The Neutral of my Enemy
Hello once again!
Back again with another monthly dev blog update for Hibera, Requiem for the Forgotten. It has been a busy month! There’s been a lot of work done in the sort of “un-sexy” side of game development like marketing and business development, signing up for things, filling out forms. But despite all that plenty of work has gotten done on the game since the last update.
Jumping right in:
Audio Overhaul
Letterboxing and Resolution support
A/V Settings menu
Tutorial hint system
Steam build pipeline
Support -> Cantrip Naming Conventions
Allies & Neutral Unit Faction support
Unit recruitment flow
Mid battle reinforcements
Battle triggers (for things like reinforcements)
Lootable Chests
Performance improvements
So many bug fixes.
The first three features on the list are all part of the same effort. It started as just a lot of little audio bug fixes. Things not fading in or out correctly, little tweaks, little adjustments. Then it became volume settings, which meant restructuring how we think about the audio buses. Then once I’d made an Audio Options panel, it seemed like I really ought to do the resolution support work as well. Originally the game ran in exactly one resolution: 1080X720. That’s because this is a multiple of 360X240 which is the resolution the game pretends to be. It is a very opinionated system. Fortunately I was able to use Unity’s built in canvas scaling and some letterboxing (really windowboxing if we’re getting technical) to get it playing nicely in all kinds of screens and aspect ratios.
Just the game with some windowboxing
I am slowly working on the process of turning my friends & family demo into a proper Steam demo and with that has come a bunch of build and upload scripts as well as steam pipe configuration. It also was the catalyst for a quick and easy tutorial popup system which only shows up in the first mission for now, just to help fill the gaps while the rest of the game comes online. I am generally against text tutorials and I’d eventually like to remove them or at least make them smaller and more targeted. As it stands I think they strike a good balance for the time being.
A tutorial popup
At the same time I’m trying to stabilise everything for a playable steam demo, I’m working in a feature branch on a lot of new tech for making future battles even more interesting! It would be boring if every mission had the same objective or map or pacing and that just requires a deep toolbox in order to keep them fresh and interesting. So with that I have added Allied units, which are friendly to you but you don’t control, and Neutral units. I’ve been calling them Neutral but really they’re second enemy units. They will fight anyone, even Enemies. This will allow for interesting 3 way battles and that kind of thing.
Maybe this guy will join my team?
Along with the new factions came reinforcements and battle triggers, so now I can set up enemy (or friendly) units to join mid-battle or after a specific area is reached or unit destroyed. This can also trigger dialogue.
The final feature for this month is lootable chests. Chests are fun by themselves but this unlocks a very classic Fire Emblem pacing mechanic: the enemy thief, which is what I’m working on right at the moment. Thieves will spawn in and try to beat you to the chests, pushing the player to act more aggressively than they may wish to. Works great in the movies!
It’s a chest, what’s it look like?
I haven’t finished all the work in my current milestone and I’m planning to work on these next:
Enemy Thieves (in Progress)
Support Conversations / Friendship System
Additional mid-battle triggered conversations
Build out lots more missions
Close tooling gaps from all these new mission features to make mission authoring faster.
On top of all the dev work I’ll be attending FIS games summit in Galway in a few weeks and showing off the game there! Come by my table and say hi!
Until then.
