Happy Anniversary!
I’m not sure how, but I’ve managed an entire year of development on Steam. This week a year ago marks the day the first build of RPG Tycoon was launched into early access and it’s crazy to see how far the game has come in that time! I’ve just launched Alpha 8 which comes with a variety of new updates and improvements (more details below) and to celebrate the whole occasion the game is currently 30% off on Steam, so there’s never been a better time to pick it up and jump in!
Alpha 0.8 Release Trailer
This update brings a large number of small adjustments to the game as well as a couple of new mechanics, both of which you’ll hopefully enjoy. The main focus began working on re-doing some of the in-game text prompts as I wanted players to be able to skim-through them if they wish and pick up the important key phrases mentioned within them. So words are now highlighted to help the player understand them a bit easier.
The other main focus was implementing the school mechanic, allowing you to generate your own heroes from scratch. The player starts with only a few classes available to teach and must assign a hero from within the kingdom to be a tutor, adventurers will then start to gather in the school and eventually a hero will be generated (their stats based on the classes). As with everything in the game, the better a tutor Hero gets the more classes they can teach and the faster they’ll teach them. Once generated you can decide to hire the new Hero or release them into the Hero pool to fend for themselves or for some other kingdom to snatch up!
I’m also excited to announce a new style of mechanic within the game, Dynamic Questing. These are essentially story-based quest-lines that develop over time as your kingdom grows and gains more experience. Currently there’s only one dynamic quest system in the game, but over the course of the next couple of updates I’ll be adding more. This system also means that a third category of building is now available, and as you meet conditions of each dynamic quest you’ll unlock special buildings and trophies to place within your kingdom.
The last big mention is that I’ve spent some time re balancing the game to make it a little fairer on decoration placement, attractiveness, gaining followers and some of the late game progression.
A full list of updates are in the patch notes below, as well as an extended preview video where I’ll walk you through a number of these new mechanics and features.
Feature Walkthrough Video
Update Notes:
New Features
– New Hero School Menu System
– Quick Quest Combos now show in previous quest history screen
– Gain hype from adventurers in the kingdom during hype stage of events.
– Stores can now be closed to avoid maintenance or stunted to avoid growth.
– Text Prompts updated to show highlighted key words.
– Various Key Bindings will now Open and Close Menus
– Heroes now demand more pay if they’re unhappy
– Heroes need to be entertained again
– New research options
– Scroll Speed Slider
– New Sandwich Shop Building
– New Music Store Building
– New Winery Drink Building
– New Pillar Decoration
– New Block Decoration
– Special Building Category Added
– New Dimensional Portal Special Building
– New Architect Special Building
– New Treasure Chest Trophy Special Building
– New Music Track “Make Your Way”
– New Dynamic Quest System Introduced
– New Adventurer Added
– Hero View now shows a Hero’s Level
Optimisation
– Improved Speed Controls
Balance
– Adjusted Walk Speeds
– Store Maintenance now rises on Level Up
– Store Appeal Added on level Up
– Attraction Re-balanced
– Library now Unlocks at Kingdom Level 3
– Clinic now Unlocks at Kingdom Level 2
– Reduced Loss of Influence from Settlements Significantly
– Guaranteed Item Drops if performance is above 50%
– Raised Chances of Item Drops
– Multiple Heroes on Epic Quests Yields even better results
– Research now introduced as Kingdom level rises
– Minor Balances Elsewhere
Bug Fixes
– Fixed Items being generated and lost mid-quest
– Heroes can no longer be fired mid-quest
– Fixed bug relating to recovering in the clinic when a clinic isn’t in the Kingdom
– Fixed bug relating to stock quality reducing to -1% on load
– Fixed Cheese Bug
– Fixed Bug Causing game to crash when attempting to place building outside of tile boundary
– Fixed a bug causing rotated indexes to show incorrectly
– Villain Progress now Saves
– Fixed bug with ghost modules showing incorrectly and returning to default upon moving mouse
– Fixed bug with level message on load
– Fixed some mouseover issues
– Fixed inventory bugs
– Fixed a bug caused by using the demolish tool before selecting a building
– Hero sprites now load properly
– Fixed a bug that stopped Heroes returning if they closed the window with the close button and not continue once during debriefing stage
– Books now load properly
– Research now loads properly
– Hero Max Health and Mana now saves/loads properly
– Various other minor bug fixes
As always the Save Files will be completely useless with this update and will cause your game to crash. So starting a new game is advised.
0.9 will focus on adding more to the dynamic quest system and I’ll basically focus on extending everything that’s already in the game to help add even more longevity and replay ability. Plenty of game mechanics and features have been neglected over the past couple of months in order to get these new systems working, so I’ll be working on improving those features as well as working on optimizing some of the backend to try and fix any other instabilities or bugs.
Enjoy the new update.
All the best,
Matt