Thanks man! We got a few more tricks up our sleeve that will hopefully ensure the campaigns success
I'm glad you like it
We wanted to have something that was a little bit unique(and played into the passage of time aspect) without straying too far from a traditional rpg leveling system.
Character Progression: Part 2
We’re past $36,000 and are steadily approaching our goal, your support continues to be amazing, thank you! Today for part 2 of Character Progression we’ll be talking about Traits, Injuries and Illnesses. While classifying Injuries and Illnesses as “progression” may be a bit of a stretch, they’re still kind of related and it felt necessary to include them here
Character Traits can be long lasting(some being permanent) or temporary. For a fresh recruit, most of the traits they begin with will be determined by their backstory, and these traits can be both positive and negative. Let’s say for example that a character’s backstory mentions that their house burnt down when they were young. This could give them the Pyrophobia trait which makes them vulnerable to fire damage, in addition to having a small chance to retreat from their position during combat whenever an enemy uses a fire-based attack. A trait like this is long-lasting but not necessarily permanent, and there would be a chance that they could eventually overcome their fear and lose the trait. A rare trait like Genius(granting a bonus to intelligence) would be an example of something that is permanent. Additionally, it is not one that could be taught or acquired later in life. A character would have to be generated with that trait in order to have it.
Backstory traits aside, most traits will require some sort of parameter to be met in order for them to be applied to a character. This parameter could be something that is capable of being met within a single mission or it may be require the character to continually perform certain actions over a longer period of time. The easiest example of the former would be the death of a character during combat. Depending on Affinity and Spirit levels, most characters will have some type of reaction to this event and it may result in the application of a negative trait for your party members. A temporary trait like Fearful could be applied in this circumstance, but given that it’s temporary, it may not last much longer than a single mission(especially if you are able to power through and “avenge” the fallen character).
While you’re not able to directly control what traits your character acquires, we have a few ways to give you some influence over the process. The first is the Mentor system which we mentioned briefly in yesterday’s update. Once a character reaches the rank of Master, they can become a mentor to a lower ranked character of the same class. By doing this, some of their more positive traits will get passed on to the apprentice, allowing you to sort of groom your characters if you wanted to.
The other method that we’d like to implement is part of the Guild Council stretch goal, specifically involving the Master at Arms and Archmage. Essentially, you would be able to assign each of your characters to study a specific subject, and each subject would have a number of traits associated with it. Over time, and depending on the skill of your Master at Arms and Archmage, your characters would adopt a few traits from their chosen category. So if you had a character with strong leadership traits that was close to retiring, it would be a good idea to task a younger character with the study of “Battlefield Command” so they could eventually serve as a replacement. Overall, character traits help ensure that each character in your roster is unique, while also adding an extra layer of strategic considerations, both in and out of combat.
Injuries and Illnesses function in a similar fashion to traits, in that they can both be temporary or permanent, and require certain parameters to be met in order to fire. They mostly occur during missions, and can come from both combat and non-combat scenarios. During combat, if one of your characters falls to 0HP and gets knocked down(but still survives), they may suffer some internal bleeding as a result. Outside of combat, your party could step on an unstable piece of the ground, fall through to a lower floor and suffer a couple injuries of in the process. Or perhaps you instruct one of your characters to inspect a rotting corpse, and they instead become afflicted with a terrible sickness.
Whatever the case, most ailments will start out as nuisances that your characters will be able to shrug off and continue on with the mission. Afterwards however, it’s important to seek the counsel of your physician and decide the best course of action. Both injuries and illnesses can progress into more serious complications if not treated properly, and in dire situations you may need to send your characters to an infirmary at a nearby city. Of course, you will need to pay fees in order to stash a character at an infirmary, so it sometimes may be worth the risk of letting an injury or illness resolve itself. Characters that are recovering in an infirmary will not be available to you for missions, and only once they recover will they begin to make their way back to your guild’s caravan.
Hopefully you found the two parts on character progression interesting(or enjoyable even lol), we would be happy to discuss things further if any of you have any questions! We have something a bit different planned for tomorrow’s update that we hope you’ll like, and following that we’ll be telling you about character customization and gear. Thanks again to all of our awesome backers, your support means everything!
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Update #12
Aug 26 2017
The Animation Process
Hey everyone! As mentioned yesterday I have something a bit different planned out for today's update: a look into how I animate all the characters in the game. Hopefully some of you find it interesting or helpful
Rough Sketch: The first part of my workflow is to just do a really rough sketch of the animation that I have in mind. I begin first by doing 3 key-frames for the starting position, anticipation and follow-through. Once I have the key-frames sketched out I then duplicate the layers, make small changes to each and I end up with a very rough version containing some in-between frames. If I'm happy with how everything looks I then move on to refining the shape of the key-frames.
Key-frame Shape: This is probably the most important step. If your silhouette doesn't read well the whole animation is going to suffer. I like to take my time here and really make sure I get the shape of each body part correct. If I'm struggling with something, I find it helpful to stand in front of a mirror and recreate the pose that I'm going for. In this instance I actually ended up recording a video of myself that I referenced on occasion.
