The development team has made the following changes and updates to the game in the latest update.
Corruption earned in a run (max 300 if all 3 characters hit 100%) is saved between runs. This will result in earning corruption levels which will begin to unlock new content over time such as subclasses, new classes, rooms, etc.
Quest system now "complete" with all unlocks in place. Can select any quest on the quest screen in a more visual interface. Base game is surface and caves. First few quicker corruption levels unlock remainder of levels.
Once levels are unlocked, specialty rooms outside a certain subset now unlock per corruption level. These will be utilized by procedural map generation as they are available.
Once rooms are unlocked, subclasses will now unlock and are now accessible via the new party selection.
Party selection now follows quest selection. It starts with the usual setup. You can now have any combination of heroes (3 of same, 2 + 1, whatever). Subclasses can now be selected at bottom of each character slot when unlocked, and future classes can be easily added post launch.
After party selection, you can now use a starting amount of gold (testing 1000) to spend in town. Same interface as town portal. Can get potions, or specialize the abilities as you see fit or save the gold.
Resolved issue where tooltips would be too large. Has helped a lot with tooltips going off screen but not completely fixed until beta.
Resolved issue with occasional crashes accessing town portal with new timed shop system. It was expecting a full 10 abilities every time you entered, and therefore crashed if you bought something and re-entered it.
In ability loot window and town portal, reordered the characters at bottom to align with their positions in each room. This was required as you can now have 3 of the same character and wouldn't be able to easily tell which one you were adding abilities too.
Resolved issues with a handful of abilities with bad visual effects causing errors/crashes.
Final pass on rooms (some still being tweaked in beta period).
Additional safety checks if an empty ability button is clicked. Normally impossible as the buttons are disabled, but checking to see if this resolves the rare null reference error I'm seeing on button press in logs.
Shifted the persistent corruption bar into the quest window where its more pertinent.
Added Discord button to main menu.
Resolved potential bug during corruption fight where due to order of operations, if the initial character was killed before killing the enemy party members, they could attempt to take a turn before the encounter reorganized everything.
Please report any issues in our Discord server or our Steam Forums.
- Quarter Onion Games
Updated Patch Notes for June 9
The development team has made the following changes and updates to the game in the latest update.
To potentially resolve issues with targeting, the previous target is saved at the end of every player turn (with the exception of a player that is currently confused or charmed). After AI takes their turns, the targeted unit will revert back to whichever target the player had selected before if they are still alive. This way if you are focusing on a unit, you will not need to reselect a target until they're dead.
Updated encyclopedia to have entries for all sections. Some areas are still WIP until final lines are in.
Removed speed run in options. This is now the default speed of play to help speed up game flow. Will revisit in the future.
Added more final assets to fill out remaining rooms.
Raised the ladder on the path down from the surface boss fight to make that prop more apparent to enter next level.
Updated effect around ladder.
Updated base attack effect prefabs.
Resolved issue where projectiles attached to skills were getting stuck or resetting with final assets.
Updated some more unfinished Rooms, still a WiP
Did some adjustments to Templates but needs another pass due to some bad data causing crashes.
Added a potential fix for the delay to projectiles going off that should speed things up.
Quick pass on the rooms recently finished by Xyla to ensure they were aligned with Templates.
Finished all the final VFX.
Fixed errors in Templates. Running fine now.
Please report any issues in our Discord server or our Steam Forums.
- Quarter Onion Games
Updated Patch Notes for May 30
The development team has made the following changes and updates to the game in the latest update.
Updated challenge mode to show icons for each daily modifier in menu. Will be adding icons with tooltip to game UI tomorrow.
Added assets for the Town portal and updated the room
Rehooked TownPortal prop template to allow access to shops.
Added first pass final turn and target effects.
Updated challenge UI.
Ability tooltips will show values for each modifier (base amounts) when added to a character. When an ability is on the observed bar, shows the base multipliers where applicable.
Health potions increased to 100hp and drop rate reduced. Does not guarantee a drop per room.
Ability window only shows up if an ability was learned.
- Starting stats on surface will ensure neither side misses attacks outside debuffs reduce accuracy or buffs increase dodge. This does not guarantee past surface as players can bring up stats to be inline via their ability stats.
