Open Development Week #104: New Skills & Combat 2.0
Hey Hunters,
Hope you're having an excellent week!
After a long period without playable updates, we're glad to share with you the first glimpse of our massive Combat 2.0 update! If you missed the original post explaining what Combat 2.0 is, you can check it out right here on this link.
Combo System
New to the Combat 2.0 update is the Combo System promised way back during the Kickstarter campaign! Depending on your Hunter's Role, they will be able to either Prime enemies for Combos and Detonate the Primers that other Hunters have set up.
This feature was originally inspired by Mass Effect 3's multiplayer, but since we announced it in 2017 it has been included in the ill-fated Anthem. What we have learned with their implementation is that the Combo system should be a collaborative-only feature: you should not be able to set it up and trigger it yourself. So here's our design ethos behind it:
Only Tank and Support characters can set up Combo Primers;
Only Damage and Trickster characters can trigger Combo Detonators;
Combo damage is very high and should compensate for extra enemy health when playing with multiple people;
Combos will be clearly communicated through unique interface icons to make it easier to use them even with a group of strangers and no in-game communication;
We hope you like the current iteration of the system and look forward to hearing your feedback on it!
Hunter Skills: Pinkyy
Pinkyy is our aggressive Tank character, and her skills help her and her teammates survive while rewarding her for staying on top of enemies and in the thick of the fights.
Passive Skill: Iron Will
When Pinkyy has no Armor points left, her damage is increased by 30%.
Mobility Skill: Leap(Combo Primer)
Pinkyy's Leap
Pinkyy jumps high and far, landing and interrupting enemies around her. Every enemy hit is Primed for a Combo for 5 seconds.
Utility Skill: Barrier
Pinkyy's Barrier
Pinkyy puts down a Barrier which blocks enemy projectiles but allows her team to shoot through it.
Charge Skill: Iron Rush
Pinkyy's Iron Rush
A powerful dash attack that hits multiple enemies. Pinkyy can hold down the Charge button to empower Iron Rush, and while she is charging the skill, she gains Damage Reduction. There are 3 charge levels, with increasing damage. The final charge level also creates an explosion when the Rush ends.
Melee Skill: Titan Punch
Pinkyy's Titan Punch
Finally, Pinkyy can quickly summon her Titan gloves to punch nearby enemies, dealing considerable damage and restoring Armor points in the process!
Hunter Skills: Jimmy
Jimmy is our damage dealer, with unparalleled damage-per-second on single targets. He excels at gunplay and rewards careful and precise aiming.
Passive Skill: Bullseye
Whenever Jimmy hits an enemy with a Precision hit, he gains a stack of Bullseye. He can have up to 5 stacks, and each provides him with increased Precision damage for a few seconds.
To hit a Precision hit, you need to hit enemies dead center. Your laser sight will turn white to indicate you are aiming at the Precision spot, and the damage numbers of Precision hits are yellow instead of white.
Mobility Skill: Dash
Jimmy's Dash
Jimmy dashes, defying gravity for a brief moment. After the Dash, he gains an increased chance to Dodge attacks for a few seconds.
Utility Skill: Web Shot
Jimmy's Web Shot
After using this skill, Jimmy's next shot will inflict the enemy with a crippling Web. Enemies under the effect of the web are slowed, and take more damage from all attacks!
Charge Skill: Impact Grenade (Combo Detonator)
Jimmy's Impact Grenade
Jimmy's Charge skill is a grenade that deals heavy damage to all enemies in an area. Hold down the Charge button to increase the radius and damage of the blast (up to 3 Charge levels). If this Skill hits any enemy that is currently marked with a Combo Primer, it will Detonate, dealing extra damage in an area.
Melee Skill: Shield Drain
Jimmy's Shield Drain
Jimmy uses a special gadget installed on his shoes to deal Magnetic damage to enemies and at the same time recover his own Shields!
Hunter Skills: Raff
Raff is our Support character. She is pretty good solo, but shines when playing in a party, healing allies, increasing their damage and move speed with the power of her songs.
Passive Skill: Shifting Moods
Raff's mood in constantly changing - every 7 seconds, to be exact. When she is on her Good Vibes, her healing skills are amplified, while her Bad Vibes enhance her damage-dealing skills.
Mobility Skill: Up The Tempo
Raff's Up The Tempo
Raff increases the tempo of her beat, boosting the movement speed of herself and all nearby allies.
Utility Skill: Soundscape
Raff's Battle Song active
Raff always has one of her music auras active: either Soothing Song, which heal herself and nearby allies over time, or Battle Song, which increases weapon damage for her and everyone nearby. Activating the "Soundscape" skill changes which song is active. If you switch to Soothing Song during Good Vibes, you send out a healing pulse, while switching to Battle Song during Bad Vibes will create a damage pulse instead!
