[previewyoutube="xp9517oGAQA;full"] It is impossible for our graphics artists to know exactly how their building assets will look in the game engine. Simply because we add a lot of post processing effects that sits "on top" of the pixel art. Things like bloom, dust specs, shadows, weather effects, etc.
Because of this our technical artist Patrik has developed a tool where you can toggle things like team colour, wind, day/night and other settings that effect the look of the buildings.
If you look closely, this video also contains a sneak preview of some Rana and Barya buildings!
[previewyoutube="TzlJ4w4t0Nk;full"] Visualizing the AI movement path helps us analyze and optimize the AI behaviour. You can see me toggle of the Fog of War in the video and then pan over to watch the AI Wielder movement. The red lines drawn behind the enemy Wielder is the path visualisation, which I for some reason forgot to mention in the video!
[previewyoutube="GI1L5HjGMsw;full"] Ok, just to be very clear: This feature is not planned for release, it is merely an example of what can happen when the developers (in this case Patrik) want to do something that is not in the backlog, and need a break from regular development. All of a sudden a magic axe appears in the game! Things like this has happened in the past and I'm sure it will happen again! A lot of people have asked us to release a mod containing the axe and while we think it is probably not a good idea, because it truly breaks the balance in weird ways, a mod might still happen if enough people request it :)
Anyhow, hope you liked this summary! Is there any specific part of the game or development process you want to see more videos about? Please let us know in the comments!
(And here is a bonus GIF of an Arleon Milita troop knocking the living daylights out of a Barya Sassanid)
/Team Lavapotion / Magnus
Development update #39
Another devblog just two weeks after the previous? Does this mean that we are moving back to biweekly publishing of dev news? Yes. Maybe. Definitely maybe. If nothing else we aim to give you at least monthly updates. Developing the game is the top priority, but at the same time, we want to keep you updated about the production! On that note, we have upped our presence on YouTube and started releasing short video clips showing random game dev moments. If you haven’t checked out the playlist I highly recommend you do!
Handsome and clever. Hair like a sloth. Hide all your dead, it’s Aldus of Loth.
Since last time we’ve had a new intern join our ranks! Albin will help us, mostly Carl actually, with playtesting and designing levels. We are looking forward to seeing what he will produce during his internship and he will stay with us until early next year. Feel free to say hi to Albin in the comments to make him feel welcome :)
Speaking of design and development schedules: The biggest news we have to share is that we have had to reconsider the number of campaigns we can realistically develop before releasing the game. Our original plan was to create four campaigns, one for each faction, but due to time and budget constraints, we have had to limit our ambitions to two campaigns. Keep in mind that we are planning for cut scenes, custom maps, and a specially composed song for each campaign. It’s lots of moving parts and effort that go into developing a full campaign.
Carl put it like this: We’ve basically reduced the number of campaigns in order to make sure that each campaign is as polished and awesome as it can be. So he’s spent most of his time these last weeks redesigning the story and campaign arcs. Carl tells me he thinks the new stuff is gonna be really great and whenever he seems confident like that I’m inclined to believe him. We don’t see this as a failure, we see it as realistic planning. We still believe that the amount of content will be enough to satisfy people who prefer a single-player experience. Especially since we are shipping the game along with a level editor that we think will be well used and give users a plethora of user-made levels to choose from!
The programmers have really focused hard on the AI by playing, analyzing the behavior, and tweaking. Making a perfect AI is near impossible, but we are working hard to truly make it great! Niklas is currently creating better visualization tools to see what's going on under the hood.
Marcus has restructured some parts of the AI to fit in our essential debugging tools. He added more build plans that the AI uses when it plans its kingdom. Furthermore, Marcus updated parts of the AI movement logic, and currently he’s still focused on that (since we've been experiencing issues with it). One tangible improvement has been choosing the closest tile when it has several to choose from.
Marcus also fixed some unwanted behavior and tweaked how the AI mood changes over the course of a game. We can now nudge the AI a bit if it benefits the build plan we have designed for it. We have also modified how the AI builds up the need to recruit units over time. The speed can be modified depending on what the AI has seen. If it encounters a strong opponent it will start to recruit units more aggressively.
Do you have some favorite type of AI behavior or unexpected moments from other games where the AI surprised you in a good way? Drop a comment below and let us know!
