SIX Report

Hey everyone! SIX was a blast and is now over. Thanks to everyone who came by and said hi and played Privateers. It was really fun to discuss the game with people. There were a lot of players who had as much enthusiasm about the idea as we do which is hugely encouraging.

We put together a special demo build for SIX which had a bit more linear of a story line in order to show off as many interesting features in as short a time as possible. If you want to give that build a try, we now have it online here...

SIX Demo Build

Since this was my (Sam) first time showing a game at a convention, there was a ton of stuff to learn which was great. One of the things that I quickly learned was that it is hard to judge the difficulty of the game as the developer. For me, the demo seemed a bit on the easy side. I was able to win every time that I played without much challenge. However, with all the players who came through and played it only ONE of them was able to beat it. So, apparently the game is harder than I thought :-).

Privateers booth ready to show at SIX

Another issue was the quick approach-ability of the game. I noticed that the games that use Xbox controllers and had local multiplayer on demo were by far the most approachable for people wandering the expo. However, a rogue-like game with crew management has a reasonable learning curve by design, which makes it much harder for someone to just sit down and enjoy for 5-10 minutes of play. Kurt and I are thinking about how to improve this with better tutorial features and things like that, but it is just a hard problem to solve.

Privateers Banner

There was a lot of great feedback for the game that Kurt and I will be picking up over the next few months. The main areas of focus that I think became clear directions for improvement are the following...

1. Improve the AI for crew and enemies
2. Improve the UI to be easier to use and more pretty
3. Add controller support
4. More content!
5. There were a few annoying bugs that showed up that we need to fix

Everyone enjoying the games at SIX

Overall, it was a really great experience. I really enjoyed meeting a bunch of other developers who were showing there, talking to gamers who enjoy similar games to me and getting a ton of great feedback. However, I will say that showing by myself for 12 hours long was EXHAUSTING and I think I am going to have to sleep in for a week to recover!

Going to SIX! (barely)

Hey Everyone! I am excited to announce that we are going to be demoing Privateers at the Seattle Indies Expo on August 30th. We were actually right on the cut line to get in, but managed to squeak through at the last second :-). If you are in the area then you should come swing by and check it out. We will be putting together a special demo which should be fun for people play.

In celebration of this announcement, we have a new build which we have put up for you to enjoy. The focus on this build is to add tons of new items and abilities in order to really open up the game play options and the progression. You can check it out here...

Build v0.15

If you want to see some of the different items and abilities shown off then I have recorded a short video which does just that. Check it out below...

Let us know in the comments what items or abilities you would like to see in the game!

Full Change List for v0.15 

- Add new abilities which last over a duration of time

- New healing aura which heals over time in an area

- New fire wall and electric field which damages over time

- Mass stealth which can make your whole crew stealth

- Summon golem to fight for you

- Summon a group of twerps to fight for you

- Plague which poisons a group of enemies

- War cry which gives your crew speed

- Taunt to force enemies to attack a specific character

- Ice explosion which slows enemies

- Fireball which deal damage to a group of enemies

- Invulnerability which protects against damage for a time

- Many new items taking advantage of new abilities

- Crew classes can now only use certain types of armor/weapons

- Armor now scales with level

- Fixed several bugs in attack timing and attack collision detection

- Added Hydromancer class

- Added Elementalist class

- Rogue class is now called the Picaroon

- Picaroon's can use assassinate ability while stealth

- Barbarian class is now called Corsair

- Corsair has the ability to taunt enemies using war cry

- Fixed a bunch of bugs

- New giant minotaur enemy type

First Impressions Matter

Hey Everyone! We have a new build out today for you to try out. The major changes are around the starting experience of the game. These include adding a new starting event, adding dialogue with NPC's and a new tutorial system. If you want to give it a play then the link is here...

Build v0.14

This week we are trying something new and instead of blogging all of the new information we have put together a short "let's play" in which we demo some of the features in a video. You can check that out right here...

This is the build that we will be using to submit for entry to SIX, so we are holding our breath that we will get accepted. Please leave us any comments you have on the gameplay and if you like the "let's play" format more than a traditional text blog.

Below is the more detailed change list for this build...

