Quarter Onion Games

Tag: state of the game

  • Emberlight 2019: In Retrospect – The State of the Game

    Emberlight 2019: In Retrospect – The State of the Game

    As we continue with areas that we are actively looking to improve in the future. There will always be places where we can do better, both working together as a studio, and each person that is a part of this experience. We fail as a studio when we can’t identify where we failed.

    Ongoing Bugs

    Nobody likes bugs, least of all the developers of your favorite games. As games get more complex, bugs will express themselves in new and “exciting” ways, and the team is always looking to resolve them. We’ve had a few rare bugs that continue to elude us, particularly a rare turn bug, and it’s been a tough one to crack.

    For the non-coder type, most of the code of a game tends to interact in some way with everything else. Making changes that may seem benign will suddenly break another system. While some fixed can be straightforward with some elbow grease and focus, others are a lot more complicated, and we’ve built a stronger QA and unit testing process for future projects to help us identify and resolve issues early.

    Game Presentation

    Consistent feedback we received from the community focused on a lack of user feedback within Emberlight. Whether this was confusion within initial menus, or a lack of direction with something as important as navigating the rooms on a level, we needed to do a better job at conveying information to our community. Efforts such as tutorials we’re not enough to properly ease players into the game.

    As a team, we have a major focus in the current project to ensure the user feedback is properly designed out at the start. We can’t assume that a new player will simply get it, and therefore the game needs to provide appropriate direction for a player that needs it. At the same time, we cannot force a player down a lengthy tutorial, so it’s a balancing act that we’ll refine with the demo we’re working on.

    Game Awareness

    While this isn’t directly related to the game development itself, getting awareness for future games is crucial to build our community and push us to continue building quality games for everyone. This was a learning experience for us, and we have new tools in the tool belt for our future projects. Particularly both how to get the game in front of more people, and to ensure that our presentation properly represents the game.

    We had many great reviewers, streamers, and YouTubers play our game and provide feedback on it, and it was a humbling experience to hear everyone’s views on Emberlight. From the reviews we received, we averaged around a 7 out of 10 which is average to us. Nothing less than a 10 out of 10 is good enough, and we have a blueprint on how to achieve that goal.

    If you have purchased the game, please leave a review so the Steam algorithm can index our game properly.

    Our final article will focus on our next project. We’re super excited to finally unveil our recent work, and where we’re going in 2020. Stay tuned!

    Read the first article here.

  • Emberlight 2019: In Retrospect

    Emberlight 2019: In Retrospect

    As we walk into a new decade, the experience of creating and launching a game has given us a lot of insight into how to move forward confident in our abilities as a studio. We’ve grown this past year with Emberlight and our wonderful community with well over a thousand folks that have given us a chance so far but there’s always room to improve. We strive for a 10 outta 10 with our future games, and it starts with self-critiques which we’ll breakdown in a three-parter leading into our new game in production.

    (more…)

  • Two Weeks Down: Steam Achievements, Cloud Saving And More!

    Two Weeks Down: Steam Achievements, Cloud Saving And More!

    Rounding out two weeks since launch, we’ve made a lot of progress.  This last update added Steam Achievements. Players can join the Knights of the Ember Order and collect all 49 milestones ranging in various difficulties. Other additions over the past two weeks include:

    • Cloud saving for persistent corruption across all supported platforms
    • Daily and lifetime leaderboards for the Daily Challenge mode
    • Purity mode which allows players to access “good” endings per run
    • Revamped quest system to better showcase the run being selected
    • And a wide range of fixes and tweaks based on feedback from the Emberlight community

    Along with this feedback, we have also adjusted our future plans with Emberlight.  Originally planned for a December release, Dungeon Master mode has been shifted to a late October, early November launch. 

    Dungeon Master mode adds the ability for stories to be created in a simple but feature-rich toolkit within Emberlight.  These stories can be shared on a public marketplace or hosted with friends. Players can then access these stories in single player story mode, play these with their friends in the upcoming co-op mode, or join DMs in hosted experiences.

    Dungeon Master mode looks to provide a virtual tabletop experience while the simplicity of the story creator means that constructing a story should be equivalent to planning a pen and paper adventure.  The hands on (DM controls entire game) and hands off (DM spectates and can make changes) then allow different ways to interact with the party in a story. And with the aimed support of the mobile and Switch platforms, DMs and players alike will be able to bring this experience anywhere.

