Oh boy! It feels like ages since we last published a devblog. Time goes fast when you are having fun and trying to prepare a game for release! So, I figured it’s about time we published an update on how the development is progressing.
You might have figured it out already, but the troop we recently teased was a Zombie! The human troops of the Loth faction will return to fight once more after their deaths. That’s what I call commitment!
Carl, our game designer, has been working with all the texts of the game. And I do mean ALL of the texts. As we are preparing the game for translations we need to make sure that all the pesky spelling errors and sloppy copy gets eliminated. He is also adding more lore-focused flavor texts to really make the game world feel coherent and alive. Kim, our freelance writer is also doing her part to improve the texts, but specifically focusing on all the dialogue in the campaigns.
At the same time our design intern, Albin, is helping out with providing context to all the lines of text in the game. Meaning that he describes where the text is visible in the game and what it actually means to the player. This is very important to the translators as it gives them a much better understanding of how the game is actually played.
This is how the context texts look in the translation tool we use. The translator can double-check specific phrases, like in this example: Occupy.
The programmers have been hard at work with eliminating bugs. We took a one-week vacation from ordinary development to just focus on smashing most of the worst offenders. In total the team was able to fix 77 bugs, meaning that the game now plays much better than before!
After the bug fixing the programmers created a limited press demo version for journalists and YouTubers. We have been distributing this demo to a select few exclusive gaming media outlets and gaming content creators. Why? Well, we are happy to announce that on the 1st of March you’ll be able to see much more material from the game. Expect things like an analysis of the gameplay and comments regarding the current state of the game. We’ll notify you on all of our social channels when the videos and articles go live!
This is the main menu shown in the press demo. Please note the text “Alpha preview build - Not final product”. That means that things you see in the preview articles and videos can and will change.
There have been tons of quality-of-life improvements and small visual tweaks made by both the look and feel team and the code team. Here are just a few of them:
The pathfinder used to happily suggest a path right through the enemy's zone of control. Tssk tssk. Poor tactical thinking if you ask me!
The pathfinder now avoids the zone of control, avoiding the frustrating need for manually choosing a path around it.
A lot of our testers have asked for it and we finally gave in. We’ll now have a damage preview if you hover over enemies in combat. If you don’t like this feature it can be turned off via options.
David has made sure that even the destructible terrain objects have a nice gib effect. Bring out the wood chopping axe and let the splinters fly like birds in the air!
Most of all team members have also been focusing on the defense and siege mechanisms of the game. A big change is that the defense towers no longer fire arrows on the Adventure map. Instead, it adds a small garrison to the towns and can also be upgraded to include ballistas in the defending towns. When battle is initiated, all the troops provided by the towers in the town are merged into two troop stacks and added to the town’s defenses.
Here’s what it looks like when you build towers for the Arleon faction. If you upgrade them they will also provide ballistas.
The AI is also getting better and better. It is getting the most attention from Niklas and Robin. But also from Marcus, who is supposedly on parental leave but still manages to squeeze a few hours into the production each week in order to also care for his digital… baby?
Improvements include, but are not limited to: The AI´s recruitment will not instantly interrupt current tasks, meaning that things like exploration will get proper time to be finished. In previous versions, the AI would just stop and turn back instantly if the need for more troops was considered to be too high. But it will now wait until the current task is "done" or its forced predicaments for that task changes. This will indirectly make the AI more expanding and seem more offensive.
Recruitment will now be forced if an AI Wielder has given its troops away to another Wielder. This avoids having weak AI Wielders roaming the map. If you, as a player, claim an AI map entity or kill an AI Wielder, it will increase the AI’s grudge towards you. High grudge means higher probability of you being selected as a war target.
AI will now also send more than one Wielder if a threat is large. This also automatically includes spreading out offense/defense if the threat is considered smaller.
I’m not entirely sure what this sketch from Marcus means, so I’ll just leave it here and let you try and figure it out for yourselves. Drop a comment below and let me know if you can figure it out!
