At this moment we are not going to localize Archeo: Shinar, when the game is in Early Access. We are preparing structures which will make localization (not dubbing!) possible and easy to implement, but in the current state we decided to work on the Career mode, voice over and the interface. For some, it may be not clear, but we will support Archeo even after the full release for at least 6 months. We hope that after the release we will earn money for the localization, which is always a great addition for non-English speakers. However, we not only need more budget to work on localization but also we don’t want to limit the languages based on our sales data, which clearly states that we should deliver only a few localizations.
What’s more, a lot of people reached us offering their service and help with the localization. That’s great, we really appreciate your passion and your attitude. You are awesome, wonderful people! And we probably will reach you back and use your help, however, we can not imagine doing so without rewarding each person. When we are talking about the lack of budget for the localization, we hope that a significant fraction of it will be spent to reward your hard work and magnificent attitude!
We should also add that most of you usually don’t see the amount of text in the game. We tried to limit it for your experience, but Archeo has a lot of ‘forks’ which hides the alternative events and so on. We can tell you that random events on their own have more than 35 000 words. As a comparison, a standard book (200 pages of manuscript) has about 55 000 words. At this point, we can’t even estimate how many words Archeo will have, because we are still writing the career mode. We just can’t expect anyone to translate our game for free.
To sum it up, we are going to release a full game with the career mode only in English. The game will be prepared for further localization, which we hope to deliver in the next few months after the release.
Cheers!
How many Random Events are in Archeo: Shinar?
How many Random Events are in Archeo: Shinar?
We've been asked about it a few times now.
Archeo: Shinar contains 98 random events, but we should make something clear about those.
8 of them are special events related to legendary explorers.
30 of them are simple events, which have their own conditions and will fill the blank spots if there's no place for advanced one (for example because of too big impact on the gameplay).
And we have also 60 advanced ones. Each advanced random event has its own storyline, it has always a meaningful choice and appears more than once in a game. Advanced random events are like simple stories always with two different sequels, but the player gets only one of them due to his choices. We can say that the whole 60 advanced random events contain more than 180 simple random events linked together.
There's no limit on how much advanced random events the player can get during his (or her) one custom game, but usually, it won't be more than 10.
The same event can't occur twice in the same run, but can during two different runs. In the career mode, random events can't occur twice in two consecutive runs.
If you want to know more, we posted a thread on the community hub about random events some time ago.
Cheers!
Voice acting - What will it be alike?
Voice acting - What will it be alike?
We have prepared a little of voice acting in the early version of the game in custom mode. We’ve seen that most of you were surprised by it. If so, you probably will be surprised again, because we plan to add voice-over to all the texts which are related to the plot in career mode and also the the tutorial.
What does it mean? It means, that everything you see in the current version of the game won’t have a voice-over, only the tutorial (new tutorial) will get the voice-over. However, in the career mode there will be a lot of letters from the opponents, animated clips and letters between the missions. And all of that will have voice-over. That also means you won’t hear those voices till the career mode release. The tutorial voice-over is planned to be released before that, but not in the next update.
We do not plan dubbing, the voice-over will be only in english.
Cheers!
The Tutorial - What will it be alike?
The Tutorial - What will it be alike?
Current tutorial isn’t going to be in the final version. We want to deliver you tutorial divided into 5 lessons. Each lesson is going to be shorter than the current tutorial. But what’s more interesting, you will have the opportunity to experience it with the next update (04.04.2019). Each lesson will help you with something else. Of course, the first one must tell the player about expeditions and explorers (and character creator, we definitely can’t leave you alone with such a difficult task alone), but every other will bring new mechanics, like Press or Property Management.
However, each tutorial will be locked (we’re going to unlock 4 out of 5 in the period between next update and full release) due to career progress. After the next milestones in the career player will unlock new tutorials. This way a new player won’t have to learn everything at once and the process of learning won’t be too demanding.
The fifth lesson is going to be locked until the full release. This certain tutorial will introduce the player to more advanced tactics. We are locking it because playing Archeo with that knowledge might impact the first experience and it’s not meant to learn that before the first play. We even assume that player during the career will learn all the tactics presented in tutorial 5 and it won’t change the experience for him (or her).
What’s more about the tutorial? Like always, there will be Cuppy to guide you. And she will have a voice! All 5 tutorials are going to have voice over for Cuppy and her babbling. We wanted to deliver the voice over quicker, but it would be more expensive to divide work for voice actor into a few gigs when we can take care of it when all the tutorials are in place. (There’s also a little chance that we would also use Cuppy in the career and we need her voice there, but we didn’t tell you anything about it.)
Cheers!
Update #02c Note (0.75c)
Update #02c Note (0.75c)
Changes
1. Information about offered money at Land Stock.
Bug Fixes
1.Game breaking bug in round 30 after the last expedition fixed.
This is a quick, not planned fix. Thanks to the player ‘Stado Baranów’ we have recreated and fixed a game breaking bug in the last round in the custom game. Next update will be there on time (04.04.2019).
