Developer Log
Stay up-to-date as we improve Constelleum, document our process, and generally post about the stuff that we enjoy! We’d love to have you follow along, so make sure to subscribe to the RSS feed or get on our mailing list!
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Patch Notes - v0.6.1
Read moreWe have a relatively light set of notes for you with this patch. There was a lot of background programming work done building towards something big that we’re not ready to talk about, but we also found some time to add some nice new visual effects and fix some recent bugs
Art
- Added vfx for picking up orbs
- Added vfx for scoring a goal
UI/UX
- Brought back character outlines in an initial form. More work is being done to restore old functionality
Gameplay
- Added a setting under Gameplay that allows environment characters in the sandbox to take turns
Ecosystem
- Updated to Godot 4.3
- Further upgraded our automated test suite to make it easier for us to find pesky bugs in multiplayer games
- Worked on some tech debt to pave the road for something big coming in the future
Bug Fixes
- Fixed controller mappings only working for the device that made the mapping and therefore only one device at a time
- Fixed broken orb tooltips
- Fixed the Drag action not showing modification from movement statuses
- Fixed edit settings button showing up for non lobby owners
- Fixed character select sidebar expanding off screen
- Card discard and therefore refresh effects now uniformly happen before turn end effects
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Patch Notes - v0.6.0
Read moreIts been almost 3 months since our last patch. For a lot of that we’ve been working on more business related things behind the scenes, but that didn’t stop us from producing one doozy of a patch that we are thrilled about.
One of the massive achievements of this patch is that we finally have our new background properly implemented in all its glory. We had static versions of this art in previous patches, but this is the first time we’ve brought together all of Jeff’s incredible artwork with Antourenein’s technical art wizardry.
But that’s not all when it comes to visuals! We also have vfx for entering and exiting the field, brand new hex highlights, and some experimental hex texturing that can be changed in the settings.
This patch is also a huge step in the right direction for making Constelleum as accessible as possible. New color, size, and input related settings have been added throughout the game. Mitch was just having some fun playing Constelleum with a dance pad this past week,
We’ve also added new setting presets in Accessibility for increasing the size of everything or the color palette. This should make it easier than ever to quickly adjust the game to your needs. We’re still always improving these features to make them as comprehensive and powerful as possible. If you experience any issues please report them so we can continue to improve our accessibility offering.
There’s so much more to unpack: cinematic camera, new lobby settings, an experimental mac build, but the last thing we’ll leave you before the bullets is that we’ve added a new character Druid to the game! Druid is still in early stages of gameplay and lore development and may leave for a short while, but we are super excited for you to meet this new character and explore their mechanics. We’ll dive into them a little deeper in the future when they are fully realized.
Ecosystem
- New Experimental Mac Build
Gameplay
- Druid has been introduced in an early form. They come with a new status called Rot that can lead to the defeat of opponents
- Water obstacle was changed to apply clumsy
Art
- Fully realized background art of the 3 worlds created by Jeff and brought to life by Antourenein
- VFX for entry and exit onto the field
- New experimental hex grid textures that can be selected in Accessibility -> Field settings
UI/UX
- New hex highlights
- New lobby settings for banning characters or using queue modes to get easy default settings
- Players that aren’t the lobby owner can now see the current settings
- Added cinematic camera settings that can be changed under Camera. These are on by default
- Added cinematic camera settings as easily available in sandbox tools and added a reset round button to make it easier than ever to quickly try things out
- Settings can now be copy and pasted to quickly share with friends. They copy the highest visible level of settings or all if nothing is selected
- Preset profiles for UI size and color palette are now available to make it simple to get the settings you need
- Color settings now have a floor on their alpha level
- Individual colors can be copied and pasted
- Added new settings for color adjustment for a wide range of UI especially related to the HUD and Field
- Added new size settings especially related to the HUD and Field
- Added setting for the debounce time when using the double select to submit selection setting
- Added settings for the display duration for the phase overlay under Accessibility -> HUD (the banner that says when to pick a card, etc)
- Added settings for hiding unwanted HUD elements
- Added slight delay after a controller passes focus for the first time (this helps prevent overshooting the item you want to focus)
- Added focus related settings under Input to help with controller usage and require less input
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a whole bunch of broken layout issues when using higher than default UI sizes
- Fixed issue with resetting settings in Accessibility -> Menu
- Fixed backward ping setting
- Fixed saving a deck and then trying to use it requiring relaunching
- Fixed submit button’s use of character names
- Fixed issue with defeating dummy in defeat tutorial
- Fixed issue with ghost pawns flickering when rebuilding a move path
- Fixed animation bug when dragging over orbs or obstacles
- Fixed issue with controller based input remapping not recognizing the input type correctly and therefore causing issues when saving settings
- Fixed orbs disappearing at the wrong time
- Fixed disrupt reactions queueing and being poorly timed when something like getting pushed over multiple disrupting obstacles occurred
- Fixed issue with settings sliders being able to overshoot their minimum and maximum values when using focus based change
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New Characters
Read moreSince the last devlog, we have been heads down building, polishing, and testing. We are very happy to announce 3 new playable characters, Gimbal, Gnamma, and Selene! Check them out on the character gallery page! For the rest of this article, I will dig further into each character than the summary cards present.
People who follow the game or have had a chance to play test it will recognize
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Patch Notes - v0.5.9
Read moreThis month we put a lot of effort into polishing our keyboard / controller experience and improving our tutorials. With Constelleum feeling more and more complete, we are working hard to better our new player experience so we can broaden our community and get fresh players testing our game! As part of our input updates, we completely revamped the settings menu, making it fully navigable with a controller only. We hope the menus feel snappier and more intuitive than ever, and that our new players have a better experience with the tutorial!
