Magic is forever changing - it is your duty to know when you must learn and change with it, or stand fast in your ways and master what you know.
Greetings travellers!
Hope everyone is doing well! It’s been a while since we’ve stepped away from the arena and joined you at the hearth to blog about our development. We’ve made a rather crucial decision which we’ll be committing to from today onwards and we wanted to sit with you by the fireside, explain our decision and share some of Doreth’s fine Ale!
The Engine Lock
After some lengthy discussion, our programmers have decided to engine lock Spellsworn at Unreal Engine 4.14 - the latest version - for the foreseeable future. (in our 0.8.8 patch update)
For those of you not in the know, an engine lock is a developer’s decision to stick with a given version of their game engine and suspend, or stop altogether, updating it. As I’m sure you are aware, the guys and gals at companies like Unity and Unreal are always hard at work fixing bugs, making improvements, and add new features to their engines.This is hard, time-consuming stuff, which is typically why engine updates occur on an infrequent and unpredictable time scale, often with several months passing between releases. This is also why engine updates are a meaningful affair - rather than dripfeed updates, they’ll release a large patch containing a collation of their work since the last update.
These engine updates are of massive benefit, but also tend to throw an unexpected fireball into the works; changes to the engine affect in-game content, assets, scripts and many other neat things. This leads to a variety of bugs, both benign and critical, which take time to work through; time that’s taken away from working on Spellsworn, often for weeks at a time as we familiarise ourselves with the changes and address the issues. And, since we can’t plan for it, there’s no means for us to add this into our work projections. An engine update is great when a core feature is added that we can massively benefit from, but is quite a nuisance for fixes we’d created a workaround for, or the changing of a feature to make improvements that Spellsworn doesn’t benefit from but is affected by.
To simplify our workload so that we can commit to bringing you excellent content and updates, we’re going to lock the engine at Unreal 4.14 for the foreseeable future.
That is not to say that Spellsworn will not be receiving any more updates - It most certainly will! With the engine on lockdown, there’ll be less development interruptions as we address any bugs present in the new engine version or adapt content. You could even say that since there’ll be less interruptions, we’ll have more time to bring you fantastic features and updates. That’s 10 times as much rock-pillar goodness!
As we mentioned earlier, this is a decision for the foreseeable future. Should a crucial fix or an alluring feature pop along that we’d like to take advantage of, we’ll make the decision to update the engine (knowing the mysterious ways of the universe, this’ll of course be the 4.15 update!). For now however, we’ll be staying as is.
If you’ve any questions or would like to know more about this process and decision, hit us up in the comments or drop us a line on Twitter, Facebook, Discord or Reddit.
For now, enjoy yourselves and see you at the next playdate!
How very nice of you to stop by. We are busy bees as always working on content and making fixes on our way to the beta, and beyond. There are still some known issues that we’re working our way through, such as the Steam inventory and forums issues, but we’re happy to say that we’re making great progress. This patch, we focused on updating the UI across the board and improving our network code. So I hope you like the improvements and find them easier to navigate!
Change Log
UI additions
Added a “kill notification” when a player gets killed, showing the amount of score received
Updated server browser with more information
Added “Custom Server settings” to Lobby for host
Added server setting information for non-host players
Added Options, Customization, and inventory to lobby
Redesigned Spell shop
Redesigned in-game U.I.
Added opening animations and sound to the chest opening event
Added Free For All game mode (Forces all the players to unique teams)
Fixes
Fixed Tutorial Screen sometimes destroying all the U.I.
AI will now spend all their money, depending on your server gold settings
The AI should no longer punch people during the first seconds of a battle
Gravity Orb gravitation effect has been improved!
Bots no longer randomly cast Phase Shift, but instead use it defensively only
Bugfix for Sell All Spells button (Was not working 100% for clients)
Network optimizations - about 30% less data used
Energy shield cooldown fixed to the proper 14/13/12
We also would like to announce that as of today, Spellsworn will be locked at Unreal Engine 4.14 for the foreseeable future. To read more about this decision, check out our dev blog later today!
Check these places to keep yourself up-to-date with everything Spellsworn
Facebook, Twitter and the Discord channel.
See you all in the arena!
(Totally not getting killed!)
/Anders (@CannonFood)
-Frogsong Studios
0.8.7 - Not according to plan!
Hello everybody!
Things have not gone according to plan, so it's a good thing we can think on our feet! As I mentioned earlier our domain was hacked and we have lost much of our item/customization management.
Today we release a fix so that you WILL be able to USE YOUR CURRENT items. but NOT GET NEW ITEMS from LEVEL REWARDS.
But alongside this new patch we bring some other tweaks and fixes as well!
Change Log
[List]
<*> Safety - If you start a round with no spells the game will buy some for you
<*> Improved AI delay after casting spells
<*> Added "Sell all spells" button to Shoppe
<*> You can now see if a spell is on the max rank in the shop interface
<*> Repaired most of the loading screens
<*> New maximum level is 22
<*> Updated art on The Clearing for better readability
<*> You now get a window with the loot drops from an opened chest
<*> Updated Unreal engine version to 4.14
<*> Multiple crash and error fixes
<*> Bots can now cast chain hook again
<*> Removed Holiday theme :(
So this hack has been very troublesome and messed with our planned progress quite a bit. But fret not good friends, we will press on and overcome this unexpected hurdle!
