As I mentioned in one of my recent devlog updates, we’re now starting to ramp up community testing! We’re moving testing from Itch.io to Steam and this will be our primary platform for testing going forwards.
Note: This is not an open call for testers. At this point in time, test keys will only be sent to backers from the crowdfunding campaigns according to their backer tiers.
Note: The following build is for Windows only. I’m working to get the Mac build up to date and in any case, the following guide and key should apply to Mac once it’s available.
For this phase of testing we’re looking for the following:
We need to make sure the game:
Starts
That the game fits the screen fully (see below)
Pixels look crisp (see below)
The game feels snappy and seems to run at about 60 fps.
The build is VERY short (takes 5 min to finish) and some features are mid development (Inventory and character sheet UI has not been reimplemented in the new GUI system for instance). I DO NOT WANT FEEDBACK on this yet.
Let me know if the game does not fill the screen like the image above. The actual game screen should not have black bars.
Pixels should look super crisp - no fuzz.
How do I Report Bugs?
Use our Discord channel! Report bugs in any of the sub-channels that start with the “feedback” prefix!
You can also send bug reports from inside the game! Just mouse over the thing you wish to indicate and press F2! This takes a snapshot of the screen. You can add a short message as well and when you press Enter, this sends the screenshot and message directly to the Discord! Pressing Escape returns to the game.
So how do I activate my Steam key?
The Steam key is formated “XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX” and for crowdfunding backers, it will be sent as a message through Kickstarter or IndieGOGO.
To activate the key, open your Steam client and just click the “Add a game” button in the lower left corner. Then, select “Activate a Product on Steam”:
Good luck and happy hunting!
AL
Project Update August 2022
Greetings all!
It’s time for a new update already. I get to nerd out hard in this one, so let’s goooooo!
—News—
TESTERS AWAKEN! We’re getting pretty close to sending out a round of builds to our testers to get some more eyes on the upcoming demo!
WHEN: Within the next week!
WHAT: The builds we’ll be sending out will be VERY short (about 5 mins of gameplay). It’s critical that we get a first round of testing in to see how the project works on different setups. More info on what to look for will follow as the test builds get sent out.
WHERE: We are moving testing to Steam (from itch.io). This means you’ll need a Steam account to continue as a tester at this point.
WHO: Steam beta keys will be sent out to crowdfunding backers who serve as our primary testers. We’ll start by sending out keys to a small subset of testers to begin with just to see if this is a good workflow (sending out keys takes time and I don’t want to send out 500 keys before realizing something is wrong).
STEAM SUBSCRIBERS
As I mentioned in my previous post, we have quite a few fans who are subscribing to our Prologue Steam page instead of the main game page. Our intention is to move all of our Steam activity to the main game page and we’ll only be publishing updates there from now on. We’ll still nudge the Prologue followers when we post stuff but be sure to make the swap if you’re following the Prologue instead of the main game.
The same goes for wishlisting: Be sure to wishlist the main game – NOT the Prologue!
As I’ve talked about before, a big emphasis for this period of development has been to add interactivity to the game world. Allowing players to interact with objects encourages exploration.
I needed a UI feature for interacting with objects that was different from the dialogue UI that I’ve used as a catch all so far. The solution was a pop-up box.
They are super easy to work with and flexible enough to offer anything from an interface for interacting with objects to adding more fourth-wall breaking stuff such as giving prompts (“Are you sure you want to attack this friendly NPC?”
I’ve also used them to help make skill-tests more transparent and interesting:
I personally think the dynamically animated dice are a cool touch. It adds a bit of a tactile feeling and ties the game closer to its tabletop roots. Here we see an early draft of interacting with locked doors:
And don’t worry: I’ll be super careful to not make this take too much space. It’s reserved for when you actively use your characters skills to interact with the world and the reason I like this system is that it makes it more explicit what your skills actually do in the game.
SAVE OR SUCK?
