Epic Tavern
Discord Chat Q&A #1
A few days ago, we let you know about our weekly dev chats on our Discord channel . Here are the highlights from our chat in a Q&A format!
Q: Will there be buildings within the tavern that could provide a temporary boost to any stat/skill?
A: The goal is more to drive it towards character specific abilities and make the selection of the character more significant for the adventures.
Q: (Referencing Characters abilities) So specialities basically, and they'd be automatic during travel?
A: Yes. If a character has a specific ability that can benefit the quest it could result in better rolls or even faster travel.
Q: (Referencing upkeep/maintenance)So it's like upgrades for your tavern? or upkeep? or both?
A: The tavern will degrade in areas and require expenditure of gold to maintain. As more 'dirty' points accumulate you will get penalties in that area. It maybe dirty taps/kegs in a brewery. Needing to clean the tavern. Wipe tables etc.
Q: How far would you go? Would this be like where we also have to monitor number of glasses? Which could greatly diminish in result of a bar fight?
A: How far is still being thought about. It may not get down to the individual glasses, but there needs to be some risk/reward. The more buildings you put on your tavern, the more upkeep they will require.
Q: So if I don't pay my rent can I hire a crew of adventurers to "handle" my landlord? Because that’s something I have seen in DnD games. Would you be able to hire someone to help or do all upkeep?
A: Design decisions still happening. There will be consequences if you can't pay the upkeep. There will be hiring of staff.
Q: How do you guys do your testing?
A: 1 dedicated tester with other staff testing when they can.
Q: Are there plans for a follow up game stirring in the back of the mind?
A: As for follow up games, there are always thoughts and ideas, however there needs to be caution. Sometimes effort is better spent on expanding the existing game rather than creating a new one.
Q: Will the model of the non-Kickstarter bathhouse and the Kickstarter bathhouse be different? Will there be differences in fatigue loss? Will non-Kickstarters see the Kickstarter bathhouse as an optional facility or will they only see the non-KS version?
A: Currently a theoretical answer: Bathhouse and Sauna, difference between KS and non-KS. KS version may be available at the start of the game, while non-KS version will be unlocked later. KS version may also allow for small friendship gain.
Q: What is the fatigue about?
A: A Fatigue system may be incoming to the game. Quests will generate fatigue, magic casting will generate extra fatigue. Character fatigue will be a new factor in questicution.
Q: What is the status of Bar Fights?
A: Their status is still pending other systems and questlines coming into play first. No ETA available currently.
Q: Is there an ETA on working with backers who will get to work with you make adventurers or quests?
A: No solid ETA at the moment, it is a current topic of discussion and forms for making the changes will be going out soon.
We have our Dev chats in our Discord channel 10:30am PDT on Tuesdays, and 4:00pm PDT on Thursdays*. All are welcome to join! (*Note: times subject to change, and updates are posted on the Discord channel should the times change.)
From everyone here at the Tavern,
CHEERS!
Weekly Dev Chats on Discord!
I wanted to post a quick announcement to let everyone know that we have Developer chats in our Discord channel every Tuesday at 10:30am PDT and Thursday at 4:00pm PDT. This is an open invitation for you to come and ask questions, chat about Epic Tavern and game dev, or just to say hi! These chats are not streamed or recorded, and quite candid! :D
Here is our Discord channel.
We do plan on posting the Q&A's from these chats onto the Steam forums as well just in case you miss the voice chat.
From everyone here at the Tavern,
CHEERS!
-Sarah (rawglambition)
Tavern Scrawl #47: A Chat with our Lead Writer, Shawn French!
With our next patch quickly approaching, we wanted to give you something fun to read in the meantime. This week, Epic Tavern Project Lead Rich sat down with our Lead Writer Shawn to ask him some questions about his background, his writing process, and his approach to conjuring the stories you see in Epic Tavern!
Rich: I'm sure the people reading this want to know a little bit about your background. Is this your first time writing for a videogame? What else have you done, up until you started on Epic Tavern?
Shawn: Writing video games has been a dream since I got my first Commodore 64 in the Long Ago Time, but this is my first real crack at it. I've done a bit of everything. I wrote and performed comedy for years, spent some time as a newspaper sports editor, and more recently got into making horror movies and writing comics. It was through that work that I met Eric (Lead Designer).
I was fortunate to grow up with an after-school program run by a game designer, whose friends were game designers. I remember us making an orc-versus-dwarf combat football game with a 6-foot-long game board when I was still in grade school. I grew up with this stuff.
I have vivid memories of a road trip to GenCon as a little kid, in a car full of adult game designers (John Wheeler, Peter Rice, Bud Wellington) who were arguing about realism-vs-playability in random weather and encumbrance systems. I just soaked it all up.
Rich: I've read your comics, and they are great. What initially sparked the idea for Escape from Jesus Island?
Shawn: It hit me in waves over the course of 20 years. It started in the parking lot after seeing Jurassic Park, when talk radio said someone claimed to have found the Shroud of Turin. I started laughing uncontrollably, imagining Jurassic Park, but with Jesus clones instead of dinosaurs. One stormy night, the Bodies of Christ break loose and run amok. I outlined the first draft right in the parking lot, then wrote it up that night as a short film script. It started as straight slapstick, like an episode of Scooby-Doo. It even had one of those chase scenes in a hallway with lots of doors, where the heroes and villains run in and out of doors completely at random.
Then Dolly the Sheep totally changed the story. Dolly was the first sheep ever cloned and it took 277 attempts to get one that lived. Which meant best-case scenario, if you were trying to clone Jesus, you would first end up with 276 fatally mutated, near-Jesus freaks. That's when I started to realize it was a horror story.
