It's time for another update! This month I am in the middle of creating Beta Patch 4. While doing so I decided to release a small interim patch to fix some of the issues of Beta 3 and introduce the new trading system. As always you can find the video devlog and its transcript below:
See you soon and best wishes,
Michael
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Hi, dungeon-crawling fans!
It is time for another update on Monomyth! As you know last month Beta 3 started. Since then I have been working on Beta 4 and implemented numerous improvements as well as a new trading system. These newly implemented features will be added shortly in a small interim patch. So let’s go through all these things in detail.
First, let’s take a look at a few more general things that I have fixed throughout the last few weeks. I finally found the time to reimplement weapon load-outs on the new codebase, as they were present in the original Kickstarter demo. Now your character can wear two different sets of weapons and quickly switch between the two in a combat situation. Alternatively, you can also use this to quickly stow away torches, so you are not seen by enemies.
In terms of level design, I added shortcuts between different areas as well as fast traveling from designated points in the game. You have seen these fast travel points before, except now that all areas are in the game they are active and usable. Together with the shortcuts, these changes make the world feel significantly more interconnected and backtracking becomes less of a problem.
Of course, I have also worked on the game’s main hub. This will be the main area of Beta Update 4. Players will find most traders in this hub as well as an anchor point for the game’s main quest. Concerning quests I have added another small fix: Instead of having quest items clutter up the player’s inventory, the latest version of the game now features a dedicated quest inventory. This was another small feature I finally had time to transfer from the old codebase. However, in this version of the game, any item type can be a quest item. In the original demo, this flag was technically limited to regular combinatory items, meaning no consumables, weapons, or anything with specific functionality. The quest inventory itself works much like an item bar you would see in a point-and-click adventure game. It isn’t limited in size and you can just pull items from it to combine them within the game world. This works very well together with the menu-world interactions I implemented a couple of months ago.
But now let’s come to this month’s main feature. As I mentioned during the last update the latest version of Monomyth will feature an entirely new trading system. The system from the demo has been completely replaced by a barter trading system that is similar to that of Ultima Underworld.
The system itself is relatively simple. Go up to an NPC and open the trading menu. The menu consists of four windows two of which are your and the NPC’s inventory. In the middle, you will find the offer windows. Just pull the items you wish to buy from an NPC into their offer window and do the same with items you wish to get rid of on the player’s side. Do this until the total values of the two offers match. You can also make a monetary offer to balance out value differences.
Characters with the “Speech” skill can try to haggle. Simply make a slightly undervalued offer and click consider. The little output window on the left will tell you whether or not this is a feasible deal and if your character has a chance to make it work. There is a little bit of luck involved in this as well since concluding such a trade will automatically do a skill check. If your character fails this check the trading attempt will fail as well. If you do this too often, the NPC will temporarily refuse to trade with you.
Along with this system, I also made a few changes to basic inventory management. A small feature that was long overdue was proper stack management. Up until now, it was never really necessary to handle specific amounts of items, however, with the trading system this was finally implemented. I think, for the moment, this should cover all the typical features you’d expect from a drag-and-drop inventory system.
As I mentioned in the beginning I added all these features in a small interim patch which will release shortly. After that, I will continue with Beta 4’s content, which will mostly cover the game’s main quest. Once that is done, I will need to polish a few things and the game will finally be ready for the Open Backer Beta.
I am not entirely sure about the mode of that beta yet. I could imagine repeating all area focus tests from the closed beta, except with a significantly shorter iteration time. This would mean you would get to test the game step by step, area by area, with a new area opening, for example, every two weeks. This could have the advantage that tests would be more thorough. People could take their time and really explore the details of each area. Alternatively, I could also just open the latest closed beta with all areas available. I am not yet sure how I will go about this but I guess we will see throughout the coming weeks.
Either way, stay tuned for more updates, and see you soon!
Monomyth - March / April Update
Hi, dungeon-crawling fans!
It's time for another project update! In this one, we will be talking about the latest beta patch and how development will continue after that.
Sorry for the delay this month. I wanted to make sure that the patch was largely finalized before creating the update. As always you will find the video transcript attached to this post!
Best wishes, Michael
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Time just flies! We are already in April but the development of Monomyth continues. The time to really wrap it up is drawing near, but there is still some stuff to do. So in this update, we will be talking about a massive amount of content that will be added to the game shortly and how we will continue from that. At this point, I don’t want to spoil too much, but I want to keep you updated on the latest work that has gone into the project. So let’s take a look at that.
