KickStarter The Legends of Eisenwald Thread

[Overboard]

Trading cards are there! And we added first six achievements too, they work fine, so we will add many other soon.

Priorities well and truly in order, then.

 

[J_C]

 

[LESS T_T]

Developers diaries #19: Balance in a tactical RPG

Recently players asked us how many man-hours we spent working on the game balance. The question seemed interesting and we tried our best to work out an estimate. In the end, it’s pretty hard to even find a close approximate. All members of our small team work on multiple tasks and it’s pretty difficult to pinpoint the hours spent in any one thing. Problems are solved as they appear and at other times we work on our specific tasks. As an approximate we could say that, Dmitry Goncharov, who had to deal primarily with balancing, spent anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 hours working on it. Though it is wise to note that Dmitry didn’t think that was accurate at all! He didn’t even try to name a number and simply explained the way it works.

In the case of Legends of Eisenwald, balance includes many factors (weapons, equipment, characters, spells, and location variables) that can influence the gameplay. As soon as we were able to produce the first fight, balancing followed soon after. We didn’t do balance full time because there were many other tasks to take care of. The characteristics of characters and heroes were changed as time went by, little by little depending on their influence.

Many things in the balance turned out well and worked from the start. For instance the weapons were thought through and they didn’t change much during the development. But it’s easy to remember some changes in regards to lances and horses. In the beginning mounted units were too strong.

Changes on NPC characteristics took a lot of work, and small fixes are still being done to this day. The biggest change was done when we realized the battles started to drag on for too long. Following our main concept in battle – no extra actions and the battle should be as compact as possible – Dmitry increased the attack of all the characters by 5 points which made combat dynamic and tough. It was the result we aimed for.

Most of the work was done changing the spells. Some spells didn’t really fit thematically and ruined the common balance in Eisenwald so we had to rewrite them completely. For a long time Dmitry tried to find a balance between healers and priests since in the beginning priests seemed completely useless. As a result we found a solution – healing had to depend on willpower and the combination of a priest and a healer was now quite viable as support characters.

Weapons, equipment and amulets were not changed much and balancing was mostly done for the latest ones which were added to the game for diversity sake.

If you are interested to look at the balance correction from a technical side, our AI programmer Denis Lomako prepared a small presentation with a story of how automatic balancing was done.

One of the balancing tasks was to make weapons in the game equivalent to each other so that after few battles there would not be a clear leader among the weapons used. For this during the testing a specific part was made for a consecutive characters test. Melee fighters and ranged characters were included in the test. The test looked like this:

• Four embedded loops are used: 1) on characters, 2) on weapons that these characters can use, 3) on enemy characters, 4) on weapons that the enemy uses. As a result, we get a sequence of test battles of all the characters with all of them using all available weapon types.
  
  
• In a test battle each of the sides fills its army with a selected character with its selected weapon. The only difference of these characters is how initiative is set. If nothing is done, then the one army will go first with all characters and it is not fair for the test. So, the initiative of all characters is decreased by one with each turn, so characters move in turns after a certain while. For example: our character’s base initiative is 15, the enemy character’s is 12. Our first character will have 15, the second 14, the third 13 and so on. The enemy will have 12, 11, 10. So four of our characters will move before the enemy character with the initiative of 12, moves.
  
  
• As a result of test, it is determined how many HP and characters are left in the victor’s army.
  
  
• Receiving data is summarized according to the type of weapons and characters. They are all stored into a separate file.

Efficiency of weapons
————————–
Sword 44.7%
Axe 40.1%
Crowbill 47.1%
Mace 35.4%
Pitchfork 9.8%
Spear 33.8%
LongSword 69.6%
Halberd 64.4%
Hammer 86.9%
Pike 44.3%
Lance 100.0%
Sword+Dagger 42.9%
————————–

Survival of characters
————————–
Knight Hero
Sword 18.9%
Axe 17.8%
Crowbill 16.8%
Mace 18.1%
========= 17.9% ~ 0.7%
————————–

Baron
Sword 50.7%
Axe 56.2%
Crowbill 49.6%
Mace 52.9%
LongSword 48.0%
Halberd 52.6%
Hammer 54.7%
Lance 70.7%
========= 54.4% ~ 6.6%
————————–

PeasantAxe 4.7%
Mace 4.8%
Pitchfork 7.4%
========= 5.6% ~ 1.3%
————————–

Based on the numbers received, the necessary corrections of weapons are done regarding both the efficiency of the weapon’s special features and their characteristics.

