we should actually name this mode, feel free to drop in to our Discord server[discord.gg] and let us know!