The final big shift was when I partnered with artist Mortimer Glum to transform it into a comic. It was around then that I fully realized it was the Biblical story of Revelation, using cloning as the catalyst for the return of Jesus and rise of the Antichrist, who in our story is the twin brother of the reborn Christ. That's when everything clicked into place. I spent a year immersing myself in scripture and listening to sermons about the Antichrist and Apocalypse around the clock. It was madness, but it led to finally finding the story in its current form.
Rich: Amazing. It feels like you've really been enjoying the writing you've been doing for Epic Tavern. What challenges and opportunities does it present that differentiate it from writing for film or comics?
Shawn: It's so much fun and it breaks my brain in new and interesting ways. Branching narrative is a whole different world and it took me awhile to really get my head around that. When breaking down a story in any other form of writing, you consider a wide range of options, but at the end of the day, you have to decide on which of those things actually happens. You discard the other ideas.
With a game like Epic Tavern, I get to explore every possibility. So I now find myself drawn to storylines based on the range of possibilities they present rather than a specific narrative outcome. Where failing creates an equally interesting path. Every path is the real one for the player who's on it. That was an important realization.
Most fiction writing is the process of narrowing down possibilities. Branching stories are the opposite. It's all about exploring and expanding possibilities. And the process of layering all those narrative threads in such a way that they elegantly play out is my favorite puzzle ever. I've become completely obsessed with it.
Rich: You and I know that there is a lot of craziness behind 'how the sausage is made' in Epic Tavern's narrative engine. If you could let the players know about a particularly interesting 'behind the scenes' mechanic/system that goes into determining what any given piece of narrative looks like, what would it be?
Shawn: A big part of the fun is finding new ways to use the storytelling tools this engine provides. One new tool that's super simple in concept but that opens a whole world of possibilities is Global Variables (GVs). It allows me to insert an invisible flag (either Yes/No or a number) into any piece of text and then later modify or check for it and display different results if certain criteria are met.
I've gone full mental with this new tool. Sure, I can use it to track major world events and make sure if a store got blown up three quests ago, people don't talk about it like it's still there. But that's the tip of the iceberg. It's now my intention to create a unique GV for every NPC in the game, as well as each faction, and have every interaction either help or hurt your reputation with them. And to have them treat you according to your past history with them. So every interaction is building your personal story. Once I realized that was possible using Global Variables, I knew I had to do it.
I'm currently working on an Olympics-style event, The Frozen Games, for our upcoming patch. Since it's a giant event in the story world, I wanted all the famous people in Beor to either be competing or attending. But there are all kinds of quests that can kill off prominent residents. Using a bunch of Global Variables allowed me to be sure that folks killed off in your timeline aren't in attendance (although, any role you played in their death may come up).
Rich: Whoah. I think we did the math once and found that players have like 1 in 1,430,000 chance of experiencing the same story as another player by the end of the prologue. Sounds like it's only getting crazier. Speaking of the story world, how the hell do you maintain a world's worth of people, places, events, items, etc, and keep it all straight?
Shawn: Like anything complex, you just break it into manageable pieces. When I have a bunch of narrative threads running parallel, I treat each as its own universe until it’s finished, and then worry about weaving them together later. The end result is writing that's buried under a terrifying pile of string commands, but it only looks scary from the outside. The individual components are still simple threads. You just learn to zoom in and block out the surrounding noise.
For the world-building stuff, I use a variety of tools. One of my first priorities when joining the project was assembling a world bible of every piece of established info about Beor and its inhabitants. That gave me the foundation to build on. I do most of my world-building work in Scrivener these days. For especially complex storylines, sometimes I'll use an engine like Inklewriter to knock out a quick outline I can click through. And I'll even go old-school and sketch out a quest tree by hand from time to time.
Obsessively building medieval fantasy worlds is something I've been doing my entire life, so that was one of the things that most excited me about Epic Tavern.
Rich: Super interesting insights, I'm glad you are on our team! One of the great things about being in Early Access is that we're able to see systems come on-line all the time that help us to achieve our visions. What's one of the pieces of tech/systems that you're most excited about? How will it help you get even crazier with telling Epic Tavern's story?
Shawn: One of the biggest upcoming additions that I'm psyched about is making it so every character who ever steps foot in your tavern has a unique backstory with a payoff once fully revealed. I recently drove myself to the brink of insanity knocking out more than a hundred 10-part class-specific backstories that will be assigned to procedurally generated characters going forward.
I wasted a fair amount of energy trying to figure out a system for randomly generating backstories, and maybe that could have worked to a degree, but the end result of actually writing each is just so much better. This was one of those times when grinding through a problem was better than trying to find a clever way around it.
When this expanded feature goes live, we'll have around 150 unique unfolding backstories in the game. I think that pool is probably deep enough, but if it turns out players are getting far enough in the game that they're meeting more than 150 heroes, I'll crank out another big batch.
Rich: That is a staggering number of words. Do you have any advice for aspiring game writers?
Shawn: Technology has evolved to the point where you don't need anyone's permission to make games anymore. You don't have to wait for a break or to be noticed or any of that. The gatekeepers have lost control and the gates are wide open. You can make games on your own right now, today, with tools that are free in many cases. If that's what you want to be doing, do it. Don't talk about wanting to be a writer, put your ass in the chair and be one.
The primary difference between me today and me before my father died 10 years ago is that I no longer wait for permission to go after what I want. Life is short and it goes fast. Spend your time doing the stuff you want to do. If you do it enough, you'll build up a marketable skill or two along the way.
And creativity breeds creativity. Working crew positions on several films led to directing my own movie, which led to my comic, which led to Epic Tavern. Taking that first step of an unpaid production assistant gig on a bad indie horror movie opened the door for everything that followed.
Want to reach out to Shawn, Rich, and the rest of the devs? You can! Join our Discord channel: https://discord.gg/ftxnBWe
From everyone here at the Tavern,
CHEERS!
