Archmage Rises - the play-how-you-want mage simulator - now available on Early Access

[Jarmaro]

Decided to give a few more hours, but unfortunately it seems I already ran out of content after two or so. Cannot do experiments in a mage chapel as they require week of time and have outstanding 0.5% chance to yield results, and I'm not even sure the experiments yield new spells. No option with any town lord to ask for land to build a mage tower. Dungeons appear to have only one variation - weird freshly abandoned dungeon full of light, torches and bars with beer and ale(???). Also for some reason skeletons and goblins love them. Quests are Go&Kill or Go&Harvest. Optionaly some more elaborate stuff, but it has next to none consequences so w.e. Turned out you actually get a mount you buy! It's a small bar in the inventory that appears to only be useful for carrying a few slots of stuff. Next to useless, I thought it would make me go faster on the map. Studying books is completely unhinged, it takes fucking weeks to read a book, and you either get a simple spell (one you wouldnt use anyway of course as it's from a different branch) or 10 experience in a magic school. Fucking 10. To illustrate, you get magic experience just by spaming spells in combat. One 10 minutes long dungeon can give you 150+ experience. This is hysterical.

Honestly, I'm disappointed. If this is how few years of work has been spent this game is not going to be finished within this decade. You could unironically get an AI made Archamge Rises version faster. It would probably be built more logically, too. Like, just look at this game and think how long it would take a small team of hobbyist or a dedicated experienced developer to make something similar by using AI art, free assets and AI coding for the most basic and repetetive stuff. Just drop the world-generation schtick and add some randomness to the characters and quests instead, 80%+ of the same impact with minimum effort. How come the author wants to do the most complicated stuff first, while the most gameplay relevant and impactful parts of the product are completely unfinished? This must be some autism or schizo shit.

This game concept just begs to be stolen and executed again, this time properly. I haven't started this post with intention to be harsh on the developer behind Archmage Rises, but the state of the game at the moment simply brings dismay. 7 years and this is what comes out. Maybe my game just bugged completely and I missed most of the content, but this far I see no reason for play this game for more than 2-3 hours at most.

PS: I disenchanted, pick-locked or simply used around 15 levers in dungeons. None of them did a single thing. None. They were all useless. What's the fucking point. Dungeons are downright over-developed, with nothing to give for it.

 

[Tyranicon]

This game concept just begs to be stolen and executed again, this time properly.

You probably hit it on the nail: someone (maybe even the dev of AR) will use AI to make mage life-sim game.

Will it be good though? Eh, I foresee AI generated content being akin to that of a mediocre writer/artist. So... far better than what the games industry has to offer, but still not great.

 

[HoboForEternity]

i only have experience with the demo, seems so obvious it's made by bunch of people who doesn't know game design and think they know and it feels like an ant trying to bite off a 14 inches pizza.

everything is just amateurish and the UI is such a pain to navigate. they really should've started with smaller projects.

 

[Jarmaro]

They should have started with Archmage Rises 1 being a basic game with the working fundamentals, then working up from that to Archamge Rises 2 etc. As it is it's a disjointed piece of software without any focus. Why couldn't they just be modular with it? Being all over the place is not conducive to productive work-flow.

 

[Jarmaro]

Can't stop thinking about this game from time to time, wondering how better it could be done. It's really one of those concepts that were fucked up so badly you just wish you could do it instead, but better.

 

[Mortmal]

Can't stop thinking about this game from time to time, wondering how better it could be done. It's really one of those concepts that were fucked up so badly you just wish you could do it instead, but better.

Me too , thats why i am still reading about it, love the concept. But what a depressing outcome, even with low expectations and being very pessimist.

 

[Jarmaro]

Actually, I just checked Steam had two important updates recently:

Patch 0.0.9

2.5 weeks from launch and we're starting to build up momentum! We obviously had some serious issues to deal with the first week, and we are still working through bug reports, but in today's patch you will experience some of the content development momentum that is going on in the background!