In general, skill tests in RPGs can be tricky. I’ve written about the challenges before but in short the issue comes down to the fact that a lot of skill tests in RPGs are “save or suck” meaning the game penalizes the player so badly for failing tests that the player is incentivized to reload every time they fail a test. I’m very cognizant of this problem and I think the best way to solve it is to:
Avoid having save or suck tests be random. If a test is save or suck, then the test should be static (not based on a random dice roll).
When random rolls are used, failing should be as interesting as succeeding and the player should feel “going with the result” is as viable as save scumming.
Of course the problem cannot be fully avoided but I feel pretty confident that I can strike a balance the allows for the best from both worlds.
DICE MECHANICS
Warning: We’re about to go down a pretty nerdy RPG-rabbithole here.
Observant readers will have noticed that the game seems to use 2d6 as a basis for the tests above. This is correct! I may tune this before launch but I feel like emulating tabletop dice mechanics has a few advantages to the old (more abstract system):
It is easier to explain the rules for the skill test mechanic: Roll over a difficulty number (typically around 10) with 2d6 + skill
It is easier for both me and players to assess what is an easy vs a hard test: A roll of 2d6 + 3 vs 7 is easy. A roll of 2d6 + 3 vs 15 is pretty hard.
It is self-explanatory how good you rolled on a test
It ties the game more closely to it’s tabletop roots and makes a tabletop conversion MUCH easier.
Dice-rolls can be visualized (as in the GIFs above).
2D6 is also an interesting base-dice (compared to, say, a D20) since it has a bell-shaped probability distribution. You are much more likely to get a result close to the average roll (7) versus very high or low rolls:
Numbers are the percentile chance of achieving a given result. This makes play feel a bit more predictable. Superior skill will win the day more often and unexpected results are, well, more unexpected. This will make it easier to play around you character’s strengths and weaknesses whilst still retaining a potent element of chance and chaos.
We’ll see how it does. Nothing is written in stone.
—In Closing—
Phew, that got real nerdy real fast. I hope it made sense! As always, I love interacting with the Skald community and please reach out to me on one of the sites below if you have questions or comments!
Time for a summer update! Hope you’re all well and enjoying your summer. Here is a GIF of a procedural fountain effect to cool you off in the summer heat.
Cat gives zero f–ks about the wonder that is Imperial plumbing!
—News—
THE DEMO
As you know, we’re working on an updated demo for testing and promotional purposes. We were originally planning to enter it in an event in late June. However we elected to go for a different venue and now we’re aiming for late September. HOWEVER, the community will be getting builds in late August for testing so stay posted for more info!
YOUR STEAM ACCOUNT REQUIRES ACTION
Maybe. As you know we have two Steam pages: One for the main application and one for the prologue. As we move towards the new demo and eventually launch, the prologue page will have outlived its purpose. But the thing is, a lot of you guys have subscribed to, or even wishlisted (!) the prologue!
If this is you, I’d love to see you subscribe to, and wishlist the main application instead.
I just did a roundtable with a bunch of fellow indie RPG developers! I’m sure you can recognize some faces and names below. We had a great talk about the art and craft of making indie RPGs and I can’t wait to bring you the vid! We’re going to edit it a bit and then I’ll be sure to let you know the moment it goes live.
—Development Update—
Currently development is all about making content, evaluating the workflow and then updating the tools and engine to become faster and safer. This is the only way we can keep the code and data manageable as the project grows.
PROPS
Props are the most important piece of the puzzle right now. They represent all interactable objects in the world that are not characters or inventory items. A huge priority has been to make the game world a lot more interactive by adding lots of interesting objects for the player to interact with (hidden secrets, loot, workbenches, lore-heavy decorations etc),
Now your character is constantly using their perception skill to try and spot hidden doors etc but also containers that may contain minor loot and fun secrets. I loved how “Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous” had a lot of hidden loot laying around, really incentivising you to put points in the “perception” skill and explore the environs.
