Greetings mercs and welcome back to another progress report on our upcoming story-driven RPG, Vahrin's Call.
April has kept the Titan Roc Team on their toes, with constant changes and improvements making their way into the game, to be refined further with meticulous QA testing. With the upcoming months promising to be even busier, there are a myriad of tasks that will require the team's full attention and focus, but we're prepared for it!
Before we get started on what the team has been working on throughout April, I would like to briefly direct all of your attention to the Forsaken Realms Socials.
Why? Well we have some pretty exciting news to share throughout May that I'm sure you guys wouldn't want to miss. Follow us on any of our socials to stay up to date with us, and definitely keep an eye out for next month's Progress Report, here on Steam. June 1st is just around the corner!
With that being said, let's dive into the world of Leyda, to see how things have developed lately!
In last month's dev update, we mentioned we were re-working the environment art and lighting of an early-game level, but weren't quite ready to show off anything just yet.
Well, I can now reveal that we were referring to the very first dungeon you'll explore on your adventure, the Falry Aeternyte Mine.
Over the course of many playtesting sessions, each with new people diving into the game, this was the area that players seemed to collectively have trouble with.
The trouble stemmed from the fact that much of this dungeon looked a little too...samey. Dark mine shafts and crumbling rocks encompassed the entirety of the area, making it very easy for players to get turned around or otherwise completely lost.
Although there is a main path to take, it was clear that we needed to make some changes to prevent players from getting so disoriented.
Introducing, the solution:
As you can see from the above image, we took the time to transform the main chamber into a quarry.
Opening up this part of the level has helped to differentiate it massively from other areas in the mine, making it significantly easier for you to get your bearings while exploring. The lighting, varied rocks, added greenery and much more all help this section to serve as the set piece it was intended to be.
We have also reduced the amount of rocks and pillars in some places. This has further opened up the area to increase your line of sight, once again helping you to navigate your surroundings.
The dark and dusty tunnels are still a big part of this dungeon though, and you'll need to put your lantern to good use if you want to make it out of these depths in one piece! You can think of this new quarry as a centre piece, with mineshafts connecting to it and branching off in all directions.
With another playtest scheduled for later this month, we're excited to see how new players respond to the changes we've made here.
This is another task that was on our minds for quite some time.
The underwear that we were previously using for our characters was rather dated, and simply didn't live up to the quality of the assets that we now use in the game. As such, we took some time and developed a couple of new sets, that are now fully modelled, skinned and hooked up to our character creator.
Speaking of our character creator, we thought it would be fun to give you a little more customisation with these undergarments. On top of being able to customise the colour like before, you'll now also be able to choose between a few different butt patches. How classy is that?
The other piece of clothing we took the time to update is the starting burlap shirt.
Much like the undergarments, this shirt was made a long time ago and was no longer living up to the standard we've now set ourselves too. This new leather jerkin has much more detail and is also better suited for a lone mercenary, ready to start a brand new adventure into the unknown.
it's been nice to see these new pieces of armour make their way into the game.
Even though you're likely to be coated in armour from head to toe, I'm sure someone out there will be crazy enough to challenge these insurmountable odds, wearing nothing but a pair of genomy butt-printed briefs. Sometimes the world just needs a hero, no matter how mental they may be..
Optimisation has always been a key part of our work flow. We're constantly getting questions about how or if Vahrin's Call will run on X and Y specs.
While we can't announce the minimum and recommended requirements until the game is closer to release, just know that we are doing everything we possibly can to ensure your gameplay experience runs as smoothly as it possibly can.
With that being said, shader compilation is something we recently implemented to tackle performance issues that some players were experiencing.
Placeholder Screen
Upon launching Vahrin's Call, a short time will now pass where the game pre-loads certain assets into memory. This serves to mitigate hitching while you're on your adventure, as the game already has everything it needs stored and ready, rather than having to search for these things during gameplay.
As I mentioned, we're always looking to increase performance in whatever way we can, and we will continue to do so up until and after Vahrin's Call has released.
This is something some of our playtesters have suggested implementing, as well as some of you in the community.
We now have indicators on the compass that will point you toward your pinned quest objective.
If the quest prompts you to search an area, the compass will also glow green once you are within the search radius.
These compass markers serve as an addition to the quest markers on the map. They are a quality of life update in a sense, preventing you from having to constantly open the map, to see if you are still heading in the right direction.
And of course, as with all other HUD elements, these markers can be enabled and disabled in the settings, if you prefer to do all the exploring yourself.
Countless quality of life improvements have made their way into the game over the last month. This has become a trend now that we're nearing the end of development and are heavy into QA testing, and no one is complaining!
As always there are too many to list them all off, but there's one thing in particular that I wanted to cover in today's post. We've smoothened how the player moves when walking over small surfaces, with the addition of interpolation.
If that doesn't make much sense to you immediately, don't worry. Check out the video below to see some before and after examples!
As you can see, the use of interpolation allows the character to move much more smoothly over small obstacles. It is especially noticeable when walking/running up and down staircases.
I won't bore you all with the details of how this works (it's a littleee bit more involved than just "adding interpolation"), but we're really satisfied with the end result.
Boss refinement. Several bosses have been drastically improved, with mechanics tweaked, damage values adjusted and even some new attacks implemented. In response to tester feedback, some arenas have also been overhauled to better match the boss that inhabits it.
Another area in Vahrin received similar treatment to the Aeternyte Mine this week, to help navigating it more clear. Though, the degree to which players were getting lost was not as drastic as in the mine, so the solution largely just involved some adjustments to the level layout.
Countless changes to character levelling, including UI tweaks that make levelling up perk specialisms and all abilities easier to understand, as well as many balancing adjustments.
Much much more!
So it's clear we've been really busy as of late (hopefully!), and believe me, it will all become clear why very very soon.
As I mentioned, we've got some big news coming soon, so please do consider following us on the social medias of your choice!
- TikTok
- X
- Instagram
- Facebook
- YouTube We also have a Discord server! :)
Before we end off today's post, I would like to extend a massive thank you to all of you from everyone on the Titan Roc team. We recently surpassed 100,000 wishlists on Steam, which is nothing short of mental.
As always, we are incredibly grateful for all of your support and patience, it really is to be commended. We've been working on this game for countless years, as many of you know, so it's really heartwarming to see so many of you still sticking with us after all this time.
We say this a lot, but now we mean it. The wait is almost over.
Thank you all once again and we'll see you again very soon.
- The Titan Roc team