Tavern Scrawl #46: Full Speed Ahead!
We hope that everyone’s holiday season and New Years was delightful! In our end of Beor, we had the pleasure of welcoming a new addition: Memige (our Lead Engineer) and his awesome wife welcomed their new baby boy into the world! What a celebration indeed! Drinks all around!
Now that we have settled into 2018, we want to let you in on all of the design discussions we’ve been having, what we are working on, and the cool changes we are making for Epic Tavern. We believe tunnel vision stunts overall growth and, by including our community in our processes, we make sure that we continuously hone Epic Tavern so that it becomes a better and better game every day. For this reason, we cherish and appreciate the time you all put in to sharing your passion and your perspective.
So, that brings us to our goals: We must promote a cohesive and naturally self-evident player experience. We must expand player agency and choice in the game. We must make every effort to eliminate junctures that provide conceptual breaks that take the player out of the experience. We must work hard to bridge the gap between a player’s idealization of the game and what they are actually experiencing. From the resultant foundation, we must press to exceed expectation and give new perspectives on what exactly a fantasy management game could be.
To that end, we are embarking on a massive push to capitalize on our potential. We are revamping the Tavern social experience to be more natural, engaging, and connected to the many interesting systems that comprise the player’s experience in Epic Tavern. Our work on this push is beginning now, and will take us through Spring 2018. Players will start to see the first manifestation of this push in our next update, due sometime in Early March.
Of course, we will complement this push with continued work on character stories, quests, and further development of our narrative engine. Looking to the future, we are excited to add tavern editing, advanced tavern management, traits, and hero relationships, as we progress forward.
Needless to say, we are extremely excited to start testing out these features, and even more excited to hear from you on how we can make it better!
Again, none of what we do would be possible without the ongoing support of our community. Your input and feedback has been a big part of our game development process, and we really have been enjoying playing the game alongside you all! Speaking of our awesome community, we wanted to point you in the direction of some awesome sites and channels of those who have contributed a lot of time towards improving our game through posts, streams, and more.
Are you interested in modding options for Epic Tavern? One of our hero community members, Draakdorei, has made some tools and documents that will help you to do so. He’s taken it upon himself out of sheer enjoyment to bring everyone some fun mechanics to play with. You can check out his website here.
We are so thankful to have such an great community on our Twitch streams - you make it easy for our moderators to moderate! Our moderators, Aiydee and FeralDraakdorei, have been so attentive and present in our streams. While they haven’t had to throw down the Dugorim hammer too much, they have kept our chat and channel fun and safe for anyone who comes and visits. Thank you both! Come have fun with us on http://twitch.tv/epictavern
There have been lots of Let’s Plays for Epic Tavern on YouTube, and every single one has been extremely fun and truly insightful. Seeing the perspective of the player has played a big role in our development of the game. We wanted to point you in the direction of some channels that you should check out: Our friends The Geek Cupboard, and PyroFalkon have lots of Let’s Plays including Epic Tavern, and other fun games!
We are very appreciative of everyone who has spent time not only playing our game, but also giving us feedback and suggestions through our Steam forums and Online Forums, and through our Discord channel. It’s really been a pleasure getting to know all of you, and developing the game alongside you. We’ve always said that we want to make a game we all want to play, and without you, that could not happen. Journeying through Early Access and steadily heading towards Full Release is much more fun with you all by our side! (That, and a whole ton of ale, of course).
From everyone here at the Tavern,
CHEERS!
Happy Holidays and 20% Off!
We hope you are all enjoying the Ice Patch and we are happy to announce that we are participating in Steam's Winter Sale at 20% off.
For our part, we are resting, playing games, and enjoying the holidays with our families, so we can dive back into developing Epic Tavern in January. We hope your holidays are amazing, and that all your wishes come true.
Let us know what you are playing over the break! :D
Love,
The Tavern Crew
New Quests, New Tavern Features, and Optimizations in the Ice Patch Update!
Merry Winter’s Crest!
We are happy to bring you another update to make your season bright!
This update includes a frighteningly festive quest chain, more critical bug fixes, and further improvements to the In-Tavern experience. We hope that your first Winter’s Crest with us is joyous and warm, but don’t relax too much: our new Tavern Effects system will keep you busy managing problems that spring up in your Tavern and affect your Patrons’ enjoyment of their experience. ‘Tis the season for clogged toilets!
We have learned a ton through our conversations with the community through our Discord channel, as well as during our Twitch streams. We love hearing from you, which is also why we have our Interactive Roadmap where you can vote on what’s important to you and help influence what goes into Epic Tavern next!
Now, onto the update:
TL;DR:
New Quest Chain! The Tinker's Damned:
With Winter’s Crest fast approaching, beloved toymaker Wilbur Winterflame and his crew of netherling helpers are hard at work creating presents for the big holiday. But when his creations start taking on a dark mind of their own, the heroes are tasked with uncovering the corruption at Winterflame Workshop before the toys go Full Murderous and ruin an otherwise pleasant holiday.
Improvements to the In-Tavern experience
- Tavern Upkeep System: Tavern tasks providing the player with more Tavern management.
- Polish to the start-of-turn messaging and UI.
Improvements to Questing
- Split the encounter logic to allow for the player to make changes to stances prior to rolling, and able to see real-time changes to the success chance.
- Additionally, we have refactored the success chance calculations to reflect a more accurate success chance percentage.
- Sound effects fixes and further polishing.
More contextual content
- Added descriptions to 110 items, tying some of the more powerful artifacts to famous historical events!
More bug fixes! Details below!