Cheers!
The Career - what will it be alike?
The career mode will contain 5 missions. Each mission is going to be similar to the custom game (structure). However, it will be different in many ways. First of all, the career mode is going to tell a story. We won’t tell you the details, but the game title may have a clue - it’s about the land of Shinar, where according to Hebrew Bible was the tower of Babel.
The player’s going to play with one character, which will take a big role in the story. Each mission will be different and will focus on a different opponent. Unlike the custom game, the opponents will be more active, they will send letters and try to cheat. Yes, they will cheat, because they will be single opponent per mission and they need a little help to be a challenge. Nevertheless, every mission is going to have different goals and the opponents will act differently.
After finishing a mission player will get a chance to take something with him for later. Like an explorer, or property, or money etc. This little something can be used during the next missions to boost new start. This way player can start the second mission with the best explorer from the first one.
Also, between missions player will get mail from opponents and from the Royal Archeology Institute. We want to keep the player close to the story, even between the missions. Another important detail about the career is the animation clips. The player will learn more about the story in the clips and the whole story will be told using those clips and letters from our opponents and institute.
The career’s missions will have unique expeditions which will be more described and scripted than the usual ones. In a few missions, the location will be determined by the plot, and the findings and random events will match that location.
The presented story will be not based on facts but will be a probable interpretation of archeological finds and theories. It won’t contain fantasy elements and is not going to use the aliens in any way. We won’t lie to you, it’s not a hidden truth, but it may be a hidden truth.
We want career mode to be a well jointed adventure, still focused on economy and strategy, but with more story to it, more interaction with the opponents and a feature allowing to take something from one mission to another mission. The career mode will have a grotesque vibe to it but after all is going to be a solid story.
We want your opinions, what would you expect, what do you think about our approach and tell us if there’s anything particular that you would love to see in the career mode!
Cheers!
Roadmap - Update #03
Roadmap - Update #03
Planned release date of Update #03: 04.04.2019
1.Press Rework Commentary: We want to introduce Royal Chess Club with 3 chief editors from the gazettes. The player is going to have two actions per round with gazettes, one in the chess club and one in the press tab. There will be also a way to learn more about the player’s current relationship with gazettes and brand new way to share the story everywhere to build up the player’s popularity. 2. Flavour text on expeditions Commentary: On every expedition, there will be 3 hidden messages about events during the voyage. It won’t affect gameplay. 3. Archeopedia adjustments Commentary: With new features Archeopedia needs adjustments. We want to add there everything about expedition reports, forecasts and land auction schedule. 4. User Interface adjustments Commentary: We can start now final work on the UI because we won’t add more features to the gameplay. And Archeo needs a lot of work on the UI. We want more text bubbles on hover with more information about the components. Graphic indicators for some actions (Have I bid for land in this round?) and more. 5. Detailed Salary Reports Commentary: We have expedition reports, we are going to have press relation reports, but what’s about the costs? Yes, we are going to add this too. No more raw paychecks. 6. Bug fixes Commentary: Like always in early access. 7. The new tutorial Commentary: The new tutorial is going to be divided into 5 lessons. It’s a huge change for Archeo. For now, we will grant you access to 4 out of 5 lessons. In the final release, the player will have access only to the first one, and the rest of the tutorials will be unlocked during career. This way player will learn how to play the game step by step and it won’t be necessary to remember everything at once. Lessons are going to be shorter than the current tutorial but focused on delivering you more information and tactical insight. The game won’t lock features in the career mode just because they were not mentioned in the tutorial, but some of them will be introduced later in the game. We are going to add voice over to the tutorial but it probably won’t be there with the next update.
Meantime
We are working on the Career mode and we will tell you more about it in the nearest future. We encourage you to share your opinions and ideas in the comments and to be active!
Summary
With the Update #03 we want to finish the gameplay (which means we won’t add new features to the gameplay, but it’s not like the game is 100% balanced yet) and start to polish the interface and focus on the story (career mode). We understand that Archeo needs a clear and easy way to teach new players how to play and without a good tutorial, it feels like a bunch of strange features and odd rules. Nevertheless, we encourage you to experiment with Archeo, and if you don't want to get confused, you can always wait a little bit, because Cuppy will tell you everything you need to know soon.
Cheers!
