Dev Log — April 2024

Hi everyone!

While development on the Steam release and the PvE overhaul continues, our artist has sketched up some previews for the mistress and master NPCs, which will be interchangeable miniboss encounters, depending on your sexual preferences.

The mistress/master encounter is the conclusion to the maid/butler encounters, and in order to encounter them, you will have to endure two encounters with their servants in the same run, before the mistress/master takes it upon themselves to properly break you and enlist you in their service!

Text Formatting

The UI overhaul is finished for now. I still need to replace the old turn-timer in the right corner, but I won't be able to do this until the release of the PvE overhaul, as the current exploration system is still reliant on the turn-timer.

I realize UI updates and QoL updates, while appreciated, aren't exactly exciting, so I have decided to add text formatting to this update. Text formatting has become common in recent years, and I feel the game's social aspects are suffering from not giving players the options they have come to expect from text formatting.

Text formatting support will be added to local chats, private messages, character bios, and looking for roleplay details, though some options will be limited to parts of the game. For instance, you won't be able to embed images or add lists and tables in the local chat.

I have written a guide that you can find on the test server at https://test.battlemageroyal.com/formatting.php

It doesn't require login on the test server, so you won't need access to the test server to read it, but I'll still developing the system, so it might be broken at times! The guide itself is written using text formatting, and you can click the pencil to access the source text.

Another reason for looking into text formatting has been the recent issue with Firefox browsers not performing properly for input fields, and with this system, I will make an improved centralized system for handling all input fields, which should be more robust and convenient to update if any future issues should arise.

I will also be increasing everyone's character limit to 8000 for character bios when text formatting is released, more than doubling the amount of characters available so players can use text formatting and still write nice long bios.

Foci and Unique Items

While working on the UI overhaul, I have also continued the design of unique items and the planned focus, as these are planned to be introduced shortly after the introduction of the PvE overhaul.

I played a bit of Last Epoch following its release for inspiration, and I did learn some interesting things that I have decided to adapt for the foci system. You can find all my thoughts and details on the system in this document: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wJWRbUzpo9nJJ9Uz-Nanb5Nvvjibons-Gp5IBKSyuNE/

The main focus of the document is to detail how foci will work and how crafting differs from enchanting equipment. Focus crafting is designed to require low-tier talismen instead of rare ones, and will function as an outlet for luna and blood moon talismen. Foci are also designed to be hand-held items that function similarly to weapons in many other RPGs, which have a more significant impact on your playstyle than your other equipment. This purpose is so you benefit more from your first powerful/perfect item than your second and onward.

Missions for Passive Skill Points

The people who have followed my streams will have noticed I've been playing a bit of Pacific Drive lately. One of the things I realized from playing this game is that a lot of its missions work as explicit onboarding; telling you to do something specific that will teach you what you immediately need to know to play the game.

Meanwhile, I have been thinking about how players should unlock skill points for the passive skill tree in the future, and I think doing something similar would be a great way to introduce players gradually into the game, also because the game doesn't have a concept of a character's level.

I still need to come up with a list of tasks/missions for the player to complete to earn skill points, but generally speaking, the idea is that missions will use a sort of grid that will likely be divided into categories with a natural progression. You can envision it as a sort of quest line for each part of the game, where each completed quest in the grid will reward you with a skill point and grant you access to the next quest or quests, starting with the most mundane things you need to know to play the game and ending with late-game activities and challenges.

As your character progresses, they become more experienced and competent at navigating the academy and world beyond, reflected by their skill points earned, but in actuality, mission progression is account-wide, and some categories might be related to aspects of the game you might not want to do on the same character.

To try and explain what I mean by categories with natural progression, only the tasks immediately relevant to the player will be highlighted, while the rest will appear locked, but that is because the player wouldn't be able to do any of the locked tasks without doing the prerequisite task(s) first.

As an example, a mundane task might be to win your first encounter, with a description of how you go about exploring in the game and how basic encounters work. Completing this task might then give you access to two new tasks: entering a wild boss encounter, and chaining three encounters of the same reward type; both of which are impossible before completing your first encounter, but also don't rely on one another. This way, the game will explain to players in comprehensive steps how to play the game, by only letting them in on what they immediately need to know. Some late-game tasks can become quite a bit less hand-holdy and have goals that are more grindy in nature, say, once you have defeated a boss once, your next task might be to defeat them five times. There might be plans for way more passive skills than there are steps to onboarding a player, so the rest can effectively be made into late-game rewards for players.

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That's it for this month's dev log! Thank you so much for your support and I hope you're looking forward to the text formatting and other upcoming additions to the game ❤️

I will be streaming later today, where you are free to ask questions about unique items, foci and essences, passive skills, and more, so please consider joining us on Twitch! I will announce Discord before I go live. I also plan on doing another stream sometime next week before the weekend, so if you miss today's stream there'll be another opportunity shortly!

Cheers,

Tinon