Pyromancer dodge reduced to resolve endless combat
Cooldown identifier on each ability is darker to make it more apparent when an ability is on cooldown
Shops (tavern and town portal) now update every 5 minutes with a defined inventory. At least 1 Ember ability is always available in town portal.
Encyclopedia (WIP) now accessible in main and pause menus. Shifting mostly text found in tutorials to this as well as expanding on lore. Tutorial will shift to being more simplistic and visual driven versus overloading with text.
Party now starts in each entrance opposite a doorway, or at a random doorway if the entrance has 4 exits.
Target stays active after an action is used. This allows the player to focus on the same target. Target will reset when the target unit dies, or when leaving a room.
Updated the target and turn effects for each unit type to better fit the unit mesh.
Resolved issue with incorrect props in some of the placeholder rooms.
Resolved issue with ability window coming up when there are no new abilities.
Updated some unfinished Rooms, still a WiP
Altered the effect in the Ember shard room to be less overpowering.
Tutorial has been temporarily disabled until a new visual approach is added.
All tutorial text has been consolidated into a new encyclopedia which can be access on main and pause menus. This allows someone to read the details at their leisure versus constant pop ups ingame.
Encyclopedia has tabs for all other information about the game such as units, abilities, and lore. They're all WIP with dummy data for the moment.
Join our Discord server to become a valued member of our community.
- Quarter Onion Games
Off Beat Reheat Plays the Emberlight Intro Quest
Watch the Emberlight dungeon run, as the Youtuber, Off Beat Reheat plays the first level and tutorial quest for the game. He did a fantastic job demonstrating the game. He took his time allowing the viewer to become part of the experience by allowing them to see what is happening at all times.
Click on the video below to watch the run. Don't forget to subscribe and like this video.
https://youtu.be/TZl09KI6I3A
Updated Build Notes for May 21
The development team has made the following changes and updates to the game in the latest update.
Added final menu/theme music to the game.
Removed placeholder music for menu and credits.
Updated main menu UI elements.
Updated textures on ground for each theme to final assets.
Updated the final terrain/wall texture assets.
Solved issue with motion blending with post processing.
Updated final textures for all Themes.
Updated post processing.
Added new VFX files.
Resolved issue where null props were being accessed when being enabled/disabled.
Updated main menu.
Updated gambling room and tavern floors.
Updated town portal.
Updated Templates prefab to properly replace the new room placeholders
Join our Discord server to become a valued member of our community.
- Quarter Onion Games
Emberlight's Roadmap
Launch (August 13)
With the recent announcement of Emberlight reaching alpha, we are fast approaching launch. We wanted to breakdown our plans both at launch and the time afterwards. The team has some great concepts for where to take the game, but the sky's the limit if the community finds new directions to take it. The launch is set for August 13th of this year. We look to have a full experience with both single player modes and the initial themes available.
Co-op (October)
Starting in October, up to 3 players will be able to join up and complete quests for the Ember Order together. This mode (at this point in design phase) will have a few adjustments to how it functions compared to Standard mode, but largely be the same. Players will each take their turn in combat, and be able to discuss out their progression through the level.
Dungeon Master (December)
This is a mode we're most excited for. It was requested from a handful of pen and paper fans that were looking for a way to be able to play a game that more closely mirrored the feel of those games without having to coordinate somewhere locally. The end result is a (we hope) virtual pen and paper experience that can be played globally.
Competitive (March)
As this is a few modes rolled into one, we're expecting a longer development cycle to complete. Competitive is, at the moment, split between three modes: Arena, Asymmetric Competitive, and Symmetric Competitive. These each provide new ways to compete amongst the community and claim dominance.
General
Outside the large modes we have planned above, we will be constantly be adding content post launch to expand out the options within the game. The main content updates include new abilities, new party members, new quests, new themes, and new units.
We are always looking for feedback on every front of development. As we still have three months before launch, there's still plenty to do to refine the core game experience. If anyone has any input on anything (art, audio, gameplay, etc), we always welcome it via our various channels. We'd recommend joining our Discord server as we're always around to respond, and can quickly plug the feedback in to see what can be done from it.