I have been working on Beta 3 roughly for the last two months and it’s now close to completion. Right away I can say I am glad that for a change I have listened to my own advice and I learned from the mistakes made during the development of Beta 2.
Beta 3’s development was much better planned, much better scaled and unsurprisingly much better executed. I built most of it based on a blockout I did earlier in development, even before the refactoring. As a result, I didn’t go overboard in terms of scaling, and the geometry plus detail passes were done much faster.
This gave me a lot more time to make some unique assets that would add personality to the area. It also gave me time to implement more intricate and polished designs. This is reflected very well in the general engagement with the game environment. Or in other words, Beta 3 features more detailed level mechanics. This goes from secrets, to traps, to what I tend to call environmental sidequests or challenges.
I also had more time working on enemies and enemy encounters. So Beta 3 actually features multiple new enemy types, some taken over from older work I did, some made completely from scratch. None of these have been in the game so far.
There were some new enemy types in Beta 2 as well, but I couldn’t put as much work into them as I wanted so I pushed some of that into the polishing phase. Luckily some of the work I did for Beta 3 overlapped with that work and now all it requires are some finishing touches. That much just as a side note. All in all the new enemies should give you a nice, fresh challenge.
In this context, I should also mention I slightly adjusted my workflow for character creation. Now if you have been following these updates for a while, you know I have been rambling about the troubles of custom character creation for UE4 in the past. Without any tool support, it can be quite challenging to bind a custom character mesh to the standard UE4 skeleton. In the past, I have done this with a mix of vertex data transfers and weight painting. This method was rather restrictive when it came to humanoid characters that weren’t perfectly proportional. I have now replaced parts of my original workflow with a tool called AutoRig Pro and that makes things a lot easier.
Now what’s left for Beta Update 3 are a couple of narrative assets, meaning some dialogue and documents, as well as item distribution throughout the new area. After that, the patch will be uploaded to the beta branch and the beta-level backers will be able to test it. This should be done within the next week or so.
That’s another step on the roadmap I showed you during the last update - so what’s next?
In Beta Update 4, I will mostly focus on the game’s main social hub. I have already built a good portion of that level so geometry and detail passes should be done pretty quickly. The main part of the workload will revolve around implementing the main quest as well as a new trading system. There was an old trading system on the original codebase - you can see it by trading with the rat NPC in the demo - but this one will be replaced by a completely new system.
I will also include some new features concerning inventory management, among other things a separate inventory for quest items.
Once that is done the polishing phase will begin. Polish will cover pretty much everything from item balance, to AI. Two major tasks will be improving the Lysandrian Heartlands and the mines. Both areas are perfectly functional in terms of mechanics, but they need a bit of a workover to be on the level of beta 3’s quality. In this process, I will probably split the mine up into two areas. You may remember this area was overscaled. This also came with some technical issues which I seek to resolve.
As I said in the past, at this point of development I will bring in more people. The first step here will be an open backer beta.
After that, I will have to look at how I am going to release the game to the public. There are basically two ways to go about this. Either I will still implement the last portion of the game as well as the backer content and release the game in full later this year, or I will release an Early Access version and implement the final content patch during that phase. Currently, things are scheduled in a way that the latter is more likely, but it also depends on the backer's feedback.
During all of this, I will see whether I can release an updated demo. Maybe I can deploy a separate build once things are properly polished.
All in all, there is still a good bit of work ahead but we are getting closer and closer to a public release. As always I will keep you updated and I will see you next time.
Monomyth - December / New Year Update
Hi, dungeon-crawling fans!
It's time for another update on Monomyth! Just like last month, I would like to present this update in the form of a short video, which you can find here:
For those of you who would rather read, I will attach the transcript plus relevant screengrabs!
Best wishes, Michael
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Video Transcript (Video Devlog 1.0)
Hi, dungeon-crawling fans!
A new year has begun and I am still very busy developing the project. I am going through milestone after milestone, slowly pushing toward a game that is ready for you, the backers, and the many followers who have supported Monomyth for over a year now (some of you even longer than that). Thank you again for your patience! I will do my best to get the project into your hands as soon as possible.