 

[LESS T_T]

It's nice to hear that they've got the additional budget: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1684781151/legends-of-eisenwald/posts/1133864

Report on stretch goals; near future plans

Hello everyone,

In the recent weeks we’ve been answering many questions about the state of the game. If we achieved our stretch goals, etc. In this update we would like to respond to some of these questions.

Stretch goals

We are happy to tell you that both stretch goals you chose to back during our campaign via the vote has been implemented fully. The first goal was the improved storyline. Victor did an amazing job creating a coherent, interesting and non-linear story. Even those of us who knew the details were very impressed when we played it all the way to the end for the first time (it was in December). It has really paid off to make him our full time writer. We are also lucky that Joel Martin is doing an equally amazing job adapting the story into English. We are now finishing the English version by removing typos, mistakes and adding a few missing things in our closed beta. By the way, the sign up for the closed beta is still open.

The second goal was to make a pack of story characters and unique bosses. We won’t give out details about this in order to avoid spoilers but it is done and tested. You won’t see all of them in a single playthrough because of the story’s nonlinearity.

Near future

Remember how we said we were looking for an additional budget for marketing and PR? We found it! And that allows us to go GDC and PAX East, it wouldn’t be possible without these extra funds.

Another piece of good news is that Legends of Eisenwald was selected as one of 15 games to be shown in Indie Megabooth at GDC in San Francisco! We are very happy about it and looking forward to this expo. Last year’s GDC didn’t work for us but we are hoping that being a part of the great Indie Megabooth will change a few things.



Also, we will be showing Legends of Eisenwald at PAX East in Boston. And we have a few free tickets left (PAX East is sold out). If you want to hang out with us for one of the three days at PAX you can sign up for a ticket in the comment section! There will just be two of us at the booth and we could use some help!

Patch 0.992

Yesterday we released a new patch that added 44 Steam achievements to the game. 16 of them are available in the first three chapters, and the others are in the closed beta content. A lot more was done including the changes to how gold is collected and finishing the assembly of the physical shaders.

Our best,

All of us at Aterdux

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Hope it works out for them. I'm generally of the mind that promoting games at conventions like that is usually a waste of time but that's simply because I don't give a shit about 'em myself.

 

[mindx2]

Hey Aterdux Entertainment You still have any PAX East tickets left? I'm only about 2 hours from Boston and would love to visit you and see what you've got. Maybe even try to write up something for the Codex here...*

*Sorry but I won't spend my own money going again... way too much popamole for me last year

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

mindx2, yes we still have two tickets left! Should I reserve one for you? It would be great if you come and hang around with us a bit I will be wearing some armor, if you have anything, bring it!

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

Hope it works out for them. I'm generally of the mind that promoting games at conventions like that is usually a waste of time but that's simply because I don't give a shit about 'em myself.

I wouldn't go to GDC since last year it was a waste of time. But being a part of Megabooth is different and should help, or so I've heard from many others.

PAX East - the only expo we missed so far, also heard great things about it... These are obvious things we should do and fortunately it's not that expensive...

 

[mindx2]

mindx2, yes we still have two tickets left! Should I reserve one for you? It would be great if you come and hang around with us a bit I will be wearing some armor, if you have anything, bring it!

Go ahead and reserve it for me... PM which day you would like me there and how to get a hold of the ticket. Also, just in case you were wondering, I am a KS backer at the "Signed Limited Edition Box" level.


Unfortunately, no armor but you really don't know how I... er, look do you...? Armor really wouldn't work for me...

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

I sent you a PM, and with it two tickets already gone! Just one more left... Well, my armor will be enough for our booth I think

 

[General Maxson]

I can't wait for you guys to finish this!

mindx2 you're a real bro, I hope you write a report!

 

[mindx2]

Alright, it seems I'm going back to that bastion of Popamole that is called PAX East thanks to the fine folks at Aterdux Entertainment!! I will, of course, be writing up something to chronicle my experience this year but plan to focus on Legends of Eisenwald. I will not let the bribe of a free PAX ticket in any way sway my judgement on what I see from them... though I did mention Mountain Dew and Doritos.......

 

[Shannow]

mindx2, yes we still have two tickets left! Should I reserve one for you? It would be great if you come and hang around with us a bit I will be wearing some armor, if you have anything, bring it!