Finally, just to let you know: We still haven’t decided the release date or the price point for the game. But the plan is still to release the game in Q2 this year. So, no need to ask about the release date. But feel free to drop a comment and tell us what you think of this update and if there is anything in particular that you want to know more about!
Anders has created a variation of Adventure map walls for all of the factions. Can you spot which one is from which faction?
That’s it for this time. Stay safe people and drop a comment if you have any questions, comments, or just general appreciation for what we are doing!
/Magnus and Team Lavapotion
---
Please note that this is a dev blog. Features and graphics mentioned or displayed above may or may not change during the development process.
A mixed bag of general updates
Hello people!
We are working hard to reach our internal deadlines and pushing onwards with the release of Early Access in Q2 this year. So much work in fact, that I haven't had the time to prepare a proper blog post in a while. But, we do share news on Youtube, Twitter and Discord every now and then. So, I'd though it would be cool to summarize the most important stuff in a Steam post. Do let me know if you think this is helpful or just redundant.
First of all, let's just show a GIF of a new spell, called Explosive Fungi. Don't step on the funny looking mushrooms people!
This is one of those things where the Art Director (Anders) along with the artist (Kordian) have created nice pixel art which then has been worked over by our VFX artist (Mattias) and finalized in a lovely way by our head of the "Look n Feel" team (David).It takes a lot of people and time to create great looking effects that mixes well with the pixel art.
Furthermore, let's check out the latest Youtube video, where we explore new visual looks for the Path and something called "Frustum culling" which optimizes the games performance.
[previewyoutube="ZHX11kYbrMw;full"]
We are also prototyping "team play". We are not sure if it will be in the Early Access release from day one, so we make no promises. But we have turned on this as an experimental feature for the Alpha testers right now. You can kind of see how it works in this video below:
[previewyoutube="LN7740HseTs;full"]
Another thing that might interest you is the different troop abilities we are working on. Most troops in the game will have specific abilities that they can perform instead of attacking. In this video we explore a few of them and also take a look at who would win if the AI plays againt the AI with 30 militia units vs 30 rat units.
[previewyoutube="PyyCJCKvE0U;full"]
We also recently showed the "Foundry" building from Barya on our Discord. We would love to hear what you think of it!
To round it all off, we have started publishing short videos (around a minute long) on Youtube and I'll post a summary below. If you like these type of videos, do subscribe to our Youtube account as you will be notified whenever we release more videos, of any kind.
That's all for now. Take care and see you soon again!
/Magnus and Team Lavapotion
PS. Did you notice that I teased a completely new troop for Loth in the banner? We'll tell you more about it soon, don't worry!
Developer interview - Technical Artist
Hello people!
This time we want to share an informal one-to-one discussions about the game and more specifically the development process behind the game. Let us know if you like this type of interviews, if you want more of them and what you would want us to talk about!
[previewyoutube="oPpnQzze2qs;full"]
We have recently gotten back to the development from our vacations and the team is hard at work. Lots of things happening, in terms of feature development and content production. We will of course give you more details in the next dev blog.
Take care until then!
Songs of Conquest will launch into Early Access in early Q2 2022
Hi everyone - this is not a regular devblog, but rather an update on our release schedule. I want to give you a thorough status update along with a deeper explanation of what’s to come. But if you just want the TL/DR-version, just scroll down to the bottom I guess ;)
It’s been a privilege working on Songs of Conquest for the last few years. The development started way back in early 2017 and our team has grown from 4 employees to 9. We also regularly work with a handful of freelancers on various parts of the game on any given day. In total, there have been around 30 people from all over the world so far who have helped make Songs of Conquest a reality!
An update without pictures is like dessert without chocolate, so here is the full lineup of Barya Wielders!
As the studio grew, so did the interest in the game, and we cannot thank you enough. Our social media channels and Discord servers are chock full of positive ideas and encouragement from our community. We’ve been getting constructive and helpful feedback throughout the development and we currently have a group of around 250 alpha testers playing Songs of Conquest. Their feedback already helped shape a lot of the stuff in-game. We couldn’t be happier with the community that has formed around our game, and we haven’t even released yet!!
