It’s time, blacksmiths – the BLADESONG PLAYTEST is here! In this special edition of our “The Cutting Edge” DevLog, we are going to summarize all the goodness, big and small, that you’ll find in this playtest.
In A Nutshell
- Added: A first preview of Campaign Mode gameplay
- Added: A first narrative location, The Den
- Added: Playtest available in five languages (English, German, Japanese, Polish, Simplified Chinese)
- Swordmaking: Morphing of sword parts (stretching/bending)
- Swordmaking: Sinking of sword parts to close gaps
- New Parts: Hexagonal grip set (grips, risers, ferrules)
- New Parts: Various new pommels
- New Parts: Rectangular Pointed quillon
- New Parts: Two rain-guards (round and hexagon)
- Usability: Tweaked behaviour of blade editing gizmos and various abilities
- Fixed: Blade jitter when using high curvature values (this might change appearance of strongly curved swords from the previous playtest)
- Fixed: Crash bug when deleting ability while dragging gizmos
- Performance: Improved performance of blade editing
- Performance: Improved performance in scenes with 3D environment (floor, anvil etc.)
Let’s have a closer look at some of these.
Campaign Mode
We’ve been laying the swordmaking foundations with Bladesong’s Creative Mode for some time now, so let’s start showing Campaign Mode some love!
In Campaign Mode, you take the role of a blacksmith who arrived in Eren Keep, a last haven of a dying world, to forge swords for guards, mercenaries, common folk and others. Customers request certain physical properties, and it’s your job to make the right sword for them.
We’ve started building this gameplay mode quite some time ago to gather publisher interest (before signing with the fantastic Mythwright folks). Initially, the commissions were all manually set up, which proved to be both work-heavy and fairly rigid. Instead, commissions are now based on randomly generated swords that increase in complexity as you unlock more abilities, get access to more vendors and learn to craft new sword parts.
Once we have a sword, we analyze its physical properties and build a commission based on that. Keep in mind that this “origin sword” is one possible solution – but not the only one! You’re always able to solve commissions in multiple creative ways.
With enough solved commissions under your belt, you will level up and explore the skill tree to unlock various kinds of goodness:
New Swordmaking Features
The big new feature for Bladesong’s swordmaking core is Part Morphing. Remember when sword parts used to be static, lifeless pieces? Well, no more. From now on, they will bow to your will.
This also means that grip parts (that used to scale only in a single direction) now scale like everything else, and can be stretched with the new morphing feature. If you don’t want any bend, hold to constrain.
With bent parts, you might run into situations where gaps occur that you’d like to close. Bladesong now allows you to sink parts into each other using the [ , ][ . ] keys.
New Sword Parts
In the last edition of The Cutting Edge, we’ve already shown you the Lionhead pommel we’ve been working on, which has become the base for a tech rework to be able to make parts with much higher fidelity (read: supporting baked normal maps and ambient occlusion maps). While we’ll never neglect our beloved historic sword parts, this now also allowed us to finally foray into fantasy territory with some new pommels. Here are some examples:
Narrative
The plot of Bladesong thickens, and with this playtest, we wanted to give you a first idea of how we’re planning to integrate narrative into the swordmaking and shop management gameplay. Things got a bit bigger than planned, so enjoy around 10,000 words of written dialogue in The Den, Eren Keep’s tavern where everyone’s welcome.
What’s next?
The Playtest is live now until December 13. We are excited to see your creations and to hear your thoughts, so please join our Discord and say hello! We will be in touch soon regarding the popular Community Challenges.
Thank you all for joining in!
– David and the Bladesong team ⚔️
