Were committed to delivering several major updates to Barony over the coming months (about once per quarter!), adding both features and content to make your next dungeon run more fun and exciting than ever. Each update will primarily focused on delivering work we promised in our Kickstarters bonus goals, stretch goals, and backer rewards. (And, because we just cant help ourselves, itll also include stuff we just think is cool)

Were excited to share our plans!

Read on for details about the first major update we currently have in the works. Our first major update to version 4.1 is coming this Halloween season and its called the Life After Death update!
Our most recent update was called Quality of Death, so like this is the one after that. Pretty good word play, right? But thats not the only reason we called it that.

Ghosts

A Kickstarter bonus goal! Whether in single-player or co-op, death is a normal part of playing Barony. While in single-player, you may begin another run right away, if youre a member of a party, you may find yourself waiting around a while for your friends to finish the level. Even the most patient among us may be bored simply spectating. So bringing you life after death Co-Op Ghosts! After you die in a multiplayer game and youre viewing your gravestone, youll have the option to spawn immediately as a Ghost! Ghosts dont fight in the normal sense, but thats not to say they cant have a meaningful impact for the team!
While haunting your party, ghosts can wander freely and use a few key abilities to offer utility in exploration and even some combat strategy. With the new Co-Op Callouts feature, Ghosts are also empowered to communicate important info to surviving team members.

Callouts

Another Kickstarter bonus goal! Teamwork in Barony looks different in every party. Maybe youre a tightly-knit squad who faces challenges together. Or perhaps youre elite agents who divide and conquer each floor. Alternatively, you might be a counterproductive band of trolling idiots. Whatever the case, a little contextual communication can go a long way, no matter your style. Whether youre on a mouse & keyboard, or a gamepad, our new co-op callouts system puts context sensitive commands at your fingertips. With just a couple of clicks, you can provide very specific messages that empower more team interactions. To name a few:

• Let the party know that youre hungry or starving to death!
• Point out that a certain item might be good for a teammate.
• Warn your team of a looming trap you spotted.
• Ask for help with a locked chest.
• Beg your party to flee from an especially threatening foe!
• Ask for a party member to pull a lever for you.
• Let your Goatman buddy know about the fountain you found.
• Thank your Healer for that clutch save!

These callouts point to the indicated subject in-world, ping it on the map, and provide accompanying icons and chat messages with a high degree of specificity. So even if you have a keyboard or are on Discord voice, callouts make it easier to convey precise information quickly. Perfect for experienced teams, or pickup groups.

Few Commands, Tons of Context

With plenty of real-time surprises to adapt to, we wanted the callouts feature to be very accessible with a minimum of clicks to use. Just pick your target and then choose from a handful of callout ideas: Spot, Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down, Help and Move. And the chat preview banner lets you know exactly what youll say to your team before the message goes out!

Holiday Integration

This isnt anything we ever promised, we just thought it would be rad. Weve put quite a bit of work into a few Holiday mods that are available on the Steam Workshop. But we love this kind of stuff in games, and we want to make sure every player can have access to it. By integrating our offical Holiday mods into the game itself, everyone (including Switch players) will have access to this content! Our Halloween celebration mod Barony Scarony has been updated to account for the new content thats been added since the Quality of Death update, all in time for Halloween! In the future, well be making other holiday mod updates and integrating them into the game seasonally. And dont worry, if like to keep it vanilla, youll be able to turn off the seasonal events as a game option.

Language Modding Support

Part 1 of a Kickstarter Stretch Goal! Prior to Quality of Death, Barony had a lot of in-game text that was hard-coded, making complete translations impractical. After the QoD update, a lot more of it is available, but when the Life After Death update ships, all in-game text will have been moved into data and is, as a result, modifiable. There is already an exemplary Russian language mod thats available in the Steam Workshop. If you are interested in creating a Barony language translation mod, this would be a great model to follow! The second part of this Kickstarter Stretch Goal needs you! If you have a translation, or are working one, that youd like to see become part of Barony officially, we welcome you to discuss it with us in the Steam Discussions here.
We will be seeking permission to distribute finished Barony language mods as part of the game. Were excited to support translator efforts as much as we can. It's our intent that complete translations will be available in the future without mods!

More

Were laying the groundwork for other exciting content. Were just not sure if itll be ready in time for Halloween or not. Well let you know at release what made it in! We look forward to sharing more with you! Happy adventuring. This announcement was reposted from the Turning Wheel Blog.

[ 2023-09-24 23:10:19 CET ] [ Original post ]