More Barya goodness, here is the factory building in both standard and upgraded version.
Speaking of which: we really want to get this right and make sure that Songs of Conquest becomes a spiritual successor to other turn-based strategy games we love and grew up with. We now know that it would be hard for us to get all the pieces of the puzzle together before Q2 2022. We also want to make sure we create a game that the players want, not that the game we think the players want. With that being said, we’ve made the decision to launch Songs of Conquest into a period Early Access in early Q2 2022. With such a vibrant and active community, we feel it would be a lost opportunity to aim for a 1.0 release from day one. We want to create the game with you.
Here's a sneak peek from the cutscenes in between campaign missions!
We are fortunate to be backed by one of the best indie publishers in the games industry. Coffee Stain has a great track record of supporting and creating successful games and making them grow through Early Access with the help of amazing communities. Games like Deep Rock Galactic, Satisfactory and Valheim wouldn’t be what they are today without solid interaction between the community and the development teams.
We want to take the same journey, together with you! That is why Songs of Conquest will go into Early Access in early Q2 2022. We hope you’ll want to join us for the ride and we can’t wait to see the levels and adventures you’ll create and experience within the game.
This song is best sung together!
/Magnus & Team Lavapotion
Development videos update
We regularly post short development updates on our Youtube channel. Today we are sharing a summary of the latest ones in one handy Steampost. As always, we are happy to get comments and feedback regarding all the material.
[previewyoutube="VDMwetxTV4s;full"] Here we are sharing one full hour of music from the game soundtrack, a lot of these songs are previously unreleased! We are also showing off more unreleased ingame footage, mainly focusing on the adventure map environments. This is one to keep going in the background when you just need an atmospheric fantasy soundtrack as a backdrop, perhaps a D&D session or while reading a good book?
[previewyoutube="jP1SOhF9Caw;full"] This video looks at how Patrik has improved the visuals using texture effects. Even though the difference can be subtle at time, it makes an overall huge improvement IMO!
[previewyoutube="lIpat9GIJkM;full"] This video is directly from our lead developer Niklas, who explains more about the development and debugging of the AI.
[previewyoutube="snO8D1AkrKY;full"] Here we are taking a look at old menu graphics that never made it into the game. We are also checking out old versions of our very first reveal trailer, also stuff that din't make it into the final cut!
We'll soon be back with another update or more videos. Until then, take care and let us know what you think of the videos!
/Magnus & Team Lavapotion
Development update #41
It’s time for a development update! We’ll jump right into the immersive world of Songs of Conquest, as we are currently working hard with finalizing our 5th edition of the lore-document. Well, actually it is Kim who is working hard and me and Carl are merely shouting encouragement and feedback. Anyhow, the document is a way for us to create a coherent world with a rich history, culture and atmosphere. It’s an important tool to create a cohesive game. And we prefer our games… cohesive. Don’t you?
It’s tricky to get a lot of details and personality in really small Wielder sprites, but I think the art team is doing a great job so far. What do you think?
Continuing on with design work, Carl has been balancing and checking a lot of the numbers in the game. He’s also worked more with skills and powers for upcoming implementation. Another big area of focus for the design work has been to create build plans for our AI so they know what to build and when. The Alpha testers are doing a great job at letting us know what the AI struggles with and where it performs well, the build plans are a way to make sure the AI is challenging enough for our players!
All of the programmers and the “Look and Feel” team have been constructing a whole new UI and flow when a player builds new buildings. The old system simply needed to be updated in order for the game to really shine when it comes to town management and constructions.
This is how the new research UI looks. It gives the user more visibility about what research is available to the faction. As well as just looking better than the old UI. Nice.
Niklas also worked on a new kingdom overview section. Showing detailed info about what you've claimed and built. And he also fixed an audio preview scene for us developers to easier check and add sounds to the map entities of the game. And on the topic of making things easier he added a "claim everything" cheat command to the dev-console. Good cheats make it easier to develop the game!
Yes, developers cheat in their own games. For a good reason mind you! Players cheating however. That’s another story!