Charge Skill: Keytar Blast (Combo Primer)
Raff's Keytar Blast healing allies
Raff can Charge up a blast from her Keytar which heals allies and damages enemies. There are 3 Charge levels with increasing amounts of healing/damage. Any enemy hit by this skill will get a Combo Primer for 5 seconds.
Melee Skill: Wrench Raff's Wrench
Of course, Raff is still an engineer - which means she fixes problems using a wrench. A really big wrench. The Wrench deals damage to enemies in an area, but can also be used to recover Armor and Shields of allies in range!
Hunter Skills: Ace
Our favorite space donkey Ace is our Trickster character, combining great mobility, crowd control and single-target damage, with a bit of support thrown in for good measure! Ace's kit has been completely redone as a rogue-ish jack-of-all-trades, and we hope you have a lot of fun with him!
Passive Skill: Donkey From Above
Anytime when using Focus Aim (right mouse button / left trigger) in mid-air, Ace will hover with his jetpack, triggering this Passive skill. Hovering in the air is not only super cool, it also gives him bonus Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Damage to boot, so stay in the air as often as you can!
Mobility Skill: Jetpack
Ace's Jetpack
Ace's Jetpack throws him quickly into the air - it's very handy for escaping attacks, quickly being able to trigger Donkey From Above or just navigating terrain. Any enemies caught around Ace when he takes off will also take Fire damage and suffer from a Burn Condition for a few seconds.
Utility Skill: Improvised Plan
Ace can use his Improvised Plan skill to recover a big chunk of Skill cooldown for himself and all allies around him! When playing solo this can drastically reduce the cooldown of Holo-Sandwich and/or allow for a fast combo of multiple Jetpack and Rocket-fist maneuvers. But it really shines in party play: with good planning your party can chain together a bunch of skills at the same time!
Charge Skill: Holo-Sandwich
Ace's Holo-Sandwich
Ace's holographic projector has been calibrated for crowd control: he can charge and throw a fake Sandwich across the battlefield, luring nearby enemies and confusing them when they try to eat it. Charging the Sandwich for longer increases its duration, providing you with ample time to run away - or hit your enemies in the back!
Melee Skill: Rocket Fist
Ace's Rocket Fist
Well, Ace's plan was to do a cool rocket punch, but it ends up being a clumsy head-butt instead! This skill was reworked to deal single-target damage instead of AoE, but now launches you into the air after you hit an enemy. You can use this to trigger Donkey From Above and finish them off, or just as a free escape tool to do a hit-and-run tactic!
First Combat 2.0 test is live on the PTR
If you have access to the PTR, we have just uploaded a first taste of the Combat 2.0 on the PTR.
We want your feedback on some of these changes and the direction we're headed.
Here are the major changes on this patch:
All-new Skills and Combo system (however, there is NO feedback on the interface for Combos right now)
Regular and Elite enemies' effective Life increased by 400%
Champion enemies' effective Life increased by 200%
Enemy Mortar skills deal a little less damage, are much faster
Weapons are much less accurate when you are not using Focus Aim (laser sights)
Enemies change positions less often, and have a "tell" before their attacks
All-new enemy attack patterns: no homing projectiles, easier to dodge, higher damage
New attack patterns for Regular enemies and the Ducan Demolisher
New spawn system that allows us for better control of the encounter size and enemy types
The time before you can self-revive in co-op matches has been drastically increased
Multiplayer enemy scaling has been tweaked up a little bit (enemies have more life and damage proportional to how many players are in the match)
Enemies now have collision and you can no longer walk through them (they also cannot walk through each other)
Here is how to play it:
(FIRST: RECOMMENDED) By accessing the PTR, your save files will be lost. Please back up your files first by navigating to "C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\AppData\LocalLow\Rogue Snail\Relic Hunters Legend" and making a copy of all the files within.
Go to your Steam Library
Right-click on the game and select "Properties"
Navigate to the "BETAS" tab
Select "public-test-realm (PTR)" from the drop-down menu
Click on "CLOSE" and wait for the update to download
This Halloween month we’re doing the event “Relic Huntober” alongside our partner Sivicks. For you participate in it, you have to join our Official Discord Channel, create an invite code and call as many friends as possible to join our community. For every 10 people that join, we’ll add a Relic Hunters Alpha key to a giveaway that Sivicks is going to host on Halloween (31th October).
We’ll also make a Rank tracking the number of successful referrals per participant, and the top three places will win prizes, but only the first place will receive the Custom Pop Funko. So, get ready to call your friends to win this HUNT!