But before that, we will have to go through a couple more beta patches first. As this new year begins, a new update for Monomyth’s closed beta is about to be released. Update 2 is being packaged at this very moment. So, I thought, let’s take a look at what’s actually in there, so you can get an understanding of what goes into a patch and why this particular one took so long:
The most time-consuming task for update 2 was the level design. Under the heartlands, you will find the mines and the factory tower.
These areas are relatively expansive and there is a lot of focus on verticality, which made it harder to assess the full scope of the environment. Essentially I started out with the idea of an underground tower adjacent to a series of caves, which later became a mine. My original intention was that the players would make their way down the tower traveling between the tower halls and the mines which are connected by bridges.
You can probably see the inspiration from locations like the mines of Moria or dwarven strongholds from various fantasy settings here.
Of course, the more impressive you want the vertical aspect to be, the higher that tower will turn out to be. But the higher the tower gets, the more caves you need to build to get a well-knit together environment with a well-balanced variety of aesthetics. You don’t just want to be in the tower and you don’t just want to be in the caves. You want to travel through a nicely mixed-up environment to keep things fresh. And from that, you can also see why the scope kinda blew up. Building the environment, especially the caves took much longer than I anticipated. This is especially ironic because originally I restarted the development of update 2’s area due to the original concepts being out of scope.
Here you have a 60x60 tile map of the original design. Every tile corresponds to a portion of the floor that is 400x400 unreal units in the engine. The original design was also supposed to include a certain verticality aspect so it basically had two levels layered on top of each other, including one connecting intermediate section. This level was almost entirely blocked out (with the exception of the ceilings), and it was clear that it was probably out of scope. The area design should have probably been cut in half and for verticality, the four remaining sections should have been layered on top of each other.
Instead, I restarted the area at the design stage, which is probably okay (you don’t want to tinker too much with broken old designs), but I made one big mistake: Instead of creating another map like for the original design, I winged the details on the environment. Of course, I had things down on paper, I had the core ideas and some rooms mapped out, but I also left a lot of blank spaces in that design. So basically I had some rooms planned out but only in specific sections, and the rest of the map kind of grew from what was built.
That last part specifically proved to be a big mistake. Don’t “grow” your maps, because that will almost certainly cause trouble in terms of scope. It’s very likely that you will overscale the area that you planned out in detail and then the rest of the environment suffers from it. You will probably wish to bring the same level of detail to those parts of the map, but it’s simply out of scope and you will never finish your work.
I noticed this happening as I went along because the workload went out of balance, meaning, that there were portions of the map that were basically done in terms of regular geometry, but which would have been way too much work during detail passes and beyond - the parts of level creation where you basically go through every room again and add detail meshes, and then NPC and mechanics and lighting and whatnot. So I suspected this happening at first and when I was sure I had to rescale, which means, bluntly said, cutting parts of the level. That’s always unpleasant because you already worked on it and you spent time on it but you have to do it or the project milestone will fail. It’s basically a sunk-cost issue.
The good part of this is, you can still keep what you made for either another level or even another project. There is plenty of examples of this in released games, even in the Triple-A titles. Either way, the remaining parts of cut-down levels are very often better for it. I firmly believe that’s the case with Monomyth’s update 2 area because I am quite satisfied with the end result. It has some very good verticality, a lot of complexity in terms of layout, interesting little mechanics, and secrets. So I feel it came out pretty alright even if it took way too long to finish.
The main lesson here is probably: Don’t grow an environment. Don’t improvise room designs. Properly plan section details ahead of time, at least to a point where you have a rough outline of how to progress through a section and you can estimate the full scale of an area and not just a part of it. Otherwise, the workload for different parts of the level will likely get out of balance and you will have to cut stuff and rescale, which will cost you a lot of time. And we don’t want that, especially when time and resources are sparse. That’s probably a fine way to summarize the issues with update 2’s level design.
Luckily I won’t have to deal with these problems in update 3, because there the level is already blocked out and scaled properly. Update 3 is also generally further along, which makes me confident that it should be done significantly faster.
But let’s move on. What else is in update 2?
I have worked on a whole bunch of new items, particularly weapons. I mention these specifically because I work on weapon models in batches, meaning the final items are not only meant for update 2, respectively the area from that update, but also for later parts of the game. So this is also a bit of preponed work that will save time in following patches. Something similar is true for spells. Most of these have been ported to the new codebase and are mechanically functional, they just need a visual workover.
