Vagabond
2D Sandbox RPG [Steam Next Fest Stream]
Looking forward to meeting you there! :)
Alpha 9 is released!
Alpha 9 is released! The most-awaited feature is finally here. It is requested since the version alpha 1. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to the crime system!
Reputation
First, there is now a reputation system. When you complete quests for a village, you will earn reputation points that will unlock certain actions such as buying a house. I will add more features linked to reputation in future releases. But, be careful, if you commit a crime, you will lose reputation points.
You can see your current reputation points and bounties in the character window. By the way, a coat of arms is now generated for each village.
Improved AI
Villager AI has been improved. They will sleep and they won't leave you alone in their house or shop stealing everything you want.
They also have the option to talk to you directly without a dialog window. You can also make your character talk using the "/say" command.
Pathfinding has also been improved, there were issues, especially with monsters and it should be better now.
Crime
Currently, there are four different crimes: theft, lockpicking, assault, and murder. If a villager sees you committing a crime, they will call the guards. Currently, a villager can see everywhere when in an interior. But outside, they can't see through walls and only at a limited distance.
After committing a crime, the guards will try to arrest you. Then either you pay the fine and give all your stolen goods or you resist the arrest. If you resist, they will try to kill you. And if they succeed, they will seize all your goods, put them in a locked chest in the barracks and you will respawn in the prison.
But you can run away and if you are a member of the Thieves Guild, you can contact the guild master to bribe the guards to forget the bounty.
Stealth
If you break into in a villager's house at night, be careful to not awake the owner. You can enter in the sneaking mode using the Left Control key by default. A new bar will appear below your hunger bar. If the bar is full you will awake someone.
A few tips: the slower you walk, the less noise you make, so be sure to walk and don't run. Moreover, using a tool, opening a container or picking an item is louder than walking so make sure the bar isn't nearly full.
Conclusion
I'm sure there are a lot of bugs. I was so eager to release the new version that I didn't test all the new features as much as I should have. If you face any issue, please send me a message. I will fix everything in the coming weeks.
Vagabond will participate to Steam Next Fest in February. I hope I will have the time to release a new version with new quests, in particular for the Mage Guild, and a draft of the skill system.
Thanks a lot to everyone who played the game and shared their issues and suggestions! If you have any, please send me an email or come chatting on the Discord server. Your feedback is very precious to me and helps me improve Vagabond!
Alpha 8 is released!
Alpha 8 is finally released! It took much longer than expected as I had to rework a lot of things to be able to implement the new features. But I am very pleased with the progress.
Locks and Lockpicking
Some doors are now locked and you will need a key to open them... or if you don't have the key, you can pick them.
The lockpicking mini-game is a code-breaking game similar to Mastermind. You will have to guess the type of the pins to open the lock. Each time, an attempt fails, you risk breaking your lockpick. If you are not into logic games, you can use the "Auto Attempt" button to get a random chance to open the lock.
Stealing
A small icon is added to items that you will steal if you take them or you have already stolen.
You can't sell stolen items to ordinary merchants. But there are fences in the Thieves Guild who will gladly buy your stolen stuff.
Thieves Guild
Look for a suspicious character in certain inns in the world to get the opportunity to join the Thieves Guild.
Once, you are a member of the Thieves Guild, you will be able to access the Thieves Guild Dens, sell your stolen items, buy lockpicks and get contracts that will use your thief abilities.
You can check your progress in the Thieves Guild with a new tab in the Character window.
User Interface
Finally, I spent time working on the user interface. There are now icons on the map.
There are tabs in the inventory window. Your character is now able to transport much more stuff.
And the trainer window is more elaborate, you can now see the ingredients of a recipe and the requirements to learn it.
Conclusion
This release also fixes many bugs, pauses the game when opening the menu in single player mode, adds walk animations to bows and new pieces of equipment to guards that will be obtainable in the next update.
The next release will bring the crime system and the factions. I hope it will come much faster that this one! :p
Thanks a lot to everyone who played the game and shared their issues and suggestions! If you have any, please send me an email or come chatting on the Discord server. Your feedback is very precious to me and helps me improve Vagabond!
Alpha 7 is released!
Alpha 7 is released! It does not provide any major new gameplay feature but lots of fixes and improvements. Let's take a look at the main ones.
Interactive Map
The map is now interactive, you can click on the regions to see details. You can also click on the "Local" button to see the current part of the world your character is in. If you are inside a building or a dungeon, it shows the map of the structure. Very useful if you are lost in a cave!
I plan to add pictograms so that it is easier to find a specific location on the map. I also want to improve the design of the map of the interiors which is quite crude at the moment.
New Architectural Styles
There are two new architectural styles for villages in forests and cold regions. They are respectively inspired by Medieval Japan and Vikings.
Destruction Animations
All destructible objects now have a destruction animation. Not much but it's nicer to destroy things!