Check out the rules of participation and other details about the event on our Discord Channel (discord.gg/relichunters).
Open Development Week #98: Announcing the Combat 2.0 Update
Hey Hunters,
How have you been?
We're already in October, oh my! I heard our Community Manager Lucy and one of our Partners Sivicks are cooking up something nice for Halloween - make sure you're following us on social media to stay up to date!
We've been hard at work on what's next for Legend. Our Steam Early Access release is fast approaching, and we are trying to hurry up and cram it with as much love, polish, cool features and content that we can!
Team Voyager: Story Tools and Social Hub
Our most handsome Team Voyager is still focusing 100% on story and the Secret Market - our Social Hub. I wish I could show all the cool things they are working on, but spoiling story stuff is a no-no.
What I can talk about though is how cool these story tools are!
Our story editor tool
We have taken the amazing open-source storytelling tool Fungus and made it ours - we have completely rewritten all commands to fit our game's architecture, while also improving the workflow and UX to fit our needs.
Gabe and Nathalia have done a great job at this, and if you've messed around with Chroma Squad's Episode Editor before (Gabe was the programmer for that!), this is similar but a thousand times more flexible and powerful. Our story designer Pedro is already working on many quests and side stories, and I can't wait to see them in-game.
Top View of the current state of The Secret Market development
Meanwhile, The Secret Market is also going super well. It is by far the biggest and most detailed location in the game, and we hope it will feel like home when you are there.
We are still holding back most details so that we don't spoil too much - that's why you are only getting the aerial view for now, sorry :p
Here are some non-spoilery information about the Market, though:
It will be the Social Hub of Relic Hunters Legend with multiple online shards with lots of players in each of them.
We still don't know how many online players we can fit into each shard because of performance (both CPU and server-side). We are aiming for as many as we can! The dream is 32 or more players, and hopefully it is feasible, but we will try our best to fit as many as we can.
The Secret Market will be home to all kinds of vendors and quest givers, and most adventures will start there.
If you backed the game on the NPC or Distinguished NPC tier, you will probably be a resident of the Secret Market, going about your day ;)
The Market will have a day and night cycle of a couple of real-time hours.
Spoiler-free lore information: the Market sits right in the middle of Hilltown, which is Ducan-controlled territory. The Market hides in plain sight from the Ducans though, using an ancient cloaking technology called The Perception Drive.
The visual inspiration for the Secret Market is Brazilian favelas, especially the Santa Marta community in Rio. It is colorful and dynamic, full of art, music and creativity, contrasting with the dull, grey and sad Hilltown, which is controlled by Ducan forces.
Team Artemis: Combat 2.0 Update
We at Artemis have recently released the Full Party Update, which included Raff's full skill kit and general improvements on skills and our internal skill tools.
Moving on, we have decided to tackle something I am personally extremely excited for: combat.
The core combat mechanics of Legend have been largely untouched since the Kickstarter demo, almost 2 years ago. There was always something riskier, more technical, more important for the vision of the game, more requested by the Founders, etc.
We think now is the time to finally get the combat gameplay of Legend to match our original vision of the game. I'll try to explain the goals and major changes the best way I can, and I very much look forward to hearing your opinions on this - join us on Discord if you haven't already!
Design goal of Combat 2.0
To improve the flow of combat, increasing the relevance of Skill use, reading enemy behavior, and proper positioning. To improve co-op, making player collaboration more important. And finally, to improve the game's challenge in a fair way, allowing us to create meaningful challenge for an experienced group of 4 players.
What do we want to do to get there?
Stagger System: enemies will have "Hit" animations that will not only make your attacks feel "heavier", but also interrupt their actions;
Combo System: as promised since the Kickstarter video, we will introduce Skill Combos between the skills of different Hunters to encourage teamwork;
Condition Triggers: all Damage Types (Impact, Frag, Magnetic, Fire, Water, Nature) will have a chance to trigger their respective Conditions (Stun, Injury, Silence, Burn, Freeze, Contagion);
Ultimate Skills: all Hunters will charge and unleash their Ultimate skills through gameplay;
Elite Rebalance: Elite enemies will appear on every Difficulty (but more of them will show up on Hard and Epic) and be significantly stronger to provide an "oh snap" moment and break the pacing of combat.
betu's concept of a new Kami enemy
New Enemies and Bosses: Kami faction and more variants of Ducan troops;
Improved Enemy Behavior: enemies will stop bouncing around all the time, will position themselves more sensibly and have clear attacks that can more easily be avoided;
Major Life/Healing Rebalance: enemy attacks will be easier to read and avoid, but damage will be higher. Also, healing from the Potion will be on a drastically increased cooldown, which will increase the value of other healing sources such as Shield regen, Skills and items.
