Zetheros
Developer
Hey Exanimates,
We've released our first insider build for Force to test the most important mechanics and get some initial feedback before we finalise things across all powers. Besides some silly mixups with some file versions, this has gone very well with basically no unexpected issues. There's a lot of new mechanics involved in force, and physics interactions and AI interactions which can be quite unpredictable. We're getting a lot of useful information as insiders share their experience and videos and we're going to be iterating over various adjustments in the next few days.
Feedback so far has been extremely positive, insiders are having a lot of fun mucking about with it and seem impressed with everything, physics, visuals, sounds, AI and controls. We generally focus much more on details that contribute to immersions than things like game balance, but we do want the game to feel challenging at times, and as we add more tools to the player's box this changes significantly. A lot of existing content was always supposed to be a lot more difficult than it currently is, and there will be new encounters and new abilities given to them, but for the time being difficulty is in an odd spot. Something else we need to support increased difficulty is new ways to save your progress, which we want to introduce soon if not already in this update.
.
The current insider test also includes the procedural item changes discussed in last week's diary. This seems to be working flawlessly, with no issues and no unwanted changes to legacy saved games. We're already seeing some nice new material combinations come up on items and we're looking forward to start expanding the item factories again with completely new designs.
There will be another insider test soon with more powers and all the updates to existing content, which includes a couple of redesigned levels and many reworked items. A final insider test will follow, to test the complete update before final release.
Getting all the pieces of force working together in a release is a major milestone and the engine feature set we developed for all of this has many broad applications that go well beyond just the thaumaturgy system mechanics. We'll probably be busy this week making various adjustments to some of these systems, but things are looking really good.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
We've released our first insider build for Force to test the most important mechanics and get some initial feedback before we finalise things across all powers. Besides some silly mixups with some file versions, this has gone very well with basically no unexpected issues. There's a lot of new mechanics involved in force, and physics interactions and AI interactions which can be quite unpredictable. We're getting a lot of useful information as insiders share their experience and videos and we're going to be iterating over various adjustments in the next few days.
Feedback so far has been extremely positive, insiders are having a lot of fun mucking about with it and seem impressed with everything, physics, visuals, sounds, AI and controls. We generally focus much more on details that contribute to immersions than things like game balance, but we do want the game to feel challenging at times, and as we add more tools to the player's box this changes significantly. A lot of existing content was always supposed to be a lot more difficult than it currently is, and there will be new encounters and new abilities given to them, but for the time being difficulty is in an odd spot. Something else we need to support increased difficulty is new ways to save your progress, which we want to introduce soon if not already in this update.
.
The current insider test also includes the procedural item changes discussed in last week's diary. This seems to be working flawlessly, with no issues and no unwanted changes to legacy saved games. We're already seeing some nice new material combinations come up on items and we're looking forward to start expanding the item factories again with completely new designs.
There will be another insider test soon with more powers and all the updates to existing content, which includes a couple of redesigned levels and many reworked items. A final insider test will follow, to test the complete update before final release.
Getting all the pieces of force working together in a release is a major milestone and the engine feature set we developed for all of this has many broad applications that go well beyond just the thaumaturgy system mechanics. We'll probably be busy this week making various adjustments to some of these systems, but things are looking really good.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