Robin also focused on the UI Rework for the town building experience. Some of the bigger things include "sticky selection" of Wielders. Which means a Wielder will always be selected if there is one alive on the map. And he also added more hotkeys for both inventory and the spellbook. Furthermore, Robin created a very developer-esque new menu for the Global research from Large buildings. It resides under the Kingdom Overview which Niklas also worked on.
Marcus changed the AI calculation loop so it tries to respect frame rate dynamically, which will make it adapt better to different computer specs. This was done together with lots of other small optimizations that tries to reduce the time it takes for the AI to make decisions.
These two screenshots show before and after Marcus optimized the AI:
BEFORE - A bit too choppy for my taste. AI needed optimization.
AFTER - Better! The freezing is not as bad as in the other GIF (look at the wielder banner for a good comparison).
The whole art team has been knee deep into the sandy dunes of Barya. The artists have all been focusing on the buildings and Wielders from the desert merchant nation. All Wielders are now designed, animated and implemented into the game! Most buildings are done-ish and are now longing to be animated with the help of Eyal. Patrik also fixed some pesky tearing in the ground material, creating big black “rifts'' in the world. We can now safely say that we, and our testers, won’t have to stumble upon black chasms across the adventure map, which feels pretty good.
Anders and Kordian are dual wielding the graphic development of the main building of the Barya faction. Each time you upgrade it you’ll see a new visual representation on the adventure map. Please let us know what you think of the building progression!
Finally, some of you might have heard that we recently let 100 more people into the closed Alpha. In fact, there were around 2000 people who applied to get in. We are thrilled that so many of you want to test the game, and please know that there will be more chances. As we get nearer to release we will gradually increase the amount of testers at a higher pace!
Until next time my friends, take care!
/Magnus and Team Lavapotion
--- Please note that this is a dev blog. Features and graphics mentioned or displayed above may or may not change during the development process. ---
Get one of 100 Alpha keys!
We will soon add 100 new testers to our ongoing closed Alpha and we are doing a raffle on our Discord server to give out the keys.
We need players who are able to test and give feedback regarding Songs of Conquest, on the PC and Mac platform, on a private Discord server. You will not be able to share any video, screenshots, etc anywhere else than on the private Discord server.
The contest is open for 24 hours only, so make sure to apply before then. After that we will close the Discord channel and draw the winners, who will then be contacted via direct messages through Discord.
Best of luck!
Behind the scenes: Development videos
It's time to share our most recent development videos! Keep in mind that you can subscribe to our channel on Youtube if you want to get notified whenever we post new material. We try to upload a new video per week, but due to the amount of work that is going into the project right now we sometime miss our own targets. But, we try!
In the first video we look at a tool for examining the effects applied to our troops when they are shown in the game engine. David, who is in charge for everything related to VFX and juicy eye candy has developed this tool to get a better feel for how all the effects look when they are applied and combined when different troops meet.
[previewyoutube="usC5qjgLEqU;full"]
In this next video I'll take you on a trip down memory lane and show you how our art style have evolved over the years. We'll follow the portrait of Cecilia Stoutheart, the main protagonist of the Arleon campaign, and see how she has evolved visually.
[previewyoutube="_RT4-UA_Rh0;full"]
Then we'll take a look at the level editor. It will get some more love and attention before we release the game, but it is fully functional already. The level editor that the game will be released with is the same level editor Carl (Our Game Designer) uses to build all maps, including dialogue heavy campaign maps with triggers, scripting, etc. So, we hope the map making community will put it to good use!
[previewyoutube="M00J06Xxdh4;full"]
And finally: Thanks everyone who helped us with suggestions for what animal we should use for the Barya desert biome. We got tons of ideas and it really helps us a lot when we can get so much feedback quickly from the community. Thanks!
[previewyoutube="Kl59K6k9cJM;full"]
That's it for now. Drop by our Discord and say hi won't you? We share news and exclusive material on the Discord server quite frequently. It is also a good way to talk directly to us, the developers.
/Magnus, for Team Lavapotion
Development update #40
Hello friends! It is time for an update don’t you think?