Ammo Economy Rebalance: ammo will run out more quickly, especially for powerful weapons such as shotguns and marksman rifles, but will drop more often, especially during boss fights.
Fixes: shotgun reloads, weapon reload animation speeds and other bugs that get in the way of combat gameplay more will be fixed;
When is the Update coming out?
Uh, not sure. We're focusing more on the quality than on a hard date for this one. Our internal goal is: before the end of the year. Does it mean November? December? One day before Christmas? Too early too tell. But I promise to keep you updated and give you more accurate estimates when we have them!
What about the Story?
We probably won't be releasing it until we are very close to done (which should be right before our Steam Early Access release next year).
What about that Halloween surprise?
It's a surprise! But you can be the first to know by checking out our Social media and weekly Community livestreams on Twitch:
Last week we deploy our new update and now our founders and backers can enjoy adventures in Relic Hunters Legend with a Full Party!
It was time for Raff, the Party Engineer, show up with all her skills implemented and now she is able to support her teammates through jammin’ tunes and pump out some damage with her trusty Keytar.
Raff's Skills
THE WRENCH: The Wrench is Raff's Melee skill. It deals a lot of area damage, but can also hit allies to recover their Shields (blue lifebar) or Armor (yellow lifebar). Pretty handy!
SOUNDSCAPE: Raff's Utility skill. It projects a constant aura of music around Raff that can buff her and nearby allies. By actively using the skill, you can switch between two songs: Soothing Song, which regenerates Life over time, and Battle Song, which grants +20% Weapon Damage.
SHIFTING MOODS: Her Passive skill. Raff's humor is constantly changing, which affects her skills: every 7 seconds she switches between two stances: Good Vibes and Bad Vibes. If you switch to Battle Song while in Bad Vibes, you deal Magnetic damage in an area around Raff. On the other hand, if you switch to Soothing Song while in Good Vibes, you will instantly heal Raff and nearby allies for a good amount.
KEYTAR BLAST: Raff's signature skill! By holding down the Charge skill, you can wind up a devastating attack with the Keytar that will hit everything in a large cone in front of Raff! Enemies will take a lot of Magnetic damage (which is effective against Shields in particular), and allies will be healed instantly!
UP THE TEMPO: Last but certainly not least, if your party wants to slip away in style, Raff has her super cool Mobility skill called Up The Tempo. It gives a huge speed buff to Raff and all nearby allies, allowing you to sprint and zip around the battlefield!
And there are more things to come for Relic Hunters Legend! Participate in our Community at Discord, give us your feedback and ask us any question you want!
Don't forget to follow our media to not lose any news about the game.
Open Development Week #93: Raff is Coming Next Week!
Hey Hunters,
Thank you for your patience with us for the past month. We've been keeping our heads down and working hard on the next steps of Relic Hunters Legend, but we haven't dedicated enough time to interact with you on Discord or on these development updates.
So now I have a huge list of things to talk about, so let's jump right in!
Our family is growing!
If you've been following us closely on social media, you will notice we have hired more people! We have two new coders who will be joining us officially very soon, and help us bring more Relic Hunters to you, faster!
We have also split into teams - you are probably already familiar if you read our previous development update. One new coder is going to Team Artemis, and another to Team Voyager!
This week will be about Team Artemis - my team - which has been working on Raff. We'll talk more about Team Voyager (who are doing Story stuff and the Secret Market) and Team Juno (and their cute Relic Hunters Blitz) in the next update.
Team Artemis: The "Raff" Update
We have a name and a release date for Raff: The Full Party Update is coming to Steam on September 3rd! If you haven't already, you can become a Founder to access our Alpha and play it!
Play our intro, Raff!
I'll be honest, it's been a whole lot more work than we expected. Here's a list of things we got done in order to bring this update to you:
We implemented healing feedback (numbers, visual effects) and optimized multiplayer code to handle healing other players and avoid synchronization issues.
We implemented the concept of "Special Weapons" that replace the weapons on your Loadout. This was used for the Keytar, but will be useful for Pinkyy's gloves and Panzer's flamethrower, as well as future dungeon mechanics and quests.
We finished implementing our Status Effects system, that is now super powerful, works well online, and can easily be extended.
We implemented Skill Cancelling to allow for some buffs or debuffs to finish early or to be removed by skills.
We created a whole new system called "Skill Proxy" that allows guns to effectively shoot Skills. This allowed us to create the Keytar, but will also be used to create all kinds of crazy weapons in the future.