We now have better tools to analyze the path of the AI Wielders. This way we can make better design decisions to improve their decision-making and movement.
The graphics team is mostly focused on Rana, even if Martí is still working on finishing the final Barya units. He’s got Rana Wielders next on his list, and judging from the few designs Kordian has done, these are going to look awesome! Placing the Frogs right next to the Human Wielders gives a lovely contrast and a reminder of the diversity of the game world.
Anders, along with Kordian, is striving to get all the buildings done for Rana within a few weeks. It is a hard task considering all the production steps. Keep in mind that most buildings need to be done in several layers due to the 3D perspective and then animated. They will also need to cater to re-coloring with team colors and look equally good in all zoom levels.
Patrik has, per usual, done a little bit of everything, including adding basic mod support to the game along with Niklas. We are very early into this work and not even sure if it will make it into release, but we do hope that we will be able to get into the hands of users as we think people could create amazing (and wonderfully horrific!) things with it!
Patrik also animated our 2D banners with some clever tech art magic and added proper UI portraits for all Loth buildings.
Yes, she’s big. Yes, she is a badass. More questions?
We’ve also done a lot of work to prepare for proper translations. Niklas and the programmers have created a font replacement system to enable translating to languages with characters that our current fonts do not support (like Russian). I’ve been making sure that we add descriptive texts that explain all parts of the game to translators, so they won’t have to guess in what context a text appears in the game. A big thank you goes out to one of our most hard-core fans, Monday from our Discord server, who has helped us with a lot of the context descriptions!
Let’s see, what more? We are recruiting a new VFX artist. The look and feel team is working on the siege UX and improving the movement interactions. The Arleon campaign map is now finally done and I just might share it in an upcoming blogpost or perhaps just parts of it. We might also just save it for the actual campaign scenes in the game. Some things are best unspoiled, right?
Anyhow, until next time, take care my friends!
/Magnus, CEO of Lavapotion
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Please note that this is a dev blog. Features and graphics mentioned or displayed above may or may not change during the development process.
Development update #38 is live!
We are back from summer vacations and want to share the latest development news with you! Take a look at the latest edition of our dev blog to find out more about online multiplayer, the new Wielder purchase screen, and team colors!
Do leave a comment if you have any suggestions, feedback, or just want to send some positive vibes. We are making the game of our dreams and we love to share that journey with you guys!
/Team Lavapotion
What does it take to develop a game like Songs of Conquest?
A lot of people ask us about the development of Songs of Conquest. What game engine do we use, how do we approach pixel art with a modern look and how does the level editor work? Well, we will try to let you guys into the development process a little more visually!
We have released eight videos in a playlist called "Gamedev moments" on our YouTube channel and we will continue to release more videos during the coming months!
So if you want to see game development behind the scenes, take a look at our channel and subscribe for lots of more videos to come!
/Team Lavapotion
Development update #37
As we are approaching the Swedish summer we wanted to give you a little insight into the development status before we leave for vacations. You can read all about the aftermath of E3, the ongoing Alpha and the big week of Optimization™.
Do take a look at the blogpost and let us know what you think! We are thrilled with the reception the game has gotten so far and we'd like to extend a big thanks to anyone who has wishlisted, commented and followed us on our various social accounts.
/Team Lavapotion
We are live on Steam!
The Lavapotion team is thrilled to announce that Songs of Conquest will be for sale on steam during early 2022. We have worked on the game for several years and are now finally ready to get a bit more public about it.
If you want to find out more about the game and its development, we suggest that you join our Discord server. You’ll find a lot of friendly people discussing strategy games in general and SoC in specific.
We also have a backlog of devblogs you can check out if you want to dip into the full details of the development history. We have changed quite a lot of features and concepts over the years and the devblog gives you a pretty transparent view of the process, if you are into that kind of stuff!
We also have more information about the game, as well as a newsletter sign up form over on the official webpage for Songs of Conquest. You’ll find a bit more details on the factions and some more game art, like sneak peek of the artifacts and the buildings.
Going forward you can expect us to share more devblogs, faction details, videos about the development process and potentially streams where the devs play the game.
We’d love to hear what you think about the trailer and the game, so don’t be a stranger. Drop a comment below or join our Discord. We are just a bunch of friendly Swedes trying to make our ultimate dream game, and you are more than welcome to join us in this journey.
