Zetheros
Developer
Hey Exanimates,
Things are very busy and a bit chaotic right now as we try to get many things fully ready for the update. As predicted in the previous diary, there's not a lot for us to report on right now, we're not really adding features or designing new things, just making sure that everything we've done so far for this update is finished and complete. Because there's a story save wipe, we're also doing things like transitioning many assets and level content to updated versions and purging deprecated things.
One thing we've properly completed now is thaumaturge AI, the functionality of (for now) AI exclusive powers, the tools we use to configure these thaumaturge AI combatants and so on. This involved a fair bit of testing, where we also got an idea of what it would be like to go up against a thaumaturge who uses a large array of powers. Fortunately for the foreseeable future encounters will only have access to a very limited set of powers, as this was hilariously brutal, but we are excited about what these fights could mean and making them even smarter.
Meanwhile we're also working on the narration system mentioned last week. We've made good progress here, but we're essentially doing this by expanding the dialogue system, which is a bit of a minefield as it's already very complex in its core design to support things like multiple concurrent real-time dialogues, dynamic participants etc. We need to modify how some things work, or can work and add to its already difficult feature set, so we are reviewing a lot of this, also in preparation for the next update which should add more and more complex dialogue interactions.
The new level is looking fantastic, but there are some parts that still need a little work, and we had an unfortunate setback due to data loss. It's hard to say exactly how long before we like it for a release, but hopefully not too long and there's plenty to keep the team busy.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
Things are very busy and a bit chaotic right now as we try to get many things fully ready for the update. As predicted in the previous diary, there's not a lot for us to report on right now, we're not really adding features or designing new things, just making sure that everything we've done so far for this update is finished and complete. Because there's a story save wipe, we're also doing things like transitioning many assets and level content to updated versions and purging deprecated things.
One thing we've properly completed now is thaumaturge AI, the functionality of (for now) AI exclusive powers, the tools we use to configure these thaumaturge AI combatants and so on. This involved a fair bit of testing, where we also got an idea of what it would be like to go up against a thaumaturge who uses a large array of powers. Fortunately for the foreseeable future encounters will only have access to a very limited set of powers, as this was hilariously brutal, but we are excited about what these fights could mean and making them even smarter.
Meanwhile we're also working on the narration system mentioned last week. We've made good progress here, but we're essentially doing this by expanding the dialogue system, which is a bit of a minefield as it's already very complex in its core design to support things like multiple concurrent real-time dialogues, dynamic participants etc. We need to modify how some things work, or can work and add to its already difficult feature set, so we are reviewing a lot of this, also in preparation for the next update which should add more and more complex dialogue interactions.
The new level is looking fantastic, but there are some parts that still need a little work, and we had an unfortunate setback due to data loss. It's hard to say exactly how long before we like it for a release, but hopefully not too long and there's plenty to keep the team busy.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
