AoD December update - beta in Jan

[likaq]

Two days ago we put together the first playable build of the upcoming 3 locations (Ganezzar – the third city, the ruins of Al-Akia – the birthplace of the Gods, and the ‘hangar’ giving you access to your very own flying ship). As I mentioned earlier, we discussed whether or not release it now as a questionable New Year gift or sit on it for a couple of weeks.

In the end we decided to wait and push the update release to Jan 19, which gives us about 3 weeks of work. This date won’t be changed or pushed back, so consider it a promise.

It’s tempting to release it now for the sake of saying that we did release an update in Dec. After all, we’re still in Early Access and work-in-progress is the norm here (in fact, that's the idea). Still, I think that if we take some extra time to smooth over the rough edges, your experience will be a lot more enjoyable.

So, the silver lining here is that after 6 months of work we’re very, very close and almost ready to get this ball rolling. The third city was the last major hurdle to overcome and soon you’ll be able to play it.

* * *

Since I don’t have much to add here, I’ll entertain you with our design process. As I mentioned previously, towns are the hardest, most time-consuming locations because of the multiple interwoven questlines with double-crossing and multiple solutions. The amount of scripting that goes into it is huge and it takes a long time to sort it out.

So step 1 – I write the faction questlines. It takes a while. For Ganezzar we needed 4 guilds: the Imperial Guards, assassins, thieves, and merchants. Plus 3 praetors: a praetor serving House Daratan who did not ruin House Aurelian, a Daratan praetor who did, and a praetor serving House Aurelian (they all have different paths to follow). Plus the main quest and key side quests (like the power armor quest). Overall, that’s 24 quests right there. Usually, it takes about 3-4 days per quest. When the quests are written, I enter them into the database, do ‘basic’ scripting that allows us to run through dialogues, and pass them to Oscar who is our artist/designer.

While I’m busy writing, Oscar is busy putting locations together, while Nick, Ivan, and Mazin are working on programming tasks (for example, now Nick is working on the power armor, which is a very unique item that requires its own interface), extra animations, and 2D art (portraits, icons, the aforementioned interface, quick concept art, etc). It takes about 4-5 days to fully implement a quest, so overall that’s ((3-4)+(4-5)) x 24 = 168-216 days right there (5-7 months) just to do the basic implementation.

Step 2 – the first draft:

When we have the first drafts of both the locations and the quests, we put them together, add ‘advanced’ scripting (usually checking events and variables) that allows us to run through and jump between the questlines, and see what we got there.

Basically, there is a difference between quests ‘on paper’ and an in-game questlines. Sometimes the difference is minor and can be disregarded (i.e. ‘sure, it can be tweaked here and there but overall it’s ok’), sometimes it’s not and you have to go back to the drawing board.

So, after debating it back and forth we decided that everything looks good except for the merchant guild’s questline's flow. The first quest (technically, the 7th quest) was quite good but required being sent all over the place. It was moved to the House Crassus questline as it fits it better. The merchants’ quest in question had to be replaced which is one of the reasons for the delay to January. I finished writing it last night and it’s a fun quest which will require you to perform miracles and dabble in the mysterious arts of faith healing.

Step 3 – once the first draft is discussed and approved, we start building it up. The faction questlines are a solid foundation but it takes a lot more work to turn ‘a place where quests take place’ into a city with its own atmosphere. It needs:

- side quests
- flavor characters to talk to
- ‘diaries’, messages, flavor text (various descriptions)
- various intros and endings
- expanded conversations with main characters
- new quest options that become clear after you play through several times

Step 4 – balance, bugs, minor things like journal and reputation

So now we’re at Step 2. I don’t think we can jump to Step 3 in 3 weeks, but we can do quite a lot, which will make your experience more enjoyable. Overall, we did release the first two towns when we hit Step 2, so it's sort of business as usual but we released it as a beta to testers. Now we're about to release it directly to Early Access, hence the desire to ensure that we give you more rather than less.

Overall, for those who’re curious about our progress rate, we released the first 3 locations in March 2012 (which included a starting town). It took us 20 months to do another town plus 6 extra locations, which were released on Nov 2013. It took us 13 months to release 6 more locations, add different states for the starting town, and almost finish the third town. Another month and we’re there.

Thank you for your support, patience, understanding and encouragement.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,6067.0.html

Jan 19

 

[eric__s]

Looking forward to it. I'd rather have a reasonably polished Ganezzar in January than a rough one today. Marking it down on my calendar - January 19 (and probably 20): the day I binge on Age of Decadence.

 

[SuicideBunny]

fuck. right at the start of exam season.

 

[SniperHF]

Is this update going to have an actual end-game? Other than a death screen that is.

 

[Vault Dweller]

No.

 

[Kem0sabe]

No.

A "normal" playthrough of the full game is about how long? according to irontowers internal testing.

 

[felipepepe]

You don't get it guys, there's no "normal" playthrough. Death is all that awaits you.

 

[SniperHF]

But I wanted to turn my PC into a Qantari demon......

 

[Vault Dweller]

A "normal" playthrough of the full game is about how long? according to irontowers internal testing.

No idea. We aren't testing it yet. So far we just ran through the questlines, skipping combat, just to 'test' the story (if everything makes sense) and see how it changes if you start jumping between the questlines.

