- Early Access Developments September 2024 - 30 September 2024
Hi everyone. We have some difficult news to break to you. But since we believe in open and honest communication with our community, here we go: Septaroad Voyager's sales have not been meeting expectations. Our development team has obligations to meet, and so development is going to have to take a back seat to other full-time jobs. Our lead developer Nathaniel spent most of September looking for a new job, which he has found. He will continue contributing to Septaroad Voyager, just in the evening and on the weekend. We promise we are not stopping development on the game. During September we still managed to fix a number of bugs, add new improvements, and push out some updates, including the following: The party's summoned ally now follows as intended on game load. Saving in a dungeon after defeating the boss no longer breaks the saved game file. The non-directional ambient lighting in le…
- Early Access Developments August 2024 - 29 August 2024
Hi everyone. As promised, we are updating you again at the end of the month with our progress on Septaroad Voyager. In July we released the prologues to all seven characters in the main campaign. In August we took your feedback (and there was a lot of it!) and we have been trying to improve and balance the game. We also added treasure chests and resource nodes for mining and herbalism, and we integrated resource-related quests into the main campaign. And the biggest new addition to the content in Septaroad Voyager is new music by Jenny O'Connor, whom you might know as The Hot Violinist. You can hear Jenny's music at https://www.jennyoconnor.com/music/ and throughout the desert areas of Septaroad Voyager. We've had the functionality for mining ore and picking herbs for a while now. But with the first world levels in place, we finally started implementing them into the game. Bringing herb…
- Patch notes 14 August 2024 - 14 August 2024
Based on player feedback, we have adjusted the following: Area-of-effect attacks are now faster and they do more damage. Turkeys now do untyped damage, instead of sword damage. Characters weak against sword damage were taking too much damage from an early-game enemy. Overall turkey attack power was also reduced. Skill points and experience points earned through combat have been adjusted. Skills are now faster to unlock through earning skill points in combat. Level-ups are now slower through earning experience points in combat. Enemy damage curves have been adjusted to make the early game easier. Tortoises no longer are strong against bows. This made them too difficult for Jomo, who starts with a bow where the most common enemies are tortoises. We will continue fixing, adjusting, and balancing the game based on your feedback. Thank you very much for your help!
- Main Campaign Prologues Now Ready To Play - 18 July 2024
Today we are pleased to announce the release of Septaroad Voyager's campaign prologues. Each of the main campaign's seven heroes are now recruitable and playable. Start a new game, choose a starting character, then make your way through the world and recruit the others! You'll notice that your old saved games are no longer accessible. Don't worry! Your saved games are organized by campaign. Change the campaign back to Infinite Roads and all of your saved games will still be there. The gameplay is still the same, but the content is all new. You should see a lot of the new enemies and locales in the new trailer and screenshots we uploaded yesterday. Although Septaroad Voyager has been in Early Access for over a year, in many ways this is like day one. We are giving you a campaign that no one has played yet. And in true Early Access form, we have a lot of work to do: filling in the world w…
- Early Access Developments June 2024 - 30 June 2024
Welcome back, everyone! As promised, we are here at the end of June with an update on Septaroad Voyager's progress. For the main campaign, we have the 7 starting zones almost all connected. We should have all of the battle/wilderness zones between the starting towns finished within the next few days and then we will start on chapter 1 for each character. We spent most of the month adding new zones and new enemies to make the world feel varied. This is Sun Fields, the area outside Nicopolis, where Thekla starts her adventure. https://rockwell-studios.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Satyr.gif We want the area to have a Byzantine feel, so we're adding some elements of Roman mythology. We're also teaming up with a musician to add some unique music for this area. We hope to give you a lot more detail on that next month. To get from the northern areas to the southern areas on the map, you'll h…
- Early Access Developments May 2024 - 30 May 2024
Hello again! As promised, we are back at the end of the month to update you on our progress. Throughout May, we were fixing bugs, adding features, and adding new content to the upcoming campaign for Septaroad Voyager. We added a new level, Gloomwood, between Halgdalir and Gearbridge. Here you'll encounter skeletons, ghosts, bats, spiders, and goblins trying to stop your quest. In that picture you'll notice that we're reading a sign. That's a relatively small functional addition this month, but we felt it was important for you to have signs to guide you. We spent some time trying to get the right look in Gloomwood. https://rockwell-studios.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Gloomwood-PostProcess.gif Some of the tools we use to get the right look include lighting, a color-grading lookup table, and postprocess effects like the vignette. We want to make sure each area has the right look, so we'…
- Early Access Developments April 2024 - 30 April 2024