NEW

1. Spell power slider has made it's return. This is unlockable via a new "master class" quest available at the Starter Town Conclave. When you unlock this new magical control knowledge, you'll be able to adjust the power of your spells before casting: Weaker, Normal, Powerful
2. 3 new quests (including the previously mentioned spell slider quest)
3. Magic school power leveling is now on a curve of 100, 200, 300, etc. It no longer is just 100xp per point. This makes the game harder and it was always supposed to be this way*
4. 3 new spells: Air Pocket, Earthquake, and Wall of Stone -
   NOTE
   : You have to generate a new world and game to get them, does not just appear in your saves!
5. Added descriptive prefixes to help differentiate enemies (thanks to player Durbitwaz for the assistance!)
6. Several new NPC portraits
7. Rebalancing of character creation - 6 sessions instead of 9
8. Added back the ability to Explore a hex to find a lair even if you failed the tracks roll. Look for the [?] in the top panel right column, if you see it, you know to explore! (player request)
9. New VSync option under Graphics Settings (player request)
10. Updated FPS cap slider option (player request)

FIXED

• Stink Cloud debuff no longer persists after combat, was causing lots o' issues
• Light & Arcane Insight now scale according to spell school power
• Fixed fill direction on enemy armor bar
• Item descriptions now display properly in combat
• Fixed Dispel Gem, and now you can also use it on yourself outside of combat
• Fixed buff/debuff icons for Stink Cloud, Ice Shield, and Flame Shield
• More save file optimizations

*Fun Fact - the programmer found a note in the source code for the School XP system from 2022 saying "TODO: Don't leave this at just 100Xp per point."

Patch 0.0.10

New

1. We now support up to 130% Text Scaling
   . It was a significant amount of work to pull this off, ~2 people for 3 weeks combing over the entire UI and tooltip system. We did this to allow people to play on many kinds of screens: 13" laptops, TV's, Steam Deck, etc. all at what is comfortable for you. We also did it to lay a foundation for future UI work. Note: There is a known issue it is slow to respond as you move the slider, and occasionally some text will pop out of a container. We will optimize in a future patch.
2. Now support more (all?) 16:9 Screen Resolutions.
   1440p and 4k screen users rejoice! Actual 4k support will come later. 21:9 probably never. (I say this as the lead dev working on a 21:9 screen I love so much I could kiss it. It's like my fourth child.)
3. Using a dungeon door key will now remove it from your inventory. They were always magical, but now go *poof* so as not to clog up yer inventory. (The vendors were sick of buying your useless keys and raised a complaint!)
4. Added 9 more character creation equipment bundles, for a total of 12.
5. Added 2 more quests

Improved

1. Removed an unnecessary click in spell casting, making combat play faster.
   You pick the spell, then can click the spot you want to cast it. No longer do you have to confirm "cast" above.
2. Rewrote locked doors, levers, and keys.
   This was real broke, but now it should be good: keys and levers will appear on the correct side of the locked door (the side where you can reach it!
   
   )
3. Optimized game loading, starting the game is at least 10x faster.
   Sadly, this does not improve save game loading. Baby steps...
4. Changed Magic School XP Level up cost from +100xp per level to +25xp per level cost, so 100, 125, 150, 175, etc. instead of 100, 200, 300... (player feedback)
5. Camps no longer are consumable. They cost more now, but they never go away. Later we will introduce wear & tear or something, but we solved the immediate issue of needing stacks of 8 of them. (player feedback)
6. Harvesting resources is down from 15->5 stamina. This is a bandaid based on player steam forum feedback (sleep simulator!
   
   ). Stamina will slowly be taken out of the game entirely, but the beneficial need to sleep will not. (player feedback)
7. Resource generation is much higher and now uniform in the code. HOWEVER, there is a deeper problem of the map showing a forest where there is no forest. Correcting the graphics to match the map is a longer solve and we didn't have time to do it this week. So this is a small improvement with a major improvement coming. (player feedback)
8. Made the Ara and AP refresh a little juicier

Fixes

1. • Combat: Ground placement of corpses and things like acid pools and such is fixed.
   It was trying to place it in the right spot, saw there was something there (the monster) and then trying to find an open place to put it.
   • Fixed showing wrong spell title/icon/radius in cast box.
   Oops.
   
2. Gambling: Somewhere around the player reaching 10,000g the game would crash. The issue was bankrupting the innkeeper! He would try to take his turn, but couldn't afford it, but had to take his turn, couldn't afford it. Infinite loop goodness.
3. Gambling: Fixed natural 20's going firey. Nothing special happens during gambling so it shouldn't show the effect.
4. Fixed inn sleep fire VFX. It was miss-firing (Ha! I'm a dad). It now scales correctly to whatever screen you are on and no longer looks like it is burning the furniture.
5. Fixed text bleeding outside of popup boxes on world generation and spell school level up
6. Fixed fellow student names must be unique in character creation. We had a player report going to school with Barbara, Barbara, and Barbara. It certainly made it an interesting challenge to keep them all straight, but we decided it was for the best to just ensure they are unique.