Features In Detail
- Refactored the Quality Settings, which should make it so the game performs noticeably better on lower-end systems
- Eliminated 8GB+ of extraneous textures and source Files from Project (Will not impact build size, but should speed up Development load cycles and Unity Start up speed)
- New Quest Chain spans 18 quests and many encounter stages, 18 new magical items to be uncovered, including our first gear sets, and two new menu items
- Encounter and Quest Success Chance now factors in Excellent and Disastrous performances, giving a much more accurate display of real odds
- Encounters now display the Setup and then pause and wait for the player to set stances and click the roll button before processing the results
- Status effect changes are reported in the tavern log panel
Tavern log panel has been upgraded to textmesh pro component - Refactored effect status update class to handle more robust formatting
Integrated coloring of keywords in effect status update reports - Dice SHAKE sound fx when the button "roll" pops up
- Dice ROLL sound fx after the "roll" button is clicked
- Map ambience added to fill the quiet void
- Added Tavern Upkeep system (only Dirty Kitchen and Backed up Outhouse)
- Upkeeps can be activated as a factor of turn count
- Upkeep list item displays a callout to indicate if it's newly activated this turn
- Goods markup tooltip now displays a callout when reputation rewards are modified by upkeep
- The upkeep interrupt popup is spawned via the turn popup script
- When interrupts are active, there's a chance of their appearance upon each closing of Character Interaction (chance based on interrupt specs)
- Interrupts provide a choice between taking a reputation penalty and offering up a randomly selected good from the menu for free
- Interrupt complainers are chosen at random from patrons in the tavern
- Repair costs advance each turn as per design doc
- Dirty kitchen: starts on turn 3, causes transaction reputation penalty of -1 starting at rank 4
- Backed up outhouse: starts on turn 4, +5% and 1 complaint per rank up to %25 and 3 max complaints
- Upkeeps can be activated as a factor of turn count
- Turned down quest result sfx so it doesn't sound as busy
Bug Fixes
- Shaders for Hats and Mugs have been repaired
- Fix for "Switching between equipment in the equipment selection menu causes character stats to keep growing"
- Fix for "Pumpkin Patch era save games with in progress quests, loaded into Harvest Patch or newer lock up when loading into the map"
- Scroll bars set to a consistent setting.
- Corrected outhouse interrupt starting chance from 95% to the proper 5%
- Many other small fixes
All this should give you enough to explore as you and your loved ones join together and fortify your house for Winter’s Crest Eve. Remember, the harder the time Wilbur’s Netherling Helpers have breaking into your house, the bigger the gift!!
From everyone here at the Tavern,
Happy Holidays, and Have a Cozy Winter’s Crest!
Harvest Update, Autumn Sale, and Nominations!!
The update includes a bunch of great new story content, some critical bug fixes for issues reported by our community, and the beginnings of what will be our team’s push for more player agency: Our goal is to give everyone the power to make more meaningful choices and decisions that will greatly impact the success of your Heroes and the future of your Tavern. We are having such a blast interacting with everyone through our Twitch stream as we develop and through our Discord-- thank you all for making Epic Tavern one of the best experiences we’ve ever had. Oh, before we forget! Take a minute to stop in and check out our Roadmap, so you can vote on what’s important to you and help influence the future of Epic Tavern. Without further ado, our Harvest Update details!
TL;DR
- New Quest Chain! The Dark Rift: An earthquake opens a rift beneath Beor Bay, unleashing strange new creatures, disrupting shipping lanes and sinking a transport ship bound for the capital. Join infamous pirate Tzarina Darkmane or beloved explorer Corinth Newbury in competing salvage missions to the edge of The Dark Rift!
- New Quest Chain! No Rest for the Wicked: In this follow-up to quest chains Still Life and The Curse of Blackheart Manor, the heroes are called back to the manor to help Rodrick access the sealed lighthouse at Blackheart Point and the old smuggling tunnels beneath. Explore the estate and solve the murder of Raven Stormswept for an epic loot cache.
- Enhanced Character Management:
- Introducing Character Stance Choices: Aggressive, Balanced, and Cautious.
- Stances are the beginning of a larger push toward more meaningful choices during questing.
- Improve messaging for negative and positive effects on your heroes
- Equipment UI and functionality fixes
- Improvements to the Beginning User Experience:
- Unlocking the Infirmary Quest Chain one turn earlier,
- Comb-through skill checks in the first 20 turns,
- Rewrite first 20 quests to make sure objectives in key stages are clear and in line with our best practices,
- Provided and tweaked early tooltips and pop-ups where applicable,
- Prologue dialogue improvements.
- Provided more clarity and balance to/for:
- The start of the turn,
- Spending AP (action points) and money in the Tavern,
- Increased AP cost for offering goods to patrons
- Stock amounts displayed correctly and match throughout UI
- Quest Sequence messaging and set up for player agency
- Building Long-Term Gameplay:
- Enhancing the Patron Spawn logic inside the Tavern (i.e., how many new patrons visit vs. previous visitors visit each turn)
- Ensuring all adventurers in the player’s roster come to the tavern every turn (unless they are out adventuring)
- Fix and clarify major UI contexts inside the Tavern:
- UI polish to menus and tooltips
- Fixes to buttons/tooltips and their functions/placements
- Font size adjustments across multiple tooltips/menus
- Lots more Bug Fixes!! See details below!
New Features in Detail
Feature Work:
- Converted broken Effects/Recovery tooltip to custom solution in line with Equipment and Goods tooltips (applied to roster list item, facilities roster list item, character sheet portrait, and character interaction portrait)
- Recovery indicator is now also a button that displays Facilities UI when clicked
- Added placeholder VFX for reputation and gold gain
- Added "Preparing" portrait indicator when adventurer is assigned to a quest
- Removed Base Income from all UI and game logic
- Patron Drunkenness now amplifies all relationship gains and losses (x1 for Sober, x2 for Tipsy, x4 for drunk, and in case it happens x0 for Passed out)
- Patron Spawning code has been reworked to ensure ALL of your current adventurers will show up in the Tavern as long as they are not Dead or Out Adventuring.