---- v0.14 ----

- New start event for escaping a slavers ship

- New tutorial system to teach the mechanics

- Crew can now be bound as prisoners

- New event infrastructure for more variety

- New dialogue system allowing you to talk to NPC's

- New sprites for cave entrance and exit

- New firepit sprite with flickering light

- New pirate camp event

- Bunch of bug fixes

Back in Action!

Hey Everyone! I know it has been a ridiculously long time since my last post. Kurt and I both got super busy including both moving. However, now we are back in action and kicking butt again. This latest build is again heavily focused on the event and questing systems in the game. We are pushing to get to the place where we can start forming the actual story line in the game in a playable fashion. So, if you want to skip all the talk and just see for yourself, the here is the link to the build...

Build v0.13

So before we dig into the changes to the event system I first want to highlight one other change that I made. Last post I showed the dynamic lighting that I had added. However, I swapped that out for a 2D lighting system that I got from the unity asset store which I think looks WAY better. This new system allows me to have the 2D items block vision and cast shadows which looks really cool. I am really excited to start plugging in more lights to make the scenes more interesting to look at. Below you can see the new system in which the mast and barrels are partially blocking light.

Sexy new lighting with shadows

The rest of the changes in this release really focus on increasing the variety of events that we can script as well as the kinds of quest chains that are there. Many of these changes aren't things that you will readily notice in the build, but they are important infrastructure to allow adding events and scenes quickly. One example is that I changed the island generation to no longer happen at run time. Instead, I am randomly generating the islands in unity and then saving a collection of my favorite ones. Then, each of these I can manually tweak to make sure that they will look good (eventually) and that they have markers in them which can be used for adding event content to them. This also allows me to slice up the islands into some different ways. For instance, there are now events that happen on the shore of islands, so you cannot navigate the whole island but instead are limited to the section of the shore that is interesting for the event. As I said, most of the work here is behind the scenes, but it is setting the stage for what is to come.

Editing an island prop in Unity

Beyond changing how props are pieced together for each event in the scene I have also added a new concept of branches to the events. This allows each event to have an arbitrary number of locations in it. An example of this is that you can now visit an island and then find and enter a cave on that island. This really expands the variety of things we can do to spice up the events and make them more dynamic. Using this system I can also place random objectives into events. For instance, finding a chest at the back of a cave that you decided to explore (watch out for ghosts!).

Looting a chest in a cave

Kurt is also back into high gear pumping out new assets for us. There are a bunch of new icons and islands which have been added into the sailing scene that look WAY nicer than the place holders. Also, the ship and locations icons have been sized down to look much better. Beyond that, there are a bunch of new bits a pieces on the ships to spice up their look.

New map icons for sailing

Another massive undertaking that was made in this build is to really finalize the saving functionality. You can now save and resume in the middle of an event without losing any progress. This is of course a critical functionality of the game, but I had been putting off implementing it because of how much work it was. It feels good to have it working now though! One interesting thing that happened was that the save game sizes were too large for the web player (it only allows 1 MB). However, I was able to plug in compression and bring them down to about 100 KB. This took a bunch of extra work, but now the saves are nice and small in size.

I am also really excited to announce that we are going to try and get into the Seattle Indies Expo (SIX). Seattle has a super awesome indie game dev scene and we are going to try and break our way in. Submissions are due at the start of July, so we are rushing to prep one more build of changes before we put in our application. As a result, you can expect a bunch more work from us to spice up the events and to add more visual variety in the next month.

Thanks everyone for reading! Please play the build and leave your ideas and feedback in the comments. We really love to hear peoples opinions on the direction of the game so far. Below is the slimmed down change list for this build...




---- v0.13 ----
- Refactor dynamic lighting. Now includes shadows and other effects.
- Refactor how props in events are managed for scalability
- Add new shore props used in events
- Add infrastructure for event chains to complete based on item collection
- Add new elven islands event chain
- Add elf character type
- Make docks come off of an island
- Refactor scene manager to allowing travelling to a larger variety of locations
- Add inside of the ship location
- Add caves which can be found during events
- Add chests which dump out loot as event objectives
- Add event branches which are used for greater event variety
- Events can now be saved in progress (this was a huge effort!)
- Add conditional event options (such as costing gold)
- New sprites for the map
- Compress the save files to save on space

Adding More Variety to Events

Hey Everyone! This months build the focus has been on the event system in the game. We are really trying to increase the variation in the different kinds of events that you play through in the game. If you want to jump straight in and see for yourself then here is the build...