In addition
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Patch Notes - v0.5.8
Read moreWe’re keeping up a good monthly stride with a new slate of features and fixes. As per usual you can jump to the bottom for a more concise bulleted list.
This month we put a lot of effort into improving our map creation workflow. There were certain elements of map making that were tedious in the past so it’s been too burdensome to quickly try out fun new ideas for maps. With our new map editor this is a problem of the past and we are excited to show off some pretty dramatically different map ideas at this month’s play test
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Patch Notes - v0.5.7
Read moreWe have a lot of exciting updates this month! Read the following paragraphs for details or jump to the bottom for a short bullet list summary.
In this patch, the animation queue got a lot of love! Now all movement and forced movement types have their own animations! Several characters have special Drag animations now, and Sayyora even has a Jumping animation. This also comes with improvements to the directions that pawns face. Everything is looking smooth
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Patch Notes - v0.5.6
Read moreHey folks we’ve got an update chocked full of goodies for you this week. You can read more about the high-level big new features below or skip to the bulleted lists below.
Meet Sayyora, the newest addition to the Constelleum cast! She is a traveling prosthetist who gains a “Rambling” resource with each space she moves on the field. This resource counter affects when and how she can collect orbs and score, and also enhances several of her cards. She was inspired by the Rambler prototype character, but she is fully unique with reworked mechanics and full art/vfx. She is still movement focused with exceptional positioning options, but her “Rambling” status resource management is now much more interactive and will remain an
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Developer Log 8
Read moreCleaning up the Lobby
This week I’m reporting in for Alex who has been hard at work on our new lobby system. This new system is going to provide a number of great benefits for our development pipeline as well as the future player base.
As a small development team we rarely have
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Developer Log 7
Read moreStill Here
It has been a loooong time since we posted our original dev blog articles as an experiment about a year ago. At the time we were still fledgling and figuring out where we wanted to take Constelleum. And the good news is that our lack of posts was because we had our heads down working hard to bring our game to life. Now that we are getting close
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Developer Log 6
Read moreSandbox
This week I implemented a Sandbox mode in our game client. This allows us (and any player) to run the game locally and test cards and mechanics against dummy players. To accompany this, I also made a new map with clusters of obstacles. Here’s how it looks:
This project was particularly valuable to us because it makes testing significantly easier. Before this, to test any card, we had to
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Developer Log 5
Read moreAnimation
This week Dev-Level animations were completed for the first three characters, Adrenaline, Flow, and The Elemantalist replacing Juggernaut, Grappler, and Archer.
These are our first non-placeholder characters (though how they look will certainly improve.) These characters are why this game idea excited me so much when Mitch first proposed it. Each character has a completely unique
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Developer Log 4
Read moreBugs and Bugs and Bugs, Oh My!
Our first playtest in mid-April revealed nasty bugs already present in our still simple game. Players reported crashes when viewing their own hands on other player’s turns, starting positions were determined based on connection order instead of team (“A feature” says Mitch), and attacks that were not meant to deal damage could be buffed to deal damage. The bugs were fantastic to see and fascinating to squash, because they drew us deeper into the very powerful Godot engine
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Developer Log 3 - Part II
Read moreCard UI Goes to the Spa
A fun project I tackled this week was updating our card layout and UI. In our game, the cards pose an interesting design challenge because there are two opposing forces driving them. On one hand, our cards need to have a broad and expressive language to enable rich and complex strategies. But on the other hand, cards are a fundamental component of our gameplay and therefore they need to be easily understandable and concise.
Cards right now consist of an initiative value, a title, and a list of actions. We have a special action type called SelectTile which encompasses all user input (ie target selection, path selection for moving, and orientation selection for area of effect). We chain actions together by passing targets
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Developer Log 3 - Part I
Read moreFrom Version to Version
This past week the team switched over to the next version of the game, V5 to V6, so this felt like an opportune time to share a bit of our process. I can’t say it’s anything special, but it works for us so on some level that just means it works.
The first step is our roadmap. A while back we created a list of rough grain features
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Developer Log 2
Read moreAnimation: When Push Comes to Shove
Time to get things moving. This week we attacked the first pass on animations, not letting ourselves sit on idle hands.
Before animation, the game state was updated as soon as a turn ended. For players not taking their turn, characters popped from point to point and swung an axe without moving a muscle. Fantastic material for theater of the mind, but a hint as to why your character is halfway to defeat is usually appreciated. You want to see fists fly, boots scoot, and heads bob.
During
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Developer Log 1 - Part II
Read moreStarting Positions and Where to Find Them
One thing I worked on this week was adding a new game phase for players to select their starting positions. Previously, starting positions existed in a predefined list, and they were assigned to players on a first-come-first-serve basis upon character selection. When you started the game, you were placed somewhere on the field with no explanation—maybe near friends and maybe near foes.
Our new implementation is to instead define an area of possible starting positions by team, then have players choose their individual starting positions from this area. This allows more control, more visibility, and a new element of strategy.
The starting position draft phase begins when everyone has selected their characters. All possible starting positions are sent to everyone, and players must decide where in a highlighted area they want to pick. Clicking / keyboard-navigating to a tile will move your character icon to the tile both locally and for all teammates. (This was the first place in our server with an RPC to all players on one team and not the other; progress!) Here is a screenshot of this process
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Developer Log 1 - Part I
Read moreThe Big Picture
We recently asked for some help with narrowing down our name choice for the game. We asked friends, family, and the DayKnight community to take a short survey and with 20 responses these were the results
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