Rise of the Foederati
Update 1.8.2
Fixes:
* Suebian Proven Ones now should be deployable and able to be played.
* Buying certain items now does not place them in an invisible black hole that makes it disappear; should be correctly placed in the player's inventory.
* Right-click "Take" command in looting should work properly
* Defeating a leader now should properly crush the warband's morale.
Update 1.8.1
Since we are disallowed to use it, our updates and files have been transferred manually, which increases our time drastically. Internally, we decided to let our subversion client resolve their internal issues while we develop our campaign.
Though we are behind in programming, our artwork and animation has been going fast. We have a script ready and expect everyone to like this small preamble to our main campaign, as a prelude that is actually an epilogue. You'll guys know more details in a few.
Not everything is bad news. Hyperkinetic has been a great partner so far with us and now has most of the knowledge of our code. This will help in the future with faster updates, but it'll require the subversion client to be restored. I hope everyone has a nice weekend!
Fixes:
* Some units were having a red glow when attacked (Visigoth units) others aren't (Frankish units like Trustismanne and Galikakus)
* Units were playing both Hurt and Defeat animations when defeated; should go direct to Defeated
Update 1.8
A long-remaining glitch in our multiplayer code left everyone without the means to play with each other, which was one of the core features of our early builds. As much as desync and bugs still happened, it was possible for players to play freely by creating a room and inviting others for a fight. Today, this has been finally addressed, and our partners at Hyperkinetic worked hard to provide a fix. This has revealed as well that our current code is not up to standards (evidenced by our previously mentioned problems), and not only has the fix been made, but we are now aware of the steps required to upgrade our systems for larger scale playing. Its not realistic for us to make this change right now, as we shifted our focus to single player, but its definately on our radar on things to-do once campaigns are fully implemented.
The update is not without content, tho. We made several grammar mistakes on item descriptions, tweaked a few weapons and added a new type of Long Sword, the Semispatha. Players now can choose between the Hairus, the Spatha and Semispatha as their weapon of choice, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.
Progress on the campaign side will remain constant as we slowly but surely add the content required for implementation. Because it takes some time for programmers to understand previous work, the inertia is now broken, and you can expect more constant updates throughout the next year.
* Added: New Long Sword-class item, the Semispatha. A sword that is light and fast, and even cheaper than other models, but has slightly reduced damage and Parry value due to its lower reach.
* Fixed: Multiplayer should now work again. Desync issues and bugs related to turn order and units should still happen, albeit at a reduced amount due to code optimization.
* Fixed: Grammatical mistakes on several item descriptions.
* Fixed: Brunjo armor had the same pricing as Lorica Hamata.
* Fixed: Several units should walk/run in a less realistic, but faster pace, slightly reducing wait times between moves. This should happen more often in new updates.
New Development Partnership with Hyperkinetic Studios
Although it is a little early to bring the exact points of our agreements, this news is to further address and finally solve our systemic issue of programming workforce that is plaguing us for years; we expect that this partnership brings a hyperkinetic boost to our programming forces, and solidify this alliance for more projects in the future.
Expect more details soon, as we finalize our deal and solidify the fineprint of our joint efforts.
Happy Steam Launch 3rd Anniversary, Rise of the Foederati!
Our lead sprite and animation artist has a nasty injury and cannot draw as often as he did, leaving us to start a new hiring process for new artists that can fill in for him in our campaign demands.
Meanwhile, structurally, our campaign script is almost done, so we know already how it will start and end with many details already previewed here in the News segment. Some details are pending because of our artist issues, such as the amount of supporting characters, but its something we can work with and solve later.
We appreciate your patience while we navigate through these tormentous waters. It has not been easy for us to recover our old pace, and the changes to the project mean we can provide more, in less time, but until we can solve our team issues, unfortunately, our news will be dedicated on revealing tidbits of material that is ready. As always, we promise to reveal more as new things are being done; our new cutscene creator requires some fleshing out before it can be used, but its almost ready. A test run of the campaign's first chapter is also on the works so you guys can feel how a single player experience is compared to multiplayer-only.
More about our Campaign (Part 2)
Hi there. Continuing our series about our single player campaign, today we'll present to you our main character. As previously posted hinting it, the new character is a young prince by the name of Hermenegild.
Being a Visigoth prince, he is raised in the court of his father, king Liuvigild, who for the first time manages to unite and create a lasting kingdom, something their people have not seen for centuries. During the campaign, the player will be put in Hermenegild's shoes as they try to survive as a young man with the huge burden of being the successor of the king. Will he be up to the task? Or will the weight of the Kingdom be too much for him to bear?