Build 0.12

One of the biggest changes that is in this new build is the ability for us to chain events together in order to create a story that spans many events. Ultimately, every region in the game will have a handful of event chains that go along with the randomly generated event. These chains will give a story to that area that you can follow along with and if you complete the chain then there will be great rewards to help you on your journey.

Starting an event chain

An example of an event chain is the new "City in Distress" event. In this event you will enter a port city and find out that it has been being harassed by pirates. They will ask for you to help and if you agree then you will be tasked with eliminating these particular pirates. After accepting, you will see the pirates on your map and can go and destroy them. When you then return to the city they declare you a hero and give you a large sum of gold. We will be adding many such chains to the game over the course of the next months.

Another thing that we are working on is increasing the visual variance between events. This has required some re-factoring the code to make it easy to script out what kinds of things should show up in the event. There are now a few different ship types that you will see in encounters and when you go to a port there is a dock there. We will continue enriching the visuals over time and of course Kurt will be hard at work making new tiles and whatnot to spice things up. Another visual change that has been made is adding dynamic lighting. When the event takes place at night or sunset then this lighting will be used which gives some nice visual variance.

Night event with dynamic lighting

One thing that you will notice right off the bat is that the graphics used for the sailing scene have changed. Ultimately, we are trying to give this scene an ancient map sort of feel. You can get a little taste of this with the new ship and town icons. However, all of this is very much early works in progress and the islands are still developer art, so this really is just a taste.

New WIP map icons for sail scene

Last but not least, Riley has gotten a few more demo tracks ready and they have been added into the game. Right now they are just playing in order as you go through the different events. However, in the future we will probably tie specific music tracks to specific events depending on their mood.

As always, we love to hear feedback and ideas. Leave your thoughts in the comments!



---- v0.12 ----
- Added in demo tracks for towns and game over
- Events can now be chained together to form quests
- Refactored event system to make it easier to add more props into a scene
- Pirate surprise attack event now has small boats the pirates come from
- Town event now has a large dock
- The camera is now constrained to the area of the event
- Added dynamic lighting for characters
- Fixed some bugs in the fog of war on the sail scene
- Added a simple event chain for a town in distress
- Change the sail scene to use some new WIP icons

Privateers

The big news this week is that we have finally named the game! And it is...

We spent a long time going over lists of names to try and come up with something that we thought would fit the different aspects of the game. Ultimately, we chose Privateers because it is a very open ended name that expresses the freedom that you have to pave your own way in the world. We think that this reflects how we envision the game play turning out in the end.

Of course, with a fancy new name and all we should give a fancy new build, and here it is...

Build v0.11

In this build the main focus was to redo the sailing experience in the game and explore how it can be more interactive and fun. As a result, there is a whole new game play experience around sailing now instead of just cramming into a little UI window.

Sailing around between islands

With the new sailing experience I am really trying to achieve the feel of a table top game. You get an overhead view of the map and you can select where you want your ship to sail to next. Then, the AI takes a turn and things can happen on the map such as ships moving around, leaving a port, or even attacking you. In later releases, I really want to enrich this experience so that each turn seems important. Also, we will increase the variety of things that can be interacted with on the map. For instance, we might add a giant sea monster which roams the map which you could choose to engage with. I am also toying with the idea of adding some ship to ship combat into this mode as well, but I'm not sure exactly how that will play out yet.

Designing regions for random map generation

Another big change that comes with the new sailing experience is random map generation which occurs for each play through. We have built a system which allows us to design hand crafted regions which have specific islands and events in them as well as randomly generated pieces as well. Then, these regions are generated and placed in order to form the map. So far, I have only made 3 different regions so there is a lot of repetition. However, we will progressively fill this out so that each play through has different interesting regions for you to sail through. This will really increase the replay-ability of the game.

I also want to take the time to also call attention to the new outfits that have been added for the human characters. Kurt put together a bunch of different pieces of clothing which we can mix and match and tint to get a large variety of looks. Also, there are specific clothing that can be used for different people groups in the game going forward. For instance, in this build, merchants always wear a red coat uniform to make them appear different. Also, I know that Kurt has been doing a lot of brainstorming on different people groups that you will encounter in the game and what kind of cultures they will have.