Known Issues
There are plenty of general problems in the game, but here are some specific ones we're working on:

• There is a quest, Gather Stone for Inquisitor, which has some ??? showing in it.
• Sometimes a new world has a bunch of the spells way up the tier. It's real weird, we can reproduce it, but not often. If you get this, just generate another world and it'll be fine.

While I see improvements and energy behind the developer...I find it highly questionable how they just overlooked the core elements like the UI or magic progression, as if that was an afterthought. Like, those are two main elements of a game like this. If I was the developer I'd spent most of the time on making the UI as flawless, pretty and joy to use.
Still, progress is progress. Maybe once they patch it up and rework some things it will start looking like something that fulfils its promise. There is nothing else, so I can only hope.

 

[Jarmaro]

I hate how the developer suddenly starts giving me hope for the project. It's getting better and the transparency at every step is a breath of fresh air...yet the lack of easthetic values or fulfiling mage fantasy (the game is more of a DnD Mage gameplay simulator than fantasy mage simulator) brings me dismay.

How can you make a game with the focus on being a mage but make a shitty UI that gives half-broken sliders for a few spells? I would expect dozens of spells, utility, non-combat applications, etc.

Sigh. Maybe in the future. If the game keeps improving at this suddenly swift rate, it can be something actually worthwhile your time in few months. If we hit update #2 of the roadmap and the game's more playable by then, we'll be able to start treating this project seriously.

This week's plan in Archmage Rises (May 23 '23)
Yesterday was a holiday (Queen Victoria Day), so today is the start of a short week. So far feedback on last week's patch 0.10 is good. It's nice to hear as that one was unexpectedly hard to get out.

Here is an insiders view into what is happening this week in Archmage Rises for adventurers and stakeholders!

1. Several weeks ago we brought on Mark Webster, a senior designer on God of War, God of War Ragnarok, and Skylanders, as a design coach. Well I decided to double down and basically hired him almost full time. We're excited for the changes he's bringing to the project.
2. Mark has come up with a new system of fatigue so we can do away with Stamina altogether. We're still evaluating it.
3. Mark and James continue work on spells and combat and you will see results of their effort in 2-3 weeks. Basically all game design features we bring to Mark for comment & approval.
4. Michel is architecting combat to support the goodies Mark & James need.
5. Jonathan enters his third week working on the exponential save file growth issue. To solve the file and make it smaller, we need to split saves into different parts. This will mean existing saves are incompatible with the new format. We expect this to come out NEXT week's patch, 0.12.
6. Tyler is working on the map & resources. Resources aren't generating correctly because of bad map data. This will be in this week's patch
7. Josh got interrupted last week with some help on the patch - he's the one who implemented the combat casting click removal - he is now finishing up build signing for Mac so we can make Mac builds.
8. Jessi is adding Last Name to Character Creation. Then updating World Generation UI and popups sprinkled throughout the game. All of it should make it into this week's patch.
9. D2 and Jeff continue to fix high priority bugs as defined by our community manager Phil.
10. Zach continues working on the economy for Update #1: Townsfolk. He was interrupted for some help on the patch last week.
11. Rubi is working on some secret art, which when done, I'll share.
12. Nolan is working on bringing the character creation outcomes from 5 to 12 variants. He is also working on job quests for Update #1: Townsfolk.
13. I'm working on quest tooling for Nolan for Update #1.

We are pushing out patch 0.11 on either Thu/Fri May 25/26. We are working towards these features:

1. Glitch with the spell power slider (Josh)
2. Remove getting kicked out of a place when it closes, instead they just get mad at you and keep asking you to leave (Josh)
3. Dungeon light issue and south door movement (D2)
4. Option to turn off auto-eat - instead, show hunger 2 days ahead of time to notify people (Tyler)
5. Airpocket needs to remove stink cloud debuff (Josh)
6. Three bugs reported by Red Oktober - Infinite steal on loading game, and Character creation isn't being reset upon quit/start again, and Character creation VISION mother choice doesn't give +6 perception

 

[Jarmaro]

I think I'm beginning to understand what rubes me the wrong way each time I consider Archmage Rises -- it's hollow. The game's a gameplayfag wet dream, with numbers for stats, skill checks, loot gathering, skill progression, combat...with only a few lines for a story and lore. There is no serious consideration whatsoever for the lore of the world, the developers go as far as making it randomly generated. It's only the set-dressing, no one cares about evoking magical atmosphere, magic that ties into abstract ideas or interesting concepts. Fire Magic has damage and are of effect, Ice Magic less damage but status control. That's what in the minds of the developers, not how to tie each element into a character, temperament, groups of people, etc.