Perhaps what is most unique about our campaign and what we are most excited to show you is the progression of our prince. When the campaign begins, you will play as an immature, but headstrong young man destined for greatness. As the chapters go by, Hermenegild will get older, and his physical and emotional scars will deepen, as it shapes him as both warrior and statesman. Many questions will be presented to him, and it is your task as the prince to follow your king's orders for the glory of your kingdom! As showcased in our previous episode, the Visigoth kingdom is set in modern Spain, in the current province of Hispania, where they occupy the central regions and share borders with the now-decayed Roman Empire who was only recently reconquered from the clutches of the Ostrogoths, a different branch and offshoot of the Visigoth royalty in a different dynasty. To the north, the everlasting Basque tribes have federations with loose authority over their own domain, and the Visigoth rulers agree to leave them be in exchange of an independent rule and non-agression treaties. To the west, the Suebians still threaten local lords and put to question the crown's authority, especially with their new king, Miro. Finally, north of the Pyrenées, in northeastern regions, lies the Franks and the Burgundians, the first being the largest and most dangerous kingdom of Europe with its multiple kings in different regions, and a key convenience-ally of Liuvigild, who married one of the Frankish kings' daughters, removing her from a life of cloisure in a monastery as a nun.
This fact shapes a lot of Hermenegild's life, as his mother was raised in a different culture. Being half-Frankish, many of Hermenegild's challenges in his court are brought upon him as a difficult choice between both sides of the family. Worst of all, his father and king Liuvigild is the youngest of three brothers, the eldest dying in mysterious circunstances and the other also being a Visigoth king, Liuva, in the northern regions of the kingdom. To survive, Liuvigild brought many concessions to regional nobles and tradesmen, making his rule be even more nominal than his other two brothers were. Different from them, however, is that Liuvigild is a great warrior, and conquered many lawless regions of the kingdom, bringing forth a new era of prosperity. This reorganization of the kingdom, however, has consequences, as you will lead small armies across Hispania to bring forth the rule of your father there are those who question his authority, be it from his lax position against those who dare question his rule, and his selective brutality to those who are deemed weaker than his armies. A prince who is from an early age engaged in matters of warfare becomes well-raised later on to rule his own kingdom; enemies and backstabbers are never in short supply in the Visigoth court...
Last, but not least, a particular case is brought to the players, because the kingdom of the Visigoths is shared between Hermenegild's father and uncle, one being ruler in the north, the other in the east... we bring more about the politics regarding the Visigoth crown in our next episode, and how this pans out for the campaign. Different than previously planned, our campaigns will still have a map movement and conquest part, but will mostly revolve around battles, and making sure your tribe is uncontested. Being a prince, and officially an army leader (or in name, at least, because young men are simply wards with a captain serving as their representatives the same way as a regent would if not old enough to reign), playing in the campaign will not be much different than in a multiplayer campaign we previously planned, with the key differences being having drastically different objectives, a more focused area in maps to travel and discover new challenges and finally directions in which you can pan out the results of your exploits, which we will also talk about in our next post.
This is our last post of the year, and with that we hope to be able to present to your guys the result of our work in our campaign cutscenes next time and bring to you how it would pan out in-game. Thank you for staying with us and make sure to check us out in 2023!
More about our Campaign (Part 1)
Hi there, we announced ten days ago our new single player campaign. We only mentioned it briefly what was all that about and today we're here to explain what it is all about.
As only a reminder for everyone, when we started developing Rise of the Foederati our main idea was to bring the connection between Antiquity and Middle Ages to players, as a interstatial period for those wondering what happened in the continent of Europe, Northern Africa and the Levant. Being a turn-based strategy game where players do not play as the leader of a nation, but rather as a commander of a soldier detachment, the whole mission of players is generally to serve their king/leader as a military officer with a group of different sizes, from a small warband to a large military unit performing a multitude of tasks, related to combat, or not, as they weave through the intricacies of a very politically fluid historical age. As the game begins roughly in 459, a few years after the death of Attila the Hun and the massive routing of his hordes, as his sons cannot unite to continue his father's legacy, be it from lack of personal competence or behind-the-scenes sabotage.
All this being said, our campaign instead is not from the 5th, but rather the 6th century. What is the difference in a hundred years to our setting, you may ask? Not many in most places. Our biggest change maybe is that players will not be dealing with the Western Roman Empire, but rather the Byzantine Empire. During this century, the Western Roman Empire was dissoluted and became what is known in history as the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths, in 489. For a while, though; emperor Justinian of the Byzantines captured and unified both Empires for a while, before losing grasp again of Roman rule and becoming the Lombard Kingdom of Italy, in 568.
With all this confusion thrown in, but now out of the way for those wondering about the setting, who is our main character and the setting of the campaign, finally?
Meet our guy. He is a Visigoth prince, born in troubling times in the Visigoth court in their capital, Toletum, Hispania. He has a small brother and has just lost his mother, Theodosia. He will need to stay strong and be a great prince for his tribe, as his father is the first Visigoth king in a while that manages to find relative stability and peace.