Go ahead and reserve it for me... PM which day you would like me there and how to get a hold of the ticket. Also, just in case you were wondering, I am a KS backer at the "Signed Limited Edition Box" level.


Unfortunately, no armor but you really don't know how I... er, look do you...? Armor really wouldn't work for me...

At least you can bring your chariot

I expect you to have a drink with our bros from Aterdux for me.

 

[PocketMine]

I sent you a PM, and with it two tickets already gone! Just one more left... Well, my armor will be enough for our booth I think

Spoiler

 

[J_C]

mindx2, yes we still have two tickets left! Should I reserve one for you? It would be great if you come and hang around with us a bit I will be wearing some armor, if you have anything, bring it!

Go ahead and reserve it for me... PM which day you would like me there and how to get a hold of the ticket. Also, just in case you were wondering, I am a KS backer at the "Signed Limited Edition Box" level.


Unfortunately, no armor but you really don't know how I... er, look do you...? Armor really wouldn't work for me...

I'm so sorry, I'm a terrible person, but I couldn' let is slide.

Spoiler

I sent you a PM, and with it two tickets already gone! Just one more left... Well, my armor will be enough for our booth I think

Spoiler

The funny thing is that Chris looks much more creepy than mindx2.

 

[Infinitron]

Alright, it seems I'm going back to that bastion of Popamole that is called PAX East thanks to the fine folks at Aterdux Entertainment!! I will, of course, be writing up something to chronicle my experience this year but plan to focus on Legends of Eisenwald. I will not let the bribe of a free PAX ticket in any way sway my judgement on what I see from them... though I did mention Mountain Dew and Doritos.......

There is another thing we'd like you to attend there, if possible: http://east.paxsite.com/schedule/panel/pillars-of-eternity-with-obsidian-entertainment

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

All right, it's official, mindx2 will come to the PAX East and will be wearing Aterdux Entertainment exhibitor badge! All Codex bros - rejoice! (Almost wrote :powerfulstrike: here - got too used to our cool Steam emoticons)

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

All right, it's official, mindx2 will come to the PAX East and will be wearing Aterdux Entertainment exhibitor badge! All Codex bros - rejoice! (Almost wrote :powerfulstrike: here - got too used to our cool Steam emoticons)

We've got cool emoticons too.

 

[Emily]

Combat feels very bare bone and simplistic. I am afraid it will get old very fast.
There is just HP to manage, no stamina, no morale. I see no strategic depth, i just see rpg elements where you level up, and then click on monsters diablo style, which is very very odd for a turn based game(the whole point is to have depth).
Can we expect any improvements or maybe reconsidering combat implementation?
Everything else is great.

So i played a bit more yesterday. And i have to say this impression is false
There is a very good strategic depth both in battle and outside of it. I played on ultra hard and had to restart the third chapter once before i could get trough it.
I played the mage character and i find it a bit weaker then others, especially on beginning.
At first it seems simple, but as the time goes you will understand more and more ways you can shift battles into your favour. I usually plan ahead 2-3 turns when playing.

If dev is lurking i have a question, will the mage character be changed more before release?

 

[LESS T_T]

http://aterdux.com/ether-editor/

ETHER EDITOR

We are happy to announce that Ether Editor will be included in the release version of the game. Legends of Eisenwald will be the first game in the world that introduces the technology of Ether Control. Other areas of software development use ether but it’s mostly used with data storage and recording. Not many people know about it but the ether is holding together the bits and bytes of software in all computers. The Editor will help players to be able to get a more stable game experience because controlling the ether will greatly reduce the amount of bugs in the game and in some rare circumstances the bugs will get fixed on their own.



Players will be able to set up which bugs will be the priority targets for the editor – crashing, scripting or combat bugs. Also, in time for the release we are hoping to create a cloud of tags that players will be able to set and control. For the most advanced players a manual mode of bitwise ether control will be available, which is not easy to learn but can produce some amazing results. Some developers believe that ether control systems will bring us to the creation of a self learning AI but obviously we don’t believe in such fairy tales.

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

Not many people know about it but the ether is holding together the bits and bytes of software in all computers.

This ^^

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

So where's the Mindx report on Eisenwald from PAX?

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

It's in here - http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=9818

 

[Infinitron]

Aterdux Entertainment Are you still planning for a May release? A "few more months" sounds a bit longer than that: http://steamcommunity.com/app/246760/discussions/0/611702631230176291/

 

[Infinitron]

New Codex preview: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=9874