- The Wine Cellar now grants 1 additional Tap slot, plus an additional 1 for each upgrade
- Adventurers now have three Stances: Aggressive (Higher Skill Power, but raises Encounter Difficulty), Balanced (Standard Skill Power and Standard Encounter Difficulty), Cautious (Lower Skill Power, but lowered Encounter Difficulty)
- Simultaneous pending quests now execute sequentially rather than all at once
- Questecution list has been removed (visual history ribbon will be brought back in some form when there's time)
- Much larger party portraits with various elements redesigned/rearranged
- Portraits have Buff / Affliction indicators with tooltips, dynamically refreshed upon relevant events
- Portraits have Equipment icons with tooltips
- Empty party slots are now displayed rather than hidden
- Party slots are visually divided into front and back rows, in prep for further design
- Quest details and Play/Roll UI have been redesigned to utilize the right half of the screen, framing the map "window"
- Added fade transitions in between sequential quests
- Added Dark, Light, and Colorable variants of equipment Icons
- Clicking a menu item in the Turn pop-up (empty or occupied) now brings up the Tavern Management UI
- Added mouseover highlights to Turn menu list items
- Improved visibility of price slider scroll background on Turn menu list items
- Added tavern gold, money earned last turn, and current day/turn UI elements to Top-of-Turn pop-up
- Added current day/turn to top right of Questecution panel
- Parties traveling back home now display "Returning in Triumph" or "Returning in Defeat" according to Quest status
- Minor redesign of portrait to make weapon slots to more "flat", miscellaneous tweaks
- Added support for weapon icons of neutral color; integrated into questcution weapon slots
- You can now select which stance you want each hero to have following a skill roll stage
-Quest Chain: The Dark Rift. An earthquake opens a rift beneath Beor Bay, unleashing strange new creatures, disrupting shipping lanes and sinking a transport ship bound for the capital. Join infamous pirate Tzarina Darkmane or beloved explorer Corinth Newbury in competing salvage missions to the edge of The Dark Rift. Story spans 28 quests and 40+ encounter stages, with 5 Player Choices and many, many possible endings. 16 new artifacts, new tavern menu item, introduces new enemy race: Rift Elves, Multiple recurring characters introduced.
-Quest Chain: No Rest for the Wicked. In this follow-up to quest chains Still Life and The Curse of Blackheart Manor, the heroes are called back to the manor to help Rodrick access the sealed lighthouse at Blackheart Point and the old smuggling tunnels beneath. Explore the estate and solve the murder of Raven Stormswept for an epic loot cache. Story spans 9 quests and 25 encounter stages, five powerful new artifacts to be found.
-Quest Rewrite: Stomp now plays out differently on second attempt
-Quest Rewrite: Pick Your Poison now plays out differently on second attempt
-Quest Rewrite: Back for Seconds now plays out differently on second attempt
-Quest Rewrite: Thatch What I Call Roofing modified to clarify reward
-Quest Rewrite: Re-Animator modified so briefing reflects success/failure of I Smell a Rat
-Quest Rewrite: Sending a Message modified so briefing reflects success/failure of I Smell a Rat
- UI polish pass on Stance buttons
- Questeuction panel portrait initial state is set to empty (temp bandaid for questecution scene loading ugliness)
- Made tooltip text size static rather than best fit to avoid occasional weird tiny text
- Improved brightness of green party contribution buff highlight color
- Interactivity of menu list items in the Management screen and Turn pop-up are improved with larger slider hover zone, hover-highlight distinction between the slider and main body, and tooltip tweaks
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed "Out Questing" portrait indicator showing up when it shouldn't
- Ripped out legacy effects tooltip elements
- Level-up button no longer displays on characters who are out adventuring
- Level-up button no longer appears on portraits during quest completion pop-up
- Fixed: GV Pop up clipping off screen on smaller resolutions
- Patrons no longer warp to their seats after picking up a drink
- Drunken effects have had their shader corrected and now display in color instead of the borked texture magenta
- Drunken effects have been lowered to a more reasonable height above the character's head, making it easier to tell which adventurer is feeling sauced
- The Infirmary will now be retroactively unlocked for anyone who completed the required quest before the unlock functionality was implemented.
- Updated Goods Icons to uniform 1:1 aspect ratio
- Removed sub-tabs from tavern management panel
- Converted context header to TMPro, improved formatting and positioning
- Added mouse wheel scroll passthrough to Turn menu list items so they'll scroll (prepared for more menu items later)
- Removed redundant "in stock" suffix on menu list item
- Fixed some race conditions related to tooltip initialization
-Rewrote prologue to reflect Thorgrin starting game in bathhouse
-Rewrote one-off quest A Colorful Story, turning it into a chain that tests hero-assignment formatting
- New Turns do not reset correctly if there is an adventurer in the Infirmary
- Skill gains trigger the appropriate callouts during questecution (avatar icon and quest log indicator)
-[ET-703] Goods offer changes from 2 AP to 3 AP
-Goods stock amounts now display more sane values and match throughout UI
- Toggle Button for Free cam in Settings menu no longer wigs out and jumps out of it's box when clicked
- Prologue dialog fix
- Effects tooltip pivot changed so panel expands upward only (prevents tooltip flicker on multi-effect display)
- ET-1058: Game breaks when sending a party of two on quest and one dies
- Patron spawning readjusted to correctly fill extra space with half returning Template characters and half returning Proc Characters
- Resolved ET-1057: divvy loot display initializes and resets to full amount instead of party count divide
- Equipment tooltips in Questecution properly display to the lower right of the mouse
- Fixed unlock conditions on multiple quests
- Quest Completed pop-up: clicking the XP bar no longer calls level-up
- Fix for ET-870 Character: Skill points are not showing in character UI (skill focus badges)
- Expansion purchase button: Replaced Arial font with Shocard
- Dark Rift quest chain fixes and Paralysis now addressed by infirmary and "Proove" spelling fixed.