Nothing says “hero” like rummaging through random trash!
Doors and chests can now be locked and you have to decide between looking for a key or picking or forcing the lock. Be careful however, props can be trapped
Thought you’d pilfer a bit, ehh? Have at thee ye blackguard!
All of the above might sound like stuff that has always been in the game though? Yes and no. The change is that this stuff was always possible (more or less) but it needed to be scripted on a case by case basis. Now it’s all been streamlined and standardized so that creating a trapped chest is as easy as two clicks on a dropdown menu.
EDITOR UPDATES
On the same note as above, a lot has also happened on the editor side. I’m putting a lot of effort into limiting manual data entry and instead focusing on creating objects for all kinds of data that is then linked together. This makes the data a LOT more error proof and also a lot faster to work with as so much data can now be reused.
A good example of this are “loadOut” and “appearancePack” objects. It used to be that I had to manually enter each item that I wanted to add to a character or a container. This a surprising amount of work if you want to carefully place items by hand as there are thousands and thousands of items in a game like Skald (and a big reason why the old demo had so much randomized container content). Same goes for character appearances: I had to manually pick primary, secondary, hair and skin color as well as hair styles and animations for each character and the work adds up quickly.
Now I instead create loadOuts and appearancePacks which are collections of data that can be referenced by several other types of objects. I can create a “Fighter loadout” and add in, say, a leather armor, a long sword and a shield. I can then assign it to the fighter class meaning that the items will be given to all characters with that class. I can also add that loadout to a container if I want to let players find that collection of items somewhere or even set it as a reward for a quest.
The same goes for appearances! I can assign appearancePacks to characters directly but also add them to objects like factions. That way, each character from the same faction can have the same colored livery etc. The cool part is that appearance packs can also be assigned to props so that props in certain areas can dynamically change color to reflect factions and so forth.
This will go a long way towards letting me customize the look of areas without having to create separate art assets to reflect different color schemes. And again: Doing so, is as easy as selection an appearancePack from a drop-down menu.
I’ve also done a HUGE job of creating meta data for all the game data. This means the editor now knows stuff like allowed ranges for numeric data, what objects can be linked to which, it can add tooltips and even to some auto-completing. This was a pretty huge job (I had to write a separate program to automate a bunch of the coding to get it done) but once again: It will make the game data sooooo much easier to work with and debug.
—In Closing—
There is a lot more that has happened but I’m already running long so I think I’ll round it off there! I’m actually taking more or less a week off starting tomorrow so huzzah I guess. I’m also a little less active on social media in the summer since I try to limit non-essential screen time so expect me to be a bit slower in responding to messages etc.
Have a wonderful summer and try to spend some time outside!
To stay posted, be sure to follow the Skald Twitter and Discord and wishlist on Steam if you haven’t already!
Cheers,
AL
Project Update June 2022
Hail serfs!
I’m taking a short break from coding to say hi and bring glad tidings! I’ll be back with more development updates soon, but for now, here is some media for you:
We Have a New Teaser!!!!
The “Eyes of the Dragon” are upon us as a new Skald teaser drops! We promoted Skald at the Guerilla Collective stream this week and took the chance to showcase our newest teaser. Check it out above!
I Went to Stockholm!
Raw Fury and I finally found a window to meet up in Stockholm! I spent almost a week with Raw Fury and my team and we had the very best of times.
I got an amazing welcome and the week passed in a flurry of pre-lunch beer, barbeque, amazing Stockholmian restaurants and literally the most fantastic people in the industry!
There is something to be said for having worked remotely on a daily basis with a group of people and then finally being able to be in the same room together. That’s how magic happens.
Beyond meeting my team, through some true calendar-voodoo, legendary Raw Fury founder / CEO, Jonas Antonsson, and I also managed to finally spend some quality time together. We even recorded some of our high-flying musings on RPGs and all things nerdy that we’ll be posting in the months to come. We go deep so be sure to stay posted.
