Small fixes and additions:

- Fixed two weapons not showing the correct element text
- Added a teleport effect to when a player 'dies'
- Added an error message for save failures
- [HUB] Added clouds
- [Fallen City] Made some minor level changes
- Foliage now fades when you're close to it, primarily so Otter players can see in tall grass
- Added maps that you can find within some levels. Not all levels have a map, and maps vary in usefulness

This patch is mostly some small fixed and adjustments.

Fixes:

[Oceanside] Fixed a lighting issue where the cave areas may be very bright
[Labyrinthian Caves] Fixed an issue with an upper ledge
[Cliffside] Removed Aki's trigger as the NPC was removed, and the trigger was not supposed to be accessible

Changes:

- Added air/water elements, though there is no status effect associated with either yet
- Seeker Sword is now set to be 'air' type magic (Was previously blight)
- Ancient Sword is now set to be 'water' type magic (Was previously blight)
- Unified Great Sword's description has been slightly altered because it was confusing
- Death animation is slightly longer now and is more prominent
- Death animation can no longer be interrupted by being hit while dying
- Added text to screen when you're dying/respawning
- Added 'crouch' indicator for when you're sneaking
- Sprinting or jumping while crouched will now break you out of the crouched position
- Baskets/Chests can only be opened now, interacting with them again will not close them on you
- Removed blood from staining player mesh as it often looked weird
- Old Legion Torch is now Old Legion Firearm, and can be fired semi-auto, and uses your ammo pool for other projectile weapons
- Old Legion Firearm's flashlight has been dimmed significantly

Mostly minor changes and fixes:

Fixes:
- Fixed Oceanside quest being labeled as frozen fort
- You can now walk on the elevator ramp in the Abyss, rather than slide on it (which was fatal fall damage)
- [Cliffside] Fixed a hole in the cliff mesh that allowed you to find a certain secret NPC
- [Cliffside] Moved the area boss so he doesn't blow himself up as easily
- Changed mouse behavior to 'lock' onto the game window

Changes:
- Most jars/pots are now destructible
- Most broken/damaged boxes are now destructible
- Added a few more detail objects to the HUB
- Added lights and a few objects to a room that was unusually empty in Gilded City

Another hotfix for some reported issues:

- Fixed being unable to use magic on banners
- Firearm bullet is now ~50% smaller and less likely to hit unintended targets
- Magic and bullet projectiles are now fired at eye level, Previously they were fired at hand/barrel height which causes some inaccuracy
- Matched Tarby's hair selection in the character editor to in-game character
- Tarbies will have 'hair' as the default selection
- You can now select to be bald with humans/tarbies/aves (hairstyle ~#14)
- Fixed an issue where you could lock yourself into a corridor in the Frozen Fort (Removed one of the doors)
- Luna will now warn you about the second specter in the frozen fort mines if you've missed the first warning/specter
- Fixed an issue where you could lock yourself under an elevator in the Labyrinth Caves
- Fixed rollout beds being the wrong material type
- You can now use magic on wheel switches
- Fixed a slime enemy location in cliffside
- The air magic push now correctly levels up aeromancy
- Fixed an issue where the HUB music may not play when you arrive from certain transitions
- Fixed an issue where wood magic would not trigger damage on bowmen
- Using wood magic to impale an enemy has been reduced in damage (30->10)
- Wood magic impaling will now do extra damage over time if the enemy is in the center of the spikes
- Wood magic impaling will attempt to stagger enemies caught in the center
- Aiming magic at an enemy's lower body will attempt to use magic under their feet if they are standing on a useable (Stone/Wood/Ice) surface, otherwise you will use the air push

Fixed an issue where, if certain conditions were met, music from HUB/Border/Oceanside/Ravines levels would continue playing even after entering the next level.

Minor Fixes:

- Added damage sound to stone/ice golems
- Fixed stat icons
- Throwing knife collision is now ~50% smaller
- Throwing knife no longer has collision after it hits an object
- Slide kick sound can no longer be triggered too quickly
- Fixed an issue where some spells could cause an item replication issue
- Otter's sweep attack animations are now much more distinctive
- Fixed a potential bug in the prologue quest where if Johnson is unable to move, the basement event will happen anyways
- Fixed some level geometry that was causing some NPCs to get stuck
- You can no longer fast travel to the HUB if you're at the HUB
- You can no longer ride projectiles
- Otter's airsweep now uses the sweep attack animation (previous was the downward attack)
- Most enemies will now (try to) aggro you if you hit them with a ranged attack outside of their normal aggro range

Fixed a critical issue where, if certain conditions are met, an asset load conflict would cause the cliffside map to fail to load and boot you to the main menu instead.

Zofia is now officially in 1.0!

We're very excited (and very tired) to finally reach 1.0 as these last few months have been pretty difficult. The early access process has been a little chaotic but we appreciate the feedback we've gotten over the last ~1.5 years.

We're going to wait for the dust to settle before we make any notable changes, but we're still collecting feedback.

v1.0 patch notes:

- Added Otter sneaking animations
- Fixed some Otter head armor materials
- Fixed Ivo's dialogue trigger in Fallen City
- Fixed metal footsteps sound
- Changed Luna's hover/appear/disappear sounds
- Reworked corrupted tarby
- Hitting shielded enemies will still do some damage
- Reworked several other sounds
- Added music to Atlas Manor map
- Fixed frost damage not immediately applying to slimes
- You can now destroy tanks with melee weapons (though they are quite tanky... hah)
- Added (minor) alternate way to trigger end sequence
- Removed debug tools
- Fixed metal noises which happened if you ran into checkpoints
- Fixed humans/otters melee damage bonuses/debuffs

A bunch of random fixes and additions:

- Using magic on illusions now destroys them
- About a dozen more schematics can be found in chests
- Greatly increased basket item drop chance
- Clara now accepts patters/schematics
- Zee Clothing is now always at clothing shop
- Previously available clothes now must be unlocked before they can be purchased
- Fixed several otter sounds
- Fixed the otter magic cast animation
- Added more thorns/specters to areas
- Added page turning sound for books
- Added enemy spawns to secret temple
- Removed Alex's ability to spawn enemies at the HUB
- Fixed Ivo's dialogue in Atlas Manor
- Ivo now has backup during his boss fight
- Changed it so players now always spawn at checkpoints, rather than the airship
- Removed Ave hair color option (as it didn't work)
- Fixed some load screen tips
- Fixed text in prologue which suggested you needed the captain to open the gate (you don't)
- Candle in prologue cabin can now be lit
- Added a grapplehook tutorial if you take a left after talking to Mercie
- Added more magic tutorials
- Morrison no longer mentions the non-existent anti-air guns
- Added sound to tarby zombies
- Wind effect should stop on level transition now
- Adjusted enemy spawns on the Abyss elevator
- Fixed Ivo's HP bar
- Adjusted several weapon sell prices (Many were increased except Seeker's sword, which was lowered to 74 silver)
- Mercie now has a different dialogue if you talk to her after the Fallen City
- Added a kick sound
- Mercie will no longer spawn if she dies during the campaign
- Added an alternate boss to Fallen City if replayed
- Straightened Ave's feet so they fit in shoes better
- Fixed a hole in the Frozen Fort map
- Updated the opened bedroll object material
- Power attacks that use elemental magic should level that element's skill level now
- Increased EXP gain across the board by 2.25x
- Added a sound to the air push magic
- Fixed V-Sync in the options menu

- Some other various minor level changes/additions

Mostly random fixes and additions for this patch:

Additions:

• Added some new dialogue and NPCs
  
• Added an ending slide
  
• Added separate volume controls for music and effects
  
• Alexandria in the HUB can now summon enemies for you to fight (WIP)
  
• Added various sound effects to several objects/areas
  
• Added effect for when Gilded City quest is complete
  
• Updated tank model
  
• Added more weapons to be found
  
• Added all weapon/armor/item icons
  
• Key maps on inventory screen should be correct now
  
• Using a consumable from your inventory will now automatically close your inventory
  
• Added illusions
  
• Added a proper way to kill specters
  
• Added more zone text to areas that didn't have it
  

• Various map additions/changes
  
• Various dialogue/story changes
  
• Changed summoned skeletons to only live temporarily
  
• Map select can be completely filled out now
  
• Prologue Murder Mystery quest is now more obviously optional
  
• Removed item/money drops from basic skeletons
  
• Fixed Otter's Fallen Knight helmet armor (It had a gap in the mesh)
  
• Fixed Otter's Fallen Knight chest armor (which caused a colliding hand mesh)
  
• Frozen Fort key card works again
  
• Reduced Jacque's quest from 10k silver cost to 1k silver cost
  
• [Splitscreen] Fixed Player 2 not being able to see name over Player 1's head
  
• Character editor music will no longer play if another music track is playing
  
• Added more top coverage to certain female characters
  
• Fixed an issue where some character's equipment would not match the playing animations
  
• If Mercie is killed, she will no longer show up in the HUB
  

Some minor fixes and level additions/changes:

- Fixed power attacks not triggering the HP bar to show
- Fixed corrupted Tarby sometimes not showing HP bar at all
- Made the grapplehook section in the Abyss slightly easier
- Fixed the final checkpoint in the Abyss
- [Splitscreen] Fixed versus level lighting issues
- [Splitscreen] Fixed quick-select not saving P2's item mappings
- Vegetation magic projectile's hitbox is now ~50% smaller so it should hit unintended targets less
- Fixed some material issues on several objects
- Added some more object detail to several models
- You can no longer do magic on lightbulbs
- Temporarily removed Golden Idol's animations as he is being reworked
- Fixed a [secret] area that only Otters could reach in the prologue
- Changed the metal bar weapon to be a blunt weapon again
- Fixed a collision issue where you could get through certain walls
- Made some various map changes to Cliffside, Labyrinthian Caves, Prologue, HUB, Abyss, and Fallen City

Additions:
- Added a new WIP enemy type
- Added some new secret areas
- Added two new weapons

Its a little too early to give a specific date but we're getting closer to getting out of Early Access - Which will be the completed 'blight' campaign.

The remaining updates you'll be seeing from here on out will be level changes/additions, story additions, a few boss tweaks, some additional content, and bug fixes. That being said, we're still open to feedback on the current implementation of features in the game.

Development of Zofia has been difficult, especially these last few months, we appreciate the feedback and support we've got from the community throughout these challenges.

Hopefully this is the last hotfix for a while!

- Added level up sound
- Added a hit effect to show poison/frost/fire damage on enemies
- Changed vegetation projectile particle effects
- Fixed some projectiles not updating enemy health on screen
- Fixed some enemy health values that were not replicating to clients correctly
- Fixed throwing knives being 'slightly' off to the left when thrown by clients
- Made enemy health UI slightly more transparent
- Enemy health UI should now be hidden when no longer in combat
- Fixed riflemen from displaying both the old and new HP UI
- Changed shielded enemies so they take small amounts of damage even when blocking
- Updated demo

This is largely a splitscreen focused patch but it includes some other elements as well.

