Hello beloved Steambirders! Francois here. We’ve emerged from hibernation and it’s been a little while since the last update, but we haven’t been sleeping (well, not all the time).
Art Upgrades
We’ve been continuing with the work to update the art style and make it just that much better. It’s not yet finished, so we can’t show it all, but it covers most of the game and it is looking pretty darn great so far! There are new models and shaders and even some surprises in store! We’ve got a little bit of concept art to share with you now, but the best way to see the latest updates is by watching the weekly live streams on Wednesdays at 10am PST, where we play through the latest build of the game and chat about it.
Quests
The quest system has been progressing quickly towards the point where it’s fully usable for players (not just us). We have the first pass on the necessary UI. You have a nice list of all your accepted quests, where you can see all their detail and progress. You can also select one of your quests as an active quest, which gets included in your HUD so you can quickly glance at your progress and tackle that quest, without the need to take a break and open the longer list. We also have little notifications as you get new quests and complete them.
The UI pass includes access to the first quest giver, Ye Olde Tavern (name change pending the tavern owners filing the appropriate paperwork). They have set up a building in the Rebel City where they conduct their business: you can see a list of some currently playable quests and then of course accept them and go out to actually do them – there’s no free lunch here, you have to work for your rewards! Most of them will require you to return back to the tavern to get your rewards, and then you can probably pick up some new quests that have appeared. We have a lot of control with the quest giver system, so Ye Olde Tavern might not have a monopoly on the market for very long!
Besides the backend systems and UI for quests, we have been making some good progress on actual content. We have a group of introductory quests, so players can get a better jumpstart at the game once they’ve completed the tutorial. These guide you through the basics, including some mini-dungeons and bosses!
We’re also currently working on regular rotating quests (to be listed at the tavern) to replace the old target system. We’re aiming to have about 4 level-appropriate enemies you can target every given hour. Some quests might even have you target enemies that don’t normally spawn in the overworld!
Server Scaling
We’re working on improving our backend to automatically spawn more Rebel City and overworld instances when the existing get too crowded. This extends to both our game server instances and the underlying cloud virtual machines. It will allow the game to dynamically handle an influx of new players, so everyone can keep playing and fighting the evil cat empire!
Other
- The dual-stick control experiments are starting to gell now and we’re using them for the Walker and Paladin classes.
- Ammo bar so you can see how much ammo you have left, and slightly better visualization of the auto-reloading
- Quests spawning – quests can now elicit new interesting units that will auto-magically appear for you to target them
- Some more cheats and settings to make authoring quest content easier
- Added more exhaust to late-game units – exhausting work!