The plan was to take lots of cool pictures but we had such a full program that to my dismay, when I got home, the above images were pretty much all I had. I will say though, they are more or less representative.
And just to be clear: I didn’t just go to Stockholm to bro out. We also had some incredibly cool and exciting business discussions. There is nothing I can talk about yet but let me just reiterate how incredibly excited I am to have signed with such an amazing partner!
Learn how to Pitch a Game
Did I tell you we spoke to Raw Fury scout Johan Toresson? We did and we went deep on how you should go about pitching your game to a publisher. Johan is THE man for finding cool new games so be sure to get his insights!
Nerd out on Reddit
This one is very technical, but I had a question about how the “crawling” fog of war system works in Skald.
I wrote up a very high level concept of it and posted it on our Skald sub-reddit. Check it out and keep in mind that the sub-reddit exists and is a very good platform for asking about stuff like this. I do monitor it and I would love to see more activity there.
Have a Spectacular week!
There is so much cool stuff going on I just had to dump some of it out so there you go! There’s lots more coming so just be sure to keep checking out my Twitter and Discord and by the Golden Dead, wishlist on Steam if you haven’t already!
We woke the dragon - and for us there is no salvation
Hi everyone!
We have been alluding to new amazing things that have been on the horizon and this is it! As part of the Guerrilla Collective is a digital games showcase, we are excited to show you more gameplay, the new improved visual effect in and out of combat as well as giving you more insight into the world in which Skald is taking place.
Stay Posted - Wishlist and follow to help support us, or follow us on Twitter and join our Discord!
Project Update May 2022
Ho there travelers!
Hope spring is finding you all well! We’re having days in a row with no snow up here in northern Norway and that’s something I guess.
The upside is that inside weather means more work is getting done on;
The teaser is a wrap! You’ll have to wait a bit more for it as we’re saving it for a festival this summer!
The cold, dead stars hate you!
It’s a bit of a challenge to find a format that does justice to the crisp pixel-art of Skald and I think we’re getting very close to cracking the code in this teaser. I can’t wait to show it off and hope you like it. A big thanks to Sarah Gonidec and Roland Smedberg for all their hard work and endless patience!
The new demo will be out in mid June if all goes according to plan! The aim is to polish the game-systems as much as possible so that the demo represents the final game as much as possible in as many areas as possible.
In particular, we’ll be digging deep on combat and the general UI.
I’m going to add more of a button and icon-based UI in the cases where it makes sense – such as in combat.
I’m adding in a lot more animation frames in general. Both for creatures and specific weapon attacks.
There is still some work on the timing aspect as some animations are a bit too fast or “off” but I can see this will go a long way towards making the game look a lot more varied.
Adding more detailed monster models also makes everything look a lot cooler. I really hope we’ll have the multi-tile monsters fully up and working by the time the demo launches as they have quite a battlefield presence.
Also note how the fire above has a new look! All the flames in the game will now be made by procedural effects. This includes props like camp-fires and torches as well as spell effects. Stay posted as we show off some of the flashy and arcane magics that will be at your disposal!
As the demo comes out, just keep in mind that it will be shorter in content then the current demo – at least in the beginning. It’s very important that what we put out is polished and making it short and sweet is the priority to begin with. Stay assured though: We’ll be padding it with more content as we go!
Streams
In case you missed it, Fiona and I recently did a stream with my producer at Raw Fury: Daniel Jonsson. We had a little round-table about what the day-to-day collaboration between developers and publishers looks like and I warmly recommend giving it a watch.
Coming up, on May 12th at 4PM CET at Raw Fury’s Twitch channel, we’re having a talk with Raw Fury’s rock-star scout Johan Toresson!
We’ll be talking about how scouts work for publishers and how and why you should pitch to them! This is a must for fellow game developers or anyone who is just interested in how the industry works!
If you love indie-punk, ramen with an attitude and new curse-words, Johan is your man (May 12th, 4PM CET at Raw Fury’s Twitch channel)!