The new area also features some new NPCs. Of course, that also means new dialogue. The dialogue in Monomyth is organized in dialogue trees or more accurately in multiple dialogue graphs per dialogue partner. The graph structure has to be planned out ahead of time - I do that in a simple spreadsheet. That spreadsheet then has to be transferred into the game’s data tables from where dialogue data is read. As a result writing dialogue was quite a pain in previous updates. Not only did I have to take great care in planning the graph structure coherently, but I also had to spend significant time transferring the finished graph into the respective data table. I did this manually, which is of course always a potential source for error and therefore bugs. So in update 2, I decided I want to have no more of this and I implemented some tool support. I can now do an automatic transcription of planned-out dialogue graphs into Unreal’s data table format.
(Old Dialogue Workflow)
(New Dialogue Workflow)
I use a simple python script for that, which transcribes a CSV into JSON format. The JSON file can then be appended to UE4’s exported data tables, which are then just reimported into the engine’s editor with the new data. This already saved me a ton of time and I am very glad I implemented this relatively small tool. It isn’t full tool support for writing dialogue but it automates the most time-consuming part of it.
So that’s it for update 2. As I said it is currently building. I will be going through it a few more times, applying some last fixes here and there and it will be in the beta branch very soon. And then it is on to update 3, which, as I said, will hopefully be done a lot faster this time. During the next Kickstarter update I will probably still be busy with it, but hopefully wrapping it up soon at that point. I believe that Kickstarter update will also be a good opportunity to go into detail on the remaining tasks and to outline another little roadmap to release, or at the very least, the open backer beta. As I mentioned in previous updates, the open backer beta will be released sometime between updates 4 and 5, depending on how much polishing I still need to do beforehand. Either way, stay tuned for more updates, and see you soon!
Best Wishes, Michael
Monomyth - October/November Update
Hi, dungeon-crawling fans!
I thought this month we could do something a little different, so instead of giving you the usual written update, I created a few video devlogs going into detail on various subjects of the project's development. In particular, the videos focus on the following topics:
Current Progress
Sentries
Telekinesis
Fire Propagation
Rune Traps
You can watch them right here or head over to the RatTower Youtube channel, which I plan to use more regularly in the future:
I will probably adapt the format a bit for coming updates. So instead of releasing several videos at once, I might upload material more frequently. Either way, I hope you will enjoy these videos and I will keep you posted!
Best wishes, Michael
Monomyth - September Update
Hi, dungeon-crawling fans!
another month, another update! I am still very busy with beta update 2, which I hope to finish and release very soon. So let's quickly take a look at what has happened over the last couple of weeks!
Current Progress
The area in which most of update 2 takes place is far below the Lysandrian Heartlands. I originally had a different level layout in mind but I decided to rework it into something more manageable (and also more interesting). Now, after about two months of work, the level is about 90% there. It still misses some details and narrative assets, but the lion's share of the work is done.
Update 2 will feature one of the biggest areas in the game. I believe this is a good opportunity to introduce you to Monomyth's fast travel system. Of course, this system can't just be activated through a map menu. Instead, it is a part of the world itself. Players will have to figure out the mechanics of ancient teleporter rooms that can be found all over Lysandria.
Talking of mechanics, update 2 will also introduce a few quest-specific mechanics that are related to the new area. There will be some mining and smelting, and while there is no real crafting system in the game, players will be able to toy with some of the interactive machines that can be found in the area.
I also took a little break from level design and worked on the game's inventory. Not only does Monomyth now feature visually more appealing menus, but the menu interactions have been streamlined to a point where most player/environment interactions can be done from the inventory. Players can now pick up, throw and combine items directly from within the inventory screen. I also integrated the object placement system that I implemented a few weeks ago. This way players will have a much easier time placing fish or pie next to a cooking spot (a recurring problem in the demo).
As a result, the inventory interactions are now a lot more intuitive (and coincidentally, also a lot closer to what Arx Fatalis did).
Gamespot Article
As you probably all know, Monomyth was partly inspired by the King's Field series. Because of that, the project was featured in a Gamespot article on upcoming King's Field-like RPGs. So if you haven't checked that out yet, you can find the article here:
And now it's time for me to go back to the mines and finish that beta update 2! Then it's on to updates 3 and 4, which I hope will be finished much faster since most of their level design is already done. Update 4 will also be the last content update before I start polishing everything for the open backer beta. As you can probably already guess, this also means that the release will slip slightly into 2023. Lots of progress has been made but there is still quite a bit of work left to do. I will give you a more detailed overview of the road to release in one of the next updates. Until then!