For example, originally, the Oracle was supposed to be a 'back up' location, an alternative way to learn the coordinates. The 'default' place to learn the coordinates was in Ganezzar but when we went through the quests and rearranged a few things, it became clear that it would be better to, well, do things differently and change the outcome of a Ganezzar quest to 'something else'. It's a relatively minor thing (instead of learning A, you learn B which is more interesting, fits better, and doesn't duplicate), but it requires a bit of writing and different scripts.

 

[Agesilaus]

IT'S OUT!

http://steamcommunity.com/games/aod/announcements/detail/239023263560126313

Has the instructions on how to access the test beta on Steam.

 

[Agesilaus]

Erm.... Apparently you can no longer change your starting stats? If I click to reduce a stat (strength, for example), I cannot then add that point anywhere else. Actually, I can't even add it back to the strength stat; the plus sign has been taking out of the game?

 

[Ninjerk]

fuck

 

[Goral]

Look at it this way - the game will be more challenging now :]. I'm currently playing as a Loremaster and charisma at 6 is utterly useless. Normally I either minimize or maximize that stat (or put it on 9 which works for almost all charisma checks).

 

[covr]

It's a bug.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/230070/discussions/0/622955136050906325/

 

[GloomFrost]

Hell yeah!!! I don't know about you people but I m going to be staring at a lot of death screens today.

 

[kain30]

it´s not a bug, it´s a feature! . jokes aside, the temptation is enormous but i´m going to wait to release day to play AoD.

 

[Agesilaus]

Yeh, I'm going to wait for an update, it's got real problems right now.

 

[vonAchdorf]

There's a preview of the current version in one of the biggest German online gaming sites:

http://www.4players.de/4players.php...schau/10128/81014/0/The_Age_of_Decadence.html

(Verdict: Good)

 

[zerotol]

Hoffentlich können Vince D. Weller und sein Team dieses ambitionierte Rollenspiel dieses Jahr finalisieren.



Next thursday bros

 

[Sensuki]

dat Warcraft 2 cheat code

 

[Goral]

As I mentioned in the previous announcement, we’re planning to update the Beta on a weekly basis until the third chapter is completed, then we’ll go back to monthly updates until the game is out. So, week 1...

Week 1

• Added the Aurelian Praetor questline
• Added the ‘Hangar’ (to unlock talk to the cartographer Domitius sent you to)
• Added the power armor quest (at the moment the quest is available to all regardless of whether or not you got the quest in Maadoran)
• Added a new NPC near the ‘pillar of skulls’
• Added tooltips for the attacks
• Added traits descriptions
• Fixed various scripting issues and bugs (antidote should be working as advertised now)
• Fixed journal crashes (hopefully for good, but if you do get one, let us know and describe the steps to reproduce)
• Added filler NPCs to Lowtown in Ganezzar
• Made visual improvements

What to expect next week:

• Daratan Praetor questline
• *Possibly* Crassus Praetor questline (there is a lot of stuff there so we might push it to week 3)
• new quests
• new NPCs
• Improved Ganezzar (art, filler NPCs, text descriptions)
• Various design improvements and fixes

Power armor

It’s working but it’s still rough around the edges. There are 3 modes plus an optional 4th mode. Right click on the armor’s icon in the inventory to interact with it. Once it’s charged, you’ll be able to go through the different modes the same way you go through different attacks. There are no tooltips yet to explain what does what, but they are coming. Play with it (keep in mind it’s work in progress and the very first iteration of the armor), then post your thoughts and suggestions. As usual, we’ll go through them and improve the design with your help.

As always, thank you for your support.

Awesome. Honestly, I would never have thought that I would love this game this much, especially after my first impression which wasn't that good (looked too indie for my taste, at least I thought so). Now I consider i_t on par with Fallout 1 which I thought was impossible for any cRPG.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Thank you for the high praise.

 

[Agesilaus]

Ganezzar is looking a lot more lively now, great work. I'm still having difficulty finding people to actually talk to there, though; perhaps I need to start a new character now that we have a new version?

I'm looking forward to the Lady Lorenzo storyline being added, I usually go that way with the AG for some reason. Probably because it's an easier battle with a higher possible reward.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Ganezzar is looking a lot more lively now, great work. I'm still having difficulty finding people to actually talk to there, though; perhaps I need to start a new character now that we have a new version?

I'd suggest to wait a few weeks and use an older save for now just to see the progress. We're planning to update the build tonight, fixing several scripting issues and lowering the rep requirement to enter the castle while the game is still in beta.

 

[Agesilaus]

Yes, I noticed a few scripting issues in the most recent build; for example, after Zamedi when you are sent by House Aurelian to Ganezzar, you can repeatedly talk to the House Aurelian leader over and over again about zamedi, gaining sp each time. Also, the game doesn't automatically send you to ganezzar, so you have to go to the front gates of the city and manually leave for ganezzar.

Also, when you go to the gate to talk to Meru... you can't confront him. You just ask him about his religion and generally chit chat with him, but House Aurelian specifically sent me there to confront him about his new digging for artifacts project and to resolve the siege.

Also, when you go to buy the power armour in your bathrobe, and things go south, it says that you will fight them in your robe. However, you are still wearing whatever armour you had equipped when you first left; the game never puts the robe on you.

Also, when you go down to the Hangar as an Aurelian Praetor, and then come back up the ramp, the only option is to lie to the loremasters upstairs about what you saw, or ask them to open the door if you weren't able to get in. Or just go back to Ganezzar. Why am I fighting with them? I'm with House Aurelian, I should tell them to go ahead and seal it up, and then tell the House Aurelian leader what a great job we did finding the temple that House Daratan was looking for.