We've had this overhead health bar for quite awhile but we've been running into issues with it.

• Its too similar to the player's HUD
  
• Its typically too high (Right above most enemies) for most Otter players
  
• Certain events could cause damage to distant/unseen targets, causing a bunch of confusing pop up health bars
  
• Multiple enemy health bars could have a lot of overlap which just looked messy
  
• This method has rendering issues in splitscreen
  

Some more fixes and balance changes:

- Moving stone walls in cliffside now play sound when moving
- Fallen City magic gate build up now shows on clients
- Fixed a collision issue with Mercie
- Fixed a fireball collision issue
- IVO's submachine gun now plays sounds correctly on clients
- Fixed a mesh issue on the bamboo trees
- Significantly lowered base fireball damage (10 -> 2.5)
- Significantly reduced fireball damage of time (7s -> 1.5s)
- Reduced fireball collision size
- Ice magic is now spikier looking
- Plant magic is now more planty looking
- Plant magic projectiles now work correctly for clients
- Projectiles from stone magic now always explode on hit (And deal AoE damage)
- Fixed an issue where characters may visually revert to default customization in online games
- Fixed an issue where the icon over player heads would disappear under certain conditions
- Updated skeletons in Gilded City with new props
- Added a few magic books scattered throughout the levels
- Fixed wood magic so it doesn't shatter easily in certain conditions
- Added another lift to the frozen fort side area
- Unarmored and mage skeletons are now immune to fire damage
- All skeleton fall damage significantly reduced (~7x more resistant to fall damage)
- Parrying arrows will now deflect the arrow back
- Parrying an attack will now show a quick parry animation
- Changed character editor options so that some buttons gray out if they don't do anything
- Made small level changes
- Added some NPCs and books to certain levels

A quick hotfix for a couple of obvious nagging issues:

- (Client) Fixed lucid damage/death sound
- (Client) Fixed Ghost damage/death sound
- Fixed lucid negative fall damage
- Fixed lucid item drops as they basically only dropped invalid items
- (Client) Fixed duplicated character editor music
- Gave username more space on invite list in editor

There will be another update here 'soon' to fix about a dozen other issues. This one is getting pushed out a little early as we found some critical bugs and needed to get them knocked out.

This update contains some bosses but most of them are still being worked on.

Patch Notes:

Fixed a critical issue where the game could crash if you destroyed an enemy airship with fire magic
Fixed a critical issue where clients would get stuck hearing 'underwater noises'
Fixed an issue on enemy riflemen that stopped their head armor from rendering
Fixed Anna's Shirt (She is no longer shirtless)
Reworked some Item data
Fixed and re-enabled difficulty options in map select
Death zones now just do a ton of damage as opposed to a special death function
UI can no longer show negative HP
Fixed splitscreen location spawn after creating a character
Right click -> Drag with mouse now works in character editor
Fixed editor hair being one off from final selection
Fixed some customizing options not saving if you're playing online as a client
Character on main menu now has correct hair style
You can no longer drop Luna
Change most enemy skeleton models (Still working on skeleton prop models)
Fixed airship control issues
You can no longer dodge while talking
Knights no longer sometimes have invisible guns
Wards can no longer be double tapped
Ammo now goes to max capacity at start of level
Fixed escape button while in map select
Fixed navigation meshes for some level areas
Fixed Morrison's feet clipping in Oceanside
Fixed Luna's navigation being wrong in the prologue
Fixed bottle shaders to use a different setup
Quickslots are no longer off by 1 sometimes
Quickslots show correct number if you replace a slot that previously had multiple consumables
Quickslot 1 no longer sometimes fails to load the item you had saved after level transition
Quickslot element icon should reset/change when swapping items now
Clients joining intro cutscene have camera now
Traveler letter can be picked up by clients
Wall jump for clients fixed
Clients can now hear NPC dialogue correctly
Ice projectiles no longer collide with each other
Wood projectiles no longer collide with each other
Metal magic effects now work on client
Fixed airship music in the border map
Chest opening sound now works on client
Player gunshot sounds now correctly replicate
Swap spell now correctly works for clients
Magic works on rocky snow terrain properly now
Shield knights drop armor debris correctly for clients now
Slimes/Mini-Slimes now have HP bars
Ward 'death' animation is now synced
Rock golems now explode for clients as well
Clients now properly aggro enemies via noise
Clients can now see boss HP bars
Enemies now hit otters much easier
Many small map adjustments and additions

Additions/Changes

Enemy spawn difficulty scales much better now, enemies now have a chance to spawn as a higher tier rather than 'always' spawning as a higher tier.
Added gamepad layout selection option to character editor
Lowered rock magic brightness when you hit it
Massively increased 'eavesdropping' distance for players
You can now keymap Player 1 and Player 2's gamepads in splitscreen (Work in progress)
Added tarby enemies
Added 'wood man'
Added regenerator enemies
Added some bosses
Added Lucid enemies
Enemy fall damage significantly reduced (20x less)
Changed enemies in Cliffside
Vegetation magic now breaks if it inflicts enough damage or if you kick someone into it
Added more dialogue and characters in certain levels
Rifle shot sound distance cut by 50% as it could aggro entire levels

A quick hotfix!

- When loading an older save with no volume data set, your volume settings will default to '100' rather than '0'.
- Fireballs now have a trail/explosion sound.
- Fireballs now do less base damage on hit (5 -> 3), and less base damage while burning (5 dps -> 2.5 dps), but their scaling has been increased so it will do more damage at higher levels.
- Fixed some enemy rotations as they would spawn in facing the wrong direction.
- Fixed a minor level issue.

This update is actually a little early but I ran into a few critical bugs and had to push it out a little early. Also this seems to have happened last update too. steamfacepalm

Additions:
- Added PlayStation Gamepad support (Currently you should be able to switch gamepad types in the options menu)
- Added Quest log
- Added some quests
- Added dozens of sound effects
- Added a new level section right after the prologue
- Added additional art assets in some areas

Fixes/Changes
- Fixed an issue where sound volume wouldn't save at all
- Essence now shows how much money you lose on death, and will not show if the value is 0
- Made some minor level changes and adjustments
- Several text fixes
- Adjusted all spawn area triggers to be roughly ~10x the area (Enemies shouldn't spawn in so close now)
- Fixed some texture issues in several areas
- Blight areas now do 0.4 HP/s (up from 0.25 HP/s), stamina recovers at 40% normal speed (up from 0%)
- Ammo capacity upgrade now looks like a bag
- Grapplehook upgrade now looks like another grapplehook
- Added an elevator to the end of the Frozen Fort so you don't have to do a risky plunge to the mines
- Fixed a weird collision issue with air magic
- Fixed a damage scaling issue with air magic (Reduced base damage from 10 -> 3, but changed level scaling so it becomes 3x stronger as you level up)
- Frankie no longer steals all your schematics if you bring the schematics up
- Fixed some unoptimized foliage materials

Noted: If you load a save that was created before this patch, your volume may default to 0. Setting it to your desired setting will save it correctly now. All new saves are unaffected by this.
^ This has been hotfixed - Volume should default to 100 if you have no previous sound save data.

When we first put Zofia in Early Access, we anticipated a 2023 release date. We have (most of) the quests added and have been testing them internally, but as we have been playing through the whole game, we're finding a few things that aren't clicking, so we're pushing the 1.0 release to 2024.

Let's talk about some of them:

- Encounter Design

Early on, enemy placement was static. In some locations the enemy placement is still static, but we've included a lot of enemy spawners that can adjust to difficulty settings and the amount of players.

The default 'trigger' area for enemy spawns was ~10 meters, which isn't enough space to assess a situation before you're in the fight, and doesn't allow you to effectively sneak.



The new default is roughly ~40 meters, so you often won't see enemies spawn at all.

This is compounded by another issue. As Zofia's magic system requires a nearby element to leverage in combat, we're finding too many areas where options are too limited and so don't give you much to work with, so we're reworking some areas to include more element types.

Lastly, some of our enemy types are a little too limited and predictable, so we're looking into expanding the current set.

- Quest Designs

Currently we have ~11 quests that will be available. One of which is not very good and may just get removed entirely, and two that need some reworking.



We expected the quests to be challenging to make, but we're running into unusual difficulties having all the pieces connect together, having things change if a quest is completed and you revisit a map, and trying to make sure the quest is intuitive.

My concern early on was to leave quests until later as to not get wonky save data if the quest is changed or updated, and unfortunately in our testing, this is absolutely something we ran into.

- Some Quality of Life features and changes

There are several things that have been brought up previously that we're also trying to add, and one of the bigger ones was PlayStation gamepad support, which should be included in the next update.



There are some other smaller additions/changes but I'll talk more about them when I actually get them done and in an update.

This update was intended to be the big introduction to quests. Well the quests aren't quite ready yet so this update is intended to fix some combat issues and other details that came up during the recent expo we were presenting at.

Balance changes:
- Reduced all weapons to a single damage type. Now rather than a sword doing normal damage + elemental, it will only do elemental. (Also all elemental weapons were slightly buffed)
- Combined magic armor/shield into a single 'buff'
- Removed shield from armors as it added unneeded complexity
- Throwing knives have had their damage reworked to scale correctly on stats
- All melee weapons can parry and block again. Blocking right as an enemy attacks will parry.

- Added star system: More difficult enemy variants will have a star on their health bar, two stars for even more difficult ones. Starred enemies will usually have new abilities or a different weapon. (This is still a work in progress)

- Changed intro text cutscene
- Added dummies to hub
- Added various Otter armors
- Fixed load screen tips
- Luna can now be asked for directions
- Luna's teleport can now be canceled
- Changed UI slightly
- Made cliffside map more grassy
- Fixed traveler's dialogue
- Added NPCs for quests (incomplete)
- Added various sounds
- Prologue will now play music at a certain point
- Prologue bridge gap fixed
- Prologue ramp near fort and near obstacle course are fixed
- Prologue checkpoint near grapplehook section has been fixed
- Fixed melee combat tutorial for gamepads as it displayed incorrect information
- Removed a rogue material
- Changed physics objects breaking damage. Kicks will knock the objects around, but most weapons will destroy them now.
- Reduced intensity of lunge
- Dodge now goes backward if player is not moving in a direction
- Added spell tomes and a spell tome shop (incomplete)
- Fixed paper cards in shops
- Added a coffee machine to the hub for obvious reasons
- Fixed ghost fall damage
- Added new enemy gunship model
- Adjusted some text in character editor
- Enemy spawn animation has been slightly updated
- Old Legion Rifle now displays 'no ammo' when attempting to fire it
- Old Legion Rifle light is now significantly brighter
- Old Legion Rifle icon is fixed
- Updated some various map sections
- Updated some various dialogue

I know I ironically posted there would be a bigger update coming up next, but unfortunately we found a pretty critical bug that we needed to patch immediately, so here is a smaller patch as a quick fix, as well as some other stuff:

Fixes/Changes:
- Improved Luna's Flutter animation
- The practice dummy is now networked synced when you hit it
- [Prologue] Fixed performance issues in Prologue's main hall
- [Prologue] Moved some tutorial tips to earlier in prologue
- [Prologue] Added cliffside path that let's you skip village
- Drink animation is now significantly faster
- Character Editor UI has been changed, Steam friends inviting should now work on gamepads
- Fixed critical issue on main menu where a certain button would call a debug function and break the UI
- Fixed main menu lighting (Fog was previously too light)
- Fixed splitscreen issue where previously solo players couldn't add a new local player
- Fixed splitscreen issue where editor got scrunched

Additions:
- Ghosts have hands again, so you can see when they throw things
- Players now have a sword icon over their head so they're easier to find
- Dummies now show damage numbers when hit
- Added nearby text chat. If you're within ~10 meters you can overhear what other NPCs/Players are saying. (This feature is a Work in progress)

- Added a bunch of object icons
- Mouse wheel now scrolls dialogue options
- Added additional Otter armor models
- Added more key binding options (Gamepad keybindings are still unavailable steamsad)
- Added tarby hair styles
- Pressing Middle-Mouse Button lets you point out a location (Work in progress)

Other:
- Cleaned up old files/assets/items
- Demo has been updated as well

If you think we're being a little quiet lately, its not just you!

