7. Improved normal enemies. Resistances & Abilities added.
Skeletons - invulnerable auran & elemental magic damage
CyberAnts - invulnerable auran damage
Rogue Thug - invulnerable auran damage
+Enemies that cast hide spell are now also permeable (no physical damage!)
and a lot more..!
... and much more!
New Features:
60 - visible 'charges' on Inventory Item Icons
1212 - change difficulty on the fly
1190 - PauseMode added to Beginner Mode (press Space to activate)
1433 - Ant Queen fight reworked & improved
1431 - improve hard mode (better AI, faster turning, better usage of Magic, and a lot more improvements!)
1427 - improve Bosses independant from difficulty modes (new abilities)
1456 - trait levels names added to stats panel
1465 - disable tutorial button added to every Tutorial Screen
1357 - rising of a traits is now better written in textbox (blue)
1459 - textbox comment added for spike damage, to better protect the feets
1440 - improve range weapons (cooldown reduced; and stun effect added to projectiles to make range combat more fun!)
Corrections:
1421 - Route on Worldmap from Valley to Fallen Dome disabled
1416 - Dialogue fix: COMOR OF THE LOST AND FOUNDS 2
1422 - Dialogue fix: Valley 1 - Link1.1b
1423 - Dialogue fix: A desert camp
1425 - Dialogue fix: A RUIN_Screen
1467 - A Pit Dialogue wrong image adjusted
1419 - GATE SCENE D: when choosing Harro in marketplace, unneeded bronce helmet removed
1411 - "sluggish" fade in / out of LargeMap fixed
1441 - blocker in maze 6_4 removed
1442 - correct damagetypes for green_spit, god_spit, green_spit_pool, acid_spit, reddust defined
1430 - Flamethrower shouldn't stack; damageoutput lowered a bit; fixed
1446 - Fix that break attack was not recognised by rangeattacks and static_enemies where affected by LOVE & UNMOVEABLE spell effects
1439 - Combat difficulty: improved normal enemies by using Flags to add resistances
1454 - ammo for crossbow/sling in random market added
1458 - Peculiar stone bug fixed; stone is now accepted as well aas other stones
1435 - more corpses added to the branchways (because of the Story)
1078 - maze 4_2 stone puzzle small bug fixed
1461 - bug in range combat targetting of NPCs fixed
1432 - maze 21_e_1 fix the start; more mobs at the start suiting the story
1402 - rename button "Character States" to "Character Stats"
1414 - Music-Loop 'fallen_branchways' fixed
Aeon of Sands - Art Book | Soundtrack and support plan 2019
During the last month, we have been hard at work on the next patch for Aeon of Sands, which will introduce a number of fixes and improvements to the gameplay. We will also add some premium content to complete the package of the game.
Soundtrack
You can expect 22 tracks for 35 minutes of great ambient and theme music. It's a direct, to the point collection, combining the exotic feelings of the desert of Aeon of Sands with those of a tense movie out of the 80’s.
Art Book
Along with it, there will come a 100 pages Art Book of the game, brimful of cool artworks, including game production art and final illustration, in high resolution, complete with a bit of behind-the-scenes information, and an in detail article about the game inspiration.
All of the above is coming early February!
Upcoming combat improvements:
NEW ability to change the difficulty of the game on the fly
NEW easy/beginner mode gets an active pause (freezing time, but allowing you to consume health salves and reagents)
Hard mode will be significantly harder, with quicker opponents and more difficult combat dance
NEW “stun” effect added to projectiles (range combat)
NEW strategies to bosses, making them more challenging
Updates stats to range combat throughout all difficulty modes (range fighting is now more efficient and fun)
Some normal enemies have learned resistance (i.e. skeletons are invulnerable to magic, and more...)
There will also be improvements to other minor aspects: specific items, enemies etc. Overall, the game combat is less prone to feel mechanical and it feels more challenging and fun.
There are more things we are going to polish in our continuing support for Aeon of Sands. Suggestions are welcome!
Aeon of Sands - Patchnotes macOSX build v1.0.6.1
Version 1.0.6.1
New Features:
macOS build now also supports achievements
Sorry for the long wait!
TwoBitsKid wish you all a Merry Christmas and many achievements next year !
Aeon of Sands - Patchnotes Version 1.0.6
Version 1.0.6
Our X-mas patch is ready!
Corrections:
a bug in the stash was fixed, where under certain circumstances an item can disappear
two reversed results in the Skirmish were corrected
Xunis progression in focus has been slightly improved
non working platform in "#4n/e*#a - %5e9 Un#6rr00ts" removed
'abs' (absorbtion) is renamed to 'prot' (protection)
'weaponhand' and 'shieldhand' renamed to 'righthand' and 'lefthand'
small visual cropping bug in titlemenu and worldmap fixed
walkable fences in Kovas Camp fixed
a couple of spelling fixes
credits updated
Interview: A Coffee Break with Aeon of Sands - The Trail
A Coffee Break with: Aeon of Sands - The Trail
The Gazette of Independent Gaming did an in-depth interview about the development and design choices with TwoBitsKid, read it here: https://medium.com/@gofig.news/a-coffee-break-with-florian-aeon-of-sands-the-trail-5410422ac0d8
What impresses me with Aeon of Sands, is the amount of choices you’ve left up for the player to take, giving the game a feel that’s almost “Choose your own Adventure”-like.
It’s especially impressive because there’s only the two of you, and you really didn’t go the easy road.
So, why was it so important for you to give player narrative choices?
Yes, to create, implement, test and revise the branching nature of Aeon of Sands’ narrative is one of the most difficult things in development, but we felt that it was necessary to be very specific with this story, to avoid it being only a blurred background.