Hello Septaroad fans! We are back with our monthly Early Access update. The big news this month is that we have finished ALL 7 of the prologues and we are now building the world that will connect the different starting zones together. When we have the world more or less laid out, then we can script the story developments in each character's first chapter. Let's take a closer look at what we accomplished this month. Here are some screenshots of the prologues we finished this month. We added new zones Wind Plains, Summerwood, and Thousand-Spear Road. And in those zones you'll find some new enemies including crabs and mushroom kids. One new feature that we're kind of proud of is a subtle fog in the Summerwood forest, where Emmerich is fighting a mushroom kid. You can't see it very well in that screenshot, but we added a fog with boundaries that we control completely, which is a change from…
- Early Access Developments March 2024 - 31 March 2024
Hi everyone! We are back now at the end of March with our promised monthly Early Access update. We here at Rockwell Studios would like to wish all of you a happy Easter. Also, we hope you had a good Passover and are continuing to have a blessed Ramadan. We have been working hard throughout the month to improve Septaroad Voyager and to get the campaign ready for you to play. So far, we have 3 of the 7 prologues finished. Our goal is to finish the prologue and chapter 1 for every character by June. Here's a look at the prologues for Emmerich, Mika, and Jomo. Those of you who have been following our patch notes throughout the month know how much we have changed and fixed. For everyone, let's take a closer look. One of the most easily visible changes is the bigger and brighter spell effects. Here are the updated effects for Meteor, Ice, and Arcane Bolt. https://rockwell-studios.com/wp-conte…
- Patch notes 21 March 2024 - 21 March 2024
We uploaded a few patches since the last patch notes. Here's what's new: Improved functionality when scrolling mouse wheel over menu to choose which action to perform. Ability description now updates automatically after scrolling. Maps containing a static texture (such as in the main campaign) instead of map tiles no longer crash. Attackers stay facing their targets longer. Targets that get hit stay in place for a short time. This helps tie combat down a little bit and makes particle effects easier to read. Fixed an area in dungeons where you would not be able to exit to the south on a specific level. Added empty rooms to dungeons to give players a breather, so the dungeons aren't one long slog through endless combat until reaching the boss. Faster running speed Fixed bug where while setting up tactics, clicking on a condition will carry down into the menu below, unintentionally enablin…
- Patch notes 13 March 2024 - 13 March 2024
Today's patches changed the following: Fixed a place in the yellow hills map where you could exit to the west when the way should be blocked. Added particle effect that characters play on death. Fixed a problem where NPC speech/quest indicators could disappear. HUD elements stay hidden throughout conversations instead of appear and disappearing when the speaker changes. New functionality for gameplay scripting that will help with cutscenes and other scripted events. Different events based on character gender, enemies can stay passive until scripted event makes them enter combat.
- Patch notes 12 March 2024 - 12 March 2024
Hi everyone! I've been gone for a few days but I'm back at work now. Today's patch added the following: Improved particle effects for ultima, smite 1-3, arrow storm, ice bolt 1-3, and ice storm. Longer exit hallways from dungeon rooms, with the camera borders moved farther to the sides. Now there should be no more accidentally exiting the room. Support for enemies going immediately to combat after being spawned. This will be used in scripted encounters. Those scripted encounters used to be a little silly when the ambush starts and the enemies go to their default wandering state. Made decals for drawing walking paths over stone arches. Fixed normal maps on some decals that were lit incorrectly. We are working hard every day to improve the look and feel of Septaroad Voyager. We are also working toward a playable main campaign with an in-depth story. We hope to have more of that to show to…
- Patch notes 6 March 2023 - 6 March 2024
Today we fixed/added the following: Fixed a game-breaking bug that could stop the game when recruiting a new character into your party. Some spells will now dim the world's light and start a slow-motion effect. Fixed particle collision. Particles effects for the druid's lightning storm ability and the warlock's fire storm ability depended on detecting the ground level, and they did not work before. Now the particle effects for those abilities display correctly. Bigger and brighter lights for all abilities. Reworked particle effects for fire bolt 1-3, lightning bolt 1-3, nightmare 1-3, healing 1-3, fire storm, lightning storm, meteor strike, immolate, heaven's wrath. We are trying to get the right look and feel for various abilities in the game, to make the game more fun and attractive. We would love to hear your feedback on the updated visual effects.
- Patch notes 2 March 2024 - 2 March 2024
Today we made the following changes: Can equip and unequip through scripted story events Simpler pathfinding Character names can be inserted in dialog Gendered versions of dialog for using "my lord" or "my lady" etc. Also will be used for localizations where men talking to women, women talking to men, men talking to men, women talking to women require different versions of the text. Speech bubbles update location so if the camera or the character moves while speaking, the speech bubbles will show up in the right place Pause message shows up on the HUD if you are playing RTwP Cleaner autosave and loading animation Numerous graphical fixes and material fixes to meshes that had the wrong normals, materials that were not rendering correctly.