We were planning a bigger update for Zofia's 1 year anniversary of going into Early Access. Well some life events got in the way, and a few tasks I wanted to get knocked out have snowballed into much bigger tasks.

I'm also currently looking at a few experimental changes that we're likely going to do a little internal testing to see if its working as intended before trying it out here in Early Access.

If all goes well, we should have a bigger announcement soonish.

We've had a few reported issues that we're working on, but here is a hotfix for a few critical ones and a few lesser ones:

- [Prologue] Fixed Anna incorrectly mentioning your house
- [Prologue] Erik no longer hands you a weapon as the dialogue was confusing if you were not the one who got the sword
- [Prologue] Erik now states correct info about fighting, as some of his dialogue involved some changed mechanics
- [Prologue] Removed the house with the second locked door as this proved misleading if you were investigating the town
- [HUB] Trying to leave the HUB with the airship will now tell you that you're supposed to use the map
- [HUB] Asking Kirik additional questions no longer gets you stuck into a conversation loop
- Fixed ghost blight zones for clients
- Candlesticks now correctly show lit/unlit for clients with a visible flame effect
(Also updated the candlestick as it was the incorrect model, and reduced the brightness as it was 300x too strong)
- Made some additional fixes to 3rd person mode so it aims better. This was technically only used for a debug mode to check equipment but we may expand upon it as it seems desired.
- Blight zones now slowly deplete stamina, instead of rapidly
- Made some stats that altered the pause before stamina begins to regenerate less impactful, as some high/maxed stats would allow you to regenerate stamina even while doing actions

This is a slightly experimental build as we've made some combat changes, minor UI updates, and made a few level changes.

- Several maps/areas have been slightly tweaked in lighting, item placement, and other details
- Blight zones now slowly deplete HP
- Chance of sword+gun variant possessed armors may spawn instead of normal variants
- Possessed armors now block
- Temporary removed yellow/blue tier possessed armors that could spawn when there were 3-4 players
- Ghosts can now create blighted zones
- Specters can now be destroyed with certain weapon types
- Aves now use the athletics skill to fly
- Grapplehooks once again properly level up
- Added Luna to several areas
- Added several weapon abilities (Many of these are works in progress)
- Split weapons into categories. Smaller weapons like the rapiers, daggers, etc now only parry, while larger swords or axes will block
- Reworked a few magic abilities
- Added standalone spells that can be cast without the element
- Enemies should now (mostly) properly take cold/fire/blight/poison damage
- Fixed poison damage as it was incorrectly scaling
- Fixed airship prologue timing
- Added step 1 of save validation/correction - When loading up a save, it will verify items match standard values, such as damages, the description, etc. You'll primarily notice this if you load a really old save.
- Reduced bow/rifle men HP
- Added a bunch of Otter animations
- Added magic shield obtainable from metal magic
- Fixed some effects so they didn't disappear so quickly
- Made some dialogue tweaks
- Checkpoints no longer destroy nearby enemies when used
- Airship on cliffside is accessible again

Sorry this will hopefully be the last hotfix for a bit.

- Removed an old armor asset that would rarely drop but be unequippable if found
- Fixed an icon issue
- Tweaked Frozen Fort's lighting
- Added a barrier in Frozen Fort to prevent falling out of the map in certain locations
- Schematics are now 'spent' when given to Frankie
- Schematic descriptions are now fixed
- Re-added the horses to the prologue
- Fixed an issue where you could slow your fall if spamming certain moves
- Fixed the deer material
- Fixed an issue where an animation on the Commons would jitter
- Fixed an issue where Commons always tried to hold a weapon, even when unarmed
- Tweaked Cliffside's lighting, fixed a shader issue that was preventing some post processing effects from showing
- 'Boss' variants are now significantly less bright when dying
- Added a Legion helmet variant that rarely drops (~1% drop rate)

Resolved some bugs and issues (In no particular order):

- Resolved an issue in the character editor where if a player joined and then left, the host would be stuck waiting on them
- The prologue will no longer force you to create a character if you're using an existing character slot
- Character editor should now respect key bindings
- You can now click and edit your character name if you do not want to use the generated options (Only on keyboard/mouse)
- Character editor area is now notably brighter
- Character editor area no longer has a shader override volume which may have cause some unusual graphical artifacts
- Hitting 'escape' in the character editor will now prompt you to return to main menu or continue with character creation
- Fixed an issue where certain doors would not replicate in the prologue
- Fixed an issue where arrows could get stuck on each other
- Arrows now despawn much quicker
- Fixed an issue where expanding blight spots wouldn't despawn when area boss was defeated
- Fixed an issue where you could go under the map in the frozen fort
- Made it more difficult to skip past the transition point in the prologue
- Made it more difficult to avoid the captain in the prologue
- Hitting 'escape' with the inventory open now just closes it without bringing up the escape menu
- Lightened all hair styles up by ~15%
- Altered ice damage time which slows your character when hit
- Made magic projectiles collision smaller so they don't collide as much when firing in a burst

This is a quick fix, a more definitive fix is on the way.

- Temporarily resolved an issue where a host with >2 clients met certain conditions, their save would get corrupted on map transitions.

This 'should' stop corruption happening in other scenarios as well, but we're doing additional testing to make sure.

Thanks to Phrieksho for reporting this one. (Also, sorry)

=== UPDATE TEMPORARILY ROLLED BACK ===
We ran into a wonky issue right after we rolled this patch out, I'm going to fix it and re-roll this one out here soon.

Fixes and Additions

- Adjusted character model faces/bodies
- Fixed male human meshes
- Readded Text introduction before character editor
- Made boxes/barrels/etc destructible
- Some art updates
- Fixed an issue where skin tones would be incorrect a lot of the time
- Fixed an issue where the unarmed punch has 0 range and couldn't hit anything
- Fixed issues where the load screen sometimes wouldn't show up on the main menu when joining another player
- Fixed some hair issues
- Some slight UI changes

Balance changes:
- Equipped weapon now factors into equipment weight
- Weapons now have a damage range
- Elements now have damage range
- Armors now have a shield or armor defense stat

A small but quick update!

Fixed an issue where the player character would match the airship's rotation on respawn
(Should be hopefully fixed now) Fixed underwater effect carrying over to new levels
Fix some texture issues in Versus Bunker and Frozen Fort
Versus mode should correct end now when there is only 1 player remaining
Exiting back to HUB should now work from versus mode
Client Player inventory should clear when starting a new game on a used save slot
Significantly reduced Legion scarf drop rate (~25% -> 4% chance)
Added legion knife to enemy drop pool (~1% chance)

This was going to be one large update, but I got knee deep into some combat and other changes and decided I should get this update out to fix some notable bugs.

There are a lot of changes here, but I will highlight some of the major ones:

- On-screen compass has been added to the top of the screen.


- A 'weapon' called the Attuned Compass can be equipped to see the location of other players and the airship. It's useful for figuring out where players ran off to.


- The 'lives' system has been removed entirely. Players now drop a percentage of their money on death. Money can be retrieved by grabbing an 'essence' that is dropped when you die.


- Checkpoints look a little better than the stone block now:


- The grapplehook has been changed significantly. It is now much 'zippier'.

Now for the patch list!

Bug fixes and Performance:
- Optimized cliff materials
- Optimized texture memory usage
- Options menu now has changeable keyboard keybindings (Not all keys yet, still adding some)
- Options menu in-game and on the main menu are the same
- Fixed some achievement issues
- Added a new particle effect for possessed armors which should be more performant
- QuickSlots now save correctly
- QuickSlots now count past 31 items correctly
- QuickSlots no longer show a number if there is only one item
- Fireballs no longer collide with each other
- Tutorials now disappear in pre-prologue after entering the fort
- Floating text now removes on level finish within airship levels
- Tutorial prompts now show correct keys if rebinded
- Fixed a stamina usage issue if using magic on metal or cloth
- Fixed some object materials
- Dialogue stuck on clients in pre-prologue is now fixed
- Fixed uncommon host character reset when going to Frozen Fort
- Ejecting Johnson off the cliff in the prologue now kills him (this technically advances the quest)
- Fixed underwater effect carrying over to new levels
- Fixed platforms in bunker being desynced when moving
- Fixed joining and disconnecting players not deleting editor character in prologue
- Buying equipment saves game correctly now
- Fixed: Ghost tunic dropped from ghosts was invalid item
- Fixed clients not seeing riflemen die correctly (?)
- Fixed Hair still visible with full helm on clients
- Fixed Client Otter Torso missing on load (?)
- Fixed Frankie being all tar for some reason
- Fixed Players taking damage from going straight up as well as falling
- Fixed Z fighting in cliffside temple area
- Fixed versus player list updates now when player leaves
- Fixed Jump prompt was wrong in pre-prologue
- Fixed broken hand animation on impact recoils
- Fixed chandelier and rug props
- Fixed a bug with the airship where the camera could roll
- Fixed a bug with the airship where it would stay suspended during a turn
- Fixed a travel bug where you couldn't cancel returning to hub
- Swimming shouldn't make you stick the surface as much
- Ropes no longer grappleable
- Grapplehook auto cancels if stuck
- Traveler moved in pre-prologue
- Interact key no longer shows on Players
- Fixed a bug with falling deaths
- Fixed some particle issues where they would render from extremely far distances
- Weapons without a special attack no longer drain stamina when attempting to attack
- Fixed uncommon bug where client players wouldn't load a character on connect
- You can no longer launch players who are still customizing their character
- Fixed uncommon bug where a joining client player may get the incorrect game info
- Enemy spawn points no longer block projectiles
- Fixed a splitscreen issue where if one player was in dialogue and using the mouse, the other player may not be able to use parts of their inventory.