Guns can now shoot multiple different projectiles on the same shot, with different effects and gameplay. This was also to allow the Keytar to work.
Our aiming system now understands when you have a weapon that can target allies and helps with aim assist / auto aim.
There are dozens of new skill effects and sounds.
Our Skill Tool that we use to create skills is 90% complete and will soon be used to make: Skill Trees, Ultimate skills, new enemies, new crazy item affixes, and Relics!
The reason why I'm mentioning all of this behind-the-scenes work is that most will be invisible in the short term. The only new content on the Full Party Update will be Raff with her full set of skills. That's pretty cool and we're proud of it, but it's admittedly a lot less than we expected - we wanted Ultimates, Skill Combos, and at least one Skill Tree, but they will have to wait a bit. We are hopeful that these things will come fast now that all of this base work has been laid out.
Raff's Skill Set Explained
Raff is the most complicated/technical character in the game to date, and since we don't have tutorials I think it's a good idea to give some general guidance as to how she works.
Raff is a Support character first and foremost, so we tried to design her to be viable solo but really shine when playing with other people. The design themes that we went for were duality, music and engineering.
By engineering we mean, uh, hitting stuff with a giant Wrench.
They don't teach that at MIT
The Wrench is Raff's Melee skill. It deals a lot of area damage, but can also hit allies to recover their Shields (blue lifebar) or Armor (yellow lifebar). Pretty handy!
Raff is always using her Utility skill Soundscape. It projects a constant aura of music around Raff that can buff her and nearby allies. By actively using the skill, you can switch between two songs: Soothing Song, which regenerates Life over time, and Battle Song, which grants +20% Weapon Damage.
Her Passive skill is called Shifting Moods. Raff's humor is constantly changing, which affects her skills: every 7 seconds she switches between two stances: Good Vibes and Bad Vibes. Our plan is for these stances to affect multiple Skill effects when the Skill Trees are in the game, but for now they only interact with Soundscape.
If you switch to Battle Song while in Bad Vibes, you deal Magnetic damage in an area around Raff. On the other hand, if you switch to Soothing Song while in Good Vibes, you will instantly heal Raff and nearby allies for a good amount.
That's not all - Raff's signature skill is definitely her Keytar Blast! By holding down the Charge skill, you can wind up a devastating attack with the Keytar that will hit everything in a large cone in front of Raff! Enemies will take a lot of Magnetic damage (which is effective against Shields in particular), and allies will be healed instantly!
Last but certainly not least, if your party wants to slip away in style, Raff has a super cool Mobility skill called Up The Tempo. It gives a huge speed buff to Raff and all nearby allies, allowing you to sprint and zip around the battlefield!
We are cooking up a brand new Raff trailer voiced by the talented Kimlihn Tran to celebrate the release of the Full Party Update! Can't wait to see what you think of Raff and her new kit in September 3rd!
And don't forget to follow us on our media and stay updated about everything we’re doing for Relic Hunters Legend.
P.S. Oh and by the way, Jimmy can kick now! Watch out, Ducans!
Open Development Week #86: What's Next for Alpha
Hey Hunters,
We hope you've been enjoying the Alpha of Relic Hunters Legend! We feel like the game is finally starting to take shape for the Early Access release next year, but there is still much to do.
Divide and Conquer: Meet the Dev Teams
After we released the Alpha, we made a change to our development process that was a long time coming. Our vision has always been to work in multiple small, independent teams. These teams will have full autonomy to work on what they think is important, and will communicate directly with the community to figure out what that is, instead of funneling everything through an internal leadership.
This is also how we plan to keep the game updated very frequently after launch!
Just imagine this: a big update comes out in, say, January. Three months later, in April, we have another big one. Then in July we have another one. That's a healthy rhythm for an online RPG, but having your team scramble to make stuff in under 3 months is very demanding and a lot of things can go wrong. We also have to fix bugs, run events, and do minor content drops in-between these updates, otherwise the game will feel dead and abandoned.
With multiple teams, we can achieve all of that! On the scenario described above, Team A delivers the January update, Team B delivers the April update, Team C delivers the July one, and then we're back to Team A - all while Team D is hotfixing the game, and doing small and fast content drops and events.
Working in such a way, each team has 9 months instead of 3 to really polish their updates and try out new and innovative things.
We have now started to prepare our studio for this live support! Next year we will have four teams, but for now we are still three. Let's meet them!
Team Artemis
This "old school" team has all the OG Relic Hunters members: me (Mark), Betu, Müller, Caio and Roni.
Artemis is the "frontline" team that is currently responsible for fixing bugs and issues with the Alpha build, and we just deployed a hotfix on Steam.
