Open Development Week #53: Inventory Screen, Vault space, new art
over 7 years ago – Fri, Nov 23, 2018 at 09:57:23 AM

Hey Hunters,

How have you been? On the month of November we at Rogue Snail have been hard at work on the Item System. It has been a lot of work (like, a LOT), but it's so rewarding! For many of us here, working on a loot-based game was a childhood dream - and it is finally coming true! We are SO close!

Hunter Screen (a.k.a. "The Inventory")

After months and literally dozens of iterations, we have finally settled on the (for now) final version of our Hunter Screen, where you will view your character's equipped items, and all the sweet loot you just dropped. Here it is:

The Destiny UI influence is still very obvious, but I think we finally hit a point where it fits our game perfectly, and has its own flavor and identity.  We wanted something sleek and cool that would work the same way regardless of your screen (4:3, Widescreen, Ultrawide) and input device (mouse+keyboard, gamepad, touchscreen), that showed all the important information at a glance with no sub-screens, and allowed you to view and equip items with a single click.

Item Slots

There are 6 Gear Slots on the left side, as well as 2 Weapon Slots (Primary and Seconday) and 2 Relic Slots (Relic Weapon and Relic Gear) on the right.

As we explained on update #51, each Hunter will have different Types of Gear that they can equip on each Slot. Here is the current list for each of the 4 Hunters on the Alpha:

Jimmy: Light Clothes, Heavy Shields, Gloves, Medal, Shoes, Potion 

Pinkyy: Heavy Clothes, Armor, Gadget, Medal, Boots, Potion 

Ace: Light Clothes, Light Shields, Gadget, Accessory, Shoes, Potion 

Raff: Heavy Clothes, Light Shields, Sash, Accessory, Shoes, Potion

Even though there is overlap in some Slots, we want every single Hunter to have a unique combination of item Types that they can equip. You can re-use Gear between Hunters, but not the entire build!

Backpack and the Vault

Those little squares on the side of the slots are your Backpack. Each Slot will have a capacity for 12 items. We know it is not much, but the Backpack is meant as a "quick access" for your most-used items, or recently-dropped ones.

At any time (or when your Backpack is full) you can send items to your Vault - that is your bigger, long-term storage. We still have to decide how big the Vault will be, and we will do so over time with the help of our Founders. 

We understand that Vault space is a very contentious subject in looter games, so we are giving it serious thought and we have come up with some guidelines:

How will we decide on available Vault space?

a) Vault space costs real money to us. Increasing item carrying capacity means that server costs go up for every single player account. In every system in Relic Hunters we try to design things smartly, with low server costs in mind. Money saved in server costs means that we need to make less money to support the game, which means less need for aggressive monetization. By saving costs we can be more generous.

b) Begginers need less Vault space than veterans. When you are just starting out, having a lot of storage space is pretty much meaningless - a luxury at best. But later in the game, when you are trying to make a profit with Trade or chasing for that perfect roll, it can be vital. Also, in every free-to-play game, the majority of accounts are "noob" accounts that never get into the endgame. So we will surely implement a system that gives you VERY limited inventory space when you start out, but allows you to unlock (for free) more space as you progress in the game. It is a great way of saving costs for us, with no cost to our players.

c) Really big Vault space will have to be purchased with premium currency. At the end of the day, if you want to have a lot of space, you will have to invest premium currency. This does not mean you have to pay real money, though. We are very serious about making everything achievable for free, so you will be able to Trade for premium currency and get that Vault space you want, if you put in the time.

When is the next Steam build coming?

We are working extra hours these days to try and complete the next build for next Friday (30th). It is still a bit risky, so we might be delayed. We appreciate your patience, as we are doing the best we can.

The build will feature the new Hunter screen, complete with some pre-rolled items for you to play around with.

This build will NOT feature loot drops yet, though - that is the next milestone that we will work towards!

New tileset coming: Kami caverns!

Meanwhile, Mari has been working on the new environment that will be available on the Galyno Desert Region: The Kami caverns! These will feature many mushrooms, old Ducan equipment, and the mysterious ruins of an old city skyline. Take a peek:

Can't wait to fight some Kami in there, leaping from building to mushrooms!

The year is almost over, but we want to deliver cool things before Christmas, fingers crossed! 2019 will be the year of Relic Hunters!

Cheers,

~Mark

Open Development Week #51: Let's Talk About Items!
over 7 years ago – Thu, Nov 08, 2018 at 10:28:27 AM

Hey Hunters,

I'm finally back in Brazil and ready to help the team push our most anticipated feature so far: sweet, sweet loot.

There were many (so many!) boring things we had to take care of before we could finally tackle this, but boy is it on right now!