Changes and Additions:
- Many maps have been added to or altered
- New sounds
- Removed 'green arrow' from on top of player's heads
- Added shield enemy
- Added new style of GP
- Simplified stats drastically (There are now only 4 weapon skills)
- Simplified magic stats drastically (There are now only 4 magic skills)
- You can now parry bullets
- Added an ammo limit for the Legion Firearms
- Added new materials for several weapons
- Added new materials for some armors
- Added several weapon schematics that can be found in the loot pool
- Added new weapons to purchase
- Added new weapons to find
- Added ammo caches
- Added max ammo upgrades
- Added max grapplehook range upgrades
- Added some new NPCs
- Added an enemy variant (Ice Fyra)
- Fyras are now significantly more accurate
- Adjusted visual design of possessed armors
- Shielded enemies can be stunned with a kick
- Erik's combat advice is a little better now
- Added wall bounce tutorial
- Added reward for tutorial obstacle course
- Removed Zofia effigies item
- Added HP bars for connected clients
- Players can now cancel map transitions (By hitting inventory or escape)
- Tutorial 'ghosts' now more transparent
- Blight zones now drain stamina instead of draining HP
- Made enemy HP darker and smaller
- Updated checkpoint asset
- Added Attuned Compass to Morrison's shop
- Changed spectator mode for versus (You can now walk around as a ghost)
- Magic now scales to stats better, increasing accuracy, stamina use, and damage
- Made collision changes to magic projectiles
- Added new magic projectile meshes
- Power attacks now gain much more XP
- Power attacks now scale better based off of weapon type
- Added zoom ability with firearms
- Checkpoints now kill all enemies within ~7m radius on activation (to prevent spawnkilling)
- Buffed nearly all enemies, except slimes who have been debuffed
- Player progress is no longer saved in versus

There will be a lot of various changes in the 'part 2' of this update, but I don't currently have a good timeline of when that will be as life seems to be pretty busy right now.

Hey everyone! I was trying to generally keep going with an update every month, and if all goes well, there should be an update towards the end of May.

This is an incomplete and generalized list of some of the bigger changes you can expect:

- The options menu has been redone. Player FOV, sensitivity, deadzone, and other player options are now more easily accessible, and you now have the ability to change keyboard bindings.

Previously the options menu in-game and on the main menu were slightly different (for dumb reasons), which are being fixed to be the same option settings.

I'd like to have changeable gamepad keybindings, but currently it will change all local player's controls, which isn't ideal for splitscreen. Still working on this one.

- Some new enemies, such as shield guy who requires a different strategy rather than spamming light attacks.



- Made some performance enhancements to reduce texture memory usage in some areas.

Some of the particle effects and 'armor debris' effect have been touched up so they're less resource heavy, as well as optimized some of the environmental materials.

- A lot of weapons and armors have been retextured

Some of the weapons and armors had temporary textures as place holders, but I'm slowly going through them all to get them corrected. They should also get real inventory icons, and not just the generic bag icon.



Some other noted changes:

- Additional music and sounds
- Items in your inventory will now stack (Finally...)
- Grapplehook has been overhauled
- Some areas have been touched up or expanded

There also has been some significant story rewrites on the back end. This, combined with some level changes, has been a surprisingly large time sink. I'm kind of a slow writer, and some of these dialogue trees end up taking hours to complete, even for some of the more basic NPCs.

I hope to talk more about these updates later this month when they go live.

Mostly bug fixes and changes and a few art fixes:

Art:
- Player hair styles should now be a more consistent art style
- Witches Fern and Hunter Aloe now look visually closer to the rest of the game art (They also slightly glow)
- Removed some old 'marker' materials from some objects
- Fixed Lucid robes materials
- Ghost Knights have hands/feet now (The boss/elite variants do not for now, for reasons too dumb to list here)

Additions:
- Added option to set lives amount in versus
- You can now double tap jump to pillar launch on vegetation/rock

Changes/Fixes:
- Aves now take a little longer to start flying
- Fixed an airship bug where would could flip it
- Vegetation/Rock will now correctly fire a 'leaf blade' instead of wood spikes
- Ranged attacks should no longer trigger magic attacks when attacking pillar magic
- Charged attacks no longer work with no stamina
- Stamina will now correctly flash if you attempt to do something without any stamina
- Fixed some inventory UI icons
- Fixed some text scaling issues within the inventory
- Several maps have had some minor fixes and changes

Other:
- (Experimental) Made build changes to try and eliminate an error that occurs on some Linux computers that have certain Nvidia cards installed

Additions:
- New sounds!
- Added the ability to map things to quick-select
- Added some UI animations
- Traveling through certain doors will now have a fade effect
- You can now boost with the airship
- There are now additional settings you can set in the player's options (Gamma, dead zone, invert Y)
- On the first ever launch, the game will now do a quick hardware test and set graphics options accordingly (By default it launches on max and this may cause a lot of lag for lower end machines)
- You can now unequip (but not drop) your weapon with the 'H' key (There is no binding for the gamepad yet)
- Flora magic has temporarily been changed to something much closer to rock/ice magic

Changes:
- Many maps have had some visual updates/tweaks as well as audio changes
- Difficulty options are now presented before launching a map
- Introduction has been changed
- Many sounds have been tweaked/changed
- Some blight visuals have been updated
- Aves bird wings are now smaller/cleaner
- Fixed some collision issues
- Fixed some spelling errors in various dialogue steamfacepalm
- When starting to drive the airship, the player will now automatically move to the captain's spot

Known issues: (Still working on these)
- Ran into an issue with remapping keybindings. The tab for it is there within the options but you can't currently remap anything.
- The inventory UI can slightly resize when highlighting certain items/weapons.
- If you have a lot of items, some of them become difficult to select when on gamepad.

Changes for a few issues we ran into when testing, and balancing changes:

- Frozen Fort music should play for all now
- Shrunk heretic sword + legion axe as they took a lot of screen space
- A bug where sound would be distorted if traveling to a new level underwater should be fixed now
- Making a new character will clear out the save slot you're using, as opposed to doing a character 'merge' of saves
- Added green markers over player head to make them visually easier to see
- Versus UI should be correct for clients now
- Adjusted water in hub that made it difficult to swim upwards sometimes
- Client players should have an easier time customizing their characters now in co-op
- Fixed some Otter animation issues with power attacks
- Changed deathmatch rules to be lives based as opposed to kill count (This is incomplete - Currently working on a way to change rule values)

Other Balancing changes:
- Light attacks no longer take stamina (for most weapons)
- Charge/heavy attacks now take considerable stamina (for most weapons)
- Kicks now take 75% less stamina to use
- Slide kicks now take stamina on use

Quick fixes as certain conditions could cause the player to get stuck, and other fixes:

- Fixed a collision issue where certain objects were unattainable on Oceanside
- Added a popup note when you reach the end of the game's current content
- You will now get error messages if a level loading issues occurs (In case there is an issue like game version mismatches, or session connection issues)
- Added a failsafe check if the player gets stuck in a load screen (this shouldn't happen)
- Barrels and crates now float on water
- If you join a session that isn't the editor level without having made a character, it will now force you to create a character after you join
- Added an error message if you attempt to join an invalid session (Such as trying to join a game that someone is currently closing down)
- The escape/exit menu should now take priority over other UI/HUD elements (Even the load screen)

Small update!

Additions:
- Added Zofia effigy to Morrison's shop, which grants you another life
- Added Steam achievements

Changes/Fixes:
- Small additions and changes to various maps
- Fixed a bug that could happen if you complimented Erin's green boots
- Changed Ward look
- You can no longer grapple onto slippery surfaces
- Changed some weapon power attack abilities (incomplete)
- Fixed a main menu bug

It has been reported that the demo will sometimes get stuck in a loading screen after making a character. - This issue should be fixed now.

The demo has also received the UI updates, options, character fixes, and some of the other minor level fixes that are in the main build.

New testing map! And some fixes of course:

Additions:
- New Map (Oceanside) that happens after Cliffside - It's still incomplete as we're doing multiplayer testing with the airship (among other things)
- New sounds
- Parrying is now possible again and grants shield on a successfully parry. Most melee enemies will stagger when parried, opening them up for extra damage
- Added several extra items (Hunter Aloe Potion, Witches Fern Potion, Greater Health Potion, Spiced Tea, Scrolls, Wire, Orpal Crystal, and several more)
- Added purchasable Hunter Aloe Potion to Morrison's shop
- Added a grapplehook aim helper into the options (Still a bit finicky, working on it)
- Main Menu has been updated, you can now switch back to the profile select, and the options menu is a little better
- Main Menu options has been updated to include more graphical options, such as V-Sync, HDR, Frame Rate limits, etc (There is more to be done here)

Changes/Fixes:
- Chests/Baskets loot tables have been completely redone, and added a rarity system so different chests will yield different loot tiers
- Hunter Aloe now stops poison as it was supposed to
- Poison now stops after you die
- Moved the 'continue' button for dialogue to where the other dialogue answers are
- Fixed candle flame sound
- Significantly reduced direct damage from the Stone/Ice pillar magic attack (It's high damage and knock effect often triggered fall damage if the enemy is knocked high enough, leading to way more damage output than intended)
- Fixed the floating gravestones in Frozen Fort
- Fixed the roof lighting in [Secret area] of Frozen Fort
- Added a small new area in Cliffside (that will get more attention later)
- Added some various details to the Frozen Fort
- Lowered Sentry HP
- Disabled magic on magic launching temporarily until a weird bug can be fixed with it (Using magic on a magic cast will now just destroy it)
- Ghost Knights now die properly
- Changed ghost death animation
- Added more details to Johnson ghosting the player
- Fixed lights on Unified Magic Switches
- Ghost Knight will now use magic sword projectiles if in range
- Made magic platforms more distinguished
- Fixed an issue with the airship falling out of the sky when game was running in background
- You can no longer kill enemy airships by hitting them with your airship's propeller blades
- Fixed most magic projectiles as they were using a less-than-ideal collision setting, causing them to sometimes invalid targets
- Fixed some meshes that had bad collision or a bad UV map
- Fixed a minor water issue

The new year has definitely been bringing in some new challenges. I intended on having some of the new levels out but I've ran into some interesting issues.

[h2]The Airship[/h2]

I have some transition maps where you can pilot the airship. The idea being, some of these areas are quite far from each other so you can have a generally more 'adventurous' open section where you can go through a lot of vertical space but also new enemies.


(This area is still a work in progress)

This has introduced a lot of unanticipated problems where the airship starts becoming a liability to deal with, which isn't really what I intended.

I suspect there will be some major revisions with the airship, but it may go down to just putting it out there and seeing how it goes or what people think.

[h2]The Grapplehook[/h2]

The grapplehook is a little quirky to mess with - I have tweaked it in the past to go faster, have more dramatic swing, or allow super jumps, but if it goes too far it can actually hinder the utility of it.