Best wishes, Michael
Monomyth - August Update
Hi, dungeon-crawling fans!
another month has passed and it's time for another update! This one will be a bit shorter, for reasons I will get into in a moment, so let's start.
Current Progress
Monomyth is now in Beta Phase 1. The beta is basically split into six phases, where the first five are mostly content updates and the last is about polishing.
So the first content update was released in August and it contained demo content ported to the new codebase, as well as some extra areas and level mechanics. Beta testers have already provided useful feedback which I will integrate in the coming weeks.
The Serpent's Bastion has been reworked and patched back into the beta.
Following this update, I originally wanted to work on the game's main hub and trading system. However, I decided to switch beta phases 2 and 3 around. I did this because beta 3 contains a major quest area that existed only as a gray blockout so far. I was concerned about this area and wanted to get to work on it as soon as possible because I felt that much of the original blockout would require a major overhaul. In fact, I decided that a large portion of it was a) not particularly interesting and b) not within the scope of the project. So I restructured the entire thing and now it is more manageable and still becoming one of the more complex areas in the game. It contains the part of your journey that leads you truly into the depths of the earth and verticality is a major aspect of it.
Unfortunately, I cannot show much of the work so far. As expected, this update is probably the most labor-intensive update out of the entire beta and I am in the middle of creating its content. The area's base geometry is almost complete and it should be fully traversable within the coming week.
Verticality in Beta 2 (WIP)
This beta update will probably be released sometime next month. After that, I will continue working on the game's main hub, which is already significantly further along in development.
A good amount of work has already gone into the game's main hub
Open Backer Beta
At the moment, testers are already providing great and in-depth reports on various issues they find in the closed beta. However, as more content is added to the game, the current amount of testers will likely not be enough to properly cover all problems that may still persist.
That is why I have decided, that once most of the main quest has been fully patched into the game (roughly beta phase 5) I will open the beta for all backers of the "Pilgrim" level and above (that's everyone who will receive a digital copy of the game).
Like all other beta testers, these backers will receive a dedicated test key, which will be locked before the release of the full game (i.e., this is not the fulfillment of your pledge, and you will receive a separate key at release). I will provide more information on this in the coming updates.
Until then! Michael
Monomyth - July Update
Hi, dungeon-crawling fans!
Another month, another update! Beta 1 is just around the corner and in the last few weeks, plenty of significant improvements have been implemented. So let's take a look at those!
Current Progress
As you know, Monomyth's beta has been out for about a month now. In this short period of time, there have been numerous hotfixes. Beta testers have been very busy reporting various problems and as a result, both major and minor bugs were corrected. One particularly nasty bug involved the functionality of NPC navigation, which, luckily, could be tracked to a simple, incorrect engine setting.
Besides fixing bugs, I have also been adding various features that would improve the overall experience of the game. NPCs will now greet the players via text messages over their heads. The same system is also used for idle chatter and combat taunts.
I have also re-introduced Offhand Actions, which were sort of a last left-over from the old codebase's feature list. This means you can now, again, press the middle mouse button and use your torch to light other torches in the game world (and set certain inflammable objects on fire as well).
Some of you may have been unaware of it, but the Kickstarter demo also featured a shield-bash that could be activated in the same way. This feature is back as well, however, this time it is far more impactful. It can be used to knock enemies down or push them off ledges.
Combat AI has been improved as well and while it still needs work encounters are now more balanced. The rebalancing in the latest version of the game also affected weapon durability. A frequent feature request from the Kickstarter demo was the possibility to pick up the weapons dropped by enemies. This was an option in Arx Fatalis and Ultima Underworld. However, in Monomyth, this feature devalued some weapons, because of their sudden high availability. More precisely, it had an effect on the urgency of keeping an eye on your weapon's durability. This called the necessity for the durability feature into question (at least with regard to highly available weapons). Ultima Underworld circumvented this problem by permanently breaking weapons. This introduced an element of resource management into the game and reduced the effects of readily available weaponry.
I have been experimenting with a similar system in Monomyth's early game now. You can still repair your weapons at a forge, but if you don't pay attention to their durability you will risk losing them permanently. So far, at least in my experience, this little change makes the early game significantly more exciting. Obviously, this feature will be somewhat less relevant for rare weapons. These aren't readily available in the first place and some of them are indestructible anyway (they still wear off over time though, so they have to be repaired to fulfill their potential).