If the main developer was a DnD fan - which supposedly inspired Archmage Rises - I'm 100% sure he would be one of those autistic retards who care more about min-maxing their characters and wondering why the DM provides more than servicable story or character arcs, why would you need that when you just need to plan which class to take, roll the dice, battle and get loot? Silly. /s

 

[Tyranicon]

Several weeks ago we brought on Mark Webster, a senior designer on God of War, God of War Ragnarok, and Skylanders, as a design coach. Well I decided to double down and basically hired him almost full time. We're excited for the changes he's bringing to the project.

Specifically a level designer. Pretty curious as I thought this was one of those games where 80% of the playtime was in some kind of menu.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Seems a bit excessive if those are indeed his qualifications.

 

[Jarmaro]

Several weeks ago we brought on Mark Webster, a senior designer on God of War, God of War Ragnarok, and Skylanders, as a design coach. Well I decided to double down and basically hired him almost full time. We're excited for the changes he's bringing to the project.

Specifically a level designer. Pretty curious as I thought this was one of those games where 80% of the playtime was in some kind of menu.

Considering how random the main dev Mark may actually contribute heavily even if he's not mainly a lead designer. I've already seen it mentioned Mark nagged the devs to make each Magic school have distinct gameplay and feel, so he knows the basics at the very least. Also, as the main dev said they are taking all of their concepts and designs for Mark to approve them before implementation. With a man like him maybe the game will finally get the kick it needs, just two big content patches from the roadmap would make a lot of difference.

 

[Jarmaro]

This is the roadmap if anyone's missed it. Feels a bit bland and somewhat vague, but if I see them delivering on at least the Updates #1 and #2, and don't fuck up their Update #3 UI changes I will allow myself to get hyped.

 

[Jarmaro]

I've kept reading the game's steam discussion forum out of curiosity. This is the conversation between a user and the main developer, a true gem:

User:
Make it so that a spells tier affect how you earn exp from it, if we assume say a maximum 5 hypothetical tiers then each spell grants 100% for a 20 level block, 50% for the next block

Tier 1 spells - levels 1-20 = 100% exp - levels 21-40 = 50% exp - levels 41-60 = 25% exp

But that makes it reasonable to increase exp gains from using higher tier spells.

Tier 2 spells - levels 1-20 = 150% exp - levels 21-40 = 100% exp - levels 41-60 = 50% exp

This just pushes the exploit target from recasting a low tier spell 10000 times to a high tier spell 1000 times.

(...)

With shifting the exploit from 10000 tier 1 casts to 1000 tier 2 casts this would be another reason to make casting above your tier could have an increased cost, 1 extra stamina per tier, 1 extra Ara per 2 tiers.

The higher above your skill level something is the more experience you get from it but the more effort you have to put into pulling it off.

With 15 spell level you could still cast a tier 5 spell, it would just be inefficient and draining, if you want to up cast or down cast its even more exhausting.

Developer:
Yes you are right, we need to have diminishing returns for multiple attempts.
Man this stuff gets complicated quickly!

For the record, until the the last two patches raising expertise in a magic school took 100 experience, always. The last patch changed it to each level taking +100 more experience, 200, 300 etc (100 experience x Magic School Level). Which was obviously an insane amount. Since the last patch it's 125, 150, 175 etc.

This game has been developed for 8 years. And the developer is excited for the most basic balancing of the game's most basic, crucial feature. The game's built around being a mage getting stronger, but in the last 8 years no one thought about this.

This is beyond satire. Beyond comprehension. I'd be convinced the developer is trolling if I haven't seen the rest of the forum. How is this possible?

 

[kris]

I have to agree. When I first saw my character in the game and how I could improve him (not really much there) I understood this game was not built as a game at all. He have put all his energy and mind to the simulation, and if you look back at his diaries you will notice there is almost nothing about your character. Its almost all about the procedural world building.

 

[Jarmaro]

Build 0.0.11 is Live!

A short week for us, but we are excited to bring these updates for this weekend!