Keep following this devlog, my Twitter and the Skald Discord to stay posted on our awesome quest to bring you more retro-RPG awesomeness!
Cheers,
AL
Scouting for Indies: Skald monthly stream for May
Come join Anders, Johan and Fiona as we chat about what it's like to be a solo dev working with a scout. How do scouts find all these awesome indie games, what sort of conversations take place before and after signing?
All those sorts of questions and more will be answered so join us for a fun informative stream. Twitch chat viewers are more than welcome to pitch their questions live on stream too!
Solo dev and publishers, working together: Skald monthly stream for April
Come join Anders, DJ and Fiona as we chat about what it's like to be a solo dev working with a publisher. What sort of day to day conversations DO devs and producers have? What resources can a publisher offer??
All those sorts of questions and more will be answered so join us for a fun informative stream. Twitch chat viewers are more than welcome to pitch their questions live on stream too!
March Devlog: Join the community and let's talk modding!
Hi there!
It’s time for another devlog update for “Skald: Against the Black Priory”!
These are busy and very exciting days. A lot of very important development is being done on the game and tools and we’re having a lot of very interesting talks regarding the long term perspective of the Skald brand both internally and with external partners. I can’t really say much yet but hopefully it will be worth the wait.
In terms of the game itself, the current priority has been on tool-development (the level editor), preparing content for the upcoming teaser and working on the redux version of the prologue (to be released this summer).
New Media Content
We’ve also been looking into more ways of communicating with the community and I’ve made a vlog update as well as a stream with Fiona Martin of Raw Fury. I’m still finding my footing on the technical side and I’ll be working on improving audio so sorry if the quality is a bit low for these two.
We’ll be doing more video content as we go and streams in particular are something we’ll be digging deeper on as they are easy to make and provide a way for you to communicate with us directly.
For upcoming streams we’ll be talking to some of the awesome people at my publisher, Raw Fury, to learn more about what they do and how the collaboration between developers and publishers look. I can guarantee you it’ll be worthwhile if you’re interested in the indiegame industry.
If you have suggestions for topics for either the stream or the video-blog, be sure to leave them in the Youtube comments of the vids above. I read everything.
The short of it, is that it’s turning out better than I hoped and I’m now super pumped to be able to offer it to the community so you can make content for Skald yourself.
And let me be clear here: The editor I’ll be releasing will be the exact same tools I’ve been using myself to make this game. You’ll be able to create (or edit) any asset in the game from maps to objects (items, characters and props), factions, quests, difficulty settings and on and on. EVERY aspect of the game.
A test I did with the Ultima 5 tileset. This took about 2 minutes to make, from importing the art asset to making the map.
Personally I think the true power of this isn’t creating more Skald content; it’s making your own awesome fan-projects. Ultima 5.5 fan-project anyone?
A Editor Road-Map
Our tentative plan for the editor, is to get it out there soon (meaning before the main game launches). I also don’t want the commitment of having to maintain another piece of commercial software so likely what we’ll do is release is as a free beta for the community to play around with.
Ideally this will allow for a community to grow up around it that could sustain itself while I’ll provide tech support, beginning tutorials and take feedback for updates.
Needs more trolls!
It certainly wouldn’t hurt if, by the launch of the main game, we could point to a vital modding community that already had a stack of awesome fan-made content ready for consumption.
What are some case studies of INDIE games that have strong modding and fan-content communities? What are they doing right?
If a community springs up, where should it live? What platform works best for both providing a way to offer tech-support, asset sharing, project collaboration and perhaps even hosting of projects?
How can I support the community whilst still making is as independent and standalone as possible?
What are some cool projects you’d like to do? Share them in the #my_dream_projects channel!
See you there!
I hope to hear from as many of you as possible. Till then, have a fantastic weekend!
Keep following this devlog, my Twitter and the Skald Discord to stay posted on our awesome quest to bring you more retro-RPG awesomeness!