So for today's update I thought I would talk a bit about where we are, and how this whole Item thing is going to work out.

What is our current progress?

We are currently working on the structure of the Items. For the next couple of weeks we are working on the RPG Stats and how they scale, as well as how Items are structured in the code.

Our next Steam update should have some hand-made Items to test out the system, but the Drop System itself will take another 2 weeks.

Items in Relic Hunters Legend

There are 3 kinds of Items that you can equip in Relic Hunters Legend: Gear, Weapons and Relics.

Gear is stuff like boots, armor, shields, medals and whatnot. You equip them on 6 slots on the left side of your character's inventory, and they offer you protection in the form of Physical Defense Rate and Elemental Defense Rate.

Weapons are, uh, weapons. Both ranged and melee.

And Relics are... different. We will talk about those at a later date.

Every item in Legend will have an "Item Type" that gives it some basic characteristics. For example, a Weapon can be of the "Light Pistol" type, or the "Shotgun" type. Gear can also be from the "Heavy Shields" or "Light Armor" types, for example.

Item types define things such as which Affixes can be rolled into the item (see below), and also help group items together. You might have a "+10% Damage with Shotguns" bonus at some point, for example.

These types will help us define some basic "ground rules" for each item, but then we have the freedom to tweak and modify it for each basic item template (that we call "Item Base").

Finally, when the item drops, it will be its own beast - with its own randomized characteristics, generated from both the Item Base and its parent Item Type.

Gear and Slots

All Gear also have a special characteristic: which Slot they belong to. Like I said above, all Hunters have 6 Gear Slots that they can fill with their hard earned loot - but these Slots are not the same for all Hunters!

There are 12 different types of Slots in total, so each Hunter will have their own unique collection of 6 Slots. This means that some of the Gear pieces that you own can be equipped by some Hunters, but not others.

The goal is to create more build and playstyle variety, and overall more items to hunt and strive for!

Rarity and Affixes

And of course we will have different tiers of item Rarity!

There are 7 tiers of Rarity: Crude, Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary, and Ascendant.

There are also 3 tiers of Unique items. Unique T1, T2 and T3 are equivalent to Rare, Epic and Legendary respectively.

All of these items increase in Level and overall effectiveness as their Rarity goes up, but also the number and quality of affixes increase.

Affixes are special bonuses that an item can have, depending on their Item Type. For example, "+5% Movement Speed" is an affix. Or "+16% Attack Rate for 15 seconds after using a Mobility Skill".

Uncommon affixes are simpler, while Rare affixes tend to be more complicated/powerful. But Unique affixes live up to their name and are playstyle-defining.

They will also have "rolls", meaning that the intensity of their effects will vary. For example, you can drop a "+8% Movement Speed" boot instead of a "+5% Movement Speed" one.

Here's how Item Rarity affects the number and quality of Item Affixes:

• Crudes and Commons have no Affixes
• Uncommons have 1-2 Uncommon Affixes
• Rares have 2-3 Uncommon Affixes
• T1 Uniques have 1 Unique + 2-3 Uncommon Affixes
• Epics have 3-4 Rare Affixes
• T2 Uniques have 1 Unique + 3-4 Rare Affixes
• Legendaries have 2-3 Rare + 2 Intrinsic Rare Affixes
• T3 Uniques have 1 Unique + 2 Intrinsic Rare + 2-3 Rare Affixes
• And Ascendants, who knows?

Enhancement and Gear Score

Apart from collecting Items of ever-increasing Rarity with tasty god-rolled Affixes, there is another very important part of the item game in Relic Hunters Legend: Enhancement.

Materials will drop when playing Legend's content, with the quality, quantity and type of materials depending on where you are in the game world, and how tough the content is - much like in Warframe.

You can use these Materials to increase the power of your Items through Enhancement, turning it into a +1 Item, then a +2 Item, and so on and so forth. The maximum Enhancement level is based on the Rarity tier, like so:

• Crudes can't be Enhanced
• Commons can go up to +5
• Uncommons can go up to +10
• Rares and T1 Uniques can go up to +15
• Epics and T2 Uniques can go up to +20
• Legendaries and T3 Uniques can go up to +25
• And what about Ascendants? It is a secret to everyone

Don't worry, we will not punish you for dropping new and more interesting items after you've invested a lot of Materials into your current one: by Recycling an Item you can get 75% of your Materials back, and we'll also give you a special Material that can only be acquired by Recycling items that have reached their maximum potential!

And so much more!

We haven't scratched the surface of Items yet! Not only we have to talk about the Drop System itself, we still have to talk about Augmentations, Mods, Item World and Timelocked Affixes - and, of course, Relics! All in due time, Rebels, all in due time.

Design Livestream!