He also has a younger brother, who is just a (younger) kid when his adventures begin, but will play a big role in the future. What are the details surrounding these two princes and his people? Why is this map different than our official ones? Uncover more next week, as we showcase more details of the campaign in the future!
A Change of Roads (Campaigns)
The most common criticism we had from most players was our lack of single-player support. This is evidence in multiple forum discussions we had showcasing our product, where people would rather play with their own pace and learn more about the game first, before diving in a multiplayer mode. In a strategy game, this makes sense, as players first want to know mechanics, combos and efficient tactics first, before putting them to the test against others.
As it is understood, our game was initially sold with multiplayer sessions in mind. But because so many people are longing for a full campaign, we are very excited to announce the shift in our development direction! instead providing several campaigns of varied difficulty that put the tribes that we already developed in a story with multiple episodes. This means you as a player will get to play against a more difficult, smarter AI in a series of challenges across different landscapes, battles and political troubles that can shift according to your own decisions. Below is the detailed list of our changes for the future:
- Multiplayer efforts are now put second to single player. We are hanging gears to develop a cutscene editor to a multi-episode single-player campaign featuring events that happened after Rise of the Foederati's timeline, but very similar in setting. More details to come.
- The new planned units are on hold until we manage to fix a critical bug in the new units' animators, developed to fit all animations that are needed for a more complex graphical showing of their equipment in-game.
- The new tribe, the Alans, are planned and set to return to the development phase once we manage to finish our campaign. Eventually, they will also get their own campaign, and its our expectations that each tribe has their own leader or important figure to have their own. This is a slight change as well from our historical accuracy perspective; several tribes do not have legendary or historical figures in Rise of the Foederati, while others have too many; we will try to feature as many important names as possible and add theoretical, fictional elements that tie together with real historical happenings.
- Many people purchased our game because of our multiplayer focus-first, and are waiting for a long time for our product to be finished. We are checking how to open a refund program for those that feel like the change of pace in development does not suit their waiting anymore.
- Until the end of the year, no new updates are programmed, but we will now update players more often with news of this change.
We listened, and because this ties so well with providing content with more haste without compromising quality (because of the lessened complexity), expect to hear from us again soon. Our first campaign features one of the greatest Visigoth heroes of all time, whose actions profoundly changed the world at the time. We cannot wait to share more details! Last but not least, we do not plan on ditching multiplayer entirely; there are discussions ongoing for how we can implement episodes with two-player options.
Programmers, development and single-player campaigns
You may have noticed we did not have a two-year anniversary Steam launch message on May 4th. We didnt post anything because there is very little to show in the ways of content update. Currently, as it is, our project is halted on the programming side, because of a shieldwall/animation bug that needs fixing. Until it is, all of our units use the same system that may cause game inconsistencies. We have new units, new tribes and the map exploration mechanic to develop ASAP and we were supposed to deliver it by April of this year.
Our team consists of one lead programmer, a game designer and several artists, with another person working in the background as the bridge to accounting, business and so forth. Our programmer has been facing personal and working-related issues that kept him from further developing as required, and we gave several months for the situation to resolve. It didnt, so we discussed and came with the solution to hire additional programmers for our project. The new programmers will need a month or so to understand the code initially; we expect them to be fully integrated by end of June/first week of July.
Today, our game has a lot to show on the artistic side, but development-wise, we admit we are very late. But because we did not have a clear way to resolve it until now, we decided to wait until we did, and this is our plan for 2022; have additional progammers working to clear this gap and put ourselves together to the timeline once again.
All this being said, there are talks to develop a first single-player campaign before the multiplayer side. Its a huge demand from people interested in the game to have something for those willing to play by themselves, and its something we promised to deliver once our multiplayer side was already working. This may change due to the problems we are facing. This campaign is already written on the backend, only requiring detailing on how to go forth with it. Players will play as a Visigoth captain under the direct command of Prince Euric to dethrone his older brother, the king of Visigoths, Theodoric II.
Further details will be given in the future. As always, thank you for your patience, and hoping that there is enough transparency with you, our communications are fully open for suggestions, feedback and chatting. Our next update will give details on the fifth tribe being installed, as well as a full analysis of the new upcoming units for existing tribes.
Yay for 2022 (New website)! Or nay...? (Programming halting)
In other more positive notes, our website is finally up again! We made lots of changes to make it more dynamic and accessible for people on both smartphones and PCs. If you want to check it out click below:
www.riseofthefoederati.com
Regarding our new tribe; we have a sketch ready for the leader of the Alans, and it should be finished by the end of the month.
This is a quick announcement just to get you guys up to date with what's happening on the back stage and to let you know things may not be going as fast as we wanted, but its still going! Thank you for your patience and support, as always.