City of the Shroud

Finalizing Our Team Menu UI
over 6 years ago – Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 12:19:20 AM

Hi Everyone,  

We’ve been hard at work getting City of the Shroud’s UI hooked up and looking good. There is still some polishing to be done, but we’re really proud of the results!  

First, here is our new team menu UI in action:  

 
I’ll go into more detail below, but before that, I’d like to show you our new-and-improved City Map:  

 
What’s new here? First, the structure of the map means that it is far more screen ratio independent than it was before, so those of you with 16:10 screens (i.e., Mac laptops) will see improvements on that front.  

The more obvious difference is that big old chart on the right: the Balance of Power. As you play through each chapter of CotS, the balance of power between factions will change, and that chart will show you the state of affairs at any given moment.  

You’ll be able to see who you’re allied with as well as how powerful each faction is relative to the others for the current chapter (I put the Hat Merchant in the affiliated leader slot because I think he’s hilarious - not an option in the final game!).  

As people play through the live chapter, those bars will fluctuate based on players’ choices until we lock the chapter’s balance of power in order to start writing the next one. Once the balance of power for a chapter is locked, the bars will show the final balance of power for that chapter until the next chapter is released. Once you start the next chapter, they’ll be moving again until we lock that one to write the next one, and so on. If you get your influence in early, who knows - your impact may end up influencing other players :)  

We’ve also streamlined the experience by stripping out what we had originally called the “Main Menu” because we decided that the City Map could act as your hub - it’s how you interface with Iskendrun in the campaign, and by moving some functionality around, you can now go from the “Start” menu straight to the campaign screen with no features or accessibility lost. 

 The other UI element we’ve been working on is the team management menu - the screen where you’ll set up your party, equip your Link Gems, configure your stats, and even equip different skins/mod items. 

 You saw it in GIF form above, so let’s break it down here, screen-by-screen: 

The Overview panel shows your current team setup - the class, visual appearance, equipped Link Gems, name, and movement and attack ranges of each of your units.

Clicking on a character takes you to their Moves panel: 

Here, you can review and equip the Link Gems you’ve acquired, read their descriptions, and try out how the Link Gems you’ve chosen string together using the Try! Button. There are shortcuts for the other panels, as well as the option to switch the currently selected character (and even their class) too. 

Next up is the Stats screen: 

On this screen, you can see your full Stat Gem inventory, as well as the grid where you equip those gems for the selected unit’s current class. Descriptions of each stat are found below the grid, and the box in between the two explains either the selected gem or stat, depending on which you have highlighted. 

Stat Gems that are granting your unit a Perfect Fit Bonus glow with a thin, blue line around the edges - notice that the yellow Square is not glowing, as it’s sitting on a non-square-shaped slot (also, the thick, white glow shows which gem you have selected). 

If you put a Stat Gem into a slot it isn’t meant for, you gain the ordinary bonus but not the Perfect Fit Bonus. So if you want just have to have an extra HP bonus in exchange for losing a Perfect Fit Bonus, you can make it happen! Customize your unit to fit your playstyle - want a high-HP Mage that can take a few smacks from a Brute? The choice is yours! 

Finally, we have the Appearance menu: 

This menu lets you equip any skins or mods you’ve acquired. Simply cycle through, and you can view all the available options for a given slot. If you like what you see, you’re done! Just leave the settings as-is and you’re all set. The next time you use that unit in battle, they’ll appear just as they do here. 

It’s a pretty big upgrade from the old menus, so let us know what you think! 

So what’s next? We’ve got a bit more polishing to do on the menus before they’re totally final, but now that we’ve got this major UI update in, we’re turning our attention to the next big event: implementing Chapter 1.

The main content for Chapter 1 is written, all the environment assets are complete, and all of the components necessary to bring it to life are more or less ready and hooked up. So what goes into implementation? Mainly, that means getting the game text into our quest database and connecting them all together (clear Quest X >> unlock Quest Y). We’ll be putting together our battle maps for Chapter 1 as we go along too. 

Stay tuned! 

All The Best,
Keaton & The Abyssal Arts Team

Comic-Con was great, and the demo is now live on Steam for Backers!
over 6 years ago – Sun, Jul 30, 2017 at 06:09:30 PM

Hi Everyone,

Comic-Con was a big success! The reaction from players was excellent, we had a great time, and we met some new indie dev friends along the way. We also got to show off our cool new poster:

 
I’ve also uploaded the demo we had at Comic-Con (an update to the Rezzed demo) to Steam for you all to check out! If you’ve switched to the “gameshow” branch on Steam before, just switch onto that branch again under the “BETAS” tab in the game’s properties. Haven’t done it before? Here is a handy visual guide:  

 
So what’s new in this update? We added: 

• Updated combat UI, including better visual cues for the Combo Wheel
• A much nicer (but very placeholder!) start screen 
• New sound and visual effects 
• General polish to make it look / flow nicer  

 
Be sure to try it out! 

In other news, we are currently making the final UI for the game’s menus - where you’ll equip your characters, set up their stats, etc. The art is nearly finished and looking great, so we’ve started setting that up in-game. 

Additionally, and much to my own personal relief, I have arrived at my final moving destination after 3 straight months (not including preparation) of packing, unpacking, repacking, and any other form of packing possible in our three-dimensional world. I am still buried in boxes, but I have a flat surface for my keyboard and monitor, and everything I own is now concentrated in one location. Huzzah! This will help me return to a more regular schedule of updates and game production. I can’t wait! 

We hope you enjoy the Comic-Con demo, and keep your eyes out for the next update!