That being said, an unintended effect is that it's become a precision tool, where sometimes you end up needing to make very accurate shots on small wooden targets. This is alright, but on gamepads (especially on splitscreen) this makes some grapplehook areas way more difficult than intended.


(Not the final icon... probably)

The solution will be some sort of light auto-target that aims the grapplehook at wood if its relatively near your center cone of vision. This might only activate if you're using a gamepad, but that might require more testing.

[h2]The Main Menu[/h2]

I built the main menu awhile ago now, and its in need of an overhaul. Specifically, I hope to include more host options, better options, and some additional buttons for ease of use.



Not exactly exciting, but definitely a thing.


[h2]Character Editor[/h2]

I don't actually get a lot of feedback on the character editor, but one of the things that has been bothering me is you can't select your starting skills, only your attributes, and you have no options on starting gear.



I'm actually currently unsure if the end result will be a point-buy, choosing a background to determine skills/attributes, or another system entirely.

Regardless, the character editor is also in need of some updates, so I hope to expand that here soon as well.

Let me know your thoughts on any of these.

Minor patch:

Additions:
- Player can now bounce off of walls again. The wall has to be on your left or right side and must be relatively vertical
- Player can now slide on the ground again (This is still a work in progress)
- Player can kick enemies while sliding (This is also a work in progress)
- Player can now 'pillar jump' if they press the jump button in mid-air and are above a stone or icy surface, as pillar jumps can be harder to pull off on gamepads or certain combat circumstances so this should make it easier
- Updated some armor sets for the otter characters (still incomplete)
- Added some animations to actions that did not previously have any (Vaulting, wall bouncing, certain types of magic charge)
- Saved characters can be seen on the main menu after a slot is selected

Changes:
- Metal/Cloth magic can now 'overcharge' the armor shield higher than your current armor level. At some point this will put you into higher weight classes but for now it can be used as a buff

Fixes:
- Fixed some animation issues with kicking and sliding, as well as enemies falling animation
- Fixed enemy drops where sometimes an enemy drop would correctly trigger but award no item
- Fixed some collision issues on certain objects
- Game will now save correctly if you're piloting the airship and trigger a game save
- Fixed the door transition in the underground HUB area
- Various minor map adjustments

This should fix some of the online issues people have been seeing:

- Character race and equipment should be synced significantly better now, there are still some situations to test but so far I have not run into the issues players have reported

- Fixed some issues where some animations were not playing correctly online. There are still some that are not playing across all clients correctly (Such as the Ave flying animation), but I am still working on that

- Fixed an issue where the player's name would sometimes be incorrect when playing online

Mostly random fixes from issues brought up, but also some incomplete additions:

Additions:
- 'Shield' system in place that gives you a small pool of extra HP based on your armor stats (Incomplete, probably not balanced)
- Shield now negates most elemental effects if it is active
- You can now charge your 'shield' with metal or cloth objects (Incomplete)
- Enemies now emit a blue spark when they drop an item
- If an enemy drops silver, it will now automatically be distributed to the player
- Added attribute icons (Incomplete)
- Spectres now have blight 'dust' in their sight area
- Checkpoints heal the player slightly when they first touch it
- Wards now have a brief 'destruction' animation (Incomplete)

Fixes:
- Frozen Fort: Changed main hall slightly to get rid of the gaps in the roof, as well as moved the blight zones as they extended further than they appeared
- Frozen Fort: added a description box if you attempt to use the elevator switches
- Frozen Fort: Fixed the rock collision for the large ground rocks
- Frozen Fort: Planks for the old hall are now moveable/attackable
- Prologue: Fixed a blight zone
- All maps: Fixed a small camera issue with joining players
- Cliffside: Made the 'main path' easier to access
- Cliffside: Fixed roof collision
- Cliffside: Removed some temp props
- PVP: Various magic types should now properly damage other players (Incomplete)
- Block sound is correct again
- Wood magic now works at the correct angle again
- Wood magic is no longer poisonous
- EXP bars in UI work correctly now
- Removed footstep 'smoke' as it caused graphical issues
- Fixed load screen text that was misleading
- Players can now use air magic on each other
- Sentries are now destroyed if the area boss is destroyed
- Certain enemies should no longer gain HP is they take a significant amount of fall damage
- Skills will now display much smaller text on level up
- UI should no longer show multiple equipped items of the same type
- Fixed an FOV and Sensitivity issue where the settings would get defaulted and saved over on certain map transitions

Known issues (Still working on):
- When playing online, clients may see others as the default Race or wearing the wrong equipment
- Some doors/elevators/object animations look low quality (jittery) while playing online
- Level lives sometimes do not show up immediately when joining another player online
- Some particle effects do not play for clients online
- Getting stuck with arrows sometimes inhibits movement when playing online (Until the arrow despawns)
- Some animations are not playing correctly when playing online
- Some actions are occasionally jittery when playing online

Quick fixes:

- Fixed an issue where you could find disembodied heads in the Frozen Fort
- Fixed an issue where using a gamepad on the map select screen would take you to the wrong map
- Fixed an issue where some lamps were floating

There are more reported bugs that I want to address but as they're a bit elusive, they'll have to be rolled into the next update.

If you were on the beta branch, there was an UE5 build out there but we've run into some notable issues and have reverted it. As of now, the 'beta' is the default build.

This update is mostly fixes and small additions.

Additions:
- Added some new assets and replaced some architecture in some maps

Fixes/changes:
- Updated the dialogue UI
- Some minor UI updates
- Some minor map updates
- Fixed some dialogue issues
- Crosshair/health bar now disappears when talking to NPCs
- Made backend changes to the dialogue system to support different sound types
- Grapplehook is now more specific on what it can hit when grappling, previously some surfaces were still allowed even though they shouldn't work
- Adjusted DPI curve/font scale slightly to accommodate some splitscreen text scale issues
- When talking to NPCs, the camera should focus on the NPC a little better than before
- Removed the gunship from Cliffside as it needs to be reworked for balance reasons
- Made some of the intended 'path' on cliffside a bit more obvious

This is mostly some minor fixes and changes, with a few additions:

Changes/Additions:
- Added 'skills' in addition to attributes (Incomplete)
[Noted, the max attribute level is now 10, down from 100. You no longer directly level attributes, only skills.]
- Moved difficulty setting 'gravestones' to in front of the abandoned shop
- The HUB now auto-saves after 10 seconds
- Enemies now have correct fall damage if kicked off of ledges (Except ghosts, who are floating)
- Added physics objects into many levels
- Added 'boss' variants of enemies near the end of each level
- Improved airship handling
- Airship can now be destroyed, resulting in an immediate level loss (But it cannot be hurt by the player)
- Airship guns can technically be used (incomplete)
- Added a challenge map, Mek's grapplehook challenge 1, to the temple within the HUB
- Added a new element, 'explosive'. Not used as a magic element.
- Made dialogue background darker
- Added a new enemy variant, 'ghost knight'
- Removed zooming from bows
- Made 'labyrinth caves versus' map significantly smaller
- Removed legacy destruction physics (Which were rarely used)
- You should now lose oxygen underwater and can drown
- Added more character backgrounds
- Added a short sword to the shop
- Added sandals to the clothing shop
- Added 'Early Access' and the game version to the main menu and load screens
- SSAO should now look more consistent across levels
- The wood splinters magic now has line trails so they're much easier to see
- Using magic on an existing magic spell will now destroy it

Fixes:
- Aves no longer lose extra stamina when clambering and attempting to fly
- Aves no longer lose extra stamina when swimming and attempting to fly
- Fixed several meshes that were not LODing correctly
- Updated Legion Rifleman to be much more accurate and better animated
- Updated Legion Bowman to be more accurate and better animated
- Updated Legion arrows to look more like normal arrows
- Fixed the grapplehook's metal end as it was untextured before
- Optimized prologue lighting
- Armor is now rounded correctly when calculating armor level
- Fixed Lev's dialogue
- Fixed the 'escape menu' in splitscreen
- Fixed an FOV issue in splitscreen (probably)
- Fixed an issue where some weapons would never drop
- Fixed an issue where a certain pair of pants could be sold infinitely
- Removed rotation/scale issues when going through a teleporter
- Fixed an issue where you may start with 0XP
- Fixed an issue where you could not grapplehook out of water
- Fixed a performance issue with water volumes
- Reduced player's overall memory usage
- Fixed an UI issue on load slots
- Fixed several small background issues for a negligible performance increase

I was originally planning to have one of the new maps out around now but I have found myself backtracking slightly. There are several smaller elements that previously were brought up but aren't meshing together as well as they should.

So, let's talk about some of them:

Your main goal throughout Zofia is to stop the blight - There was kind of a vague goal of following areas overrun with blight would eventually lead you to the source, but this doesn't seem to click very well.


(Can I get away with calling that a blightsaber?)

A solution has been to add a unique enemy who acts as a 'boss' that, once defeated, clears out the blight. The boss should be marked with these pinkish embers. This should be a better short-term goal as you're on your long-term hunt for the blight source.

Another issue you may have noticed is you have a kick button, but not a lot of objects to kick. This mostly due to online multiplayer, where physics like to do weird things. Fortunately I think I got some kinks worked out and I have been going back and various objects with physics-enabled versions.


(Take that, casual and tasteful modern lobby chair!)

Enemies have been updated so you can kick these items into them and do damage. You can also grapplehook and pull these objects along, but this mostly results in a very unreliable wrecking ball. (But a neat potential puzzle mechanic)

An issue you probably didn't notice was the dialogue. Zofia has a relatively basic dialogue system that you have probably seen before. Some of the dialogue options are gated behind stat/knowledge checks, and will show up as [Attribute/Knowledge] if you've passed them.


(I also lowered this menu so you can see the NPC's face)

Having all the possible options listed but inaccessible if you don't pass the check might be cluttered, so I'm looking at (potentially) doing this the other way: If an NPC throws a skill check at you, you can answer regardless, and the NPC's answer will show if you've failed or not.

Not for knowledge checks, however, because if your character doesn't know about something, they can't take a shot at using it as an answer.

This leads me to the next point...

I'm going to split up attributes and 'skills'.


(Maybe this should say 'Rapier skill is now level 7'?)

I originally intended to have only basic attributes, like 'Strength' and have it as something you slowly increment over time throughout the story. My problem with it ended up being progression was very minimal but also easy to abuse. Since there are only 6 attributes, power leveling any of them would greatly slant the game's balance and kind of break the game. (Except Charisma which isn't currently useful)

Doubly so in multiplayer, where you may be deprived of XP depending on your party, and where things are easier to break.

The skill system should be less game breaking, allow for some character specialization, and make some less-than-useful-attributes (Charisma) to be tied to skills that can be much more useful.

Last notable change!

There are difficulty options hidden away in the HUB, marked on gravestones. Didn't find them...? Well that's ok, it seems not a lot of people did - These are going to be moved to a much more obvious location. Then if you're running into a particularly hard section or trying to level break but keep dying, you can set the level lives to unlimited.