- Removed Focus button from death pop-up, additional minor cosmetic tweaks
- Resolution safe Equipment and Effects tooltips mean you can see what’s up, regardless what rez you run
- Quest fixes
- Quest data fixes
- Data Fixes
- Quest unlocks moved to proper places.
- New Turns do not reset correctly if there is an adventurer in the Infirmary
- Skill gains trigger the appropriate callouts during questecution (avatar icon and quest log indicator)
Wow, you read this far? Impressive. We are thankful for your determination :D
HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYONE! Enjoy the Harvest!
Epic Tavern - November Dev Update #1 - Catching Up With Memige!
Let's try an experiment and do this Q&A style!
Richie: Hey, Memige! What are you the most excited to be working on in our November update?
Memige: The two most interesting things for me are that we are adding in the ability for encounters to reward specific skill points. The randomization of the encounters that characters go on will impact the way that those characters' skillsets will grow.
Additionally, we are taking a first pass at implementing stances for characters on the quests. This will give you some choice in how the characters tackle the challenges with which they are presented.
Richie: So, it looks like we are laying the groundwork for giving the players more choice during questing. Is that a fair assumption? What can we expect in the future?
Memige: Well, we have gotten a lot of feedback from the community about interacting with the adventurers when they are out questing, and because we are serious about the Early Access process, we are committed to exploring ways to make that happen. We are not settled on ways to do that, yet, but we wanted to try things out and make it easier to expand upon what is already there.
Richie: What about choose your own adventure-style choices during quests?
Memige: This is definitely something that is being actively addressed in design discussions. There are some pretty significant ramifications to the way we process the data that need to be adjusted to handle meaningful interactions from the player, so I am spending time talking with Shawn [ET's Lead Writer], Tomo [ET's Creative Director], and Eric [ET's Lead Designer] about the best way to handle these adjustments. Some of the structural underpinnings of this will be going into the November update, but the first significant per-encounter interaction will probably land in January... I hope.
Richie: Well, I personally am looking forward to how that develops and probably making all the wrong choices so my party dies, like usual. So, what are you looking forward to, in future updates?
Memige: Shit... Tavern editing?! *laughs* Tavern editing is really high on my list, in terms of desire. There is a lot of design work that needs to go into it to ensure that it ties into all the current systems of the game and highlights the strengths of Epic Tavern, so it probably will not be a "soon" feature. But man, I'm looking forward to it.
Richie: Anything else that might be coming sooner?
Memige: In terms of what's on the short list for the next couple of updates, we have a bit of an overhaul to the loot system, to give you more rewards that are directly useful to your heroes. I think that'll be interesting, because it'll give the player a more active interest in the specific results of stages. It gives them better feedback on how effective their party selection was. And, to be honest, with the UI overhaul that will come with it, it will make the process of gaining loot a much more exciting event.
Richie: Awesome, thanks for the info! Anything else you want to say to our community before you stop being lazy and get the hell back to work?
Memige: It's an exciting time, right now. There is a lot of good feedback coming in, a lot of constructive criticism. Thankfully, we are in a position to leverage all that to make Epic Tavern a much better game. Thank you to all of our community members for your active participation in our Early Access!!
Halloween Sale and Update: Live NOW!
Early Access is an awesome experience. We have had the honor of spending the last few weeks talking with you, our amazing community, and working our asses off to move Epic Tavern toward being the best game it possibly can be. Your words, thoughts, and enthusiasm, dear players, not only serve to motivate us, but guide us toward making what we feel will be a truly great game. This update is packed with tons of work and love from your team here at Hyperkinetic. It's for you and because of you. Without further ado, the details:
[version 0.828.f1]
TL;DR Updates
- Halloween Tavern Makeover
- Halloween-themed Quest
- Updated Tutorial Flow
- In-Tavern Critical Info Notification System
- Equipment System Overhaul
- Tavern Menu Management Functionality
- Goods Management Overhaul
- Stage Success Chance Displays
- Additional Save Slots
- Character Management Improvements
- Combat Resolution System Overhauled/Rebalanced
- Economy Overhaul - Stage One
- A Metric Shit Ton of UI Overhauls/Improvements
- Procedural Skill Gain
- A Ton of New Tools for our Procedural Storytelling Engine
- Character Textures are Now Exposed for Modders
- Bunches of Optimizations (Significant Memory Usage Improvements)
- Like a Billion Dead Bugs
New Features in Detail
- Notification logs are active in the Tavern at all times except when hidden by the expanded character interaction panel
- Notification items:
- Are categorized, each category assigned a unique display color
- Are, where applicable, clickable in order to bring up relevant UI
- Possess tooltips explaining what a click action does, or other info
- Can be manually closed by clicking an X to their right side
- Automatically close themselves when an event makes them obsolete (leveling up a character will auto-close the level-up notification for that character)
- Avatars now use different amount of move points based on the nav layer they're on; they also have variable move speeds depending on their nav layer
- Updated UI on New Tavern pop-up to try something new, though it might be a bit dark
- Added fade-to-black with placeholder text for Go Forth transition, fades back in when Questecution begins
- Go Forth fade-out now displays title and summary of quest in focus
- Expansions/upgrades must now be purchased after unlocking
- Expansion/upgrade purchase UI
- Added expansion and upgrade unlock to debug panel
- Parties on map now have different speeds depending on their topographic location
- Parties spend fewer move points when on land that is easier to move on
- Destination Position Tuning
- Added a lot of Map Text
- Cosmetic improvements to tavern naming panel
- Added pop-up warning for attempting to equip a weapon that's already equipped on someone else
- Added notifications for adventurers returning Wounded, Poisoned, or Demoralized
- A single notification event now handles multiple relevant returning adventurer effects
- Added text pulse for notifications on returning adventurer effects, Level-up, and Bonus points available
- Goods and lodging refactor
- Wounds and effects messaging rework
- Drunkeness FX
- Tutorial adjustments - integrating more tutorials in the prologue quest
- Obviously aesthetic things like a halloween tavern theme, halloween quests
- Adjusted navcosts and procedural stage frequency
- Updates to tavern level schedule, also added 3 more levels (max is now 13)
- Added list of item ids for in the tavern beginning of prologue turn
- Menu slot price sliders are functional, adjusting goods sell price
- Custom pricing tooltip has been added, displaying and dynamically updating as the slider is moved. The NavBar spawns the tooltip prefab under NavBar's parent (the canvas root)
- Markup tiers and related friend/rep bonuses are defined/tunable in ManagerTavernStock
- Current and Max tap/special menu slots are defined/tunable in ManagerTavernStock
- Menu slots are now spawned list items rather than static objects, clearing the path for expansion integration
- Menu auto-assigns Mead and Porridge to the menu if the menu is empty. There must be at least one item on the menu AT ALL TIMES.