Barracks and Guards
There are now barracks and guards in villages. Guards have different equipment depending on the village. They patrol the villages but they won't attack you if they catch you committing crimes yet, this will come in the next update!
Conclusion
The next update is expected to be the biggest ever with guilds, factions, and the crime system. I wish I could release it in October but I might run out of time. Maybe I'll release it in two parts if it gets too big.
Thanks a lot to everyone who played the game and shared their issues and suggestions! If you have any, please send me an email or come chatting on the Discord server. Your feedback is very precious to me and helps improving Vagabond!
Alpha 6 is released!
Alpha 6 is released! Let's take a tour of the major new features.
Villager AI Improvements
Villagers can now enter in shops and shopkeepers can use the crafting objects in their shops. It makes cities much more livelier!
Item Attraction
Your character now attracts item!
Object Destruction
It is now possible to destroy objects that you have previously placed. However, it is still impossible to destroy objects in villages.
Cooking
Cooking is finally there! You can use a stove and food to cook delicious meals.
If you use ingredients with effects in common, the meal will give these effects to your character when eaten. Meals give small but long-lasting effects. Only one meal buff can be active.
There are seven different recipes but the differences are currently only cosmetic.
Magician Laboratory
The big content addition of this update is magic and wizards. You can find wizards in their laboratories as well as three new crafting objects: the alchemy table, the enchanting table and the staff enchanter.
Alchemy
Alchemy is very similar to cooking. You can brew potions using ingredients at the alchemy table.
The potions also have the effects that are present in at least two ingredients. Contrary to meals, potion effets are powerful but don't last long. Only one potion buff can be active.
Enchanting
You can enchant your items at the enchanting table. You can play on two things: elements and a soul.
You can imbue an item with elemental motes. It will give elemental damage to weapons and elemental defense to armors.
You can also infuse a soul into an item. It will give magic effects to the item, the effects and their power will depend on the elements imbued in the item.
Staves
Finally, you can craft staves at the staff enchanter. The first step is to craft a magic crystal, then you should imbue the crystal with elements at the enchanting table. Finally, you craft the staff at the staff enchanter with your crystal. A procedural name will be generated for your staff which will depend on the elements and the power of your staff.
There are three different staves that emit different types of bolts.
Conclusion
There are many more small improvements and changes. I tried to fix all the bugs you reported to me and to implement all the small suggestions you sent me. If I forgot yours, feel free to remind me! I will be tackling bigger things such as reworking the map to give more detail, improving the shooting system to be able to shoot in all directions and removing the ability to steal without any consequence very soon!
Thanks a lot to everyone who played the game and shared their issues and suggestions! If you have any, please send me an email or come chatting on the Discord server. Your feedback is very precious to me and helps improving Vagabond!
Alpha 5 is released!
Alpha 5 is released! Let’s take a tour of the new features.
Ruins
This the main new content added in this version. If you wander in the desert or in the jungle, you may discover some ruins. Beware! Monsters and traps are protecting them.
They have an inside and an outside part. If you visit cities near the ruins, you may find new quests related to them.
Multiplayer
The game now supports multiplayer with Steam. It was a highly requested feature. I am very happy that I managed to do it for this release. So, once you have started a game, you can invite a friend to join you.
Or one of your friend can directly join your world by looking at your in name in their friend list.
Combat
Combat was one of the most unpolished feature of the game. I worked a lot on them. Here is the list of the main improvements:
- Attack animations were added
- Monsters now avoid each others
- Monsters avoid obstacles (there are still issues with walls, it will be fixed later)
- Particles effects when monsters take damages were added
- Damage dealt are now shown on screen
- Fix the hit box of arrows
I don’t pretend combats are now perfect, there is still a lot to improve. If you have any comment or suggestion, please share it with me!
Translation
I am very pleased to announce that Vagabond is now available in French!
It was a lot of work to be able to procedurally generate French texts. But the technology developed for French will also be useful for other languages and it will be easier to add translations for other languages.
English:
French:
Lighting
If you have been following Vagabond for a while, you know that I like working on the lighting. In this release, I added support for normal maps which in layman’s terms allow to add information about the orientation of the surface of an object to change the lighting accordingly. An image is worth a thousand words:
Outside World
The outside world was, with the exception of cities, very quiet. You may now encouter animals and monsters. Moreover, they are finally bandits in bandit camps!
Finally, it is no longer possible to buy seeds from innkeepers. You now have to explore to find them in the world.
Conclusion
There are many more small improvements and changes. Thanks a lot to everyone who played the game and shared their issues and suggestions! If you have any, please send me an email or come chatting on the Discord server. Your feedback is very precious to me and helps improving Vagabond!
Steam Next Fest Live Stream #2
It will be a rebroadcast of the first live stream. But I will be in the chat if you want to talk!
Looking forward to meeting you there! :)