    We’re super excited for Dungeon Master mode as a major milestone not only for development, but something we’ve wanted for a long time ourselves.  Some of the team are tabletop players, and have wanted a way to be able to play with friends worldwide in a system closely matching what they’d do on their Friday night sessions.  Hopefully we can bridge the gap between the open imagination of a pen and paper game with the story creator and gameplay mechanics emulating that as closely as possible.

     

    Join our popular Discord Community Server at www.discord.gg/quarteronion to discuss Emberlight.

     

  • Updated w/link – Join our Emberlight Reddit AMA on /Games on Sunday at 8 PM EDT

    Updated w/link – Join our Emberlight Reddit AMA on /Games on Sunday at 8 PM EDT

    Emberlight AMA   has ended at 11 pm EDT.  We will continue to all your answer questions on the thread as they come in.

    Have you watched the launch trailer, or better yet tried the game on Steam/Discord/Itch.io, and wondered what was going through our heads when we created Emberlight?  Why am I killing off my own party?  I have to kill my old corrupted Pyromancer with his Brutal Charge, Meteor Strike, and Nova?!

    Well fear not, because we don’t know what was going through our heads.  But we have the next best thing to answering these and other questions you may have!  We will be hosting a Reddit AMA on /Games at 8pm EDT (GMT-5) on Sunday (August 18th). We will post the full Reddit link prior to the chat on Discord, Facebook, Twitter, as well as update this post.

    While you wait, you can listen in on the interview we had with Fragments of Silicon on July 3rd.

    • The Quarter Onion Games team


     

  • Emberlight – State of the Game

    Emberlight – State of the Game

    So we have finally reached the finish line (of sorts) for Emberlight. What does that mean for Emberlight over the next few months? And more importantly, what is up the sleeves of our team over the next year or two? Read on, dear reader, and we’ll go down the path of Trinity.

    Roadmap for Emberlight

    We had posted the Emberlight Roadmap a few months ago due to questions about what was happening after August 13th. And while this roadmap details a lot of the cool content and features we have planned over the next year, it doesn’t really go into detail about how we will continue to build up the core functionality we have in Emberlight now. So where are we going with Emberlight?

    First off, we know there’s still plenty to tweak. We took in valuable feedback during our pre-launch period from the many streamers and YouTubers that helped iron out flaws we were overlooking. There’s still some glitches, including a few we’re having a helluva time to recreate (resurrection instantly killing the resurrect party member which might be a feature, the Blaze Knight moonwalking which is most definitely not a feature, and those pesky snakes not going away properly when ending a run), but these will be cleaned up.

    As many will attest during the pre-launch period, we will work rapidly to get these fixed. We’ve done what we could to alleviate the vast majority of issues. These last few mainly stem from an inability to recreate on the development side making it very difficult to resolve them without potentially breaking the game for those without the issues. We will continue to tweak areas to see if it resolves itself, but it’s one of those areas where we may just need new eyes looking at the code base as we start rounding out the team for this and future endeavors.

    Of particular note is additional platforms we plan to support. We aim to be on iOS and Android by the end of October with the Co-op mode update. We then, publisher permitting, aim to be on the Switch by the end of December with the Dungeon Master mode update. At the moment, those are the only platforms we’re aiming for long term but we are open to suggestions from our community (please come talk to us on Discord, we don’t bite…).


     

    Project 2 (It really needs a name…)
    So we’ve briefly discussed what is after Emberlight, which will get touched on in more detail below, but the current goal is for project 2 to be a tactical RPG. Keeping with the tradition of Emberlight pulling from our nostalgia of Final Fantasy X and XI while attempting to modernize it with a few twists, Project 2 will pull specifically from our nostalgia of Ogre Battle. This project will fall within the same timeline as Emberlight, and this becomes important with Trinity.

    What is Trinity?
    Trinity is basically a framework that will connect Emberlight, Project 2, and a third concept (a side scrolling city simulator) into one persistent shard. The point of Trinity is continuing the charm of single player games (you do not directly connect to any players within the shard you are playing on), but the actions of each playthrough have lasting consequences on the shard. Emberlight players completing quests will see those regions have a smaller evil footprint. Project 2 players will secure the borders as countries vie for power and territory. And the city sim players are the engine that fuels the other two games, providing quests and resources respectively.

