- Cutscenes are hard :D - 14 February 2019
https://youtu.be/zp1jxxlKvtE
- Opening Cutscene, Take 1 - 15 December 2018
https://youtu.be/XysEKoo8Dzs After 3 years of development, we're ready to start making the actual game (kinda kidding, but kinda not) For #screenshotsaturday, here's a part of the very first cut-scene players will be greeted with, sans a few other opening shots. Work on the opening cutscene is about a third of the way done, barring major revisions--while a lot of RPGs are exposition-heavy early on, we wanted to throw the player into combat and eventually character control as quickly as possible. With that in mind, here's what we've got so far--still a work in progress, and very much open to critique or suggestions!
- The Anatomy of a Bug - 16 November 2018
Hi all! We recently put together an imgur post detailing a very strange bug we encountered, and how we eventually squashed it. Eventually. Come check it out and make sure to upvote it so we can hit that sweet front page! imgur.com/a/LevXcN0
- Our Discord server is open! - 6 November 2018
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F31395209%2Ff67608ca2e985627da95437546fc10cf277d425b.jpg We've recently opened up our Discord channel for anyone who'd like to drop by and talk about the game and its development--you'll be able to give feedback and even glimpse at upcoming features before anyone else! Come hang out! https://t.co/P76kJcWWGo
- New boss model/animation! - 6 October 2018
https://youtu.be/8HCOW4GFb5k Hi all! We're extremely excited to show off a quick video of our new Kelvari model and walk cycle! While the environment is still a work-in-progress, we're pretty happy with it so far and will improve upon it further, introducing new sound effects, creatures, and environmental effects. This particular creature is known to the Auvanians as "Berithane" and has been engaged and fought countless times over the centuries. While no one expected the Kelvari to breach the Auvanian forticiations, the Roots found another way instead and the town of Molsha was quickly engulfed, Berithane leading the charge. As we add more animations and effects, you can be the first to see these and other updates by signing up for our newsletter here: http://www.eepurl.com/b_SewT
- Dev Streams! - 3 August 2018
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F31395209%2F532aef1312d427a890363e739663fbbade2c9344.jpg Hi all! Here lately, we’ve been seriously entertaining the idea of doing a weekly (or even bi-weekly) dev stream where we take some time to talk about Wellspring development. We wanted to take a more ‘tutorial’-oriented approach to these streams—we most likely wouldn’t be coding or programming new features necessarily, but would be talking about some of the systems we’ve already developed and diving more deeply into the intricacies of Unity and game development in general. My question then, is which of the following topics would you be most interested in learning more about? And if it’s something that isn’t on the list, feel free to let us know in the comments section! Thanks! Combat system internals Artificial intelligence Skill system implementation Item/equipment s…
- When you're scarier than your opponent - 28 July 2018
https://youtu.be/CZLtNMOaimQ May have made a slight mistake here... (AKA what happens when you bind your running animation to the wrong avatar) Wellspring: Altar of Roots is a dark and plot-heavy tactical RPG that merges old-school, turn-based strategy with modern, fast-paced combat. Featuring gridless battles, roaming enemy encounters, complex character customization and a vast and open world map, Wellspring offers a fresh look at a time-honored genre.
- If you can't beat 'em, be 'em! - 7 July 2018
https://youtu.be/_Gyy1-H3GjI When we first started developing Wellspring, there were several features that we knew would be incredibly difficult to figure out--for me, in particular, I imagined that the enemy AI system would be the biggest pain in the ass to implement. (spoiler: it actually wasn't) So like the good little programmer I am, I decided to put it off for a really long time and focus on other aspects of the game--in the meantime, however, we needed a way to have the enemies do something, anything at all--so we ended up adding the ability for the player to control the enemies directly. While incredibly entertaining (and somewhat unfair), this does serve a more practical purpose, allowing us to quickly test and balance enemies and their skills. It also allows us to turn on/off an enemy in the middle of battle--so if we need an enemy to do a specific thing (IE, for many of our c…
- Into Battle! - 16 June 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wn0JIymbMM I know it's been a long time since we've posted anything, but we're still at it! Lately I've found myself playtesting a lot using Game/Scene views and managed to catch our battle sequence--the left side is what the player 'sees' and the right side is what actually happens in the scene without any other 'effects.' In game development, and most things really, there's a lot of trickery involved. More often than not, a simple screen fade is almost all that's needed to get the job done.