And this specificity meant for us that the choices needed to have different and tangible consequences, plus an amount of text that is novel-sized.
But that’s the point: any game is a story. Such mechanics are something we as players care for, even subconsciously; thus, we should care for it even more as developers.
In this case, the game is a story we tell. We wanted to tell it the best we could, so, this was the choice we made. And if it required complexity, we would have gone for it, as we have.
...
Aeon of Sands - Patchnotes Version 1.0.4+1.0.5
Version 1.0.5
Corrections:
hotfixed the rewards at "A Skirmish"
Version 1.0.4
New Features:
added 4 new stats to gameplay stats screen, which is shown after the end and the credits
Corrections:
fixed the wrong number of all story scenes in the gameplay stats screen (we have 147)
fixed a bug where under certain cercumstances some enemies where not counted as kill for the result screen after a playthrough
fixed a bug where you couldn't click on the portrait anymore to access the inventory
help menu background has now the correct background when exiting a game
problem solved with Xunis tear attack (thanks to the reporter of this bug)
Aeon of Sands - Patchnotes Version 1.0.3
Version 1.0.3
New Features:
double-click (or middle-click) on an item in the inventory to identify items
(for touchpad/macOS users)
hard mode is now even harder: enemy AI improved and chances to break an attack lowered
the order of items in your inventory is now saved!
you can now throw items into holes
Corrections:
fixed a bug where difficulty mode was not saved into savegame and was reset to normal mode (only for new game)
added a fix to close the hole to the ant queen, when ant queen was already killed (only for new game)
small visual update of "a ruin" maze
some item locations in starting mazes and "the valley" changed
skeletons now drop 'poultice' instead of 'water skin' or 'raw meat'
'water skin' lowered to 5 hp and 5 stamina instead of 5 hp and 10 stamina
stats of shoes improved
typos fixed in "the pit", "the marketplace", "xuni", "intro", tutorials and help pages
parser fix in "skirmish" where a party of three can meet the leech
"Centipede" made a bit faster
"Pantellan Cutthroat" drop chance and items changed
Desktop wallpaper for Aeon of Sands - The Trail
Hello readers!
For this installment of “Sleep ’till late with Marco”, I’ll guide you in the process of Aeon of Sands – The Trail official Titlescreen and desktop wallpaper creation.
The first requirement to create artwork is someone who asks or forces you to do it. Usually a perverted creature called co-worker who ignores the fact that you already have something to do: to recover from too little sleep, to buy food and to defend yourself against garden vines that try to enter your floor uninvited. This kind of thing.
For proper illustration making, there are engagement rules to be respected.
Thumbnails ahoy
After some other unjustified jokes associated with the threat that he would add heinous features to the game that only his distorted mind could love, like, more statistics, I give up, and for the sake of reason, I’ll make a few sketches that you see above.
What I wanted to create:
a bold view of the sacred giant tree of the city of Pantella, called: Kinami
the tree: important to the story of the game, thus should show its vitality, its will to spread, and to fill up the image
the city: had to be shown growing on it, in a symbiotic relation
a figure in foreground to help me state the proportion of the scene, and most of all to give a sense of story, of a final destination reached, or of something about to happen.
I thumbnailed a dozen possibilities, and decided for the one that seemed the most clear and sharply cut: a straightforward one.
Black and white rough
At that point, I usually want to have only a couple of values; in this case that was also seconding a scene overflown by the two suns’ light. I’m mostly concerned with shape and flow until very late in illustration, in any case.
After that, I distanced the various planes a bit, and thought about the mood.
In our story there is a kind of metaphorical veil, sometimes even a real one. A warm strangulation that threatens to suffocate the main character. This sometimes leads him in situations where right and wrong are blurred and Setrani, our leading actor, cannot help but miserably move on.
So, I started playing with that idea and the tree.
Add heat
The rough was ready, and I started to work on the preparatory drawing. I don’t need such drawings to be very precise in respect to line, but I do need that in respect to masses; I need to know what goes where precisely.
I’m not the kind of visual artist that has the details fixed in mind from the start: I usually find them as I go on, as long as I have an expression, or emotion in mind, and a structure in place.
Now for instance, the placeholder figure in foreground was really lame. I needed a clear purpose for it, beyond the simple balance of the image.
So I borrowed a particular creature from the story, I covered it with a cloak, and gave it a sense of foreboding menace which fits with the general theme of the game.
Draw the skeleton out
Then I started to paint it. A lot of clone-mix brush work and pencils later, I arrived the stage of the following screenshot.
Pour the color in
And even later, after adjusting the overall hue, adding detail and trying to pursue light diffraction and more distance separation, I came to the following one.
Add detail
Then, I had to add the game title that also called for a revision of the logo used for the normal advertising screenshots.
Enter the logo
I decided not to occupy myself so much with the dome, and to suggest it only in the distance. Besides, whatever the creature in the foreground is, the dome is an obstacle that didn’t stop it: it’s already inside the city limits. ,
Now I just had to add the shadows cast by the tree and by the figure on the ground, and add a bit of detail to it: grass, maybe a bit of farming for the sustenance of the city inhabitants.
Finally I placed the logo on it, and added the finishing touches.
- achievements added to the Windows version of the game (macOS achievements comes later)
- lock mouse cursor in video options
- two new tutorial pages added
- new window screen resolution added (1920x1080)
- reset all options menu added
Changes:
- various tutorials updated and enhanced
- typos in dialogues fixed
- typos in item descriptions fixed
- party inventory improved
- quit via escape/pause button from largemap and partyinventory
- starting mazes improved a bit