I know I keep saying this, but the new levels should be soon, I got caught up with all these other things above, as well as fixing some weird issues I keep getting bug reports on. You'll likely see the combination of all of those and these things above in one big ol' patch.

Discovered a few critical bugs that needed addressing, but also some additions to make way for some future changes:

Additions:
- Labyrinthian Caves Versus map
- Bunker Versus map
- Lives remaining indicator on HUD
- Added unique Rapier animations
- Added an 'airship shop' that's available in many levels
- Added elemental damage effects on player when hit
-> Cold Damage now slows max player move speed for a few seconds
-> Poison Damage now does a decreasing amount of damage every ~5 seconds
-> Magic/Blight Damage temporarily increases all damage taken for a few seconds
-> Fire damage does nothing unique but extra damage and a burn effect
- Added blood spatter on ground/character if hit for high damage
- Added slight camera shake if the player melees a solid object (like a stone wall)
- Weapons now recoil if they hit a solid enemy/player (Purely visual, this does not impact attack speed)
- Weapons now leave hit marks on objects
- Added 'leads' to dialogue options (incomplete)
- Added stairs to the HUB as some players did not realize Mercie was in the tower
- Added two NPCs to the HUB
- Added level pictures/description to the level select map

Changes/Fixes:
- NPCs no longer send you to quests directly (This proved to be confusing)
- Frozen Fort and Prologue are auto-unlocked
- The prologue is replayable
- Fixed a pathing issue in Frozen Fort where many enemies would not chase the player
- Fixed a level issue in Frozen Fort where one pathway would seemingly lead to a dead-end
- The robes are no longer free
- Clarified on Escape Menu that saved progress is lost when leaving to Hub or Main Menu
- Most two-handed swords now use wide sweeps while most one handed swords use vertical strikes
- Fixed character's leg stance when idle and armed with a weapon
- Removed Seeker Spaces for now to make level respawning consistent
- Removed the pilotable airship in Cliffside to make level respawning consistent
- Removed inactive golems in Frozen Fort
- Kick damage is no longer unblockable
- Fixed an issue where the player would be staggered from many attacks unless close to death
- Players are knocked out of the grapplehook if hit in mid-air
- Fixed several objects that had some UV/Shading issues
- Fixed some text on the gravestones in the HUB temple
- Fixed some transition issues that would take an unusually long time, such as finishing a character in the editor or selecting a level from the map
- The holograms no longer look like the tutorial dummies
- Fixed an issue with the teleporter where, in certain circumstances, you would come out very disoriented
- Reduced area for when enemy groups are spawned, as they could spawn behind the player and out of sight
- Made changes to the labyrinthian caves as two particular jumps were very difficult
- Some other minor level fixes and some level layout fixes
- The 'spectre' enemies (glowing purple ghosts) will no longer insta-kill players, but will do 9 blight damage every 0.25 seconds they are in contact with the player

Just some minor fixes

- Fixed a map issue on Cliffside where you could see through the cliff face
- Fixed a minor issue with the grapplehook where you could stay attached to a grapple point after dying
- Fixed a visual issue where your hand/arm would disappear briefly when viewed from certain angles
- Fixed a [Versus] issue where kicking another player to their death would not result in a point

I was aiming to have the new areas available here by the end of October but I've had a few life events that have delayed things more than I thought.

I'm going to try and roll the levels into the November updates instead, along with some more weapon updates.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Quick fixes:

- Fixed a sound issue where player hit sounds would also default to male
- Fixed an issue with the cliffside trees where the LOD was set incorrectly, making them have pop-in issues
- Fixed an enemy issue where the wind-up for an attack was way too short

Sorry - This isn't the new levels update :(

Changes and Additions:
- Additions to Cliffside Art
- Aves now have wings
- Flying/Swimming is now slightly impacted by how much armor you are wearing (~+10% movement for minimal armor, ~-10% movement for overloaded)
- Character Editor now has a 'generate name' option to randomly select a character name (Characters will be labeled as 'No Name' if the save was made before this)
- Save titles are now a little simplified and show the character's name and level
- Fixed some UI issues by adding backdrops for better contrast
- Falling into a 'death zone' now causes ~45 HP of damage and not an immediate life loss
- Most enemies will have HP bars now
- Default magic used on enemies should be the 'magic air push' ability
- Added magic tab to menu (still incomplete)
- Possessed Armors can no longer hit each other
- Possessed Armors track the player significantly better
- Possessed Armor's side attack now covers much more area
- Possessed Armor's will now change their leg stance when in combat
- Ghosts will heal enemy targets if their blight magic hits an enemy
- Rock magic sounds have been updated
- Some weapons and armors have been retextured and/or remodeled
- Some weapons and armors should now have the correct UI icon
- Knives now use the correct stab motions (and are ~50% faster for it)
- Removed some unfinished art from a few levels

Fixes:
- Fixed an issue in the Labyrinthian Caves where a blight magic section was sticking through the floor and causing damage where it was not supposed to
- Aves can now fly again, Dex is the base stat for flight
- Fixed an issue where you could hit 'continue' on a new save
- Deleting a save file now deletes the associated splitscreen player as well
- HUD will now properly disappear on death
- Player's equipped weapon should now disappear on death
- If a player dies, and is out of lives, the chat window should now correctly state the player has died and will not respawn
- Fixed some animation issues with flying and blocking
- Fixed some texture issues on several maps where an incorrect or temp texture was being used
- Fixed some lighting issues
- Fixed an issue where unequipping all your armor would unequip the grapplehook as well
- Fixed an issue where when playing online, your character's hair change to the default hair style
- Fixed an issue where your character's hair may be the incorrect color when spawning
- Fixed an issue where you may die twice when falling into death zones
- Decreased gunship's rate of fire by ~50%
- Decreased player's 'invincibility' window after immediately taking damage

Versus Fixes and Changes:
- Kill count is now much more correct
- Kills by magic should be correct now
- Kills by kicking players off of ledges should now track
- Player suicides should now count as a -1 kill
- Fixed an issue where knocking a player into a death zone counted as two kills

In making progress for the next few areas, there are a few things that I realized needed some attention and I got sidetracked on, so I feel I should talk about them a bit:

(All these are works in progress, of course)

- Enemy Health Bars



Some of the new areas introduce regenerating enemies and some pretty tanky enemies, which makes it harder to judge how well a combat encounter is going when you don't know the enemies HP.

There's more that can be done here, as it would be neat to highlight enemies resistances or if they have immunity to a certain damage type, but this starts getting cluttered way too quickly and leaves a lot to be desired.

- Weapon Attacks



Some of the weapons have had their attacks updated, which notably has doubled the knife/dagger's attack speed.

You likely have also noticed that heavy attacks for most weapons is the 'air slice', but this will be getting updated for many weapons to something more appropriate for the weapon/element/damage type.

- Magic Changes



If you played some of the much earlier betas, you might recall some of the magic worked differently for some elements.

Well I am adding a tab within the inventory so that when you learn a new magic spell or element, it can be changed to something else.

This will give you the option of, for example, using the ice pillar magic on snowy surfaces, or swapping it to the original ice spikes if that's what you prefer.

On that note, the default 'spell' when you use magic directly on enemies will now be the air push:



There are some animation/AI changes that are still in progress, but we'll talk more about those when the update is released, which is hopefully 'soon'.

The primary focus for the next update is just more content - More enemies, more equipment, and more levels.

This is another 'block' of levels much like Frozen Fort -> Labyrinthian Caves -> Cliffside, and is also another block of three levels and this chain will be started from talking to Mercie at the Hub. The other levels given by NPCs are in blocks or two or singular, somehow these ended up being the ones with three.

For now I'm just going to talk about the new levels:
(These are all unfinished so you can expect some changes)


The Fallen City of Cassard is an oceanside castle. Somehow we ended with a few city-like levels, and while that's great and all, they tend to be very dense. They take longer to make than other levels and can be more methodical/time consuming to explore.

For that reason, this level is ending up a little more split, with a greater focus on getting closer to the large danger-portal and enemies.

Cassard was also originally very key focused, with many hidden keys to unlock specific doors or switches to proceed. Zofia has (mostly) moved away from key-focused missions as they can get messy and/or problematic with multiplayer, as players could take critical keys and disconnect or bring keys from their save in. Both of those are 'solvable', but bring issues of their own, so...

That may be something I revisit later.


You can see an earlier version of the Gilded City as the versus map (Or if you played one of the early betas)

This area is intended to have a lot of underwater sections/combat - Though I don't think underwater gameplay is where it needs to be at, so that will likely get nailed down better before the underwater side gets much further along.

Underwater areas were originally more common, with them being shortcuts and secrets primarily for otter players to utilize. This caused a lot of players to attempt swimming them anyways and drowning, or getting lost with the bluish haze and underwater effects, which is not fun.



The last area is the Atlas Manor. This was originally much different but a lot of elements for it were taken and used in the prologue instead. The new intent for this level is to have a single 'boss' style enemy with much more platforming. I realize giant floating rock islands are kind of a fantasy trope, but so far it works pretty well...

Hopefully there will be more to show soon!

This is actually a little sooner than expected as I found a couple of issues that warranted a quicker patch, so here is an additional patch for the base game:

Changes/Fixes:

- Use/Jump button should now both work in dialogue menus
- (Potentially) Fixed an issue where settings in split-screen would sometimes not save
- Fixed a terrain issue in the prologue where you could fall through the ground
- Fixed a debug option that allowed you to skip the prologue
- Fixed a menu option that allowed you to 'Return To Hub' immediately starting the game, skipping the prologue
- Fixed some texture/model issues in the Gilded City Arena
- Adjusted difficulty scaling for co-op, 2-4 players should see sometimes additional enemies and harder enemies (Only currently some enemy types, this is still being worked on)
- Fixed ghosts not being able to hit you at close range
- Altered parts of Labyrinthian Caves to have sections of blight
- Altered some enemy spawns and item placement within Labyrinthian Caves
- Grapplehooks now have the correct range underwater
- Altered Hub backdrop as it was very empty looking
- Temporarily removed the 'regenerating armor' enemy from having a chance of spawning as they could be a problem without certain environmental hazards nearby (stronger possessed armors will spawn instead)

Additions:

- Added difficulty options, they can be found within the Hub
- Added a teleporter to the Hub
- Added Sentry enemies to the Cliffside map
- Added additional travel routes to Gilded City Arena
- Possessed Armors have had their drop rate adjusted so that each armor piece has a 4% chance of drop, and a much higher chance to drop silver
- Added an additional weapon that can be found in the Labyrinthian Caves level

Some quick updates for the main game of Zofia.