Update #02 Note
Update #02 Note
Changes
1.Expedition Forecast Commentary: Basically player has 3 expeditions to choose from. It’s possible to have more choices due to the train station or other factors (random events). The forecast will deliver information about one out of three basic expeditions in advance. Depending on the difficulty the range of forecast may vary. 2.Prices Charts
Commentary: Prices charts for stimulants, because the player needs to know when the Merchant Company is robbing him and Prices charts for the land market because the player needs to know how much has he (or the bot) overpaid. 3.Merchant Company Boosters
Commentary: There will always be 3 boosters to choose from, and the merchant company will try to personalize one of the boosters for the player and his needs. 4.Black Market - The risk of buying Artifacts
Commentary: In a nutshell, it won’t be that risky like it is now. Also, all of the cheap Artifacts won’t appear on Black Market’s sales. 5.Black Market - Demand rework
Commentary: We want to give every artifact at least one chance to appear on demand. Also, we don’t want cheap artifacts on the demand. 6.Generating first 5 explorers and their addictions Commentary: To balance the starting condition we want to create situation 2-2-1, which means that on start there will be always 2 explorers addicted to stimulant_1, 2 explorers addicted to stimulant_2 and 1 addicted to stimulant_3. And by 'addicted' we mean that they are very enthusiastic about certain stimulant. 7.Property Management - Interaction with the map
Commentary: Clicking on nobody’s lands or on lands of your opponent will open the brief note about the land. 8.Schedule of land auctions Commentary: The auctions will be prepared in advance and the player will have the opportunity to plan next moves depending on the quality of the lands and their potential value. The auctions will be executed the same as in the current version, but the schedule will let you consider saving money for the next round. 9.Expedition Reports Commentary: Reports contain all the information about the last expedition. The player can access all reports from the current game in the lobby. It’s super important because the information about the chance of success will be there (and it probably will be 100% or 0%, because Archeo gives % chances only for a certain range of lacking skill, and for Quests with “+” there’s no rng at all). With this tool, the player can learn quicker and better how to evaluate the difficulty of expeditions. 10. Background for items in Warehouse changed
11. Credits updated
12. Information for attempting to put artifact on the Black Market without accepting risk and margin.
13. AI opponents’ aggression on the land market decreased
Commentary: Bots are aggressive on the land market, and they should be to prevent the player from buying too many lands. But they were too aggressive because they know that they can’t bankrupt. It should be better now, at least after the first 10 rounds, when we feel they should be aggressive. 14. New information for each land - when and for how much was it bought
Commentary: With Interaction with the map you can see this information for every land on the map. 15. Getting Fears on Normal Difficulty changed Commentary: We feel that our last attempt didn’t solve this problem for the Normal difficulty. We decided to place a brand new algorithm for this difficulty, which allows 100% security if the right stimulant is present. The only negative factor (which means it’s the only reason for getting a fear) is now the lack of the certain stimulant (based on explorer’s addiction) 16. Cautious Attitude gives a better bonus to the risk of getting a fear.
17. Lands’ statistics are presented by bars instead of raw numbers Commentary: It’s important to see the max. limit od land’s statistics. The player needs to know that a certain value is high or low. With bars, it should be clear. 18. A few adjustments for the random events in the code
19. “Thumb” graphic in the expedition
20. Archeopedia - text correction
21. Changes in random quests on the expedition - RNG factor terminated Commentary: We’ve changed the formula for the random quests. Player probably won’t even see the differences but there are a few. First of all, we’ve terminated raw RNG factor. It was a small value, but after a lot of feedback, we decided to terminate it. After that, we had a void in the formula, and we needed to add a new factor to fill it for the balance. We added new relation for the amount of explorer participating in the random quest with the rule “the more the merrier”. 22. Cautious Attitude buffed
Commentary: After changes to getting fears on Normal Difficulty, cautious attitude became useless. We decided to buff it to make it a tool for players, who want to save some money on the stimulants but also don’t want to risk too many fears. Nevertheless, cautious attitude always will be a better tool on harder difficulties.
Bug Fixes
1. The sailor path in animation in the Quarters fixed
2. [ESC] works for Archeopedia
3. The game starts on the best possible resolution for the player’s PC 4. The fired explorers’ salary fixed Commentary: It was a game breaking bug, and we are glad it’s solved now. 5. The bug with land auction report fixed Commentary: Sometimes it showed the wrong winner. 6. Random Event ‘Need more coffee” fixed
Summary
This update provides adjustments to the gameplay and should help a lot with the understanding of the game. We didn’t want players to spend their time in the archeopedia learning basic and trying to figure it out. Instead, we want the player to learn on his mistakes and gather more and more experience with every other expedition. That’s why we added more tools for predictions and reports.
During our work on Update #02, we also had time to work on the career mode. At this time we know exactly what we can add to the game and what we will add in the next updates.
In next days we’re going to talk with you, the community, about our plans for next updates, for the release and about the career mode. We would love to see your activity and opinions and we hope that our plans and your expectations will meet.
Cheers!
Archeo: Shinar 20% off Weeklond Discount
Archeo: Shinar is on Weeklong deal 20% off. It's the last stop for us to determine what will be in the game and what we need to cut. After this deal, we need to make decisions about animations, localization and everything extra and secret that we are not talking about. If you wanted to get it for yourself it's the best time to buy the game!
And keep in mind, that the Update#02 is coming soon (05.03.2019)!
Default Resolution Bug
We've found a bug with the default resolution on some of the PCs. Please, go to Options and set your resolution manually. If it's already set in options, then change it to another one, and set it again. Remember to apply all the changes in the options.
We've seen that a lot of users play on wrong (lower than it could be) resolution. This bug will be eliminated with the next update (05.03.2019).
Cheers!
