Frontline Report #1

On our road to getting what would be by November 3 years of our work, we’ve gone through quite a few stages. To figuring out many things along the way, to always being surprised at what could go wrong – and conversely, what could go right. And we’re sure there’s more we’ll experience in both aspects.

Regarding our current progress on the game, we’ve switched to delivering things by segments. Melee first, then magic, then ranged, shields, talents…

Our future roadmap will clarify where we intend each major feature to be. In general, we aim for monthly updates intertwined with smaller patches regarding bugfixes, optimizations and more importantly: balancing changes and experiments.

Last but not least, this phase – this Alpha – will be very interesting for us, as we have once been on the other end of the table, playing and commenting on other games’ Alphas – and we hope it will be as interesting for you too.

From development, to the battlefield, we welcome you to join us on our journey as we dive deeper into what we’ve been working on behind the scenes.

Upgrade from UE 5.4 to 5.6

We have upgraded to the current version of Unreal Engine, not only providing us with a host of new tools, but better performance across the board.

Migration of blueprint code to C++

We migrated 170 structs/enums/classes from blueprint to C++. Not only does this provide us a higher degree of control over how we interact with the systems, but in almost all cases also increases performance allowing for higher player counts while retaining our desired gameplay feel.

Creation of internal balancing tools

Balance has always been a large area of discussion, and likewise a very important thing to get right. Thanks to the creation of balancing tools, we now have the ability to adjust major aspects of combat on the fly.

Bug fixes

We've fixed 78 bugs found during internal QA sessions, namely regarding animation blending, input, replication (networking) and UI.

Combat logic improvements

We've simplified and optimized our combat logic across the board. This will make combat use less resources on both the server and client.

We've recreated logic for combos, morphs, ripostes and unified many animation states. This allows us to have controllable transition timings and blend curves at-will, opening up a lot of creative freedom in animation work, as well as responsiveness of inputs.

Animation overhaul

We have been rather quiet regarding our animation work – as we'd rather show, not tell, but here's some quick information: we have fully redone almost 100% of the animation assets FIEFDOM had when our Kickstarter launched.

What is perceived as a game's "animation" is often equal parts animation assets and technical animation; we are heavily working on the latter, and we will reveal the current state of gameplay once we are happy with it. However, this area is one of constant changes and/or improvements, as it indirectly ties to not only a game's feel, but also its balancing and performance.

We have continued the rework of our assets to provide better quality and wherever possible, optimization. The following are from our showcases since late August:

Dev note: Some of you have asked us a very important question: “Can you run around with naked mauls in FIEFDOM?”. While our world’s soldiers can be adepts of the maul – all seem a bit prude. As such, you’ll have undergarments of various types; these are aimed to be comfortable and compatible with the armour you have on top, if any…. To start it off, here is one example of Renhir’s and of Sulma’s undergarments! Mazovia's undergarments will come soon..

"What is perhaps most varied among the appearance of Renhirites is the colour of their eyes. Kohrian yellow mixed in with Reterlanter’s blue has given the draconic realm its two main palettes. More rarely, the right admixture of both Kohrian and Reterlanter ancestry has created a colour unique only to the Renhirites: emerald green. A colour which is a nigh unanimous telltale of the realm of its beholder – a trait that naturally ejects any of its candidates from employment in matters of subterfuge and espionage."

"Often enough, the Renhirites' zeal for draconic heraldry has hindered their craft. Not so with their famed corseque. Despite its advantageous profile and versatility, pairing some of the traits of a spear and a billhook, the corseque has waned in favour over the past thirteen years. While constables and royal bodyguards fought valiantly at the Battle of Hanvec of 1378 A.C., with the Renhirite relief force winning the city a pyrric reprieve, it would not be without a grievous cost: the mortal wounding and subsequent death of Renhir's former king and Moll's father, Oxis Flahm."

"For reasons related to cost or weight, a Renhirite levy might skimp on any heavier elements and forgo all scales. Sometimes, these levies are shamed for this decision – While some may believe it reflects their poor finances, the phenomenon may instead stem from Renhirite war doctrine: lesser armoured members of a fielded army tend to busy up the least dangerous, but often most physically demanding, duties of the army. While the spearhead gets the glory, the backline gets not to worry."

Dev note

Given that FIEFDOM features asymmetrical balancing, in the sense that realms have a different assortment of weapons to pick from and armours with different values, we’ve decided to extend this concept into asymmetrical customization – namely, that some options or categories are realm-specific.

Starting off with face customization

we’ve decided that the Renhirites feature metal injections on their gnarliest scars, Sulmites feature arrays of tattoos, and Mazovians use thick face paint, a callback to their more ancient shamanic times.

Dev note: We announced Volaster a long time ago, and we've made a lot of progress since. There are several aspects of a big level like this to work on in parallel: Here we are showing you some of the assets we are both editing, and making from scratch, to more accurately bring to life the mountains of the land of Renhir, and the ancient ruins which form the foundation of the map. We're currently sticking to more traditional workflows, not leaning on some of the newer features available in Unreal 5, with the goal of bringing you a map which both performs well and looks good. That being said, features like Unreal's procedural content generation (PCG) have proven very valuable in helping to speed up work on a map of this scale. After Magna Castellum this is our first effort as an environment team to properly make our own assets to exactly suit our needs, so this map will be for us a valuable opportunity to show a little of what we can do, but also to learn what we might be able to do as our development continues.

Dev note: Several aspects of a map can be worked on in parallel. One aspect of Volaster which we wanted to improve upon from the ‘block-in’ stage was the overall fantasy-level of the map, as well as the map’s ability to draw player’s their focus towards the centre of the map – where the objectives are located. The goal for the environment team this month will be to combine these parallel improvements, resulting in a map with an interesting layout and story, made from our own beautiful and optimized assets. While we currently don’t expect Volaster to be in its final stage when the Alpha releases, the art team is looking forward to pushing out regular updates to the map during the alpha, improving visuals and performance as time goes by.

The countdown to Alpha ticks away (out on November 28th, accessible to those that back our Kickstarter's Tier III or above), as our team continues to dedicate their time preparing for the awaited day! Here is an insight to some of what's planned for the next few weeks.

• Continued focus on optimizing combat, including making it more intuitive and responsive

• Initial game balancing pass using aforementioned tools

• Work on various gamemodes and objectives

• Integrating immersive visual effects in combat & other areas

• Further standardization of our user interface, alongside experimentation in styles

• Finalization of one more armour set, several weapons. Continuing on Volaster’s environment art

Steam Retrospective posts

We have a Discord server open since August 2024, where we have posted new content once or twice a week through showcase posts. However, many of you reading this are not in the Discord. The solution? Posting retrospectives of our first assets with its flavour text; in addition to any reworks a particular asset or map might've gone through. We will start these soon, stay tuned!

Many projects start with crowdfunding, but not all make it out. With our Alpha’s delay, transparency becomes key. While we, as a team, might be busy working, we also need to keep you in the loop. Our plan is to increase the level of communication from our team to everyone reading.

From now to full release, we want to not only show you what we’ve made, but also include you in the process that gets us there. As this is an indie project, our biggest strength is you!