I am going live in THIRTY MINUTES (!) to talk about Item design and everything related to Loot. Tune in to Twitch right now so you don't miss it! http://twitch.tv/playrelichunters/

If you are coming from the future and our Livestream is already over, don't worry - we have a time-traveller-friendly Youtube channel where we upload our past streams!

See you soon!

Cheers,

~Mark

Open Development Week #49: The 100% Boring Update
over 7 years ago – Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 11:34:53 AM

Hey Hunters,

It's that time of the development cycle again. We decided to put our heads down and work on the boring parts! And I mean ALL OF THEM.

Programming: Improved Skill Tools

We have talked quite a bit in the past about getting our tech right so the game can scale and we can deploy content quicker in the future. But in no part of the game has this been as important as it is with the Skill Tools.

Almost everything in the game is going to use these tools - Hunter skills, enemy skills, weapons, passive skills, status effects, potions and Gear. And we have been working hard on improving them to allow for the Loot system and everything that we want to do with it.

In short, what the Skill Tools allow us to do is to create and re-utilize small "building blocks" of effects to build complex mechanics. For example, we can create the effects required to make Jimmy's "Bullseye" skill, and later use some of these same effects to make Pinkyy's "Iron Will" skill with no additional code required!

And that's not just limited to skills. Want an item that gives you extra damage when your Life is low? Well, the required building blocks are already done!

It is a much more time-consuming way of doing skills and gear at first... but it accelerates development exponentially as it progresses, since implementing new building blocks increases the possible combinations. In a few months, the need to code new building blocks will become a rarer and rarer occurrence.

With that said, we are still getting a few kinks ironed out. It is a super complex tool to create, as it is almost like we are building our own visual scripting language. You can declare custom variables, create and use conditional expressions, and override values of other skill instances - all within our custom editor!

It should be ready for the Loot and Gear in November, so please bear with us. It will be worth the time investment, we are sure of it.

Level Editor Tool Improvements

Still on the "getting ready for the future" front, we have been discussing and designing the required improvements for our Level Editor.

The goal, as with the Skill Tools, is to allow our level designers and artists to create levels extremely fast in a reliable, bug-free way.

Mari and I sat down and detailed the entire level-building process that we need to create a level such as Galyno Canyons, and found a few areas that need attention. We have to improve our Level Editor to speed up Mari's work and also make it more error-proof.

As with the Skill Tools, there is a clear trade-off here where we give up getting more thing done "right now", but in the future we will be able to deploy much more content for the game.

We understand that an online game like Relic Hunters Legend lives and dies by how fast we can update and add content, so we are taking this challenge seriously from day one. We want to prove that a small team can deploy so much content so fast that it will make a lot of AAA 100-person crews out there blush. But getting there requires time, dedication, and polish of our technology.

In the meantime, Betu is trying to wrap up the art direction for our Map / Stage Selection screen. Here's one of his recent concepts:

And we also have new wooden ramps and such

New team members incoming!

In keeping with the "future" theme, we have received a sizable private investment and are ready to grow Rogue Snail to twice its size in 2019 as we prepare to go into Alpha and then the Beta!

Last week we announced a Producer job at Rogue and we are very excited about the level of talent that we have attracted!

Soon we will announce our new Producer, and with this announcement will come new spots for programming, art and design. Our little family will grow quite a bit.

Art Stream tomorrow!

Tomorrow we will have Mari on the Stream for the first time! She will be drawing live and talking to you with Lucy helping her out. Don't miss it, it starts tomorrow (Thursday) at Noon Pacific Time on http://twitch.tv/playrelichunters.

Cheers,

~Mark

Open Development Week #47: New build, new features, new Livestreams!
over 7 years ago – Tue, Oct 09, 2018 at 07:51:06 AM

Hey Hunters,

Lots of love from the Relic Hunters team! We recently celebrated one year since we launched the Kickstarter campaign. It's been a wild ride, and personally this has been the best year of my professional life. Working on Relic Hunters is a dream come true, and we have you to thank for it. We are deeply grateful, and want to build the best game we've ever made.

So how's this game coming along? Pretty nicely! Let's talk about it.

New build up on Steam

If you are an Alpha tier backer/founder or above, you have access to all of our early development builds on Steam. This weekend we pushed the new Revive system and the new Mini-Map. Go check it out if you haven't already, and let us know what you think on Discord!

The new Mini-Map is 100% functional, even though it is a bit ugly at the moment. We think it is a great new addition to the game, and made the gameplay much more comfortable and fun. Plus, you get to "open" the map as you walk around, and that has been super fun since the original Diablo days!

However, some game modes (such as Scavenge) will already open up the whole map for you from the start!