- Battle Skill: Substitute - 12 May 2018
https://youtu.be/Cz866GTEhpk We've recently implemented new skills for our characters and I wanted to share one of the more interesting ones that we've come up with! In our tactical, turn-based RPG Wellspring: Altar of Roots, Apolith fulfills the 'tank' role and as such, his job is basically... well, to get the hell beat out of him. He has a number of ways to go about doing this, from taunting enemies to reducing damage inflicted, to charging right into the fray. I wanted to play around with the more 'positional' aspects of Wellspring's combat, so we came up with the Substitute skill. Essentially, this allows Apolith to swap locations with a targeted ally, thus removing them from the heat of combat. More interestingly, however, Apolith makes himself the target of any skills, damaging or otherwise, that were previously targeted to the ally he's substituting himself with. In this video, y…
- Inspection Mode - 7 May 2018
https://youtu.be/8HxCWfocMIw So this probably isn't the most glamorous feature ever, but we've recently fine-tuned our combat "Inspection Mode!" This is essentially a way to 'pause' combat and cycle through all of the combatants to view detailed information such as movement range, the currently-queued up skill and its targets, as well as any active buffs or debuffs.. and probably some other junk too when I get around to adding it. This mode has existed since the early days of Wellspring, but we noticed that players would sometimes enter this mode and not realize it--this update serves to make it a little more obvious that the player is 'inspecting' the characters and that the normal flow of combat is 'paused.' Implementation-wise, we threw in another post-processing volume (gotta love these things) as well as the flashing "Inspection Mode" text controlled by a simple Tween. We also 'fro…
- Teleport Strike - 30 April 2018
https://youtu.be/billYSlAfpc Finished up most of the Teleport Strike skill for our turn-based, tactical RPG Wellspring : Altar of Roots! This is our first 'free-targeted' skill, meaning that you can position it anywhere within its attack range. If there isn't a nearby target, the skill simply moves the user to its targeted destination, but if there is an enemy (or enemies) in range, it will deal damage to the nearest one. The most challenging parts were setting up the animation/particle effect timing and working out the logic for whether damage is dealt or not--our skill system is pretty robust, so it wasn't too terribly hard to get it up and running. Pretty satisfied with how it turned out, but there are a few small issues (like the sound effects and particle effects disappearing abruptly) that'll be cleaned up soon enough! We feel that this adds a lot more variety to Bodom's overall s…
- Free Targeting - 26 April 2018
https://youtu.be/-uTqFQlqVig Hi all! Here's a more 'behind the scenes' look at something that I've recently been working on! In Wellspring, up until this point, all skills have required an actual target before they can be selected and queued up. We always wanted to have certain skills allow the player to manually position them and therefore, not require a specific target. Unfortunately, we didn't build out our skill system with this in mind initially, so there was a little bit of uh.. 'messiness' involved with implementing this basic first step. For Bodom's skill Teleport Strike, we want the player to be able to position it anywhere within a certain radius, and potentially do damage if it's close to an enemy--but it can also be used as an escape route or gap closer. There were a few tricky parts to implementing this: the first issue isn't super difficult, but requires the skill to be co…
- Chain Effects - 21 April 2018
https://youtu.be/xBSxjIQH_F0 Wellspring's gridless combat system introduces the concept of 'chains', which allows allies (and enemies!) to queue up skills to deal extra damage and other effects. We wanted to make the presence of a chain more obvious, while also adding more gratifying visual feedback for the player. To help draw attention to chains, we've used Unity's Post Processing Stack (v2), and added three effects: vignette, chromatic aberration and color grading/tinting. Thanks to the flexibility of Unity's volume system, we can make the effect stronger overall just by changing a single value, and the more skills that are involved in the chain, the more pronounced the effect is. We also change the damage font as well, just to let the player know how 'large' the chain is. We're pretty satisfied with the effect, but we're wondering if it's too strong, or maybe not pronounced enough,…