We are next in line for a content update: the "Raff Update" coming in August (read more about it below).
Ace charging his Holo-Sandwich skill
We are now working on the Skill System, specifically on the Status effects, and you can see some of Betu's new animations for Ace and Raff's skills on our Twitter account.
Team Voyager
Voyager is our "story" team, and they are our sweethearts Gabriel, Eli, Mari, Rayk and Pedro.
They are working on two big, big things. The first one is the Secret Market, our city hub where you will be able to meet other Hunters, talk to NPCs, and just chill.
Layout sketch of the Secret Market
We'll be posting a lot of concept art and some preview models and textures for the Secret Market on our social media, it's starting to look super cool :)
The second big thing they're working on is the story tools and content! We have wrapped up the the script for the first Act of the story, and Gabriel and Pedro are working on implementing all of it. We are very proud of the story and we hope it will surprise and delight all of you Hunters out there when it comes out!
Team Juno
Our newest team has been with us for only about 6 months now, but it already feels like they have always been here. Maíra, Chu, Gus and Eli* are working on a different project for now.
(*yes, she is doubling as producer on both Juno and Voyager)
Funded by the Brazilian government, the mobile-exclusive "Relic Hunters Blitz" is coming out next year for iOS and Android and it is already looking and playing the part.
Pew! Take that, pixel Ducans!
As soon as Team Juno is done with Blitz, they will come over to help on Legend! What will they work on? You decide ;)
Hopefully we will soon have a playable Alpha build of Blitz for all our Kickstarter backers and Founders to play on their phones!
Announcing the Next Content Patch: The Raff Update
Team Artemis is hard at work on the next update for you! the Raff Update will bring:
Our robust Skill system, with revamps of existing Skills;
New visual effects;
New animations;
New Skills for Ace: Holo-Sadwich and Improvised Plan
And, most importantly, Raff will have all of her skills!
This update will drop in August! On the next development update we will talk at length about Raff's skills and how they'll work in the game, so keep following us ;)
See you soon!
Cheers,
~Mark
Our Alpha Phase is here!
After a couple of months of a LOT of hard work, we launched today the Alpha Phase of Relic Hunters Legend with tons of new content, bug fixes, improved systems and many things for you to discover on our galaxy!
You can check the details about the features that we implement on this build on the previous update here on Steam!
All hunters aboard!
Now everybody who supported the development of Relic Hunters Legend with our founder's packs or purchased our Kickstarter on the sub-$40 will receive their Alpha Keys. More people to play, more fun for everyone!
For our Founders, please check your Humble Bundle account to grab your key.
If you purchase one of these packs and didn’t receive your key, please contact us at this email: lucyg@roguesnail.com
What is next? You decide!
There will have another poll with all of our Founders on our Discord Channel! We want to know where do you want us to focus next. More enemies and places? Finish the skills of all Hunters? More game modes? More progression systems? We'll see what you have to say!
And there are much more things to come! Follow us on our media and stay updated about everything we’re doing for Relic Hunters Legend.
Open Development Week #82: Announcing the Alpha Release Date!
Hey Hunters,
Long time no see, uh? Sorry for the silence during the last couple of months.
A lot of things happened, and production has been moving at a solid pace, but I (Mark) am the sole person responsible for these updates.
I had a family tragedy in May that took a heavy toll not only on my time, but also on my energy to come out and do social things like hanging out on Discord with you, or writing these development updates.
There's also something I usually call "mid-development blues" that happens on every single big project like this (I swear, it happens every time, with every team). You start feeling like you've been wasting too much time to get things done, you start to doubt your ability to actually get the game to the finish line, and you start to doubt if anyone is actually going to like it and what the heck was I thinking when I thought this was good helpmeI'mafraud.
At the end of the day, I am very grateful for having a wonderful, wonderful team at Rogue that is sharing this dream with me, and the support and trust of you, our Founders, who are giving us this opportunity. We will not squander it.
Whew.
Deep breath.
It's ok now.
Let's talk about happy stuff!
All Hunters Aboard!
Our Alpha build for Relic Hunters Legend has a confirmed release date of June 22nd. We will let in everybody who has ever supported us. If you purchased our Kickstarter on the sub-$40 tier, or if you purchased our $20 Founders pack, this is your entry point!
Originally we planned to let more people in during the Beta, but it's taking way longer than we had predicted. At this point, the Alpha backers have been playing the game for a year already. They want more people to play together with, so it's a win-win for everyone!
What's In the Alpha?
There are many new things on the Alpha build!