    Is this ambitious? Most definitely. And this is why we want to focus on each game as its own project. We want to build these to the highest quality possible. Trinity basically forces us to. Even as we shift gears into the 2nd and 3rd projects, we are still having to work on the previous games to ensure they all pair up properly.

    Just as Dungeon Master mode in Emberlight comes from our yearning for that tabletop experience in the games that we just feel hasn’t quite been achieved yet, Trinity builds off of our desire for a most interactive experience for players in all genres. That ability to play a game that is underappreciated in the industry and yet have it interact with those that are.

    Can we pull all of this off? We sure can!

    – The Quarter Onion Games team


  • Updated Patch Notes for August 1 (Launch Candidate)

    Updated Patch Notes for August 1 (Launch Candidate)

    The development team has made the following changes and updates to the game in the latest changeset 814 update. This build is the launch candidate for release on August 13th.

    • Combat log pop in/pop out effect was not ideal. Now just appears/disappears
    • Targeting should now definitely be probably fixed, maybe – Tab to cycle targets is working again
    • Encounter wasn’t working like AoE for mirror image negation and is fixed
    • Looks like subclasses were hooked to the wrong characters on party select for 0 and 1 slots and is now fixed
    • If all party members die in corruption fight, the game should now properly end with no corrupted boss
    • Investigated characters instantly dying when resurrected and added some safety checks
    • Investigated confused characters getting stuck and added some safety checks to ensure input cannot happen
    • Settings now saved on EndOfRun and PartyDead screens to save out corruption
    • Investigated how options menu works as it still has issues. Checked through save/load routines as we were only applying the volume at load but ignoring the mutes if they were saved. Also potentially resolved issues in the resolution setup as we’re showing resolutions not even supported by the game (should only be 16:9 and 16:10)
    • Tooltips only showed properly on 1920 x 1080. They now stay within the screen space for all supported resolutions
    • Fixed debug scores in daily challenge (I do not have 90000 points anymore, and the two debug test players are removed)
    • Added text next to the corruption bars on EndOfRun and PartyDead to show amount for what was earned in that run
    • Targeting in tooltips now explains what it does as a first pass to explaining special cases
    • Switched back to centered combat log text
    • Colorized chat log messages similar to floaty text
    • Adjusted unit bar to support 3 wide status effects, and 2 rows above. This resolves some issues where too many effects flowed over the turn bar, but can present an issue where many effects go under the learned abilities bar in some encounters
    • Continued investigation of icons used in ability and town portal windows, and added some more safety checks
    • As a first pass on crowd control having a diminishing return, rooms now have a defined cap for amount of crowd control used (either side) before all units become immune. This will eventually expand to be more diminishing returns, but the value is high enough to still make it useful per encounter
    • Exiting a run brings the player to the party death screen and applies the usual score corruption gain. This also provides an out if a player is stuck in a never ending corruption fight
    • Reintroduced credits page in main menu
    • Removed lore temporarily from game
    • Add voices for gambling hall, tavern, and town portal when entering and purchasing something
    • Updated a handful of shop-based texts for grammar issues
    • Fixed positioning of earned corruption at bottom of end of run and party dead as it was too close to edge
    • Disabled party dead sound in when closing the party dead screen so it doesn’t continue playing on main menu
    • Theme ambience was never disabled when going to main menu and now shuts off properly
    • Removed extra line at the bottom of challenge modifiers and difficulty tooltips

    The team is really excited as we are preparing to launch the game on August 13th.  Our community continues to be awesome as they provide the necessary feedback  enabling us to launch a quality game in Emberlight.  We listened to everyone opinions and did our best to incorporate your ideas in the game. Thank you for supporting us!

    Join our popular Discord Community Server at www.discord.gg/quarteronion to discuss Emberlight. We want your feedback!