Detail: Once the shape is refined, the detail step is a lot easier to handle, though it still takes the longest amount of time! I begin by first separating out each body part onto its own layer, and doing the same for each piece of gear that I add. The gear is done in the same fashion as the Shape step, I start with a color that stands out for each piece and make sure the silhouette reads well before I actually begin to detail onto it. Using references here is again helpful for making sure the detail on the muscles is more or less correct.
In-Between Frames: Adding in-between frames really smooths out the animation and adds a lot of life to it. It's something that I was always afraid of doing because it seemed like it would take a lot of time, but in actuality it only took about 2 hours for the above example(the entire process took 12h). For this step, I do my best to recreate the in-betweens that I roughed out in the sketch step. You don't need to have a ton of frames here to trick your mind into seeing a fluid motion. The mantra to follow is "ease in, ease out" which basically means you want to add frames that are easing in, and then easing out of your 3 keyframes. Some of the in-betweens might end up looking a little silly on their own, but as long as it looks good in motion it doesn't really matter!
Here's another workflow for a necromancer cast animation which took about 16 hours:
I also created two timelapse videos which you can view on youtube. They're a little bit long, but hopefully it will be instructive for those of you who are interested in animation & pixel art!
Bounty Hunter Youtube Timelapse
Necromancer Youtube Timelapse
I've created a gallery post on imgur detailing the same steps. If you have an account we would appreciate it if you could take a second to upvote it. It would really help our campaign out! http://imgur.com/gallery/ZrJz2
Thanks again everyone, we hope you have a terrific weekend!
Eight days to go and we’re nearly 95% funded! Our community continues to be amazing and we are so grateful for all of your support! As soon as we hit our goal, we’ll be unveiling the 3rd stretch goal, but for now...let’s talk about character customization. We’ve already discussed a few aspects of customization such as ability skill trees and the mentor system, and now we’re going to dig into a few more
Probably the most basic way to customize your characters is by renaming them, which you can do at any time in the overworld. There are a few rare exceptions to this however: some recruits may be part of a noble House, or their backstory may require their name to be locked for continuity sake.
Gear is the most impactful form of customization. It can be purchased from city vendors or traveling merchants; looted from chests, corpses or enemies; or given as a reward for completing a mission. Each character possesses 6 equipment slots for you to fill out. Some gear will be unique to a specific class, while others may be shared across multiple.
Our focus is going to be on less, but more more meaningful drops. We want it to feel good when you find a piece of gear, as opposed to stockpiling a bunch of junk to sell off to a merchant. The loot itself will be very much Diablo-like, with a few different tiers of rarity, and multiple special properties that make every drop unique. The highest rarity is Legendary, and these items will be hand-crafted, possessing unique properties that no other piece of gear can have.
- Armor: We’ve consolidated all the typical armor pieces into a single armor slot. All armor types are sorted into 3 categories: Light, Medium and Heavy with each class in the game being restricted to a single category. (eg. Pyrolancer can only use Medium)
- Main Hand: Categories for the main hand slot include swords, axes, polearms, lances, staffs, wands, daggers, bows. There are also some unique main hand items such as the Lute for the Troubadour class. Like armor, classes are restricted to certain categories.
- Off Hand/Accessory: The off hand(or accessory) slot can be a weapon, shield or another unique item type depending on the class you are outfitting. The Paladin uses a shield, while the Nightstalker uses a quiver.
- Amulet: Amulets are free of class restrictions, and you may equip them onto any character you wish.
- Ring: Like amulets, rings also do not have any class restrictions.
- Artifact: Artifacts can offer unique enhancements for classes, and as such are restricted to a specific class.
The last thing to mention is that for now, we are not planning on having any level restrictions on gear. Any new recruit could use that shiny Legendary item you just found(provided there are no class restrictions), and we feel this will help minimize the negative effect of character deaths. And as an added bonus, you won’t need to save sets of inferior gear for your recruits.
There are a few other customization options for characters that we would like to add, but we cannot yet guarantee they will make it into the game at launch without hitting the necessary stretch goals:
As stated, the above options will all be stretch goals as they will require us to hire even more artists. Hopefully we can hit them, but regardless we’ll still try do as much as we can before(and after) launch.
- Skins: As mentioned in a previous update, we’re so close to unlocking 8 Social Goals which will give every class one alternate skin. However, we would really like to add a lot more!
- Races: Our world contains multiple races of people, but for now each class will be locked to a specific race. If we get to add multiple races for every class, we will also be introducing unique racial traits on top of that.
- Hairstyles(or Helmets): We’d like to be able to add a choice of hairstyles and helmets(when applicable) for every class to further differentiate them.
- Gender: This is the most difficult one, as it is essentially doubling the art workload for the classes we plan to offer.
Fan Art Contest
We’ve only received a few entries so far for our Fan Art Contest, and so we’ve decided to extend the deadline until Wednesday September 6th at 12am EST.
It’s open to everyone and we’re giving away prizes to the top 5 entries. For more information, read this update.