The main new feature (that you voted for!) is... guns! There are now over 50 base guns with cool models, animations, sound effects, visual effects, everything. They also come with randomized item affixes and damage types.
Hunter Screen (inventory) is improved, with better and new feedback, shiny visuals and that cool reflection that we always wanted to do!
Materials now drop from enemies all around Galyno Canyons. There are many different Materials to collect, with different uses and rarities.
Recycling items now award you with Materials depending on the item that was recycled.
You can use materials to Enhance your items, increasing their power and Gear Score. You can keep the ones with good rolls instead of just using whatever was higher item level!
The item drop system has been reworked and we have Item Labels and new effects to make loot more clear.
The item drop system can now drop our new Unique items, Set items, Augmented items and Exotic items.
We currently have only one implemented Unique Weapon: the Blade Knight.
The Help Others system allows you to join games to help other players. In the future this will award you with a social currency called "Karma" that you can trade for cool rewards!
The Map Screen has been improved and is now closer to our vision for the final game.
All Menus are now closely resembling the final vision, and the ones that are not done have little descriptions to explain how the game is going to grow and evolve.
What is NOT in the Alpha?
Sadly, we still haven't reached the full scope of what we had planned for the Alpha last year.
Raff still has no skills in-game.
Ace is still missing his Utility skill (Improvised Plan) and his Charge skill (Holo-Sandwich).
We have yet to implement the additional Game Modes: Defense, Payload and Distraction.
We have yet to implement Special Missions.
What's next?
You decide! No, really. We are going to have another poll with all of our Founders after the Alpha build is deployed. I'm sure you will all have a lot of feedback for us, and we want to know where do you want us to focus next. More enemies and places? Finish the skills of all Hunters (especially Raff)? More gamemodes? More progression systems? We'll see what you have to say!
Join us on our Discord to participate in this when the time comes!
Come chat with me on our Livestream!
Want to take an early look at the Alpha in-development? I will be live on our Twitch channel showing it and talking about game design and what's planned for Relic Hunters.
Don't miss it this Friday 14th at Noon PT / 1 PM ET / 4 PM BRT
Open Development Week #70: Back from GDC, announcing "Help Others"
Hey Hunters,
We are finally back to our normal routine after quite a bit of travelling around and showing the game!
We had a wonderful time in San Francisco at the Game Developers Conference (GDC). We met some of you Kickstarter backers, we showed the game to players, fellow devs, media and business partners, and we ate a lot of cheesecake!
Caio, Me, Maira and Lucy arriving at GDC 2019!
After we came back we had a big all-hands meeting to discuss what was next for Relic Hunters Legend. We know we will let all backers play the game in June, so what are the most urgent things that we need to do to make the experience great for all those new Hunters that will soon be joining us?
We polled our Founders at our Discord channel to figure out what you want. Was it more in-depth loot? Better matchmaking and social systems? More skills and the promised Ultimate Skills and Skill Combos?
(Spoilers: the answer is in the next paragraph)
The "Help Others" Feature
Since the beginning of Relic Hunters we had a vision for how we wanted to connect people.
We grew up playing online games such as Ragnarok Online and World of Warcraft, where people would log in just to hang out with their "virtual" friends. You would sit on city hubs or in front of dungeons and just chat while you are waiting for a healer or for your guildies to log in. You could make new friends, and there was many of opportunities to be kind to strangers.
Friends 4 Ever <3
Online games have become more and more anti-social over the last few years, with communities that are at worst hostile and at best detached and silent. This is the indirect product of game design that has prioritized convenience and ease-of-use, but slowly lost human connection and kindness as an unforeseen side-effect.
With Legend we want to create systems that allow people to make friends, game modes that give space to social interaction, and reward systems that incentive people to be nice to each other.
We have several of these systems planned: Help Others, Emotes/Emojis, Kindness, Hearts/Super Hearts, The Secret Market, Dropship Customization, Cooking, Gifts... but we had to choose one to start, and that was an easy choice.
How does it work?
"Help Others" is a feature designed to increase the odds of matchmaking with random players regardless of activity.
When you next login to Relic Hunters, you will have a new menu on the top-left of the Map screen where you'll be able to select whether you want to play a Solo, Public or Friends Only game, as well as your Region of preference.
You will also find a big new button on the bottom part of the screen called "Help Others". By clicking this button, we will try to matchmake you into the Public game where we think you'll be most helpful.
It will always try to find content that you already completed yourself;
It will not matchmake you to help someone if your Gear Score is too low for the activity;
It will not matchmake you to help someone if their Gear Score is too low for the activity;
It will prioritize games that have fewer people in them, especially someone who is alone;
It will try to put you with players that are close to your Gear Score, if possible;
It will not put you into a game that is on a boss fight or final section of the activity;
Why should you use this?