Improvements

1. Added option to turn off auto-eat, for those who want to role-play more specifically. (Player request)
2. Added hunger warning 2 days before auto-eating. If you eat, then it won't auto-eat. If you ignore it then auto-eat will happen as usual (Player request)
3. Improved resource generation distribution.
4. Removed getting kicked out of buildings when they close. Instead, the person tells you to leave. Soon they will start getting mad at you until you leave, though this isn't implemented now. Inns, conclave chapter house, and healers are open 24hrs a day
5. Added player Lastname to character creation with randomization options. (Player request)
6. Made overcasting (slider 3rd position) add more umph (about 20%) to the result (Player request)
7. Tweaked spells: Arcane Shield, Magic Missile, Daggerfall, Dispel, Fireball, Light, Lightning Bolt, Push, Air Pocket, Wall of Stone, Ice Lance

Fixes

1. Dungeon: Light is no longer required to travel to previously visited rooms, removing soft lock when running out of light. This is the south door not clickable problem.
2. Dungeon: Trapped levers resetting upon reentering a room. This was really thorny to solve.
3. Dungeon: Fixed some really silly code that was generating a zillion levers. Oops!
4. Combat: Power slider now works correctly. It was intermittently working before
5. Combat: Can no longer cast shield spells on the ground
6. Combat: Stopped player from casting during enemy turn. It just wasn't fair!
7. Combat: Air pocket now removes stink cloud debuff as well as preventing it. Thanks for pointing out that mistake.
8. Combat: Fixed weapon descriptions with text scaling
9. Character creation: options now apply skill gains correctly
10. Updated UI of confirmation popups
11. Map: Graphics now match the map data, this makes finding resources actually possible
12. Map: Resources regenerating on loaded save games leading to tons of duplications. Fixing this requires it to generate one more time, wiping out whatever was there previously. This means previously found resources may no longer be there. Sorry.
13. Town: Resolved infinite vendor stealing exploit through save/load
14. Town: Sneaking into town no longer shows a gate toll

 

[Jarmaro]

Okay, I seem to have finally tracked down the relevant information on why the game looks like it does despite being made for 8+ years. It's relieving, as now the state it's in makes more sense. Lack of focus on actual roleplaying is still bad, though.

tl;dr

• For 7 years it's been just the main dev and another person, in the meantime they worked on other things and for other companies
• They constantly rewrote a lot of world generation stuff
• The real developement with the entire team of 7+ people has been going on since March 2022
• Many important features has been stripped from the game to polish it for Early Access, will be slowly reimplemented according to the roadmap
• The game should be able to achieve version 1.0 within a year, reasonably

It's not a tool issue, I'm just dumb and slow.

(...)
If the tool isn't the problem, why does it take so freakin long?

The game is really really hard to make. To my knowledge there are no other proc-gen simulator games like it (*more later). Breaking new ground is really hard because there is no proven path "oh you just do it like this" examples to follow. There were not FPS until Carmack saw Ultima Underworld and made Wolfenstein. Then suddenly, you have Tim Sweeny making Unreal and Ken Silverman making Build3D. Right after Wolfenstein (and Doom) everyone suddenly seems to know how to make FPS. Because a path was forged and people could see what to do and how to do it (or not).

So in innovation there are false starts, things that we try and fail at, and have to rewrite to find the right solution. This is the nature of innovation (or Basic Research if you will): it takes forever and with seemingly little result.

I used to build business software. Business software is easier because the workflow processes are known and the client can tell you exactly what the end result should be. While we talk about being agile and iterative, really it's just waterfall where you build the features in a straight row and once you have enough features, everyone is happy and call it done. Until they have more money and more pain points, and then you revise & add.

But game dev is cyclical: you have an idea, you code it up, try it out. And it isn't quite right. It is what you decided to do, but it just doesn't feel good.
Throw it out.
Try again with a new idea.
Keep trying until it feels right.

This constant throwing out of work is FRUSTRATING as can be.

I'll give two examples:
The simulator was originally written "bottom up". Meaning every NPC existed and made decisions hourly (or weekly/monthly) and the world was what it was.
It was really cool, it worked (there are update videos from 2017/2018 showing it)... but it didn't scale past 1,000 NPCs.
There was no "trick of the game programming gurus" that could solve the problems.

This required a rethink, and we had to rewrite the simulator to be Just In Time (JIT).
Cool as it may sound, to me and you, it ultimately doesn't matter what ale an NPC you never met, is ordering in an Inn you've never been to, in a town you've never been to, half way across the world.

The "aha" is it doesn't matter until you get there.
When you arrive, the simulator "catches up".

This allows us to scale to millions of NPCs.
And also required a complete rewrite of the simulator (and world gen, and NPC interactions), which we started summer of 2022. And it isn't done.
But it took a game that pre-order fans were really playing and made it completely unplayable.
Juuuuuuuust before we had to get a demo out for Next Fest.

Right now Zach is continuing the JIT Simulator work so we can do Update #1 NPCs. Michel will join him soon.