All The Best,
Keaton & The Abyssal Arts Team

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PS: I'd like to give a shout-out to one of our backers, Ron Z, and his comic book Kickstarter, Patriotika #1! They've been funded more than 5x over, and have unlocked some awesome extras. If you enjoy comic books and want to help an independent author, his Kickstarter is only a click away. You can read the description and view the cover art below, too:

The descendant of the goddess Athena with the same name comes to Earth to fight invading gods and monsters! A problem arises when she arrives; the power that banished the gods originally is sapping her life force too! Now she must bond with a human to stay and reluctantly ends up bonding with a scrawny college student named Erin! Together they transform into Patriotika and fight the invading gods and monsters, protect and rally military soldiers, and deal with college social life! The powers of a god, the troubles of a teenager!

Denver Comic Con and Making Art Assets
almost 7 years ago – Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 06:41:59 PM

Hi Everyone,  

We’re taking City of the Shroud to Denver Comic Con! The show runs from June 30 - July 2 at the Colorado Convention Center, and we’ll be there in style. This is a big deal for us, as it’s our first chance to take the game to a show in the US - and it’s a big one!

 

Why Denver Comic Con? I’m currently in the middle of that international move I mentioned back in November, which has taken me to my hometown for a few weeks (pro tip: moving internationally is really, really hard). This layover conveniently lines up with the Denver Comic Con dates, and the fine folks at Bolder Games were kind enough to reach out and ask if we wanted to join in. Who are we to refuse showing at Comic Con?!    

If you’re planning on going, please come say hi! We know some backers are planning on coming down, and we can’t wait to meet new people and be able to show them the game in person!  

As for the game itself, we had a few production hiccups over the last couple of months that I wanted to share and thought might be illuminating for those of you interested in game production. Since we’re making most of the artwork by working with people external to the main team, there’s always a risk of delays or problems, and although we’ve had great luck thus far, this time around there were a few stumbling blocks.  

City of the Shroud uses a “hand-painted” style, which means that making the textures (the 2D images that get stretched over the 3D models) for the game generally requires artists to manually paint them, usually in Photoshop (it’s fairly uncommon to find teams procedurally generating a hand-painted style, but we’re helping pioneer that too!). Generally, this hasn’t been an issue - the people we’ve had the good fortune of working with have handled the style deftly.  

Early in the spring, though, we ended up needing to work with a team of artists we hadn’t worked with before for some of our assets due to scheduling conflicts. Everything started out smoothly, but the style of the game quickly became difficult for them to achieve at scale (it’s one thing to paint a single asset; it’s another to paint dozens), and this slowed production down considerably. In AAA, this is when a company would throw money and bodies at an issue to resolve it (I’ve been on the front lines of that process a few times), but we have neither spare cash or people to do this, and besides, we wanted to be patient and work through everything until we could all achieve something we were happy with.    

Thankfully, we were able to do just that - we have all of the assets we wanted, and they look really nice. It was also a good learning experience for the other team as well, since it was a new artistic style for them to take on. Here are a couple example screenshots of their work I took today in the engine:

While it was slower than we planned (and we’re adjusting for that), we’re happy with the results and are continuing to plug away diligently at our to-dos. We’ve got a few things up our sleeve for you, and I’m excited to get them out and into your hands to try. Stay tuned!    

All The Best,
Keaton & The Abyssal Arts Team

One Year On
almost 7 years ago – Sat, May 06, 2017 at 11:37:28 AM

Hi Everyone,  

It’s officially been a year since City of the Shroud was funded by you kind folks! It’s been, and continues to be, an incredible journey, and we cannot say enough how grateful we are to each and every one of you.  

Whether we’ve met you in person at a show, chatted with you online, or just been an occasional update in your inbox, we hope you’re enjoying the progress we’re making (have you played the latest demo?)!  
 

 
Rezzed, which we went to at the end of March, was phenomenal. Players loved the game, both people who had played it before and people who were experiencing it for the first time.  
 

 
One particularly fun episode that occurred while there: there is a man who attends the EGX and Rezzed events with the magical power to break any game he touches, from tiny indie to polished AAA. He played CotS at EGX last September and, though he finished the demo, he did trigger “a few” bugs.  

This time, I am proud to say, he completed the tutorial battles AND the boss fight without triggering a single issue (that either of us noticed, at least). Shows make for great QA!  

Some players challenged the boss fight without knowing anything about the game (and some won!), some players played multiple rounds just to improve their results, and one player dominated the boss so completely that he asked for a harder AND faster mode (he liked it that much).  
 

 
We also had the pleasure of speaking to Gaiscioch Magazine once again, who covered City of the Shroud back during our Kickstarter. As a result, they did a brilliant write-up and interview about the status of the game and our journey to make it. You can read it here:

http://magazine.gaiscioch.com/previews/lifting_the_veil_on_city_of_the_shroud.html  

In the end, we came away from Rezzed feeling really enthusiastic. The game is playing well, looking good, and sounding nice too. Now to bring it all together!  

To that end, we’ve been hard at work on multiple fronts. We’re cleaning up a lot of long-standing bugs before diving into putting all the components of the game together, the end of the visual effects-creation tunnel is in sight, and the majority of the music is done. We’ve also been working on the environment art assets, which are very nearly all complete.  

To give you a little taste, here’s a shot of a brand-new area we’ve been working on: the Docks!  
 

 
I’ll go into more detail on the environments and new areas in a future update, but hopefully you enjoy the preview!  

Thank you all again for your support; this game wouldn’t be happening without you, and we hope you’re enjoying the journey along with us!  

All The Best,
Keaton & The Abyssal Arts Team

New Demo Is Live For Backers - Come Play It At Rezzed!
about 7 years ago – Wed, Mar 29, 2017 at 05:43:01 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.