Right now, because you want to be nice, play with other people and make new friends. We are not naive, though - we know we need more incentive to make sure this feature gets used a lot in the final game.
In the near future we will implement the "Kindness" system - a special social currency that you win by completing activities on Help Others. We will talk more in-depth about it when we're closer to implementing it, but it will be a way to purchase cosmetics and other premium items without having to use premium currency.
This means you can either contribute to this game and this community by purchasing premium currency or by being really nice and helpful to everyone and earning a lot of Kindness!
Special Game Design Livestream Today!
Wanna talk more about Help Others, social features and anything else with me? I'll be live at our Twitch channel later today at our new time that the community voted for: Noon Pacific Time on Fridays!
For all of you around the world, that's 12PM PDT, 3PM EDT, 4PM BRT and 9PM CEST!
Open Development Week #68: New Trailer and Bug Fixes!
Hey Hunters,
How's it going? We've been A-OK here at Rogue, and we just had a nice couple of weeks of fixing bugs. We still have two more weeks to go before we are back to doing new stuff, so hang in there - it's gonna be worth it!
But fun things first: we released our new GAMEPLAY TRAILER and you can already check it on our Store Page and YouTube!
https://youtu.be/Wx9yOoax8F8
We are headed to GDC (Game Developer's Conference) in San Francisco next week, and our previous trailer was from late 2017, so a new gameplay show-off was more than needed.
It was super fun to record this - I played with Founders Blurbi, Spookyy, Rathorn, wowman and MasterSuperior, and it is a testament to how much our community helps us out every day. Thank you!
Bug Fixes Ahoy!
We've been laser-focused on the Loot update for the past few months, so the game's stability and smoothness suffered quite a bit.
We have decided that our showcase at GDC was an excellent opportunity to take a whole month to fix bugs and issues in the game.
Jimmy is fighting some Ducans at Peaks Blockade
This is the list of fixes we are currently working on:
Getting stuck sometimes when typing on the chat
Some commands are not being ignored while typing on chat (using skills, opening the inventory, etc)
Getting killed while charging a skill would make you unable to revive (stuck on revive screen)
You can join matches that are already on scoreboard
You can close the scoreboard by pressing ESC
The scoreboard bugs out when it opens on top of the inventory screen or pause menu
Pinkyy's Leap animation bugs out when she jumps straight up
Edge tracking of the enemies disappearing
Jimmy's Dash animation bugs out when he jumps straight up
Skills from other players are showing up delayed on multiplayer matches
Weapon animation are bugging out in many cases (switching while in cover, getting stuck on reloading animations, etc)
Some weapon animations have inverted hands
Improve the feel and sticky aim of the controller cursor on the inventory
Controller deadzone and acceleration are wrong on the menu screens
Two tooltips can open at the same time on the inventory if you close it while a tooltip is open
Step sounds and fx are wrongly timed
Some maps vanished from the mini-map
Champion and Elite enemy lifebars and icons are not showing correctly
Melee attacks are not working for multiple characters and skills
Some skills cause 0 damage when elemental weapons are equipped
Changing the input method on the inventory makes the Recycle button not work anymore
Loot VFX are playing twice and sometimes with the wrong rarity color
Ammo drop is not correctly considering the dynamic drop chances, and is dropping less ammo than it should
Final gamepad input on the pause menu or inventory are triggering skills on the gameplay
Some visual effects are hard to see on snow levels
Cover animations are busted
Some enemy shaders are not correctly displaying the "white" effect when they are hit
Sometimes weapons stop firing until you switch to another weapon
Pinkyy's Barrier is being targeted as if it was an enemy
Controller support in general needs some improvements
Sometimes when you join a game, enemies are just flying weapons
Sometimes when enemies are activated they shoot at you with a low-damage instant hit-scan damage
Champion enemies sometime cause a lag spike when they die
Lifebar is not starting the match fully filled when you have +Life% gear equipped
You currently lose a Scavenge match when you should have won it by Overtime
Jimmy's grenades sometimes fly towards the sky or fall through the floor
Scoreboard should close all open screens when it pops up
Options and player settings are not saving correctly every time
Mission completion should be recorded when the last objective is completed, not when the scoreboard shows up
Loot and progression should be saved on disconnect, and also periodically to prevent losing data on crashes or forced closures
Revive countdown bugs out if you open your inventory while downed
___________
Hopefully this will all be done by next week!
Follow Us During GDC
Lucy will be active on instagram and other social networks all throughout GDC, so make sure you follow us to stay up-to-date!