We have also completely revamped how Revive works, both in single player and co-op play. It is now much more clear and fun, while also providing you with options and respecting your time. Here's how it works:

When your Hunter is Defeated, you will have a "control area" around your fallen character that works just like any other such area in the game. Other players can step inside to "capture" it, reviving you. Be careful though, as enemies inside the area will "contest" it and prevent you from being revived!

You can still "auto-revive" yourself after a few seconds, but this time increases with the Difficulty of the Mission you are playing. However, this "auto-revive" is no longer automatic - you can choose when you want to revive! So now you can either wait for your friends to pick you up, or to revive at the starting point of the Mission.

Another neat new feature is the "wipe" mechanic, represented in the game by the message "All Hunters Are Down!". If all of the Hunters are Defeated at any point (or if you are playing alone), you will NOT need to wait for the "auto-revive" timer as before. The game now allows you to instantly revive without wasting your time. However, if you are playing on a higher Difficulty with a time limit, there will be a penalty to the completion time of the Mission to represent the amount of time you'd have lost if we forced you to sit through the countdown.

Let's chat about chat!

We often say that we don't want Relic Hunters to be "just" a multiplayer shooter-looter. Our mission on Rogue Snail is also to connect our players, to allow new friendships, deeper and more positive interactions between people.

We always wanted to have a fun chat experience in the game. With Discord, Twitch and other forms of online interaction being so dynamic, we don't know why game chats are still so boring and one-dimensional.

This week we are working on chat bubbles, emotes and emojis to make our chat a lot more fun and expressive!

The gist of the idea is that by typing on the chat you will see your messages pop up on top of your character's head as a Bubble. We want to introduce neat effects that we will use on the Story portions of the game, such as animated letters, dynamic colors and fonts, and allow players to use them freely.

For example, if you type "This is **COOL**" we will identify the double-asterisk around the word "COOL" and display it on a larger font with shaking letters!

We will also allow the use of Emojis as you type into the in-game and global chats:

We are currently holding a vote on which custom Relic Hunters emojis from Discord you want to see in the game! Head over to our Discord server and have your say <3

Finally, we will also have big, animated emoticons that can be used in-game (not on chat!). These will appear as large balloons on top of your character's heads, and even some boss enemies and NPCs might use them as well!

These are another fun way of adding customization to the game, and will be a part of the Cosmetics system alongside skins, skill effects and voice packs!

New Livestream plans!

Our community manager LucyG recently announced our new plans to livestream more often.

We will now livestream THREE TIMES A WEEK! You've read it right!

All Streams will happen on our traditional hour: Noon Pacific Time.

On Tuesdays (today!) we'll host our regular Community Stream with LucyG. On Thursdays we will special themes related to development - game design, programming, lore, art, etc. And finally, on Saturdays, we will just chill and play other games with you. Lucy played Warframe last Saturday and it was a lot of fun! 

Come join LucyG today at Noon Pacific Time for our Community Stream!

Cheers,

~Mark

Open Development Week #46: Let's Get Chatty
over 7 years ago – Wed, Oct 03, 2018 at 12:40:51 AM

Hey Hunters,

Hope you are all doing extremely well!

This week's update will be short and to the point, because we are running a bit late on things and have a lot of work to get done.

Mini-Map Update a Bit Late

The Mini-Map feature should have been deployed to Steam last Friday, but a few minor but annoying bugs have prevented us from doing so. We will try to upload it as soon as possible, maybe even today!

The latest update on Steam will feature:

- New and improved Revive mechanics;

- New Mini-Map feature (visuals not final);

- Rework on how Passive skills work (mostly under-the-hood);

Exciting feature ahead: Chat Bubbles

Wait, what? Chat Bubbles are exciting? We were surprised, too! 

This was just a "minor" feature on our to-do list, but during this week's planning meeting we started getting more and more excited about it.

We don't want to spoil the details before we make sure that we can deliver on all of the cool little things about this feature, but from what I know about this community I am 100% positive that you will love it. Stay tuned!

Updated Roadmap

Things have changed slightly. With last week's delay, our maintenance period has increased. Our next weeks are now looking something like this:

October 4th: Steam update with new Mini-Map and new Revive mechanic  

October 12th: Steam update with the Chat Bubble :)

October 26th: Steam update with the Inventory screen, and general fixes and polishes to the game

November 9th: Steam update with Loot!

Exciting Livestream Changes!

We have been talking a lot about how to improve our Livestreams, and also do more of them!

Join Lucy on today's Livestream to chat about what's changing, and what new type of content you're going to see on our Twitch Channel in the (very) near future!

Tune in, as always, to http://twitch.tv/playrelichunters today (Tuesday) at Noon Pacific Time!

See you soon!

Cheers,

~Mark