Community Forum
One of our backers, Sinistar, asked if he could start up a community forum for fans to engage in discussions about The Iron Oath. Since we haven’t set anything up yet we thought it was a good idea! You can find the forum HERE and we encourage you all to sign-up. Chris and I will try our best to drop by as often as possible, but most of our attention will still go towards the private Discord server.
Social Goals
I’ve updated the Social Goals graphic, and we’re so close to unlocking alternate skins for every class! Head to the Social Goals section on the campaign page and find out what you can do to help!
Thank you for reading, and once again thank you for your support! We hope you’re all ready for the stretch goals
Thanks so much
We couldn't really think of any reason to include it other than the fact that other games do it. Glad you agree!
This was a great idea in Darkest Dungeon that they really screwed up. In DD, Traits come and go with such speed that I never really thought about them. Although I had a number of characters I came to think of as my "special guys", I couldn't tell you any of their Traits. Traits just weren't memorable, new ones "pushed out" prior ones, and the ones that were a real pain in the ass were easily cured.Curious Panda said:
Can't disagree with you there. I liked the idea and types of traits in DD, but the execution could have been better. As you say, they didn't help to define a character since they changed so often, and were easily removed by just throwing them into a building. When I think of traits for our game, it's much closer to CK2 in terms of duration, and how you had to work around and with the traits of your ruler to get the most out of them.
We're funded! (+Stretch Goals & Add-Ons)
We did it! We are absolutely blown away right now, and really did not expect to get funded this early in the day! Thank you so much to all of you for your incredible support on this journey so far. We are so damn happy right now and we cannot wait to get back into full-time work on The Iron Oath, but we still have one week to go here and we're not done yet! Let's get started on some stretch goals, shall we?
Guild Council($55K): Council members can be recruited from all over the world, but not all will be equal in ability. Each member will offer you advice and has a number of tasks that they can perform for the guild.
The Master at Arms is in charge of your warrior classes, he or she is able to train them either as a group or individually, and you can also send them on missions to various destinations to find promising new recruits. The Archmage functions in the same fashion, but is instead charged with your mages.
The Emissary is your guild’s chosen representative for improving your reputation with other factions. When assigned, they will slowly increase your reputation over time with the targeted faction. In addition, they will bring a variety of missions to your attention that the target requires assistance with, allowing you to further increase your reputation and get rewarded in the process.
The Master of Intrigue is your main advisor and functions as your eyes and ears throughout the land. They will bring important matters to your attention that you may otherwise never hear about(such as a plot to kill a liege) in addition to any unsubstantiated rumors that may be worth looking into. They also have the ability to disrupt relations between factions of your choosing, potentially providing the spark that leads to an all out war.
As a bonus, when a character of yours retires from active duty, you will be given the chance to keep them around by offering them a position on your council. If their loyalty rating is high enough, they will likely accept the job.
Sea Travel & Encounters($65K): Every major coastal city will be given a port from which they can trade and send troops along numerous sea-routes. You can pay for passage across these routes in order to save time, but much like on land, there is a possibility of Encounters. Many different types of sea encounters exist, such as being boarded by pirates(in which combat will take place on the ship’s deck), spotting a tradeship, or even crossing paths with an entire fleet.
Purchase your own vessel($70K): If you gather enough coin, you may purchase a vessel of your own to do with what you wish. The ship will act as a separate unit for you to command in the overworld. You may leave it behind at a port while you continue on land, and order it around the map as you see fit. Paying for its crew, upgrades, and maintenance can get costly. Fortunately, owning a vessel will also present some unique opportunities for you to profit. A merchant may approach you and offer payment to transport their goods across the sea, or a family seeking refuge in a new city may pay for passage.
If you so desire, you can turn to piracy on the high seas, stalking trading lanes and taking what you want by force. Being branded as pirates will have its own set of consequences(and opportunities) however, so you best be prepared to deal with them.
$85K: This stretch goal will be revealed once the Guild Council is unlocked!
We're incredibly excited about all three of these stretch goals, and we really feel they will add a large amount of depth to the overworld and guild management. We hope that you feel the same!
Add-Ons
If you'd like, you can now pledge a higher amount to receive additional rewards.
Click on the 'Manage your pledge' button at the top, and then increase your pledge in the 'Pledge Amount' box. Add the price of reward you want(listed below), and you can tell us later in a survey what you raised your pledge for (do not change the tier that you are currently pledged at).
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- Additional Digital Game(Steam or Humble): $15 per copy
- Digital Art Book: $5
- Digital Soundtrack by Alex Roe: $10
A big thank you once again to everyone. Whether you pledged or just helped spread the word(or both!), your support has been amazing and we are so grateful to each of you. Let's keep it going now and unlock some stretch goals together!
We'll do our very best not to let you guys down! So hyped to get back to work on everything, it's been tough having to focus on the marketing side for so long.
As for additional funding, we're going to be using BackerKit after the campaign and allowing people to still pledge or do add-ons. Not sure how long we'll leave it open for or how much we can expect to get, but hopefully we can squeeze out an extra stretch goal that way!
As long as there's a suit of plate armor out there that has exposed thighs, even magic can slide. Iron Oath delivers.