Just today we've had another one of these rewrite decisions.
We wrote combat in 2015/2016.
Then we rewrote it in 2021.
(...)
My lead programmer did an analysis and discovered we can rewrite combat in 2-3 weeks, knowing what we know now.
To a player: it will look and function the same. Just less buggy.
Internally, it will be easier to work with going forward.
So I just approved that initiative this morning around 11:03am. Michel & Tyler for 2 weeks+.

*Now about games like us, many people compare us to Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode. Which is a great honor and I appreciate. Dwarf Fortress is definitely an inspiration. I have internally thought of Archmage Rises as "playable Dwarf Fortress" because I find DF so obtuse. (Though people find Archmage obtuse... so maybe it's not so playable!)

DF has been made by 2 people for about 20 years. It's a really fantastic simulator, very impressive.

Do they have NPC AI driven dialog trees?
Do they have graphics like ours?
What about the combat with all the sequencing, animating, and timing issues that entails?
What about 3D dungeon exploration with room decoration?

We go much further than DF in some areas, and much less in others:
We don't simulate blood, we have HP.
We don't simulate weather and air pressure like them.

For about 1 year we were doing contract work for other game studios (3 months then another for 8 months). So it's actually about 7.5 years effort.
Of those 7 years, it's been mostly me or two of us (me & nic for 2 years, me & michel for 2 years).

The real serious effort, the team wide sprint to get this game done, started March 1 2022. Most of what you see in game is the result of a 8+ person team working for just over a year.

Considering its been 15 months with a serious team, the roadmap looks quite reasonable to do in about a year. Note, I haven't promised to be 1.0 in a year, its just a reasonable estimate.

 

[Jarmaro]

My fascination with this project doesn't cease, so I've backlogged the entire 32 pages of this thread. I'm now absolutely convinced the entire thread, the developer's post and his videos should be archived, turned into a larger document or a book, then made a mandatory read for every solo-developer or design students at universities.

There is this song I recall, about a man trying to make it big. He thinks, he works, his dreams are large. And how he works? By making a model of a building he wants to build, for a few years. The song is obviously satirical, but I've never thought I'd see a real example of such a person. This developer wanted to make an RPG mage simulator, but instead spent 8 years working on minutae, fluff and irrelevant details.
It's not exactly just sad or pitiful, it's scary. Lovecraft's cthullus aren't as terrifying because they are fictional, meanwhile this is a real nigthmare that can happen to a normal person that went off the deep end in their passion. Most of the work he has put in the game will not matter much for the experience. The world-generation is in the end secondary to the gameplay.

Thankfuly, most of the features in the roadmap are already made, more or less being part of the older builds (but the combat has been recently rewritten, despite me seeing like 6 posts about combat re-designs), so a month a feature isn't a wild expectation. I could see Archmage Rising hiting 1.0 within a year or two.

You know, it's games like these that make me respect Todd Howard and Bethesda more. That man is the same like the developer of AR, but realistic and capable of deliviring serious products while at the same working incrementally with each to achieve his dream vision.

 

[Jarmaro]

This week's plan in Archmage Rises (May 29 '23)
Hello fellow adventurers & stakeholders, here is this week's plan.

We had a bumpy road with patch 0.11 on Friday requiring 0.11a on Saturday, but thanks to all who reported and dialogued with us on the issues to identify the problem and get it fixed. This is why we try to do patches on Thursday

We're putting things into place to keep the weekly Thu cycle.

This week Thu Jun 1 we will release patch 0.12. We (Josh, Tyler, D2, & Jeff) and are working towards these features/fixes:

1. All the inventory issues that have come up recently. Gems are one cause, people have raised Ginger, and acid flasks (reported as green potion) as other potential culprits.
2. Ability to add custom portraits for your player character. We'll have a magic folder where you can stick your images and just use em from there.
3. Dungeon loot not appearing in the player's inventory
4. Innkeeper quest turn-in infinite loop.
5. Conclave & Healer not 24/7
6. Double ambush when sleeping caused combat not to start
7. Bug using weapons in battle (Red Oktober posted)
8. Bug where world map is black
9. Better display of Ara and AP costs in combat
10. Stop enemies from dodging status effects like burning
11. Show AP and Ara costs in other screens outside of combat
12. Fix relationship massively affecting costs too much
13. Nolan is using some new tooling we wrote last week to make character creation allow for expulsion or graduation based on choices made along the way. This is great for roleplaying

Other studio efforts:

• Jonathan has been working on the save file speed, size issues since May 1. He's almost done and some of the changes are extreme and require a new save file format. But we don't think there is enough time to test it all before this Thu, therefore expect 0.13 next week to not work with old saves. Sorry.
• Zach, Thomas, and Mark are working on NPCs for Update #1 Townfolk. Hope to have the design work locked later this week so we can bring more of the team into building out the features.
• Jessi is doing initial design on a NEW Mage Tower UI (scheduled for Update #2 on our roadmap)
• Rubi continues on secret art
• Michel is working on the combat rewrite which will allow us to speed up the turns/phases in it.
• James & Mark are working on combat and spell design. They are close to locking the design. Thanks for the input on the forums, it has helped them.
• Josh finished our automated build process on a Mac last week so anyone on the team can make and publish a build to Steam. Phil was able to do it last Friday. Now Josh just needs to add the Apple signing component and we'll have Mac builds again!

 

[Jarmaro]

If someone wants to play a real mage simulator that's thought-out and finished, I recommend Magic Research, a new game I've found looking for something similar to Archmage Rises on steam.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2311680/Magic_Research/

Almost 1/10 the price of AR, cookie-clickery but has addicting gameplay and even storylines.

 

[Tyranicon]

There is this song I recall, about a man trying to make it big. He thinks, he works, his dreams are large. And how he works? By making a model of a building he wants to build, for a few years. The song is obviously satirical, but I've never thought I'd see a real example of such a person. This developer wanted to make an RPG mage simulator, but instead spent 8 years working on minutae, fluff and irrelevant details.

I see myself a lot in this picture.

#solodevlife

I wouldn't judge the dev here too much, solodev is meant for the weirdest people. I genuinely believe that the only people who attempt and keep at it might have something wrong in their head.

But sometimes that translates to great games. Hell, I wouldn't even be surprised if the dev here turns it around and it becomes a codex classic (as unlikely as it would seem). That's just how crazy it is.

 

[Jarmaro]

Build 0.0.12 is Live!

Another Thursday, another weekly build. And this time we got it out on the right day! We've got some stuff that many of you have been asking for, so let's jump into what's new this build!

NEW:

• New character creation endings:
  Now depending on what choices you make when going through school, you'll get one of 12 possible endings (won't always be expelled anymore, hurray!)
• Custom Player Portraits:
  There's a special folder that you can now add your own images to and then set them as your character portrait by right clicking on your character's portrait on the relationship screen (tutorial will be post to YouTube soon!)
• Display Ara costs in tooltips:
  Now when you hover over spells, you can see the the Ara costs as well as the AP costs in the tooltips (player request)
• Display AP costs for weapons in stores:
  Now you can see a weapons default AP cost in the item's description when in stores (player request)
• Display actual weapon attack AP cost in combat:
  When using a melee weapon the AP cost can change depending on if you are using it in it's natural range or outside of it's range, but we weren't displaying the new AP costs. Now when you attack with a melee weapon, the AP cost now updates in the castbox window when you hover over targets to show the actual AP cost (player request)

IMPROVED:

• Relationships were swaying trade pricing too much. We've fixed that...
• Fixed cramped text on conversations with NPCs when on the highest text scaling setting
• Better balanced male name generation. Now you shouldn't see towns full of Walters
  

FIXED:

• Fixed: Bug causing weapon melee AP cost not to reset after using it outside of it's default range
• Fixed: Gems causing inventories to break. (We've totally removed them from resource generation)
• Fixed: Added temporary check to remove Gems from inventories should Gems exist to prevent further inventory breaks until there's a more permanent solution to Gems
• Fixed: Getting hit by multiple combat encounters simultaneously
• Fixed: Log window showing styling code for certain messages
• Fixed: Frozen enemies storing up their AP and unleashing it all at once when they unfreeze. Now their AP gets reset to their max AP every turn
• Fixed: Fireseed quest infinite loop bug
• Fixed: Bug causing town tooltips showing through world gen / character creation screens
• Fixed: Enemies can no longer dodge status effects (like burning)
• Fixed: Some Conclave Chapterhouses and Healers weren't open 24/7 like they should be
• Fixed: Trade Counters duplicating themselves on the character sheet
• Fixed: Fixes to Weapon Skill requirements and replaced skill check with a stat check
• Fixed: Bug causing some hexes on the world map to appear black when they shouldn't
• Fixed: Removed power sliders from weapon attacks (since they don't do anything right now)
• Fixed: Some item descriptions showing +- to attributes
• Fixed: Some apostrophes not formatting correctly
• Fixed: Formating on populations in town view. Now they don't show an extra '0' if there are no population increases/decreases
• Fixed: Various typos and grammatical errors

 

[Jarmaro]

This week's plan in Archmage Rises (Jun 5 '23)
Hello fellow adventurers & stakeholders, I'm happy to say big things are afoot!