- Prologue refactor (facilities and equipment tutorial during prologue)
- Top of turn pop-up that conveys critical information and lets the user set their menu/specials for the day
- Free camera mode now available
- Avatars now use different amount of move points based on the nav layer they're on; they also have variable move speeds depending on their nav layer
- Expansions/upgrades must now be purchased after unlocking
- Expansion/upgrade purchase UI
- Added expansion and upgrade unlock to debug panel
- Parties on map now have different speeds depending on their topgraphic location
- Parties spend fewer move points when on land that is easier to move on
- Equipment UI refactor
- Cosmetic improvements to tavern naming panel
- Refactored collapsible skill list item UI (types, categories, skills)
- Added notifications for adventurers returning Wounded, Poisoned, or Demoralized
- A single notification event now handles multiple relevant returning adventurer effects
- Added text pulse for notifications on returning adventurer effects, Level-up, and Bonus points available
- GV Notify Pop Up bullshit aka. custom pop-up messages that can be triggered at any time via a data-driven scheme
- Save versioning system - allows folks to switch between branches without having their saves borked
- Reduced the overall size of the game
- Reduced memory footprint
- Many text elements have been updated to a higher resolution, more flexible system. More readable! Still in progress
Bug Fixes
- Fixed null ref error upon displaying equipment description that has no leading [TAG]
- Fixed bug with questecution fade in that allowed stages to be completed before fade in finished
- Fix for duped key stage logs
- NaN fixed in partyavatar log
- Preventative code: prevent quests from adding themselves to keystage wait event multiple times
- Fixed roster item selection changing the "AdventurerInFocus"; it only affects RosterFocus now (this distinction is necessary for things like kicking a roster member while talking to a prospective hire)
- Fixed notification bug when handling an unsupported character effect
- Fixed Quest contribution top line not initializing properly
- Tavern navmesh tweaks to allow character to be seated on stools and navigate more responsibly and reliably
- Hiding walls that are in the way of the camera
- Recovering adventurers can no longer be added to quests
- Goods list item Buy Stock buttons are now disabled when tavern gold drops below the restock cost
- Goods menu focus now gracefully handles selecting for an empty menu slot
- Force tutorial patrons to center of tavern
- Changed time sensitive functions in the avatar stage result icon and portrait speech bubble from unscaled time to standard time, eliminating the occasional massive overscales that would occur during frame rate hitches
- Prevented double booking of adventurers in lodging rooms
- Fixed tavern stool colliders being massive (caused patrons to warp to their seats in the tavern from the bar instead of walking up to the seat and sitting)
- Map: Fixed Roster button that leads from the Equipment screen to the roster
- Fixed bad formatting of equipment skill delta displayed in equipment focus and tooltip
- Fixed the position of "Tasuil South"
- CharactersDB edits to eliminate bad items
- Added support for missing adventurer Effects that were causing blank spaces in injury report
- Top-of-turn list header "Maligned Adventurers" has been changed to "Injured Adventurers"
- Turn pop-up now disappears when one of the management buttons is clicked
- Fixed right-side overlapping adventurer log text in Quest resolution pop-up
- Increased size of quest chain font in Quest resolution pop-up
- Buying goods no longer causes null ref on menu slots; stock counts properly update upon stock purchase
- Added servings indicator (how many servings per restock) to Buy Stock buttons on the Menu focus and goods list items
- Changed the Menu focus "in stock" footer to say "servings in stock" to lessen confusion
- Replaced obsolete level load calls with Async calls in Tavern and Map sceneControllers
- Fixed null ref when assigning a good to the Menu in the Map
- Fixed level-up for another couple days until it breaks again
- Fixed broken adventurer details in the Map
- Increased transparency of equipment select dimmer
- Added parsing of conditionals, global vars, and tavern name to questecution scene transition
- Fixed Tavern Summary Expenses tally (consolidated bad debit calculations for Expansions and removed arbitrary upkeep expenses)
- Friendship gained last turn now displays in the Summary
- Removed construction signs from Tavern summary, Roster (removed placeholder filter dropdowns), and Map Roster Character Details panels
- Minor refactor of Map Roster Character Details to compensate for imbalance due to loss of construction sign
- Fixed generic popup
- Menu focus restock button now longer allows purchase when there's not enough gold
- Various goods restock tooltips are fixed and displaying in proper context
- Disabled reporting of recovering adventurers in the Turn pop-up (temp until fixed)
- Scroll wheel functionality restored for Goods list and Menu, full roster, map roster, and all character skill lists
- Standardized/improved scroll speed and elasticity on most prominent scroll lists gamewide
- Removed pulse behavior from Turn pop-up empty slots
- Added parsing to Quest completion debrief
- Fixed save slot code; save slots are now functioning, still need UI to be reactivated
- Fixed a whole slew of social bugs
- Partial refactor of social system to abandon instability of coroutines
- Housekeeping on social system code
- Code note: All patron speech display is now funneled into one primary function UpdateCharacterDialogue(string or tavernDialogueType) - all parsed for GV, TavernName, etc
- Summary screen shows properly at top of turn once more
- Roster is automatically closed upon display of Offer interface