A bunch of different looking human characters

Lastly, there is a little treat in this build which is an early preview of some of the music which Riley is working on for the game. During the opening menu you will hear a tune in which he is exploring the instrumentation which he is going to be using for all of the tracks going forward. I think it really is setting the tone of the game well!

As always, thanks for taking the time to give the game a try and we would love to hear your feedback in the comments below. Here is a brief summary of the changes in this build...

---- v0.11 ----

- Refactor sailing screen completely to be more interactive

- Add new clothing variations for humans of different types

- Crew now drop their items on death

- Added branding for new name "Privateers"

- Crew now quickly regenerate life and refresh cool downs after an event completes

- Monk's cool down reduction now works correctly

- Sail scene is now broken into regions which can have their own designs and are distributed randomly

- The sail scene now has fog of war

- Towns in the sail scene generate neutral ships occasionally

- Added new music to the menu screen

The Tactical Advantage

Hey guys! This build has some of the most dramatic changes to the game play that we have made so far. The focus has really been on evolving the core game play that occurs with each event. It includes a new tactical mode in which you can pause the game and give commands to your crew. Also, we have added classes to the crew which make them unique for playing different roles during battle. You can play the latest build here...

Build v.10

Just for the sake of bragging, I will show off a beautiful sunset picture that I took while on vacation in Hawaii this week. The early mornings were still free for me to get some indie dev work done.

This was the backdrop for my past 2 weeks of game dev'ing

I am really excited about being able to take tactical command of your crew during a battle. This adds a much more cerebral element to the game in which you can plan out what each crew member should do next in order to survive an encounter. As a result, the interface is now something pretty similar to the game "Dragon Age" where you can give commands to your party as well as take direct control of one of them. While playing the game, press SPACE to pause it. While paused, you can click where you want your crew members to move or attack. Then, press SPACE again to un-pause and they will follow those orders.You can use TAB to switch between which crew member you are controlling at any given time.

Giving tactical orders to your crew

I am trying to decide if I like the blend of tactical and action or if it would be better to remove the direct control aspect and only have tactical control. It could be that the blend will just end up being confusing for players and not actually add any fun. I would be really interested to hear peoples thoughts on this in the comments after they have tried the build. Though, as I mentioned above, the blend did work pretty well in "Dragon Age", so I know it is possible to make it work.

The other main change that is in this build is the addition of classes for each of your crew. Every class has bonuses which change how the class is used best. The bonuses include things such as increased health or faster attack speed with bows. Also, each class has a special ability such as a healing spell or the ability to stun enemies. Ultimately, creating a good complimentary class composition for your crew will be critical to success in the game. Also, finding the right items to compliment each class member will be critical to reaching the full potential of that class.

Browsing through your crew

Along with the class abilities, some items now have actions which are used in a similar way. For instance, there is a spell scroll which can be used to heal crew members just like how the monk can for his ability. Right now there are only a couple items that take advantage of this, but I intend to have unique actions tied to most of the items in the long run.

On a separate note, we have a team update which is that we have found a music composer to join the team. Our composer Riley is going to whipping up some awesome pirate tunes so people can look forward to hearing those in the future! He may also by involved in helping with sound effects and doing some of the coding for the game (depending on how much time he has).

Lastly, I hope everyone enjoys trying out the new build and remember to leave me your feedback on what you think about the tactical game play. The next build is going to include an art drop from Kurt to liven things up and we will be announcing the name of the game very soon. The list of significant changes in the build is below.

---- v0.10 ----

- Add tactical crew control (press space to pause)

- Fixed several bugs around how the crew work

- Player can now control any crew member equally

- Crew now have special abilities which can be used

- Actions can be queued up while in tactical mode

- Items can now have an action attached to them

- Improve item tooltips to be easier to read

- Added a window for browsing your crew

- Lots of UI improvements

- Added game balance framework to help with tweaking the balance in the future

- Add a handful of new items but most of them aren't fully complete yet

- Did an initial balance pass. Much more to come though

- Added Heal area action

- Added Stealth action

- Added Stun area action

- Added Mutli-shot action

- Added Rogue class

- Added Barbarian class

- Added Monk class

- Added Archer class