I have also been thinking about the save system during the rebalancing process. At the moment free saving is the standard game mode on the basis of which the distribution of level-up shrines is balanced (these were originally used to save). I might actually turn this around and balance the distribution around the classic system from the Kickstarter demo. People will still have the option to turn on free saving during the character creation though.
I have also reworked the object carrying/placement system since I have noticed that players kept having problems with putting bread near a fire or into an oven. Therefore, I implemented a feature with which they can drop items from the inventory directly into their character's hands. Players can then precisely rotate and place the item with the help of a "ghost object". This is also very useful for stacking boxes.
Beta 1
The rest of the time, I have focused on closing the gap between the actual beginning of the game and the current beta content. This required a rework of the "Serpent's Bastion", an area you already know from the Kickstarter demo.
The patch integrating this content should be ready within the next few days. With its release, Monomyth will enter the "Beta 1" phase. Just like after the release of "Beta 0" I will then shortly focus on documenting and fixing various bugs found by the beta testers. Afterward, I will shift my focus toward working on the next beta patch. Going strictly by the plan from last month's update that would include the game's main settlement, I might, however, switch Update 2 and 3 around, since the latter still requires more work.
Either way, there is still a lot to do. I will keep you posted!
Just a short update: I have sent out the e-mails for backer-created content rewards. If you have backed the project at the "Lysandrian Knight" level or higher, you should have received a short message with a form to fill out. If you have not received such an e-mail please get in touch with me via michael@rattower.com. You can take your time filling out the form since backer-created content will probably be added to the game last. I will notify you in time when the deadline is coming up.
Due to popular demand, I have also re-opened the slacker backer option, which can be found here:
All rewards are the same as on Kickstarter. The slacker backer option will be open until the end of the month. So if you know anyone that wanted to back the project last year but could not at the time, you can send them this link.
As for the project itself: The beta is going well. The testers and I are locating and fixing bugs almost every day. Since the last update, there have been numerous hotfixes, adjusting menus, gameplay mechanics, visuals, etc
Besides that, I am also preparing the "Beta 1 Update", which will reintroduce the Serpent's Bastion into the game.
You may remember the Serpent's Bastion from Monomyth's Kickstarter demo.
In the full version of the game, you will also gain access to a formerly closed cellar section.
And that's already all for the moment! Until the next update!
Best wishes Michael
Monomyth - June Update
Hi, dungeon-crawling fans!
Monomyth's closed beta has finally started! Those of you, who backed the game at the "Seventh Oath Cleric" level (€ 125) should have received their invitation mail by now. In case you haven't, please do not hesitate to contact me via contact@rattower.com.
The first beta phase will still be a bit of a bumpy ride with many bugs and some missing features. It is mostly a focus test for the new code base and the first area of the game (hence the name Beta 0). What follows now is a constant loop of feedback and patches that will push the project closer and closer to a stable release.
In that regard, the game already received various hotfixes over the weekend. Among other things, these fixes included the following:
Slimes are no longer invincible
Various level design fixes
Swimming should be much less of a pain now (still not entirely painless)
Comfortability features + fixed bugs in container GUIs
Some adjusted/corrected dialogue options
Books should display correctly while being carried around
Torches burn longer and burnt-out torches are now placed in the inventory
The GUI for money should update correctly now
Fixed a bug that would respawn the player in a mysterious Ankh room
Fixed a collision problem that made leaning impossible
Visual updates to the environment
And so on. At least until next week, I will still focus on hotfixes of this nature. After that, I will start focusing on the first beta content patch. Speaking of which, the roadmap for the coming months looks as follows:
Update 1: To close the gap between the beginning of the game and the current beta content I will first reintroduce the "Serpent's Bastion" - the area you may already know from the demo. In the full version, this area will be slightly extended. In the same patch, item balancing will be overhauled as well.
Update 2: This patch will include the game's main settlement as well as the updated trading systems. It will also include some portions of the game that may not be accessible until later but are possibly interesting for testing at this point.
Update 3: This patch will introduce the area below the heartlands, where players will really start their vertical descent into the depths of Ariath. Releasing this patch will probably take the most time because the area in it is still at a very early stage of development.
Update 4: This patch will introduce the most classic dungeon crawling experience Monomyth has to offer. Lots of dark hallways, lots of traps, lots of tough enemies. Stressful and my personal favorite at this point. The development of this area has already progressed nicely.