- Early Access Developments February 2024 - 29 February 2024
As promised, we are back at the end of another month to update you on what we've been doing in Septaroad Voyager. Behind the scenes, we are getting everything organized for the main campaign. We made a wiki where we are sharing mood boards and inspiration, discussing the feel and look of various places. I'm finally writing out the script for all of the characters' stories. And getting things down on paper (or the digital equivalent) is really helping me to stay organized. For the characters' stories, I am following a template well known and loved (or hated) among scriptwriters. It's called Save the Cat! and it's an excellent guide for solid story structure. As for the tangible things you can see in the game right now, the towns of Utakawa and Ramliyah are accessible in the randomly generated campaign currently available, so long as the route to those towns doesn't go through an unavaila…
- Patch Notes 27 February 2024 - 27 February 2024
Today we added the following: Force the game to load post process settings. In some cases the game would load without post process settings and effects such as the Sobel edge outline, vignette, and bokeh blur were not showing correctly. Better camera transitions. In some cases, when transitioning between levels, or when starting a new character, the camera would glitch to a location that is not meant to be seen in the game. We now have a fix for that. This has to be set up manually for each case of a character- or level-transition, so we will keep our eyes open for other places where this happens. Character customizer menu now fully supports default characters, for one default gender, or for characters who can be changed to a different gender. Character customizer supports different starting equipment loadouts, different starting character classes, and different starting abilities. This…
- Patch notes 26 February 2024 - 26 February 2024
Yesterday and today we uploaded some patches that changed the following: The depth-of-field blur is now a bokeh blur. This requires a video card that can run DX11 and it's more taxing on the video card. In the future we can make a simple gaussian blur fallback for DX9 cards and slower DX11 cards. Cleave now has a description indicating that it can hit two targets. AoE abilities no longer affect non-combat NPCs. Fixed a visual bug where the description of the previous ability appeared when reopening the ability menu. The player can now close the map with the M key (or the key mapped to the map). Enter and spacebar can be used to press the selected menu button. Fixed bugged text in the instructions for switching characters. Preparatory work for adding story characters to the game.
- Patch Notes 22 February 2024 - 22 February 2024
Today we added/changed/fixed the following: Default walking speed is a little slower. Hold down shift to run. Running will cancel any actions currently charging. Enemies move a little slower. You can now use the mouse to click on a target instead of clicking in the menu to choose the target of an action. Default key for interaction is now F. New defaults will be loaded when you load the game. If you customized your keybindings, you will need to change them again. Loot drops do not explode away from defeated enemies but now drop on the ground nearby Lots of new enemy names. Tiered goblins, orcs, boar, cultist knights, cultist warlocks, necromancers, scrapper mechanics, scrapper alchemists all have new names. An enemy not currently in combat that dodges or blocks an attack now enters combat as intended Enemies in the intro attack faster. More DOF blur to background and foreground Steal ab…
- Patch Notes 8 February 2024 - 8 February 2024
Changed location of saved games. This will help prevent messes if multiple accounts log into the same device. Also, 32-bit and 64-bit executables now save in the same location and their games will be accessible from a 32-bit or 64-bit executable on another device. The game will automatically copy your saved files to the new save location. You will need to play one more time on the device containing your most recent saved games in order for the saved game files to reach the cloud and your other devices.
- Early Access Developments January 2024 - 31 January 2024
Hello again! We're back at the end of January with more updates on Septaroad Voyager. We hope your 2024 is off to a great start. Ours certainly is. The biggest thing we've been working on this month is the addition of a major new minigame: dueling, presented as a collectible card game. We want each character to introduce some fun and unique new mechanic. We decided that we want Emmerich to be able to challenge people to duels. As you win duels around the world, you'll learn useful new techniques and increase your fame, opening up new opponents who have new techniques for you to learn. Dueling is not in the game yet. We've made all the cards and animations. And we've finished all of the other preparations so we should be able to get dueling into the game very soon. We have also been converting some of the new cities into maps that can be used in the procedurally generated world you can p…
- Patch notes 3 January 2024 - 3 January 2024
Hi everyone! First patch of the new year. Today we added a few small fixes, some content for use right now, and some content that will show up in the finished campaign. Fixed vignette effect, which had not been loading correctly. Added poor-quality equipment and legendary-quality equipment. Most of the equipment that drops off defeated enemies will be of poor quality. Most of the equipment you steal will be common quality. Most of the uncommon, rare, epic, and legendary drops will come from finishing dungeons. Fixed camera logic to account for the possibility that the player is underground. Before, if the camera detected that was inside the landscape, the camera would place itself above the landscape. That resulted in buggy behavior when the character was in a cave below the landscape. This behavior has been corrected. Added additional content not yet visible in the Early Access campaig…
