Himeko Sutori
Patch Notes 8 February 2024
Patch notes 19 June 2023
Septaroad Voyager Now a Standalone Game
Thank you everyone for making Himeko Sutori such a huge success. You have given me the time and the audience to help make my second game. I hope you like it.
Septaroad Voyager features a party where you can customize the name and the look of every character. You can program each character's tactics so that they will act independently and intelligently in frenetic battles. You can level them up in 14 different character classes. And you can adventure with them right now across a huge procedurally generated world, with more custom content being added every day.
Early Access was a very important time for Himeko Sutori, where the community provided bug reports and suggestions for improvement. I am very thankful for all of your input. You made Himeko Sutori a better game. And now I hope that you try out Septaroad Voyager in Early Access and once again help me to make a better game.
I'll see you over at Septaroad Voyager. I hope you enjoy it!
Patch notes 29 July 2022
Patch notes 9 July 2022
- Fixed minor typos in the main campaign
- Changed the SRV rogue skill board to give you access to the Steal ability faster
- Fixed several bugs with SRV summons. The most notable change is that summoned allies now survive saving and loading the game.
- Fixed a bug in the SRV skill board that would prevent skill tiles from displaying their cost if you change characters while the skill board is up
- In SRV, party members will continue following you while preparing to cast buffs
- Implemented the Enrage and Confuse abilities in SRV.
Patch notes 5 July 2022
- Implemented the rogue's Steal ability, which lets you take an item from the enemies you fight. We are in the process of adding stealable loot to all of the enemies.
- Added scaled loot tables and enemy loadouts. Now enemies that are higher level will automatically drop better loot and use deadlier weapons. We are in the process of adding more tiers of enemy loot and equipment.
- Fixed a bug that would cause your characters to attack themselves when looking for an enemy with an elemental weakness.
Patch notes 26 June 2022
- Unlocked skill board tiles and tactics can now be received as quest rewards
- Unlocking a skill board tile as a quest reward now unlocks that tile for all current and future party members
- Autosave after moving to a new level
- Fixed bug that was causing previous map not to unload correctly
- Fixed the Study ability, which shows enemy defenses and vulnerabilities when used
- Fixed the Expose Weakness ability, which adds an additional vulnerability to an enemy
- Characters who are revived at a refreshing well or similar interactive healing item now get teleported to the rest of the party
- Characters who are knocked out will no longer be targeted by enemies
- Characters who are knocked out have their current action cleared from their combat display
- Loading a game will immediately enter battle mode, providing instant information on hit points and status effects, and you will also be able to buff party members before going into battle
- Party members no longer turn away from their target enemies before the final blow lands
- Improved movement using right mouse button
- Slimes are now resistant against physical weapons, but each slime has an elemental weakness
- Enemies use a greater variety of debuffs during combat
- Quest-dependent enemy spawn points
- Enemies now use a skill cooldown in addition to their usual tactics, leading to a greater variety of enemy skills used, instead of spamming the same ability
- [Edit: New patch uploaded same day changes damage scaling of default attack to use magic power instead of attack power when using wands, tomes, and similar weapons.]
- [Edit: New patch uploaded same day greatly increases dodge bonus of flying enemies. You will need to use ranged attacks against flying enemies or face a 50%+ chance of dodging.]
We have added a lot to the Septaroad Voyager campaign. We will upload a more detailed post very soon.
Introducing Septaroad Voyager, a free expansion and total conversion
[previewyoutube="4SgxrNiAIO0;full"]
We are very grateful for the opportunity to make Himeko Sutori. Himeko Sutori was the first video game that anyone in Rockwell Studios worked on. We would like to thank you for believing in us enough to try the game, and to make it possible for us to live the dream of creating video games for others to enjoy.
As a first project, Himeko Sutori has some flaws, some that run deep and will be very difficult to change. We want to keep improving and expanding the game however, and we decided that starting over with a mod known as a "total conversion" would be the best way to push forward.
You should be able to see right away from the gifs here that Septaroad Voyager is a very different kind of game from the Himeko Sutori main campaign. You still see all of the charming sprite characters from the base game, with the sprite-layering system that changes how your characters look based on what they have equipped. But the similarities end there.
(Here you can see the kind of fast-paced, dynamic, and chaotic battles you can expect from Septaroad Voyager.)
Septaroad Voyager isn't the huge strategy RPG that Himeko Sutori was. Septaroad Voyager is a party-based RPG where you program your party members with custom tactics to follow in fast-paced real-time combat.
And to go along with the faster pace, Septaroad Voyager is 100% controller-compatible, with text input available using Steam Big Picture mode. All of the gifs in this post were recorded while lead developer Nathaniel played using only a controller. But if you prefer mouse and keyboard, those work perfectly well too.
(When you're not fighting, you'll be able to travel the world, visit shops, and recruit allies into your party.)