Changes/Fixes:

- Selecting the save slot should now show if you have a local co-op player, and their overall level
- Inventory should now highlight weapons/armor you have equipped
- You can now correctly drop items again
- Fixed an issue where if you wore a 'ghost jacket' as a female character, it would be fitted incorrectly
- Fixed an armor description that was missing

Additions:
- In-game Escape Menu now has an options menu
- You can now adjust the FOV in-game from the in-game options menu
- You can now adjust the mouse sensitivity from the in-game options menu
- You can now adjust gamepad sensitivity from the in-game options menu
- Inventory now has tab functionality and can filter between all items/weapons/armor/stats
- Added a more detailed 'Stat' page that shows more details on character levels, weapon stats, stamina usage, and armor defense bonuses
- There are now some items to purchase in the stores
- You can sell items to Morrison now
- Added more examinable items to the HUB

Zofia is launching into Early Access now!

As before, the launch will include the intro and 'prologue sections', three other levels, and 2 PvP maps.
The character editor, online co-op, and splitscreen modes should be available as well.



It's been a long (and weird) ride, but we hope you enjoy it!

Zofia will be launching into early access September 27th!

The launch will include the intro and 'prologue sections', three other levels, and 2 PvP maps.
The character editor, online co-op, and splitscreen modes should be available as well.

For added chaos, we also made the airship in the hub area drivable and hid a few secrets.



We'll see you then!

A quick demo patch to resolve some performance issues. Previously there was only a Windows Demo, so the Linux/SteamOS demo is live now too.

This update should also have a slightly extended intro and a slightly expanded character editor.

I have got a lot of unusual feedback this last month, so in turn I have a lot of unusual changes:

The character editor is one of the more difficult things I have made in this game and I don't think I am anywhere near where I want it to be. While I'm struggling, its at least coming along and some of the options have been expanded.



There is still a lot to be done here, of course.

If you played the Frozen Fort during the open playtest, you may have found it a little weird that the Legion there use bows and arrows, while nearly every other Legion soldier you've met at this point either has a warblade or a firearm.

Well complain no more.


(It looks a little awkward from this angle, but the left hand is holding the mounting bar somewhat like a foregrip)

The archers were easily avoidable by just moving around. You can dodge bullets too, or you can be cool by parrying as soon as you see the muzzle flash.

These have been mechanically difficult to add because of how they function, but the additions of some of the 'old world' tech has made some areas require a little more planning and stealth.


(If you played the OLD prologue or Project Broken Hammer, these may look incredibly familiar.)

Lastly, I believe there was some narrative and character issues with the prologue, so there will be changes here to both the dialogue and how it is presented.



I hope to have all this, and more, out soon.

We're closing the open beta playtest for now - There will be some notable changes based on the feedback, but such changes might not be ideal for regular updates.

We are going to leave the Demo up of course, so that's still very playable.

Thank you to everyone who played it and left feedback!

This update is for the demo only, an update to the playtest will out be relatively soon while will expand and complete 'the Frozen Fort' and add onto the HUB.

Some of the additional pieces have been taking longer than I thought they would, but I can definitely show off one of the things:



Anyways, onto demo updates!

Additions:
- Added the character editor and save system
- Added 'spawners' in the prologue, but only in a few sections

Fixes:
- Fixed an issue where your weapon may not equip correct after loading your save
- Fixed an animation issue where your character wouldn't look down correctly when holding a 2-handed weapon (So now you can see your shoes)
- Fixed some texture issues where some settings were applied to the wrong material
- Fixed the damage numbers in the inventory
- Leveling attributes is now easier and works more consistently
- Stone magic projectiles have been optimized to fix some weird edge case issues
- Ice magic projectiles have been optimized to better follow your aim trajectory
- Using plant magic's thornwire will now only connect to a single other plant, as previously you could exponentially make new plants and crash the game
- Thornwire no longer hurts the player
- Wood magic (Thorns) no longer hurts the player and you can stand on it
- Fixed several of the Otter's animations
- Certain clothing will no longer disappear when sneaking
- Fixed the 'left run' animation as it made the camera bounce a lot
- Added blocks in certain sections as the player could accidentally get themselves stuck
- It is now more difficult to regenerated stamina while swinging with the grapplehook, making extending grappling a bit more difficult
- Fixed some issues with various cliff collision
- Unarmed punching should now have arm's length of range and do basic damage
- The player in the Character editor can now be properly rotated with the gamepad
- The escape menu now works much better with the gamepad
- Fixed an issue where you might end up with the wrong face after exiting the editor

Changes:
- Removed cel-shading from NPCs as it caused unexpected performance issues
- As requested, the lamp flicker is now much smoother
- Disabled some VFX temporarily until we figure out some performance quirks we've ran into with them
- You can now attack/magic with only 1% stamina (previously it required a minimum amount)
- Updated wall candles
- Gave the editor example character all the same clothes regardless of race as it was previously confusing to see it changed when you finished customizing the character (Except for otters, for obvious reasons)

The playtest beta will be live here in a little while.

I ran into a lot of various networking issues and unusual bugs, I have been chipping away at these but was not able to finish some of the other content in time. That being said, we're going to open up the beta with the character editor, prologue, the hub, and part of 'the frozen fort'.

There are also two versus maps with a 'king of the hill' style game mode.

I will be adding the other content through the duration of this playtest beta.

I am aiming to have Zofia's open beta within the next few weeks at the end of May - It will be open sign-ups and be done via Steam's playtest tool. It shouldn't look much more different than downloading the demo.

The beta will include the character editor, a handful of story levels and some of the challenge maps. (Maybe more if I can get it done in time)

Based and the demo's feedback (and some internal testers), there are a couple of changes and additions that will be happening:

- Some of the magic elements you can use were either wildly useful or very situational, so many of these are being reworked to either be more useful, or allow some alternative interactions.

For example, you can now smack the rock columns to hurl a large boulder towards enemies:



- The 'possess' spell and 'swap' spell will likely be coming back but only in certain situations. (To hopefully make them less game breaking)

- Some physics objects can now be picked up and dragged with the grapplehook.

- There will be a few more level changes made to the prologue, as well as some performance tweaks.

I will put out more details as we get closer to the release date.

Normally I try to be formal with these posts but today I am vibing with just talking about everything:

There have been literally thousands of things I have been updating (Specifically 4669 changes), all of which can't really be shown off and were extremely tedious to update... Well I am going to show them anyways:

Zofia started years ago, but whenever I built the initial character rig (which all characters are based on), I made some pretty ugly mistakes that no artist would make. Over the years, this has caused a number of unusual issues to crop up, where some animations would look 'off' and some funky character issues.

Well I have finally taken a lot of steps to correct that, but its led to some significant challenges. Every animation and character model in the game has to be altered/updated, which has been a lot of work. Any character art that hasn't been updated looks pretty broken:


"Do you want to talk about it?"

Unfortunately some of the original files for the older art have been lost, so some of this is essentially getting remade, which has been a slow process.

If you played the Demo, you'll be happy to know this area will be getting some updates:



There were some minor differences in an older version of the map, we previously wanted players to get more comfortable with magic before entering the fort. Well, after some big gameplay and map changes, the player was basically left with not much to do in this section except murder that deer.

The new plan is to introduce the grapplehook sooner so the player can get more comfortable with that.

Speaking of the demo...



I have watched a lot of people play the demo at this point, and (nearly) everyone struggles with these guys (at least, until they get the hang of combat). They are going to undergo some changes so the first melee combat enemies you run into aren't as punishing.

The magic-throwing hoodie ghosts will have significantly less tracking on their projectiles, as it seems a lot of player deaths were from getting hit in the back... Which isn't fun for anyone.

Some other rapid fire updates on the demo:

- Lantern is getting corrected so it works better
- Reducing the demo's build size
- Optimized the bulk of textures and materials
- Adjustments being made to stealth parameters
- Dialogue UI being adjusted as it tends to look wonk in certain resolutions or splitscreen
- Some dialogue getting changed
- Ghost models getting updated
- Some NPC models will be getting updated, thanks to their rig being corrected now
- Engine has been updated to 4.27.2

I am aiming to have a demo of Zofia out sometime this week. Currently, Zofia as a project is on hold, but it isn't fair to the others or myself to just never release anything from it.

That being said, while I have made some adjustments based on feedback from the internal beta, some features or options are going to be limited as they've proven to be problematic.

The demo is 64-bit Windows only, and will only feature single player/local co-op - It will feature just the prologue and will not have the character editor at this time.

I will still be collecting feedback and will try to fix issues as they come up.

Thank you everyone, I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Due to unfortunate timing and personal reasons, Zofia has temporarily been placed on hold.

The art upgrade to the 'new style' has been much more time consuming and costly. The artists have left the project, which has made finishing the project while maintaining the art standard difficult. The scope of the project is big enough that the art will likely not be able to continue in this style - Though I am unsure of what the changes, if any, will be.

The other primary reason is personal - I don't feel the game plays as its supposed to. We made some significant changes to accommodate the art style and try out suggested ideas from feedback, some of these changes have led to more design problems and gameplay impact than we could have realized.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, hopefully the next update will be more positive.

This dev talk is going to go over some nitty gritty details about game development and some of the issues we've ran into during 2020. This will be greatly summarized.

The Cost of Art

It's an absolute surprise to no one that better art takes more time. What we didn't realize when we first started making the art transition is that it bleeds into absolutely everything.


The 'old' art style

I'm not an artist so choosing the project's art style wasn't really a choice, it was what I had a skillset in. The distinctive advantage to the old art style though was speed. I'll give you some metrics though: At its height I could whip up a new armor set in about 1-3 days. New assets like boxes or tables could be anywhere from 3 minutes to 3 hours each.

At the time, I didn't really consider how much of an advantage this was. As I am also doing the implementation for enemies, I could go from a concept -> model -> animating -> implemented in 4-7 days. A fresh new enemy a week is not bad all things considering.


The 'new' art style

The new art style was a choice, though one with some unforeseen consequences.

Zofia's design called for six unique areas - The goal being that most had some environmental obstacle that the player(s) would have to overcome. The easiest example being a cold, snowy mountain fort that you would ideally want to wear a cozy jacket in.

From a design perspective, this is a lot harder because now you have six areas you have to consider and design. What works in the snowy mountain fort probably won't fit in that tropical sea-side town.

This gets doubled-down when you realize each NPC and enemy also (likely) needs to be thematically correct, so everything requires a lot more legwork. Overall this made the process of creating a new enemy from about a week to about 3-5 weeks.

In the original scope of the game, estimating for every asset, and given our team size, this likely set the game back about ~2-2.5 years of development time.

In retrospect - Art styles are actually quite a lot of work, and creating and refining one is some serious effort. I don't believe anyone on the team quite anticipated how much the impact of the art change would be.

Looking to the future - I don't actually have a confident answer on this one. We're trying to find a better way to speed up the art process without compromising the game's design, but there may not be a good answer, at least none that we've found yet.

The Cost of Features

In hindsight, this seems a little obvious, but there is a distinctive lack of first-person melee games out there, and splitscreen as a feature is typically uncommon.

I have a remarkable amount of design decisions being made entirely because of first-person and splitscreen. A big one is text. I mean any work on the UI takes a bit of wizardry to make, but getting the scale to something legible in splitscreen is a challenge on its own.


