Dev Update (October 2022)

Hey everyone!

This month I've been hard at work redoing some of the basics to be in their "polished state". There's a chance I'll make small tweaks here and there, but with the amazing feedback you've all given during the open beta I think we're close to finalizing a lot of UIs.

First I wanted to give an example of the new action bar flow. If you look closely, you'll see quite a bit going on that I'm excited to share. First, HOTKEYS. You can move through ability selection with 'Q' and 'E', as well as equipped weapons with the 'SHIFT' key. You can also select abilities directly with hotkeys ('1', '2', etc etc). The plan is to have these fully able to be mapped by release!

The second thing you'll see is that you're getting a nice quick combat preview with flashing health bars, and any potential status effects!

Also came up with a new design for the Main Menu and Save Menu pages:

In addition to the above there was a ton more smaller things improved upon.

Changelog

• Ability charges now displayed to the user.

• Weapon abilities are now functional! The first is the default "Backstab" for all one handed swords, that will increase backstab damage.

• Personal abilities! Marcus received the first one, "Hot headed" gain 4 attack when initiating combat.

• 12 new blood effects, and as many sound effects when a unit is hit.

• Agile ability (Skirmisher) no longer asks for move input if the unit cannot move (in enemy's ZoC).

Future

• Settings page in the main menu.

• Show in use abilities (active and passive) in the battle preview UI. These will be hoverable to show tool tips later in development.

• Clicking on enemies showing their movement/attack range.

• Add more juice to the Level Up UI!

• Change the turn order system to be easier to understand. Turn order will still be based on a unit's endurance (END) stat, but will no longer allow multiple hits a turn. It was happening too infrequently to matter.

I hope you're all enjoying the direction the game is heading in. I've started thinking about release timelines, and I'm hoping to be able to get to a spot where all the fundamentals are polished, and I can start expanding chapters again. I'm hoping to get to an average pace of 1 chapter per month. Working with my writer, we are expecting ~20 total chapters, so 20 months estimate would put us at ~2 years out. I'll solidify this more in the future, and hopefully get a release date set in stone for you all!

Best, Eldin T.