Tag Archives: gamedev

Dev Blog #27 – New Factions, Balancing Issues, and Marketing Plans

Four weeks until closed beta aka Earlier Access! First, here’s a rundown of what we’ve been up to recently.

Development Progress

While the purpose of the beta is to get more players to test the game so we can rebalance the game, it’s work that we’ve already started doing.

Watch Last Regiment Dev Blog #27: Balancing Issues from boomzapofficial on www.twitch.tv

We got a bunch of feedback from the first few rounds of new-unit testing and have been heavily making some major adjustments. We’re adding some powers, moving some others around, and refactoring a BUNCH of the numbers. However, this includes a subjective decision on what we think a unit and its powers are worth.

Watch Last Regiment Dev Blog #27: New Units, Regiment Builder, UI, and Faction Names from boomzapofficial on www.twitch.tv

Recent game changes also include some cool new stuff! We’ve added two new factions, Tinkersteel and Khazan. We’re also discussing some of the faction names, such as changing the Woodspawn to Faeborn, and the Highborne into Elves, which are more direct to the point.

Concept art for Tinkertsteel hero, Gearmage Shelbia

Aside from the new units, we’re also improving the user interface. Last week we added the livestreamer section in the main menu, and we’ll continue to look at more Twitch API integrations. The regiment builder is also now easier to select and sort.

Functional sorting system for Choose a Regiment screen

Changing Our Marketing Approach

One of the questions we received from Discord was: how are we going to market this game differently from Legends of Callasia? Again, we look at the reasons of why it failed, and determine where we got our money’s worth from our past marketing efforts.

Watch Last Regiment Dev Blog #27: How are we going to market this game? from boomzapofficial on www.twitch.tv

For Last Regiment, we’ll be concentrate on improving our Steam page, including our trailer. Paid advertising is also an option for us, and the marketing blitz before launch is also important. But the most essential part is making changes in the game itself, to making sure it is easy to understand and has features that can help improve our marketing.

 

 


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Dev Blog #26 – Beta Schedule and Launch Plans

We’re back from our stream hiatus (one month since our last update), and officially committing to the schedule for Last Regiment’s closed beta aka “Earlier Access”!

Updated main menu with Lore button and list of live streamers

To be part of the beta, you must: earn 2000 boombux on Twitch; reach Level 15 on Discord; or, be a betatester for Legends of Callasia.

Here’s the timeline we are looking at:

  • May 18 –  We’ll let special friends of the company have copies of the game super early, so they can play beta builds and help us get the game ready for the official Early Access launch.
  • July 2018 -We go into Early Access with some campaign missions, releasing updates every two weeks.
  • October 2018 -Target launch for the full game!

Watch Last Regiment Dev Blog #26: Launch Plans from boomzapofficial on www.twitch.tv

We’re already planning what content will be available during each release, and estimating the price point at which we want to sell the game. As of now, we’re looking at $20 USD for the full game with 10 factions, 108 units (including heroes and unit upgrades), 40 campaign missions, and around 40 hours of gameplay.

Daily playtesting of new maps and units

However, we need to push back on the map editor and the related community features it needs. We want to make sure first that the core gameplay (campaign and multiplayer) are solid for the official launch.

Watch Last Regiment Dev Blog #26: Salty Waitress from boomzapofficial on www.twitch.tv

Speaking of campaign, we’re no longer just writing Olivia’s story, but the story of Kothia’s colonization which is told through different viewpoints. There are no good guys and bad guys – everyone’s a hero in their own story and they have reasons for their choices, and putting it all together has been a struggle to write.

Watch Last Regiment Dev Blog #26: Story Writing Struggles from boomzapofficial on www.twitch.tv

That being said, we’ll continue to do the weekly streams, and in between those we’ll be posting quick updates on Discord.  We’re already adding people to the secret beta channel, so start earning those points if you still haven’t!


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Dev Blog #25 – Why are we promoting Last Regiment and not our other games?

Someone on Discord asked us: How come we never see your other games and we only hear about Last Regiment and Legends of Callasia? The quick answer is: our other projects are with publishers, who own the rights to our games. This brings us to a discussion about how the game development industry works, including the developer-publisher relationship.

There are two (or three) ways to make games. One is first party publishing, wherein a publisher makes the game and figures out the whole process of getting the game out to the consumer. The other is third party publishing, wherein someone else develops the game, and the publisher runs it through their established processes, platforms, and pipelines. Either the developer (who may not have the resources) approaches a publisher to distribute their game, or a publisher goes to the developers and asks them to make a game.

There are three important parts of this deal: prepaid payments, backend royalties, and IP ownership. This final one pretty much explain why we haven’t continued making our successful hidden object franchises, and why we don’t promote our newer games as heavily as we do for Last Regiment.

Spreaking of the game, we are continuing to work on getting the game from “good” to “great”. Here are some of the code, data, and UI changes we’ve done in the past week.

  • Updated all relevant systems (mechanics, input, ai) to recognize and support the new foundation structure system
  • Implemented neutral structures; updated AI to recognize the changes
  • Prototyped structure damage system
  • Implemented constants table; move default movement costs to constants
  • Added a bunch of logs to track the unit creation and invalidation process in multiplayer
  • Fixed Mystery bug for stealth meeples
  • Implemented Heroes-Units tab on select regiment ui.
Settlement Layering
Structure Points with Fortification Bonus
Choose A Regiment: Faction List and Heroes Tab
Choose A Regiment: Units Tab with Filter System

This might be our last full update for the month, and we’ll be back streaming in April. Until then, we’ll be posting our WAIDRN updates on Discord.


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