(The ability to customize characters was a frequent request, so that was one of the first features we implemented in the expansion.)
The main idea behind Septaroad Voyager was the gameplay of an MMORPG, but where one player can control the whole party. Hopefully with the tactics system and huge variety of conditions, abilities, and interactions, we can deliver something close to that premise.
(Early in the expansion, you'll assign your characters' actions one at a time.)
(Eventually you'll want to assign tactics to your characters so that they can without your input.)
The expansion isn't finished yet, but there's a playable vertical slice of the game ready for anyone who wants to try it. Septaroad Voyager is accessible from the main menu of Himeko Sutori, under "campaigns."
(Even in smaller battles, your party will react faster with a list of tactics to follow.)
There is still plenty of work for us to do, and we are posting updates at least a few times per week. In the near future, we will be implementing the threat mechanic that most enemies will use to choose their targets. Along with the threat scores that the enemies track, we will add abilities to manage threat, increasing threat for your heavily armored knights and paladins to get the enemies' attention, or reducing threat for your less hardy clerics, mages, and warlocks.
(In Septaroad Voyager, you can level-up your characters in 14 different character classes, each with its own unique abilities and skill board.)
(Earn skill points by defeating enemies, then unlock stat bonuses, equipment, character classes, abilities, and tactic slots on the skill board.)
After that, we will implement the enrage, reflect, and confusion abilities. After that, the steal, trophy hunt, and dismantle abilities, which will get you additional treasure from the enemies you face.
And we will keep building the world of Septaroad Voyager, adding more towns, shops, enemies, and allies, across a vast variety of maps, from woodlands to deserts to tundra.
We hope that you enjoy Septaroad Voyager and we look forward to hearing your feedback. Right now our plan is to develop this into a full adventure that will span several hours at least. And maybe one day we will spin it off into an entire standalone game with its own cards, achievements, and mods.
But no matter where we go from here, our success depends in large part on you. If you like what you see here and would like to support our continuing work, please tell your friends about it. Please share news, links, images, and videos on your social media and please tell your favorite streamers to give Himeko Sutori and Septaroad Voyager a try.
Thank you everyone for being part of the Himeko Sutori family and thank you for your ongoing encouragement and support. We will be back soon with plenty of updates and patches. See you then!
Patch notes 11 January 2022
- Fixed an issue with outlines drawing around some translucent materials when the Sobel edge post process effect is active. If you still notice black lines drawing inside translucent materials (such as particle effects and shadows), then you might need to use "verify integrity of game files" to receive this change.
- Added a character customization menu to the SRV test campaign. Your feedback is welcome.
- Added a game over menu to the SRV test campaign.
- Implemented most status effects and abilities in the SRV test campaign. These come with lots of new particle effects and icons.
We are making lots of progress on the SRV test campaign. The game functionality is mostly finished. We will be starting to build the world and the campaign very soon.
Patch notes 2 January 2022: Fixed gamebreaking bug at start menu
The cause of the problem was a change that I made as part of an overall effort to standardize and improve how a gamepad or controller works.
The first thing you see when the game starts is a movie that shows the Rockwell Studios name, then the Unreal logo, then some legalese. There was a bug where if you pressed Start on a controller during that part of the startup movie, it would open the pause menu over it. I recently changed what the controller does so that if you press Start during the startup movie, it should skip the rest and go straight to the main menu.
The problem occurred because I tried to generalize that. Instead of leaving the startup section alone, I changed the name of an event from "SkipLegalese" to "SkipCutscene." This was as part of an overall effort to improve and standardize how the controller works, so that pressing Start on the controller would always look for the event SkipCutscene.
Recently I had been testing the controller and I would skip the startup sequence by pressing Start on the controller, then loading a saved game to a section that I would play using the controller. It turns out that I had neglected to test what happened if you let the startup sequence finish. The startup sequence would finish, then look for the event SkipLegalese, which no longer existed.
It was possible to get past that part by pressing Start on a controller, or by manually typing "ce SkipCutscene" into the console. But of course no one should be expected to know that. This was a major failure on my part and I should not have pushed this patch to you without testing it more thoroughly. You have my sincerest apologies and I'll do my best to make sure this doesn't happen again.
Other items fixed in the latest patch include the following:
- Enemy spawns start their first round unable to act. Enemy lances will act on the next round after they spawn.
- Lots of improvements and fixes to the upcoming Septaroad Voyager campaign, including greatly improved obstacle avoidance for your followers, displaying damage resistances/vulnerabilities on the character sheet, new icons for each status effect, fixed various issues with loading a saved game, and much more.
The new Septaroad Voyager expansion is getting closer to completion every day. Right now I am working on implementing status effects. After that I will dive into the interplay between status effects and abilities that rely on those status effects. After that, I'll work on shops, loot drops, and item prices. After that, I'll start working on a real game level where you'll be able to try it all out for yourself.