- Opening the Roster or clicking a new patron gracefully cancels any offer that's in progress
- Serial bio unlock events should work better but need more testing
- Tooltips now shift away from the screen edge when the cursor is too close to the border
- Character sheet friendship bar updated to match character interaction bar, and now functional (displays friendship, current social prize, etc)
- Fixed missing skip intro button
- Facilities now properly progress effects (at least wounds) and kick out occupants when they're done (at least for wounds)
- Updated UI on New Tavern pop-up to try something new, though it might be a bit dark
- Added fade-to-black with placeholder text for Go Forth transition, fades back in when Questecution begin
- Go Forth fade-out now displays title and summary of quest in focus
- More social interaction fixes and improvements
- Fixes various issues with Go Forth/Next Day scene fades
- Expansion/upgrade system now functional
- Expansions/upgrades are saved
- Fixed save slots (UI and backend) in Landing
- Tweaked effects progression
- Fixed death token and wounds progression
- Fixed progression blocker with map fader okay button during prologue and tutorial
- Tweaked some site/sprite pairs to better match their sprites (e.g. swamp is now a lone hut instead of a house)
- NavMesh now matches current map layout (e.g. no more parties crossing rivers instead of using bridges)
- Added new tutorial states to handle tutorial stall in tavern (new okay buttons were added to dialogue)
- Prologue map gameplay no longer uses procedural stages
- Destination Position Tuning
- Added a lot of Map Text
- Added pop-up warning for attempting to equip a weapon that's already equipped on someone else
- Fixed bugs related to the aforementioned situation
- Hacked, that's right HACKED, procedural wound calculation so that the number of wounds is reduced, only occurs with disasterous and poor results, and only happens in combat stages
- Equipment focus: fixed delta text colors and improved display with monospace font
- Reverted regionblock prefabs so they do what I expect
- Added shortcut Roster button to placeholder equipment management screen, and explanatory note
- Updated missing notification prefab
- Fixed bug where questecution would skip multiday quests when no new quests were launched
(see design channel for details of implementation)
- Fixed null ref that could occur when clicking failed quest notification items
- New Adventurer level notification now pulses, removed mistakenly added pulse from new Tavern level notification
- Fixed squirrely Continue to Tavern button responsiveness that was mostly blocked by raycast-detecting button text
- Map: Fixed null ref upon opening Roster
- Fixed null ref upon opening placeholder Equipment Management (was trying to run legacy code)
- Map: Transition dimmer canvas group no longer blocks raycasts during quest assignment
- Character sheet minimized mode: Full sized vignette/background no longer displays and fights with charInteraction
- Notification list item: Removed close button tooltip that would persist after closing, also fixed intitial state of close button
- Equip slot Remove button is now hidden when nothing is equipped, fixing a null ref upon click
- Fixed misaligned cursor hot spot
- Fixed timing of fadeout raycast block enabling during questecution transition
- Clicking the Next Day button with no parties assigned or in the field now properly advances the turn
- Fixed failure to continue 2 day quests if you quit and reload on them during day 2 questiucution
- Broken map is fixed (killlist)
- Fixed missing adventurer party icons on multiday quests
- Skill items that are present due to equipment are now grayed out during level-up and have a tooltip to explain why (kill list)
- Small improvemenets to the lodging summons offer pane to keep it from fighting background elements, room price now displays properly in offer pane instead of default 999
- Fixed issue with Increasing Skill that only exists on Equipment
- Moved tavern center to a better place
- Smoother travel to Flaming Gate via nav mesh edits
- Top line party contribution tooltips now state if a red or green number is modified due to buffs or debuffs (general message, does not list specific effects though this will be simple to add)
- Fixed level-up
- Fixed level-up
- Fixed level-up
- Fixed level-up (again)
- Many other bugs, too small to mention
Thank you all for being there and supporting us. <3
We've Slaughtered a Horde of Bugs in Build 0.827.5p7h!
Die, Bugs, DIE!!!
Tons of fixes incoming, including questing stalls FIXED, repeated offers for quests FIXED, equipment UI error soft lock and save corruption FIXED, and many, many more! Huge thanks to our wonderful community and, in particular, our heroes terraneko, Lothendas, Hrachia, Draak, and Aiydee!!!
Now, to get to work on that next patch............ ːsteamhappyː
The Details, In Detail
Hot Fix Build 0.827.5p7h
- Several fixes reducing the possibility of stalls during quest execution
- Choose your path bug that resulted in repeated offers for quest choices fixed
- Equipment UI error that could lead to soft-lock and save game corruption
- Party icon during questing moves faster
- Prologue quest displays item, character, quest and food/drink unlocks
- Characters level-up faster now
Numerous quest data errors that could lead to running out of quests
- Increased tavern dialog variety
- More items awarded during early quests
- Some characters have had their personal stories updated
- Some special characters now start at a higher level appropriate to when they appear in the tavern
- One of the starting characters has had a significant personal story rework and a new personal quest added
- Many quests have been given xp rewards that were previously missing
- Coming soon message replaced temp personal story strings
Enjoy, and keep the comments coming! We could not have done this without the help of our amazing community! And yes, I mean you!