- Wellspring Pre-Alpha Demo 1.3.2 is LIVE! - 9 April 2018
Hi everyone! We've been working hard to update, optimize and fix some of the issues reported in our most recent pre-alpha demo and we have a new build available! We're looking for any and all feedback, so if you're feeling up to the challenge, dive right in: there's over three hours of content, loads of skills, items and equipment, and plenty of challenging encounters! You can download it from our store page here! Since we've changed our name from Bevontule to Wellspring, if you want to keep your old save files and configuration settings, you'll need to do a few things, as the application data folder has a different name: Find the AppData folder for Bevontule--this is usually found at C:\Users\ \AppData\LocalLow\Multithreaded Games\ Run "Wellspring_Demo.exe" and close it before choosing configuration options from the built-in Unity dialog. There should be a "Wellspring" directory in the…
- Wellspring Pre-Alpha Demo 1.3.2 is LIVE! - 9 April 2018
Hi everyone! We've been working hard to update, optimize and fix some of the issues reported in our most recent pre-alpha demo and we have a new build available! We're looking for any and all feedback, so if you're feeling up to the challenge, dive right in: there's over three hours of content, loads of skills, items and equipment, and plenty of challenging encounters! You can download it from our store page here! Since we've changed our name from Bevontule to Wellspring, if you want to keep your old save files and configuration settings, you'll need to do a few things, as the application data folder has a different name: Find the AppData folder for Bevontule--this is usually found at C:\Users\ \AppData\LocalLow\Multithreaded Games\ Run "Wellspring_Demo.exe" and close it before choosing configuration options from the built-in Unity dialog. There should be a "Wellspring" directory in the…
- What's in a name? - 1 March 2018
Greetings, everyone! While we’ve received a lot of amazing feedback during our Kickstarter, one of the bigger pieces of advice that’s stuck out is that we should probably consider renaming the game—obviously not the ideal situation, but I can definitely see it and it’s better to do it now rather than later. Bevontule’s a cool word and all, but it has very little recognition, people tend to not remember it and people tend to not be able to pronounce it. So we wanted to pick something that’s more… ‘normal.’ Lately we’ve been focused on the name "Wellspring"— and this has a special significance, as ‘wellsprings’ are the latent energy ‘pools’ found throughout the continent of Onich. Without further ado—let us know what you think! Wellspring : Altar of Roots Wellspring Story : Altar of Roots Wellspring Saga : Altar of Roots Kelvari Chronicles : Altar of Roots Keep "Bevontule : Altar of Roots…
- What's in a name? - 1 March 2018
Greetings, everyone! While we’ve received a lot of amazing feedback during our Kickstarter, one of the bigger pieces of advice that’s stuck out is that we should probably consider renaming the game—obviously not the ideal situation, but I can definitely see it and it’s better to do it now rather than later. Bevontule’s a cool word and all, but it has very little recognition, people tend to not remember it and people tend to not be able to pronounce it. So we wanted to pick something that’s more… ‘normal.’ Lately we’ve been focused on the name "Wellspring"— and this has a special significance, as ‘wellsprings’ are the latent energy ‘pools’ found throughout the continent of Onich. Without further ado—let us know what you think! Wellspring : Altar of Roots Wellspring Story : Altar of Roots Wellspring Saga : Altar of Roots Kelvari Chronicles : Altar of Roots Keep "Bevontule : Altar of Roots…
- Bevontule Kickstarter Update #13 : Farewell... for now! - 1 March 2018
Hi all! While we didn’t hit our Kickstarter goal this time around, we’re not giving up! Check out our latest update for more information on the future of Bevontule: Altar of Roots! Until next time, Derek
- Bevontule Kickstarter Update #13 : Farewell... for now! - 1 March 2018
Hi all! While we didn’t hit our Kickstarter goal this time around, we’re not giving up! Check out our latest update for more information on the future of Bevontule: Altar of Roots! Until next time, Derek