The game development is coming along nicely and tons of things have happened since the last post. I was actually planning to share a devblog a few weeks earlier than this, but a lot of people have been sick, including myself, so the schedule was a bit fudged. But, to compensate for the lack of updates I’m treating you to an extra long wall of text, spiced up with the occasional image just to keep you on your toes! Please remember that if you ever feel that the lack of updates is getting to you: We try to share a short game development video each week on our Youtube Channel. We read all comments and try to reply to all questions, so it is a great way to talk to us!
Here they are in their full glory, the whole Arleon troop lineup. Most of these troops have been shown before, but this is the first time we show them all off in one image, including all upgrades. What do you think?
I know a lot of you are curious about the main features of the game, like combat, town construction and the magic system. Rest assured that we will talk more about this as soon as we are ready! We are preparing videos that will show more gameplay material, but the truth is that we are still tweaking several features and changing stuff around. So for as long as we don't feel 100% confident in the design decisions we don’t want to drop videos that might give people the wrong impressions.
Moving over to check in with the tech team we’ll learn that our lead programmer, Niklas, has become a father! Drop him some well wishes in the comments won’t you? Besides getting to know his latest family member and between the diaper changes he has also gotten some work done. The biggest thing was changing how the save/load system works, basically expanding the system we already had in place.
Niklas have refactored the post game statistics and included more features. You can now toggle teams, see values on the y-axis and see where a player lost a fight (the skull shown in the image above).
David and the wider ‘look and feel’ team has done a little bit of everything! The biggest update being a new version of the spellbook, to adapt to a major rework of the spell system (more on that later!). The enemy portraits now use pixel art, instead of painted 2D images, if you attack a neutral hostile (non-Wielder) on the adventure map. It is used in dialogues and pre battle as well. Creating hand painted portraits for all 64 troops would simply be too much work, but fortunately it looks really nice with the pixel art as well!
There is now a tiny animation when you gain or use resources. There's also a slight highlight to inventory items when hovering over them. The good old marketplace has been given some love in terms of both UI and UX. Team name labels can now also handle any (Yes, any!) length of names. Lots of small quality of life updates, as well as finishing all the spell visual effects with the help of Mattias, our VFX freelancer.
Christian has made sure that our UI is now more readable. We have three types of text in the game; Title, Label and Lore. Each type has three sizes; Large, Medium and Small. All text in the game now has been increased in size with a main focus on lifting the Medium and Small types. We are currently trying the new font sizes with the Alpha testers to a general positive sentiment.
Ding dong, something important happened! Running a kingdom requires your constant attention, hence the need for notifications. So while you’re off fighting battles or searching for loot and artifacts, these notifications will keep you covered.
Getting back to the tech team I’ve been provided with a deep dive into the AI development by Marcus. So buckle up, because we are about to enter the Matrix!
The AI has had some large changes done to how it moves on the adventure map. When a Wielder has to walk a longer distance to reach a valuable destination, we do pathfinding at a different level than usual (usual meaning between every tile on the way) and instead look at the distance in "regions". When it has performed all relevant actions and emptied a region it will be looking for new areas to explore. This decision is also weighed together with the total "need" of all the available resources and pickups in a region. When it moves towards a selected region the AI can also pick up relevant things on the way, if it makes sense to make a short detour.
The image above illustrates the AI starting region, which it will focus on firstly.
When it has emptied the region of all relevant resources it will move on to the next.
If two AI Wielders are within proximity it will check who is the strongest from a battle perspective. The weaker Wielder will walk to the strongest and give away as many troops as it can.
Robin has also entered the Matrix and improved how the AI builds their towns. There is now a specific set of build plans per town instead of per team, meaning that the AI can branch development into different areas for different towns. The handling of the build plans are more dynamic and adaptable to the game situations.
An early view of the Rana settlements! These can be found and claimed as expansion points across an adventure map. They are in essence small towns, with less building sites but with the ability to draft troops if you construct the appropriate buildings.