     

  • Emberlight’s Roadmap

    Emberlight’s Roadmap

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    Emberlight’s Roadmap

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    Roadmap for Emberlight

    Launch (August 13)

    With the recent announcement of Emberlight reaching alpha, we are fast approaching launch. We wanted to breakdown our plans both at launch and the time afterwards. The team has some great concepts for where to take the game, but the sky’s the limit if the community finds new directions to take it.  The launch is set for August 13th of this year. We look to have a full experience with both single player modes and the initial themes available.

    • Standard Mode: The standard mode is the bread and butter of Emberlight. You select a quest from a randomized list which details the location you’re heading to, the conditions to complete the quest, your party, and the starting resources. When a quest is completed successfully, a new corrupted boss is added to the pool and can be linked to corrupted quests. This mode is recommended for new players to get a feel of the game, especially when choosing the easier quests that end on the surface.
    • Daily Challenge Mode: The daily challenge mode defines a daily set of modifiers to the game (such as all enemies being stronger, or potions dealing damage) and pits the entire community against one another to top the leaderboards. The game flow is generally the same as Standard mode, with the modifiers adding a curveball into the mix.
    • Surface Ruins: The standard theme for level 1 and include grassy areas, ancient ruins, and a mix of animals and elven enemies to fight. Every run will lead through the ruins and is an easy area to get acquainted with the features of Emberlight. It holds a few secrets that can either make a run substantially easier or wipe it early.
    • Caves: The standard theme for level 2 and include underground caverns and a mix of animals, golems, slimes, and some more insidious creatures. Difficulty begins to ramp up, being on par with the player’s party at this point. Stronger enemies from the final levels have taken residence in rarely traveled portions of the caves which can propose a dangerous threat.
    • Dungeon: One of two standard themes for level 3 and include the living areas of the orcish hordes with a mix of goblins, orcs, ogres, and more. These areas are very dangerous, with units focused on dealing heavy damage rapidly at the cost of defensive capabilities. Typically this leads into the final boss fight, and the subsequent corruption battle to end a run.
    • Catacombs: The second of two standard themes for level 3 and include the decrepit ruins of an ancient tomb with a mix of necromancers, skeletons, zombies, and more. Equally as dangerous as dungeon, the catacombs units focus on defense and numbers with a necromancer quickly overwhelming the party. The player needs to focus on controlling adds to successfully complete each encounter.

    Co-op (October)

    Starting in October, up to 3 players will be able to join up and complete quests for the Ember Order together. This mode (at this point in design phase) will have a few adjustments to how it functions compared to Standard mode, but largely be the same. Players will each take their turn in combat, and be able to discuss out their progression through the level.

    • Co-op Mode: The host chooses the quest, controls traversal through the level, controls interaction with props, and controls loot distribution. We’re still in discussion on other systems (possibly free for all on loot), but most likely it will stay this way when it goes live. It is meant to have a sort of pen and paper feel where you’ve all jumped into an adventure and are talking out progression that benefits all of you. However, the end corruption fight still takes place and there can only be one true winner per quest…
    • Spectator Mode: Along with co-op will be spectator mode. This will allow others to watch a run play out in co-op and future modes. We felt this will also be a good way for a new player to see a run in action and get some pointers on how to overcome the many challenges each run can present, as well as the overall entertainment value of watching a run quickly devolve due to backstabbing.

    Dungeon Master (December)

    This is a mode we’re most excited for. It was requested from a handful of pen and paper fans that were looking for a way to be able to play a game that more closely mirrored the feel of those games without having to coordinate somewhere locally. The end result is a (we hope) virtual pen and paper experience that can be played globally.

    • Dungeon Master Mode: In Dungeon Master mode, the host is able to customize their own quest. This includes putting together each of the levels, defining the encounters, setting the rewards, and more. The host has all the tools to setup their scenario as they see fit. Long term, we’d like to be able to submit these scenarios to a central database that would allow DMs to download new experiences and share their own with others.
    • When a scenario has been loaded, up to three players can join in. Like a pen and paper game, the DM has full control over the progression of the run. They handle navigation after its been discussed, handle interaction with props in rooms, handle loot distribution, and overall drive the story forward. Combat is still controlled via the players like normal, with the added perk that the DM can jump into combat and control the enemy side at will.
    • This concept is still very rough, and we’re looking for feedback from the pen and paper community on how to refine this. We’ve discussed both hands on (the concept above) and hands off (functions identically to co-op mode but the DM is watching the party’s progression and can change on the fly). We’ve also discussed the potential for actual dice rolls. But the mode is an open book and we’re looking for any critiques to refine.

