- Summary of our experience with the demo, and future plans - 19 June 2021
Hey everyone! Firstly, let me thank every one of you who gave the demo a go and shared his/her opinion with us! We learned a great deal, and while there is still a lot of things to improve, we are happy with the core of the combat system. That means we are hard at work on the bigger picture, the campaign portion of the game. This alpha demo is "done" for now, and we will post our future devlogs in our indiedb page here, and on the full game page here. By the way, we just released a new devlog about our progress so far, so if you are interested you can check it out here! This page will be only updated when we have plans for another demo, or other playable builds.
- Small camera update - 4 May 2021
A small update to the camera to wait while there are ongoing animations before it goes to the current unit. So that it doesn't make you miss the result of your action. In addition, added an option to turn this behavior off completely from the settings menu.
- Combat rework released! - 3 May 2021
I'm super excited to announce that the reworked combat system patch is released! In a nutshell, the new combat system core is a traditional-turn-based system where initiative decides the order of the units. The twist is that a turn consists of 2 phases. A movement phase and an attack phase. This heightens the importance of maneuvering, as everyone can move before any attack can happen, making melee combat more dynamic. While the combat system rework is the star of the patch, but it isn't the only thing that changed. We added a lot of quality of life features like zoom and reworked character sheets and character hud for better readability. Plus we added a few eye candy as well, with dynamic fog of war, reworked sprites, and animations, which improved the overall visual quality. So give it a go, and share your opinion with us what do you think of the changes.
- Devlog #7 The new combat system - 20 March 2021
Devlog #7 The new combat system The time has come, when I can finally talk about the core of the new combat system! A quick recap for those who don't know, the new patch we are working on for the alpha combat demo will feature a completely reworked combat system. The problem with the old system was in short that it was too complex to use, even though it archived my design goal of heightening the importance of positioning in melee combat, even after the characters are in melee range. In designing the new combat system, I tried to emulate the same feeling, within a traditional turn-based framework. The big problem, which makes positioning not that relevant after the characters meet in melee in a traditional turn-based game is I feel that the opposition has no chance to have any kind of reaction to it. A character can usually move and attack in the same turn. If you try to separate the two…
- Devlog #6 Communication through visuals - 21 February 2021
Devlog #6 Communication through visuals Hey everyone! The new gameplay still needs a bit of time in the oven before I'm comfortable sharing details about it. But I did not want to leave you without any information about our progress, so I thought I should make a post about a lot of small improvements we made in our visual communication and overall quality. Those who follow us on Twitter have already seen most of it, so if you are interested in smaller more frequent updates, feel free to follow us there as well! We definitely cut a few corners in our initial alpha release because we wanted it to be done before the Steam Christmas sale. After we decided that we want to rework the alpha combat demo, we thought that we should definitely take the time to polish it up as well. One of those cut features was the ability to zoom in and out. It took a while to get it right, as it is not as trivia…
- Devlog #5 Our plans for 2021. - 20 January 2021
Devlog #5 Our plans for 2021. We were a bit silent after releasing the alpha combat demo, partly due to the holidays, and partly because we were listening to the feedback, and we were thinking about the best way forward for Slaves of Magic. If I want to summarize the feedback we received, I think the biggest problem was the fiddliness and complexity of the delayed turn-based system, which turned off a lot of players. In addition, the initial version did not have a tutorial to explain the more intricate details which compounded the problem I think. So, I went back to the drawing board and asked myself the following question. Can I reduce the complexity of the game, without losing my design goal? I believe that complexity is something the designer pays when he/she wants to reach certain design goals, and if it is possible to reach those goals with less complexity, then that is great. My p…
- Windows 7 startup crash fixed - 20 December 2020
There was a bug that was only present on players using Windows 7, which caused a crash on startup. This has been corrected.
- Added tutorial, and stability improvements - 18 December 2020
We have added a small tutorial to the demo, which can be accessed from the main menu. In addition, fixed a few visual bugs and improved stability.
- Slaves of Magic first trailer is released! - 16 November 2020
Our first trailer's goal is to set the tone of the game and to show the players the starting situation they will find themself in. Hope you will enjoy it!
- Devlog #4 A deep dive into Slaves of Magic skill system. - 7 November 2020
Devlog #4 A deep dive into Slaves of Magic skill system. Previously, I talked about how combat works on a fundamental level, today I would like to expand on it, and talk about how Slaves of Magic skill system works and what can you expect from it. The biggest inspiration for the system is the original Guild Wars skill system, which I think gave the player enormous freedom to build his/her character as he saw fit. The basic idea is simple. You have up to 8 skill slots, and while you might know more than 8 skills, you can only use 8. The skills themselves had an attribute as well (so for example, there were sword skills, strength skills, illusion skills, etc). The skill efficiency depended on how good you were at its given attribute. Basically, this meant that the more attribute the player used, the weaker the individual skills were. Of course, there are some basic skills like movement, w…
- Devlog #3 Hit chance,damage,armor, the way you can make your enemies disappear. - 24 October 2020
Devlog #3 Hit chance, damage, armor, the way you can make your enemies disappear. I thought its time to talk a little bit about how combat is calculated in our game, as this is a very prominent system that the players will try to manipulate to their advantage in a tactical game. No component of it is particularly unique, so I'm sure you, the reader, will be able to bring up other games that had one component or another. But I think the mix of those components and their effect on each other is interesting. Before I go into it though I want to leave a note that the exact values could change, as we are in development! Hit chance calculation: Let's start with the formula: hit chance = base_hit_chance + attacking_character_accuracy_bonus - defending_character_defense_bonus Here, the base hit chance is 50%, so if everything being equal, a character has a 50% chance of hitting the enemy. One i…
- Devlog #2 The dark side of delayed turn based system. - 17 October 2020
Devlog #2 The dark side of delayed turn based system. Previously I talked about the positives of the delayed turn-based system, now let's see the negatives, and how I tried to solve those. Let's talk about the elephant in the room. Compared to a traditional turn based game, the player will need to keep in mind not just what is happening right now, but what will be the situation when their action resolves. It is a lot of extra information, what the player needs to be aware of, yet not be overwhelmed by it. This was actually kind of a problem in Final Fantasy Tactic, from which a lot of motivation from this system came from. So to solve this, I needed to rethink the UI, more specifically, how we can convey this extra information to the players without confusing him/her. To recap, here is the picture from my previous Devlog: In this picture, let's take a closer look at its hud. To the left…
- Devlog #1 What is a delayed turn based system? - 11 October 2020
Devlog #1 What is a delayed turn based system? The most important concept in this type of system that every action takes time to resolve. For example, imagine it is your turn, and you start some very strong spell which takes some time to cast. This gives your opponent a chance to respond with something faster in their turn. You could say that well, that is not new, a lot of turn based combat system have skills which take multiple turns to resolve. What is special about ours? My answer to this that we took this idea to the extremes, in that every action takes time to resolve. The most basic movement and attack commands take time to happen, even turning a character take some time. It leads to turns when actually, no input is needed because every character is already trying to resolve a command. Because of this, in Slaves Of Magic, we do not call them turns, we call them time units. You ca…
