Hey, this is Scott, thanks for checking out the latest dev log for The Wyndfinder!
First, I made a video companion to this update, which you can watch here!
Lots of progress just in the past two weeks, excited to walk through it. My primary goal for this sprint was to complete the last Major feature to be implemented, the Bestiary System. I’m very happy with how that turned out, but it's a system that grows with the player as the story progresses, so it will probably need work over the next year to get exactly right.
I also had a goal of redesigning the character relationship system. Working on content in Act 2 made it clear that my initial design wasn't going to scale. There were just too many strange interactions between characters that didn't feel interesting or authentic. It makes a lot more sense now, the characters and their interactions can be very well defined.
Also got a few accessibility settings in place, did some foundation work for future localization, and had a little bit of fun as well adding ragdoll death animations for some of the creatures.
The new Bestiary system was designed to put character Skills to use with more frequency, by using them to gain an advantage over enemies in combat. Each monster has a specific type (Undead, Elemental, Aberration, and so on), and each of these types corresponds to one of the skills. First, an Advantage buff in the first round with a successful check, but that success also fills a progress meter in the Bestiary. Each milestone adds permanent buffs when fighting that creature type. By the time early monsters become minions later in the game, you’ve mastered defeating them in battle, and they melt. It’s very rewarding! Look for books as you explore the world that contain further knowledge of these creatures to make advancement to the maximum tier possible.
Now that I’m implementing character arcs through the game’s 2nd act, it became very apparent that the original system wasn’t cutting it. Relationships weren’t growing at the right pace, too many decisions felt obvious or forced, and that was due to the original design.
The initial system, while fun to build, felt weird in practice. Characters were liking things they shouldn’t (narratively speaking) and vice versa, due to the narrow bands I had developed for decision making.
The new system ties decisions directly into specific Topics, rather than broad Ideals (pragmatic vs. dogmatic).
Characters can care (either strongly, or with a mild interest) about any topic, and that care can be either positive or negative.
The player’s choice can then be tagged with the Topic, whether it’s a positive or negative sentiment, and whether they are being Strong or Mild-mannered about it.
As the story progresses, choices get made, and as relationships with the Characters evolve, more dialogues open up, new quest lines, and so on.
The new Party Management menu shows you the history of these events, including the specific Topic, so you can learn what these folks care about.
For humanoid creatures (and more, probably), I re-implemented the ragdoll system I had disabled years ago.
The animations are fine, until a Fireball knocks down three enemies, and they all do the exact same flop to the ground. Very immersion breaking!
So I’ve brought back ragdolls, and we’ll see how far I take it.
Added the ability to adjust font size up or down. Right now, the setting only covers the Dialogue text, but there are other places where the same setting should be used for sure.
Added the ability to tone down or ramp up screen shake. Some folks just don’t like it, no reason for me to inflict it on them!
Also added Ragdoll intensity to settings, cause why not. Crank it if you need a laugh!
Prepare for a Closed Playtest. I've got Steam SDK and Analytics integrations working, and am putting the last major designed feature into the game. This is a system I've wanted to build for a while, a rich Bestiary that lets each character use their trained Skills in the first round of the fight to advance their knowledge of their enemies. Progress is tracked, and bonuses kick in after enough growth. So far it's pretty fun! A detailed update on this system is probably the next update.
The Playtest will focus on the first hour of the game, and I have a bit of work to do on the starting town of Cartha, its people, and a few of the quests. Much of the work here is complete, but I will spend two weeks here ensuring that each narrative choice has the right level of variety, that the writing is up to the current standard (some of Cartha was written as long as three years ago, and needs editing if not wholesale rewriting).
Continue QA of the Playtest build, covering each class across as much of the viable narrative paths as possible. During each of the sprints I've mentioned so far, I'm also working on designs for areas, encounters, and people in Act 2 of the game, as well as "grey-boxing" many of those scenes.
If all goes well, it's mid-July and I'm ready to start the Playtest. I'll be handling this via Steam Keys to the private playtest build, distributed on the Cat Lord Games Discord server. It's quiet there now, but maybe we can change that. The goal of the Playtest is to smoke out any deal breakers before this build turns into an official Demo.