Steady as a rock(pillar)
/Anders (@Cannonfood) -Frogsong Studios
Server and rewards are down.
Hello friends!
Today I am a bringer of bad news. Due to hacking our homepage is down and the server responsible for all the rewards and items is down with it.
We are working our hardest to fix the issue, so we ask you to please be patient.
On this, the last day of our celebrations, all I wish you to bring you are well wishes on the behalf of all of Frogsong Studios! We’re wrapping up today for the holidays and will be unavailable until 9th January.
And, as a little extra gift ,we are extending the time to earn our special holiday content until the 9th of January! More time to get that sweet Tomte/Sad tree combo!
Hope you all have a wonderfull, peacfull (except for epic wizard brawls), and rejuvenating holiday!
(Thank you for a great year!)
/Anders (@CannonFood)
-Frogsong Studios
Twelve days of Christmas - Day ELEVEN
Welcome back, wanderer!
With the eleventh day, I present you with a little tale of a sad and lonely tree.
Alone and disheveled, it stood on the top of a hill, year after year. No-one or nothing paid it much attention. It tried to take part in the yearly ritual of the Yuletides, but to no avail. Finally, in the first year of the Drowning Star, it was noticed and plucked up by a wandering guardian of the wild. Now, wielded with pride and honor, it has finally found its place in the world
This limited edition staff is now available to unlock in Spellsworn - by completing a SINGLE games of Spellsworn between NOW and January 6th at 17:00 CET and you'll be granted permanent access to this weatherworn and resilient staff of the Yuletide..
I hope you do good to this little tree. It has seen and heard much during its lonely perch on the hill. You are holding a true relic in your hands!
(So take care of yourselves and your weak, brittle trees)
/Anders (@CannonFood)
-Frogsong Studios
Twelve days of Christmas – Day TEN
It is good to see you have returned!
Today, I have the honor to present you with another wallpaper, and the final entry into this year’s holiday tale.
With only a few days left we still have gifts and wonders left! Stay jolly, friends!
(Hope everything ends well for the Bogwitch)
/Anders (@CannonFood)
-Frogsong Studios
Twelve days of Christmas – Day NINE
Seasons Greetings and salutations traveler!
This, the ninth day of the holiday ritual, presents some fantastic new content! The falling snow on the Clearing has been building up, and the ritualistic lights have been placed. Today you get to see a darker version of the clearing lit mostly by the eerie spirits and the arcane energies of your spells!
In addition, now that you all have gotten your Fireball scorched hands on the Candy Cane staff, the time has come to present the true wielder of its awesome power!
I give you:
The Tomte
This limited edition player skin is available to unlock in Spellsworn - complete 5 games of Spellsworn between NOW and January 6th at 17:00 CET and you'll be granted permanent access to this jolly, bearded hero of the wild.
What better way to complete your 5 games by joining us at tonight's playdate - 18.30 CET. Come have a look at the winter Clearing and impress everyone with your skillful spell-casting!
When the fluttering lights of candles are defying the twirling snow, it's a good time to sit under a warm blanket, while sipping a hot drink, and brutally trapping your opponents in burning acid.
(Top three hot drinks: 3: Cocoa 2. Coffee 1.Glögg)
To begin our second week of holiday cheer and celebrations, we present you with another wonderful wallpaper. In a snow covered clearing, a young Acolyte gets a glimpse of something unusual.
I hope everybody is having a jolly time and playing good games in great company!
See you tomorrow!
(Winter is truly coming)
/Anders (@CannonFood)
-Frogsong Studios
Twelve days of Christmas - Day SEVEN
It's Day 7 of the 12 Days of Christmas and time to add a face to our giving spirit!
We have 3 additional t-shirts and mugs to giveaway to our Facebook fans!
To enter, simply share this post , and like the Frogsong Studios Facebook page - it’s that simple! And don’t forget to check out all the other wonderful gifts and goodies we’ve shared during our 12 Days of Christmas promotion
Here’s a few rules of the giveaway: Entry to the give-away ends on 17:00 CET on December 20th and winners will be announced later that day via Facebook. Winners will be Private Messaged via Facebook for contact and shipping details.
Prizes will be shipped during the week of January 9th, and we’ll do our best to provide tracking info, if it’s available.
T-shirt sizes are subject to availability – please note that we only have a small selection of sizes at hand and we may run out.
If you’ve any questions, let us know via Twitter, Facebook, Reddit or Steam! Best of luck!
The gifts keep on falling like like fresh snow on a winter morning!
(...and covers the land with a snug blanket of hype!)
In addition, now that you all have gotten your Fireball scorched hands on the Candy Cane staff, the time has come to present the true wielder of its awesome power!