- Quarter Onion Games
Behind the Emberlight Theme Music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TW8tMLQ6UY&t=28s
Evil, darkness, corruption. These were the words that gave Emberlight's theme it's shape. And after extensive conversation on the game's lore with Will (William Phelps, Creative Director of Emberlight) it became clear to me that the music needed to tell a story that captured both the thematic material of Emberlight, and its inherent emotional weight, as well as the endless nature of the in-lore cycle of the Ember Order and Emberlight's re-playability as a roguelike game.
Whenever I approach writing a theme, I like to have as much information on the world and its lore as possible. I like to immerse myself in the game's world. That way, the music comes from the game world as much as the characters or stories do. In this way, Emberlight's theme could as much from Emberlight's world as Ember itself. That was my thinking going in.
In all the discussions on Emberlight's lore, one of those words just kept coming back to me as what underpinned the emotional weight of the game. Corruption. It was important to get darkness and evil across in the music too but it was this idea of corruption that hooked me into the music. And once I got started writing, the music took on a character of its own.
Whenever I'm composing and I get a keyword like this, the first question has to be, "what does this sound like?" It's always a challenge to condense something so abstract into musical terms. Sometimes a feeling can be portrayed in a single chord, or a set of them. Other times in a handful of notes.
It was with a handful of notes that I started on Emberlight. The motif needed to stick in your head. Like corruption, it needed to stay with you. And it needed to be instantly recognizable as Emberlight's theme. But it needed to be more than that. It had to tell a story. To that end, it was 'call and answer' that brought this corruption to life. And as the motif developed into a fully formed passage, Emberlight's theme was born.
When the theme begins, you hear this soprano vocal. Three notes. The question, a beckoning. And then, in amongst the rising layers of the music, you hear the answer. A cello. Gentle, alluring, it gives its reply. And it's this interplay between the vocal and the cello throughout the piece that would tell the story. A tale of need, of change and of loss.
That first question and answer is one half of the Emberlight theme. A theme which is built out of several passages but is ultimately defined by what it begins with and returns to. This interplay between vocal and cello. The pure losing itself to corruption only to be overcome by a new force of purity which in turn will lose itself to corruption.
Something that was really important for me, when approaching corruption from a musical standpoint was that the melody needed to contort at times, to veer off in some unexpected direction and give a sense of warping and deterioration of spirit somewhat. For Emberlight, it felt right to portray that with atonality, so, here, the notes and chords fall out of a strict scale and begin to subvert expectation as they take a darker turn.
Often you'll hear the vocal melody attempt to maintain tonality and adhere to the direction you might expect the music to move in only to have the cello take the music somewhere else. And each time the vocal attempts to rectify it, the cello wins out and drags it, usually downwards, into darkness and into chaotic. That's something I really loved about composing for Emberlight. It's a permadeath, roguelike dungeon crawler. A game about heroism against the odds, in the face of certain doom. That gave me the opportunity as a composer to really go there with the darkness. It allowed for a foray into the darkest things music has to offer.
Later in the piece, you'll hear that the vocal and the cello begin to entrain with one another. As if, where once the two were separate, now they are becoming one. What the vocal was when it was heard alone is gone now and is becoming something new. But where you hear this unison, it's fleeting. After that, the next time you hear the theme from the beginning, it's different. The parts have swapped. The cello is calling now and the vocal is answering. A harrowing musical message about insidious corruption. Then, the entire piece builds, exponentially dilapidated tonally and rhythmically as chaos ensues. All before an abrupt halt is called. In waiting for the bell to toll, silence falls for a moment.
The final moments of the piece bring the vocal back for a longer, drawn out rendition of the initial motif. This time, for the first time, the cello and vocal fold together in resolution. The musical tension built through the piece is resolved. The transformation is complete. Corruption has won. The cycle has ended. And so it begins again.
By Andey Fellowes
Visit Andey's Soundcloud and Blog below
https://soundcloud.com/andeyfellowescomposer/emberlight-emberlight-ost
http://andeyfellowescomposer.wordpress.com
