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Fata Deum
Hooded Horse Strategy Publisher Sale
Hooded Horse Strategy Publisher Sale
June 2023 Update: New UI, AI, Levels, Cutscenes, Achievements, …
- Several new UI features have been introduced and the overall UX has been adapted based on the community feedback.
- After a long period the new god AI is finally ready and four different AI characters are eagerly waiting to challenge the player.
- Another level for three gods has been created with the godly powers of our level designer
- Campaign cutscenes have been designed.
- 25 achievements can now be achieved.
- and much more…
Improved UI
We have added three new UI elements, which have been requested by our community. Thanks for the feedback!
Settlement Overview: this provides all important details of the current settlement at the top of the screen. Furthermore, it is possible to navigate to the next or previous settlement with one click.
The View Menu: this menu allows you to search for specific attributes in your current surroundings. Looking for mortals with low health to help them to recover (or bring it to an end..)? Looking for those who follow another god? Need to know who is most productive?The strongest warriors? This is the way to go: just select the corresponding attribute and all important details are directly rendered on top of the surrounding mortals. You can either lock your setup for further investigations or shortly hover over an icon to get a first impression.
The Shortcut Menu: the shortcut menu provides you direct access to all wonders and available settlements. Thereby, you can easily move from one important part of the current match to another with the click of one button. You can now be everywhere at once, just like a real god!
The settlement shortcuts also provide a good overview of the current belief distribution in each settlement.
Furthermore, you can directly execute each wonder by selecting it and pointing at a target.
It is possible to configure the shortcut menu as you like and also mix settlement and wonder shortcuts in one row.
You can add as many configurations as you want and switch between them easily.
You can also create shortcuts for specific positions on the map, not just for settlements.
Being a god has never been so easy!
The New AI
Our new AI system, which has been in development for a very long time, is now active and ready for a challenge! Four different AI characters (Fertility, Pleasure, Deceit, Violence) act very differently while still being able to react to the player’s behavior.
Do you want to see how your followers are hit by thunder strikes day by day, while a mass of soldiers are trained to conquer your lands? Violence is your choice!
Prefer to see how your followers get cursed and start to attack each other for no reason until a massive horde of zombies takes over your village? Deceit will be your match!
Do you want to keep up against inhuman growth and beauty? Seeing villages and cities evolving in no time? Meet up with Fertility!
Or do you just wanna have fun? Pleasure is your opponent!
While the described characteristics of each character are already there, they still need further work to be improved and match our vision.
Furthermore, each AI character is not only acting individually but will also comment on the player’s action in its own style.
So be ready for some rude suggestions, too ;)
We will further improve the AI, especially when it comes to long-term planning and we will also add several difficulty options. And bug fixing, of course!
Another Beautiful Island
Another map is ready to be conquered, and it is the most beautiful one 🙂
Take a look:
We now have a two gods, a three gods and a four gods map available to play.
The Campaign
Fata Deum lets the player experience the story of a young god who learns to lead its human followers and to assert itself through them against divine rivals. In a process of increasing challenges, it not only finds out more and more about its opponents, but also about itself.
The three goddesses of fate speak to the player in the cutscenes and guide them on their way to becoming a god. They stand for past, present, and future, i.e. for time itself, which encompasses everything and thus they are outside the power structure of the other gods, perhaps even above them. They are the mentors of the player.
Furthermore, the AI characters Violence, Deceit, Fertility and Pleasure have a major role in the cutscenes, too.
We have put a lot of time into the story and the shown cutscenes are a first impression of what is to follow 🙂
Achievements
A first set of 25 achievements are now implemented!
We can already show you the most important one:
Next Steps
We will now take a break and enjoy the (already very hot) summer!
Afterwards we will further focus on UI/UX, AI, performance, and level design.
Stay tuned!