Carl has been doing a little bit of everything, well to be honest, he has done a lot of everything. As we are nearing the end of the development cycle there seems to never be enough of Carl to go around as team members need to know about different aspects of the game and all campaign levels need to be wrapped up. Lately he has focused on creating a new version of the spell system along with our producer Johannes. This is very much based on feedback from the Alpha testers and we are trying to create something that has a bit more risk/reward and add more dynamic aspects to combat.
Essence is now a spell casting “currency” stored in the Wielder’s “Essence Wallet”. You gain essence in various ways: At the beginning of each battle round a Wielder adds all Essence gained from skills, special abilities and equipped artifacts as well as team-wide Essence gained from research and claimed objects on the map. When it becomes a troop’s turn to act, it adds its Essence to the Wielder’s wallet.
Each spell has a cost of one or more types of Essence, which is “paid” when the spell is cast. There is no limit on the amount of spells that can be cast in a round, as opposed to once per battle round as it was before. The “Essence Wallet” is cleared after each battle.
The layout of the Spellbook has been changed to adapt to the new spell system. It is less complicated than the previous one and in general we feel it conveys the magic system better.
More design work has been done on the towns and buildings for all factions. Many prices have changed and moved around. Most prerequisite building requirements have been removed and replaced with a higher cost of exotic resources. To build the “best” medium building you need a specific small building. To upgrade your end tier troop dwelling you need a specific medium building. To build a Rally point or similar building, you’ll need a Marketplace.
Kim is working on the campaign together with Carl. She has also rewritten our world document, melding lore snippets and short stories with informational texts about the game world. When she is done it will be version number five of the document, will it be the last though? I wonder.
Our amazing map artist Marc Moureau has finished the campaign map for Arleon. Behold the island of Arleon! Well, at least parts of it!
On to our jack of all trades - Patrik! This time he told me that there was not much to say about what he had done since the last blogpost, due to him being off sick for a long time. Oh yeah? You underestimate yourself Patrik, says I, and will without further interruption list just what has come from his desk since our last update.
Teleportation now works as intended. There is a working prototype for controllable ballistas in the siege battles. Selected objects are now highlighted on the minimap. The battlefield zone of control areas has been given some visual love. All claimable neutral map entities now have proper portraits with team colors (where applicable). Rana is starting to get proper building portraits. The artwork, localization and stats of all planned artifacts are now in-game (all 109 of them). The first frame of all Rana wielders has been added to the game! Among other things, such as improving the walls in adventure.
And that segues nicely over to Anders who has added textures, noise and improved the 3D meshes of the walls. He has also finished art for all levels and research updates for the regular buildings of Rana along with the help from Kordian. Eyal is now hard at work with getting them all animated. The Rana camp is the only one still in need of upgrades at this point.
Try wallhacking your way through this! Well, come to think of it. Please don’t.
Anders has furthermore done more work with picking optimal colours for the teams, making sure it works when recolouring the combat troop sprites. He has also continued to create more artwork for siege battles. Kordian has - besides creating first drafts of all Rana buildings - also designed early versions for all Barya buildings, as well as first frames of the full Barya Wielder line up. Martí has finished all the animations for the Barya troops and he now only has Wielders left to animate!
[previewyoutube="iBHV2B5_Ixo;full"] The Youtuber H for Havoc recently released a video about our game. Please note that the contest for Alpha keys is not active anymore. But, there will be more chances!
Finally I’d strongly encourage you to follow us on Steam if you aren’t already doing so! Following us on Steam is a great way to support the development of the game. It basically tells Valve that yes, people do care about this game. And it also means that you won’t miss out on any new videos, weekly highlights, etc. So, what are you waiting for? Give us a follow and get our eternal love.
Until next time, take care!
---
Please note that this is a dev blog. Features and graphics mentioned or displayed above may or may not change during the development process.
You can win a key to the closed Alpha!
We are pleased to announce that you can win a key to the closed Alpha. Together with the Youtuber Havoc we are running a week long contest where anyone can win a key!
Check out the video below to get all the juicy details! [previewyoutube="iBHV2B5_Ixo;full"] This is a rare opportunity indeed. Only 100 testers have been able to try the game so far and we are happy to make room for a few more new ones.