Update 5: This patch will introduce the final area of the game. This area is slightly smaller than the others. The core focus of testing here will likely be level mechanics, as well as the conclusion of the main quest.
Polishing: At this point in time the content creation phase should be concluded. After that, I might open the beta to all backers or go for a short early access phase before the final release.
And that's the entire plan for the beta. Some parts may still be adapted in terms of scope but overall this is how I will attempt to push the project forward. Something that will be helping me in this regard is a highly useful debug tool I implemented some time ago. This tool is, by the way, also available to beta testers. You can bring up the GUI by pressing "K".
Due to popular demand, I will also be re-opening the Kickstarter Encore (slacker-backer option). I will send out a short update about this later this week. The same goes for the backer-created content rewards.
Until then!
Best wishes, Michael
Monomyth - May Update
Hi, dungeon-crawling fans!
time is going by fast and I have been busy preparing everything for the approaching first beta phase. So let us take a quick look at what has been happening over the last few weeks and how we will proceed.
Current Progress
During May I ported some major features into the refactored codebase. Among other things, I made sure that the reworked dialogue system would find its way into the latest version of the game. Feature-wise the system is similar to what you may have seen in the Kickstarter demo (that is if you didn't slaughter the only peaceful NPC).
To quickly recap: The dialogue system is a mix between keywords and dialogue trees. The player can collect clues from documents and conversations and ask different NPCs what they know about a topic. Dialogue trees can trigger different commands, from skill checks to setting the hostility of an NPC. Much like in Ultima Underworld any item given to an NPC via dialogue options will appear in their inventory.
Building upon the modular character system I also introduced visible player armor. At the moment there are two armor sets consisting of multiple equipment items. Much like weapons, armor can break, however, this happens very slowly. Broken armor can still be worn but barely provides any protection.
I also reworked spells, skills, and utility items. Since the code refactoring largely focused on the core character class, some of these things had to be rewritten. A few things still require tidying up but all the functionality is there again and I will use the beta to address these issues.
By the way, porting explosive barrels to the refactored codebase also gave me an opportunity to test out the modular character's ragdoll model.
The beta will feature an initial version of blacksmithing, which allows players to repair broken equipment. Since any character will sooner or later break an item, repairing is not bound to a skill but has to be done in a forge. Blacksmithing in mid to late game will largely revolve around optional weapon improvements. The equipment's damage is visible as well.
Since the first beta area features an underground river, I have also reworked swimming & diving. There are still a few aesthetic things I have to fix on that, so I will present this in a future update.
I also spent some time adding more treasure to the game. During the beta test phase, I will implement an updated trading system. The plan is a more comfortable version of Ultima Underworld's trading system - that means a value-based barter system, where trades can be balanced out either by cash or goods (for a modern example of this you could look at "Stalker: Call of Pripyat").
To put a bow on all the refactoring I rebuilt the game's saving and loading system from the ground up, so it nicely fits the new code. Unlike the public Kickstarter demo, the beta version will let players save and load at any time. Technically I already implemented something like that last September (still on the old codebase), but to lower the chance for nasty surprises I redid the whole system. I also exposed some parts of Unreal Engine's level data to Blueprints to make sure that all persistent entities have unique IDs (regular display names may overlap between streaming levels).
All in all, I must say that the refactoring of the game's core classes slowly evolved into an extensive rewrite of most of the code. That should have probably not been done during production, but in the end, I believe it was worth it. Some features still need to be tweaked here and there but I suppose that should happen with the respective beta tester feedback in mind anyway.
Beta Status
The first beta phase will be set in the "Lysandrian Heartlands", the first non-tutorial area of the game. This very early phase should probably be regarded as more of a focus test for the refactored codebase. With regard to our past definition of what the beta will look like you could maybe call this "Beta 0", because you can play a part of the main quest but it can't be finished at the moment. That will be part of future beta updates, which will add more areas.
Together with the trading update, I will introduce the game's main hub (where most traders are located) and then, step by step, all other important areas will follow. Most of these are currently "work in progress" and I will try to get them into the tester's hands as swiftly as possible.
With a full feature set and the first focus test done we can hopefully concentrate on content testing.
Talking of content, I still need to fix some stuff in the upcoming beta area, which is what I am going to do now. You will hear from me around the 17th when I will send out emails including instructions on how to access the beta. For those of you that have not backed the game on a beta tester level, I will write a short update here. Until then!