Streaming on Store Page
If you'd like to discuss Fata Deum, please consider joining us on Discord: https://discord.gg/2u2b2MD
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1330360/Fata_Deum/
Streaming on Store Page
If you'd like to discuss Fata Deum, please consider joining us on Discord: https://discord.gg/2u2b2MD
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1330360/Fata_Deum/
Streaming on Store Page
If you'd like to discuss Fata Deum, please consider joining us on Discord: https://discord.gg/2u2b2MD
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1330360/Fata_Deum/
Streaming on Store Page
If you'd like to discuss Fata Deum, please consider joining us on Discord: https://discord.gg/2u2b2MD
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1330360/Fata_Deum/
Streaming on Store Page
If you'd like to discuss Fata Deum, please consider joining us on Discord: https://discord.gg/2u2b2MD
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1330360/Fata_Deum/
Streaming on Store Page
If you'd like to discuss Fata Deum, please consider joining us on Discord: https://discord.gg/2u2b2MD
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1330360/Fata_Deum/
February 2023 update: Levels, Camera, Performance, Audio, and AI
And, wow - have we been productive 🙂
Level Design
Nico, our level designer, first learned how to work with our tools and to understand what is a feature and what is a bug in our very customized level designing toolchain. After some teething issues at the beginning, he's become very productive quite fast.
And below are the first results of a skirmish map for up to four gods:
The new four gods map is ready for action!
Many mortals available!
Four gods, four cities (and many more villages)
Who will succeed?!
While this map still needs some polishing, a second map for up to three gods is already in the making:
A three gods map is already in the making!
Nice place for a holiday ?!
The massive amount of buildings and characters being simulated and rendered in the end game of a five gods maps directly highlights the second very important topic we are currently working on:
Performance
There are several very complex issues if you want to bring a game like Fata Deum to life (large numbers of characters, complex AI logic, many buildings, etc.). Especially, if most of it shall also be visible at a distance.
One major bottleneck in the end game was the rendering of a large amount of characters. We do not want to bother you with technical details but we needed to test many different techniques and faced many technical issues until we found a solution. This ended up being a combination of several techniques that satisfies our high standards.
Test scenario: rendering as many diverse characters as possible at the same time!
Geri worked really hard to find this solution and the results are very promising: he was able to push us from 20 FPS in end game situations with a large amount of characters to over 60 FPS!
Before: low frame rate because of many characters rendered at the same time.
After: 60 FPS even many characters are rendered at the same time!
And these are frames captured inside the Unity editor, so performance is even better with a real build!
We will proceed to increase the overall performance, so that we will be able to provide you a smooth experience in all cases.
Camera Controls
The camera controls are the functionality which has been most criticized in the feedback form we have collected from all of you. So, we decided to put Jan on this job to focus on it!
One main issue here is to provide a smooth experience even when switching between different height levels and using different distance and view angles. While many strategy and simulation games have quite fixed camera angles and distances, Fata Deum allows you to move freely. This is great, but makes camera control quite complex.
As the overall complexity has been understood over time and the camera logic was technically a wild-mix of different camera control styles, Jan decided to rewrite the whole logic. While this part is done and we already have a much better experience, Jan will further improve and polish the logic over the next months while working on other tasks.
Jan also added the functionality for individual key bindings, which can now be defined by each player in the main menu:
Key bindings!!
Audio Improvements
There have been some issues on the audio logic which resulted in sounds being played much more often than intended, resulting in a more or less quite annoying gaming experience once the scenery became more crowded. Jakob, another new hire, did fix this at the very beginning. Our ears are very thankful 🙂
Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery
As we are now working in a much larger team with four software developers in parallel, it was also necessary to improve our workflow on an organizational and a technical level. Jakob implemented a Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery system, which allows us to automatically check the newest builds which are pushed onto the server and receive a fresh new version automatically every night. While setting this up was quite time-intensive, we can now proceed with focusing on our tasks and not having to waste time on time-intensive builds or code checks!
AI Dialogs
Jakob has also started work on AI related topics. As the AI is quite complex it will need some time until he can take over this part. One thing he is currently working on is the introduction of AI dialogues, so the AI god character reacts to specific situations, e.g. a simple greeting at the beginning of a match.
God Deceit speaks his first words!
Next Steps
We are planning to provide you with new updates every couple of months or so. In terms of what the team will be working on next:
- Nico will continue on creating new maps and improving the vegetation visually.
- Jan will further improve the camera logic and furthermore improve the UI.
- Geri will continue with improving performance.
- Jakob will focus on AI mostly.
Chris was mainly focusing on supporting all others with their tasks and bug fixing whatever stands in their way. But he hopes to continue working on AI across the next few months.
Stay tuned!
Streaming on Store Page
Additionally, we'll be streaming footage of the demo during these events on the store page.
If you'd like to discuss Fata Deum, please consider joining us on Discord: https://discord.gg/2u2b2MD
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1330360/Fata_Deum/