DEVELOPER NEWS: Conquests Status Update
Greetings Pit Master!
I wanted to give you another update on Conquests. The technical side of Conquests are basically feature complete at this point (future tuning aside). Art wise Conquests are complete in the sense that there are art assets for 1 world, 1 realm (The Great Realm), 10 territories, 40 regions and 160 "dungeons" (with the same art being used more than once and a dungeon can be inside or outside). Each territory has 4 regions and each region has 4 official "dungeons"/conquests. Once a conquest creation tool is made public user generated content will also populate each region. Since you are a clever bloke you no doubt saw that 160 number and said "hot damn!" can't wait to pillage, ransack and murder whoever has taken up residence in those! You also probably thought "Good Gods! 160 dungeons! That must be a lot of work!" and you would be correct in your astute observation! :)
Your logical next question is probably "Nate, how many of the 160 dungeons have you created so far?" and the answer is...drum roll...(do try and say this next part in your best Count from Sesame Street voice) ONE! One Conquest has been created thus far, ah, ah, ah! The first one always takes the longest as many of the processes are being developed on how to create the rest. The processes are mostly in place now but the act of creating a conquest goes something like this:
1) Get Conquest art.
2) Cut art up into pieces that represent each room the player will adventure through.
3) Touch up each room art piece and ready it for the game.
4) Find the hot spot coordinates for each piece within the conquest image so the player can click and move within the dungeon.
5) Come up with great idea for conquest
6) Write backstory for conquest and descriptions for each room
7) Create encounters
8) Balance encounters
9) Test & debug
10) Do everything you forgot about.
The cutting up of art and such will only happen once per art asset (for example once the sewers art is done it doesn't need to be done again, but any conquest that uses that art will still need to be thought up and written and tested, etc.) As you can see it is a pretty involved process but I think the end result is worth it.
The eventual goal is to have each dungeon be level based such as the 1st dungeon is level 5 and the last dungeons in territory 10 are level 50. That is what the game will eventually look like, but what to do in the meantime? If we stick to that plan most of you will have nothing to do for awhile especially all the level 50 gladiators. This is unfortunate, so I have decided to scale each conquest to the level of the gladiator for now perhaps eventually grandfathering current glads into that system and all new glads following the original design once I think there is enough of a head start to do so and then eventually switching everyone over to the original system once everything is done.
I'm planning to release Conquests soon as a beta (which basically means it is "done" but is still a work in progress) so players who want to enjoy it now can. You do not have to partake in it if you don't want to but I think you most likely will want to. Running the same conquest over and over might get a little boring for some players but it is what it is. I will of course do my best to generate new ones as fast as possible which also means coming up with all the lore as well so it is no small feat.
I will also be working on the conquest creation tool so you can start creating your own if you like as well.
Good luck in the Pit!
-Nate-