Definitely not showing in-game books

The issues we've seen with first person melee combat is largely a lack of situational awareness. It's a player skill to manage handling multiple close-range enemies at a time, but this is amplified with the very basic premise that blocking or parrying requires you to look (generally) at your target, and therefore unable to assess the situation.

This becomes worse on splitscreen where your screen space and field of view is limited.

The other issue of course is that it can be difficult to determine how far away something is, which can result in sword strikes narrowly missing and causing a lot of frustration.

In retrospect - As they say, these are challenges that come with the territory, though admittedly I didn't grasp that very well until later on.

Looking to the future - These are solvable issues but they can be challenging issues, but I don't believe our melee combat has quite hit its stride.

Some other thoughts

These are smaller topics that don't quite have enough to talk about to warrant a bigger space.

• There just isn't a good place to put the drivable airship in at right now as it causes a lot of gameplay issues, but I'd eventually like to find a good place for it, if possible.
  
  
  
  
• It's really difficult to get swimming right and bug free. I think if I had to do this over again, I would probably not include swimming at all, or greatly reduce its complexity.
  
• There was a bug where wearing a set of cursed armor would make your health bar invisible, and honestly that's such a better curse than what the armor was actually supposed to do.
  
• I should probably do monthly articles like this rather than being silent for months at a time.
  

Admittedly, nearly this entire year hasn't really gone to plan. We've made some stumbles, changed some core design, and ran into several things we weren't really expecting.

I'm going to talk a bit about some of the problems we've run into and the decisions we've made. Its a little bit of reflection as well as lessons learned.

Also some of these screenshots will include old/temp art and definitely not final.

[h2]Core Changes[/h2]

We were originally aiming for an Early Access release much earlier in the year, as well as a split screen only demo. Several things changed this, the art change being a big one, but this resulted in several changes being made across the entire design.

Most of these changes are good, but as we quickly learned, once you change one mechanic, you're going to end up tweaking/changing the rest.

[h2]Magic[/h2]

Magic was originally a little odd: You consumed an item (like a potion) and would gain temporary magic abilities. Some were powerful, others were fairly mild and nearly passive.

While this worked, it made you reliant on items and was too temporary to make a long term difference. You could also only really have one magic 'active' at a time, which felt weak considering you're supposed to be part-mage.

The new system is much simpler: Aim at an object, and press the magic key. You draw the element of whatever you're looking at and can now hurl it at foes. (Or other players)

Even better, if you hold the magic key down, you'll manipulate that material in some way:


Cover all wood objects in spikey wooden branches? Sure, then maybe kick someone into them.

Launch another player into a lake? Absolutely.

[h2]Balancing[/h2]

Which leads us to the next problem: Balancing.

The game was originally balanced from what we saw at the Expo last year. With the magic changes and more flexibility designed with the grapple hook, most enemies are now pretty much pushovers in difficulty, even more so in co-op. Unfortunately this is the impact of making significant core changes but its something we can overcome.

Right now we'll probably leave the enemies as is and keep them in the early game, but make some more advanced enemies for have some better mobility to combat the player.

[h2]Levels[/h2]



This has influenced many of the levels we have built out, unfortunately causing many to be reworked entirely.

The combination of magic and the grapplehook caused a lot of sections to be easily bypassed. Combined with now much more powerful players, and you could beat levels quick.

We also felt a lot of levels didn't utilize gameplay strengths, or focused on an unusual aspect of the game that didn't quite work out well as an entire level. (Looking at you, desert ghosts)



On the plus side, a lot of the online play is mostly working, aside from a few obvious issues. I don't want to call it out too soon but I'm hoping we can have something out there sooner than later. Well we'll see.

Anyways that's all the notes for now. Until then, here is a picture of Morrison and his (to be filled) item shop:

A few weeks ago we sent out about a dozen private beta keys to start gathering some feedback for the project. This seemed like a good time to get thoughts on the current direction and the best steps to move forward.

I feel its also relevant to note that this is the first (?) private beta we've ran, so I feel we stumbled on a few steps, but all in all it worked. The beta included roughly 20% of the game, but had enough of the core mechanics to have a strong idea for how the remainder of the game worked.

We've done a lot of review of the feedback and it's given us quite a bit to think about.

In no particular order, here are some various observations from our notes:

Originally we had a lot of manually piloting the airship around. While a neat novelty, it became kind of a chore, and left other players in co-op with not much to do.

We're considering making the airship more of a 'safe house' that you can access whenever you need it in certain levels, and potentially be able to pilot it around in areas (where it would make sense).


Keeping the deck cluttered with stuff is cool right...?

Every single beta tester we got feedback from struggled with the combat difficulty.

We've concluded there are several reasons for this that were external to the actual AI: UI Feedback, level design, the player's animations, and the lack of a proper combat tutorial.

That being said, I'm looking at making weaker variants of the current enemy types to create a better learning curve. Fortunately this private beta didn't have any of the bosses, which may have been way more problematic.


Simple ghost who lobs magic, or the harbinger of death?

On the up side, a lot of players found they liked the grapple hook. Some so much so that they effectively stopped walking altogether.

There are a handful of tools you can equip to your left arm, but at the minute none of them really quite measure up with the grapple hook. I predict this might lead to some problems down the road so I think its a good time to reevaluate the other tools.


Not shown: Swinging into this tree.

There is a lot of thoughts on the UI - which I think at this point needs an overhaul as well as some notable changes. I don't think I am going to discuss that at the minute as that may need to be its own topic.

Lastly, we've still been overhauling the art style. This is definitely incomplete but I think the vibe is probably going to stay the same:





Thanks for reading.

First things first, the team has grown somewhat. We have brought on:

- Adrian as a 3D artist.
- Josh as an art director and level designer.
- Hampus as a composer.

This has had some unusual side effects...

Adrian has taken up the daunting task of overhauling the art. Since we are already somewhat late into development, you'll likely see a slow transition from my simple art style to a much more cohesive one. I'm currently undecided, but its possible we'll have at least one beta(?) build with a mixed and/or incomplete art style.



Similarly, each level is undergoing an overhaul as well. Josh will be redoing/finishing the main chapters. We're also adding some optional challenges and mini-dungeons but its really too early to say how many of these there will actually be, and how extensive they will be.

A lot of these are challenges we thought it would be fun to add or areas that didn't quite make it into other levels.



Combat changes!

We've run into some unusual balance problems that kind of go into the core of our stat system. I'd love to go into a lot of depth over the flaws, but that might be too much for this particular article.

To summarize, the player was too fast, and once you hit certain combat levels, gained far too much of an advantage over most enemies. Unfortunately for the stats, this means a good deal will need to be reworked, but it will be all for the better in the long run.

Combat is still being tweaked but here is a small clip of it if you're interested:

[previewyoutube=9HDtDKofXw4;full][/previewyoutube]

Unfortunately we're going to push everything further back until some of these overhauls are in a better state. I personally have several things on my to-do list that I really want polished up and/or fixed before the project sees any public beta or early access status.

The weeks leading up into the holidays always get kind of crazy. I actually intended to have an update sometime during the first week of November but that just did not pan out.

So what's the current status of the game?

Well technically playable. Single player works, and splitscreen (+ Steam Remote Play) work but not without some issues. Admittedly the online play via Steam has given us some unusual issues which has been a lot of our focus right now.

Some quirky issues came up that we didn't anticipate but we probably should have.

Originally, during dialogue, you would select what you want to say to an NPC and they would immediately reply. Well we added a step in-between where your character actually asks the question.



This is entirely for other players who may be listening into the conversation. This doesn't add much to single player other than having the character slightly expand on the question/answer when they state it.

The original character editor, although interesting, wasn't quite the right tone, so we went with something much more traditional.



Admittedly the editor is pretty basic right now and eventually should have more, but it's been an usual design issue/challenge for both online play and splitscreen, and needs to work 100% before we do much else to it.

After we get Steam online (and a couple of notable bugs) hammered out, we're going to send out a handful of Alpha keys for largely performance and some bug squashing. How we are going to choose the testers, I'm really not sure.

Once things seems to be functional online and local, and some rough edges smoothed out, I think we'll be set for early access, which will be largely focusing on adding content.

We got a lot of feedback from demoing the project and having anyone who wanted to come up and play it. There were definitely bugs that are being ironed out so I won't talk about those, but I will write about some notable topics people brought up, as well as observations from me.



Level design:
This one is 100% on me. I created this coastal city with some winding paths, bridges, and shortcuts. As you progress through the level, you slowly fight new varieties and larger numbers of enemies. A player progressing normally will have decent equipment and few levels to deal with the challenge.

What I did not expect was players to take windy side routes and avoid most conflicts and gear, resulting in them getting into difficult fights with little to no gear.

Respawning:
Throughout the level was about 4-5 of these 'markers'.


They are the equivalent of 'check points' in that you respawn at them, but you need to walk up and touch them to activate them. Most players skipped these entirely. My theory is that don't look particularly interesting so it was easy to skip.

Another idea would be to have them auto-activate if you get near them. Maybe an NPC can point them out but that feels cheap.

Regardless this system will definitely get tuned up.

Art:
I got some praise and some confusion on the art style. Players generally seemed to like the simpler style as it was pretty easy to tell what's going on. What was not liked was a lot of items use the same color palettes as other objects, making some items fairly difficult to see if you weren't looking directly at it.

This was amplified by the fact some items are hard to aim at and pick up, due to them being small or oddly shaped.

This should be pretty easily fixable.

Other:

• As it stands the inventory 'book' system is a little too slow to use and will likely be getting some slight design changes.
  
• Several players asked for more destructible objects and things to interact with. Specifically, brute forcing doors.
  
• Wall jumping works on some objects that it probably shouldn't work on, which was more confusing to players than anything.
  
• The player's death animation takes too long. This is actually a bug, but the AI adds insult to injury and will kick you on the ground as you die and that came off as kind of mean.
  

We have been invited to showcase our game at the Name Your Game Expo in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Should you happen to be in the area October 5th/6th, you should swing by and check out what we got.

(If all goes according to plan ) We'll be showcasing splitscreen and one of the newer areas for anyone to play, as well as a newer trailer we'll be showing and uploading here to Steam.



This is our first expo so it will be a rough build, but there will be a follow-up post here as well as discussion over feedback on our Discord...

Which is to note, we're also finally opening up a Discord server. Feel free to join us here: https://discord.gg/sFDJZ7R

So there has been like a whole lot of changes that I haven't been talking about much. The last few months have been crazy and I suspect that will continue for a while.

Here is the inventory notebook. (Some of the art in it is placeholder.)
Not only is it diegetic, but can be used with a bunch of different screensizes and splitscreen, which is cool.



More weapons and stuff. The art has been changed around quite a bit, and will likely change a bit more.



As requested by various people, an option for 3rd person.



I'd love to talk about the grapplehook next but it still needs a few adjustments before I can really show it off.

There are also a handful of graphical changes that will be done and I may also talk about that. Not as exciting, sure, but it is interesting to see how the art developers over time.