We've made it through the preliminary work for Update #1: Townsfolk. We've sorted out what systems we need, what has to be done first, and what will have the greatest gameplay experience impact. We're now really ramping up and expanding the team focused on the first update. No dates yet. The patch will be lighter this week because of the effort going into the update.

I'm not ready to announce the features coming in Townsfolk, a separate post is a better place for it anyway. So I'm just going to talk in terms of allocations instead of specifics.

1. Mark and I are working on the design of Townsfolk and how the relationship building works. We're on version 2.5 based on internal iteration and feedback from these Steam forums.
2. Jessi & Josh are working on new Townsfolk UI
3. Zach is programming Townsfolk quest tech
4. Nolan is creating Townsfolk quests
5. Jonathan is programming Townsfolk AI movement and decisions
6. Rubi is working on Townsfolk emotional reactions
7. James, Mark, Michel, and Tyler are working on the Combat rewrite. I've been posting about this since Apr 24. We've nailed down the design and changes necessary and the two programmers are implementing it with some new tooling. Still weeks away but it is looking good!
8. Jonathan has been working on dungeon file saving since May 1. He's managed to get dungeon file saving down from 100's of MB to 100's of K. We are testing the new saving format this week and will release it if it's solid, or hold it back a week if it isn't.
9. Jeff & D2 are working on the patch (see below)
10. Josh finally got Apple Notarizing working with our automated build process allowing us to make Mac builds. For reference, we used to have mac builds, but recently Steam/Apple required notarizing so we had to withdraw support. We tested it on both Intel and M1 chips and it works. So we expect the Mac build out this week! If you don't care about a Mac build, then the take away is: a programmer has been freed up!

We are pushing out patch 0.13 on Thursday Jun 8. We are working towards these fixes:

1. Broken cart event
2. Magic boat problems
3. Dungeon Entry problem
4. Goblin tracks in ocean tiles

Thanks for playing & caring about this game!

 

[ArchAngel]

There is this song I recall, about a man trying to make it big. He thinks, he works, his dreams are large. And how he works? By making a model of a building he wants to build, for a few years. The song is obviously satirical, but I've never thought I'd see a real example of such a person. This developer wanted to make an RPG mage simulator, but instead spent 8 years working on minutae, fluff and irrelevant details.

I see myself a lot in this picture.

#solodevlife

I wouldn't judge the dev here too much, solodev is meant for the weirdest people. I genuinely believe that the only people who attempt and keep at it might have something wrong in their head.

But sometimes that translates to great games. Hell, I wouldn't even be surprised if the dev here turns it around and it becomes a codex classic (as unlikely as it would seem). That's just how crazy it is.

As long as they do not change the art style 15 times and the release buggy and almost unplayable game it has that chance.

 

[Jarmaro]

Build 0.0.13 is Live!

Hey! It's Thursday, which means another patch day!

As we mentioned before, this patch is a bit on the lighter side as we're shifting our resources to focus more on our upcoming Update #1: Townsfolk, but there are still a few major changes in this that will set the stage for future builds. The biggest being, this is the week we break saves (but in a good way... see notes below).

NEW:

• New dynamic quests are now available

IMPROVED:

• New saving system:
  the biggest change this build is how we are handling save files. Save files are now much smaller (up to 90% smaller or more) and load faster! This unfortunately means all of your old worlds and saves are no longer compatible, so you're going to have to start over... But, it'll save you a ton of space on your hard drive!
• Dungeon Generation:
  We've improved how dungeons are generated and saved, and now they are properly procedurally generated. This means greater stability in the dungeons themselves, plus allowed us to reduce the save file sizes as now dungeons (which took up most of the space) are no longer stored in save files.
• Improved key & lever placement inside dungeons
• Added icons to hexes where pack animals are left behind (in the case of boarding a rowboat for example)

FIXED:

• Resource icons on hexes are now removed when there is no longer any renewable resources left
• Magic ship now properly uses hex map targeting just like rowboat
• Fixed magic ship and row boat duplication issue
• Fixed bug with not being able to cast Force Push spell
• Fixed Running away not ending caravan encounter
• Fixed bug with NPC ages changing
• Fixed a bug with weaponsmith starter quest