    Competitive (March)

    As this is a few modes rolled into one, we’re expecting a longer development cycle to complete. Competitive is, at the moment, split between three modes: Arena, Asymmetric Competitive, and Symmetric Competitive. These each provide new ways to compete amongst the community and claim dominance.

    • Arena Mode: With Arena Mode, this provides a quick play mode that works as either single player or multiplayer. When entering Arena Mode, the player is able to set their party and define the 10 abilities they want from the full list. In single player, they fight a defined amount of encounters (or infinite) and see how long they can survive against an ever increasing wave of enemies. In multiplayer, Arena pits parties against one another through matchmaking. We have discussed in game tournaments on the multiplayer side.
    • Asymmetric Competitive Mode: This mode (which will get a better name shortly) pits 8 parties against one another in a larger Standard mode setup. The run still functions the same, but the game begins with 4 surface ruins, 2 caves, and 1 larger final area. Each surface ruins has two entrances for each party, and outside of the standard gameplay, parties can engage one another. Upon reaching the final area, there can only be one party before the final boss is accessible to complete a run.
    • Symmetric Competitive Mode: This mode (also needs a new name) functions largely the same as Asymmetric Competitive Mode, but the generation of the surface and caves areas are identical for everyone. This was brought up to provide an even playing field for everyone. Otherwise, it plays out the same way with only one party surviving to final boss and winning the run.

    General

    Outside the large modes we have planned above, we will be constantly be adding content post launch to expand out the options within the game. The main content updates include new abilities, new party members, new quests, new themes, and new units.

    • New Abilities: We’ll be constantly adding new abilities to the game. While abilities are driven primarily by enemy units, we will be expanding out the abilities that are accessible via town portal to give more usage for gold. Right now, while there is a good selection of utility abilities and some real gems to be found in the town portal, it is really for filling out the characters versus a true way to find stronger and useful abilities.
    • New Party Members: We’ll be adding new party members to the mix, and setting up a process to select the party members you want to use in your party at quest selection. While the Ember Knights are largely clean slates, driven by the abilities you decide to add to them through a run, their starting stats drive a lot of what is most useful on each. We’ve also discussed subclasses for the current party members that can be unlocked via certain achievements. These subclasses would allow you to start with different abilities and stats (i.e. the Blaze Knight could become a Hell Knight which starts with three Hell-based Ember abilities instead of the usual ones).
    • New Quests: We’ve discussed quests other than simply killing a boss. Concepts include destroying portals (keep a sorceror alive while he closes a portal which constantly spawns enemies), escort (keep an NPC alive in party to end), and side quest driven events that would include a journal in the future. These are still very much in early design and we’re open to feedback to refine these.
    • New Theme (Hell): A theme for level 3 and is a burned out and hellish landscape that combines demon and devil enemies. It will focus heavily on arcane and psionic abilities (which are lacking in the current themes due to the enemy types).
    • New Theme (Lair): A theme for level 3 and is the home of dragon-kind in the peaks of faraway mountains, combining a mix of draconian humanoid warriors, dragons, and flying creatures. It will be a balanced area. Depths is a theme for level 3 and is the area of nightmares, mixing Lovecraftian creatures with other swamp-based abominations. It will focus heavily on psionic abilities.
    • New Theme (Depths): A theme for level 3 and is the area of nightmares, mixing Lovecraftian creatures with other swamp-based abominations. It will focus heavily on psionic abilities.
    • New Units: While the bulk of the new units will come from the theme additions, we will be identifying new units that can be added to the current themes without unbalancing the game. Our initial focus will be new miniboss and bosses primarily, with additional units added where it incorporates new abilities that can benefit the player as they progress.

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    We are always looking for feedback on every front of development. As we still have three months before launch, there’s still plenty to do to refine the core game experience. If anyone has any input on anything (art, audio, gameplay, etc), we always welcome it via our various channels. We’d recommend joining our Discord server as we’re always around to respond, and can quickly plug the feedback in to see what can be done from it.

    – Quarter Onion Games

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