TAR 3-Year Development Anniversary Update news

Hello everyone! Today marks our 3rd year anniversary of developing The Arcane Relics! Wow, already 3 years… We certainly underestimated the amount of time needed to get this game to where it is, but we’ve learned a lot and continue to surprise ourselves by what we’re able to accomplish. This past year we’ve managed to release the 1st public demo and are getting closer to the next update. This update will include an overview of changes since last year, as well as what we've been up to the last few weeks or so. First up, a year to this day-

We’ve made a lot of improvements since last November. Some notables:
(Some of these images may look familiar.)

• Dalwood has grown in size:

• New Zombie-infested Catacombs area:

• Revised magic system:

• Day/night cycle improvements: moon, stars, sky colors, clouds-

• Hefting unconscious characters:

• AI Improvements: simple Town Guards, pathing for Villagers, & NPCs capable of opening doors
• Crossroads (yet to be revealed)
• Increased movement speeds
• Control changes: Attack buttons & sprint button change
• Revised Party setup: characters can be created right in there
• Crossroads Directional Signs: helps locating areas
• Loading screen changes: radial loading bar, target scene/location name, spinny sword icon, & more message variations
• Updated most object cursor common name displays (bottom-right)
• Sprint FOV zoom
• Texture improvements/changes (environment, items, UVs)
• Look sensitivities dropped
• NPC dialog improvements
• Scene transitions besides warp portals
• Additional skill group: Trades
• More items: Helms/Hats, Weapons, Gems, Magic Catalysts
• Few more spells & additional spell effects
• Hit lean animations & hit block animations
• Left-hand attack improvements: uses directional attacks, offhand does less damage
• More settings
• "Butt-load" of bug fixes

In public demo, but not present a year ago:

• Upper Town
• Additional plants: Blueberries, Strawberries, Rosemary, Sage, Parsley, Thyme
• Town buildings:
  • Chicken Keeper’s house
  • Clothier
  • Inn
  • Botanical Shop
• No NPCs in Town (just an angry mob & bats)
• No sleep jingle
• Cursor highlighter system: used to swap materials…

This is not a complete list, either.

Another main focus has been rebuilding and cleaning up old code and models. Since you can learn a lot in 3 years, we have found the need to revisit or, at least, clean up/improve some systems & graphics that were started near the beginning of development. The tricky bugs/issues seem to crop up in the stuff you haven’t looked at in a while.

This last week Jon primarily returned to working on the party setup, trying to improve the usability of the menus and fixing bugs with creating characters. He also improved the device query (“Waiting for input…”). Joining on a controller should be much more responsive now.

I worked on making the newest buildings into prefabs (optimizing & polishing) & made lily pad hats and cattail props.

Unity Tip: Jon also discovered builtin API in Unity for capturing a screenshot!

ScreenCapture.CaptureScreenshot("Screenshot.png");


Maybe we won’t have lots of crazy cropped screenshot resolutions in the future… :)

Continuing work from previous weeks, Dalwood has grown in size. Now there’s a transition to the forest from a scene other than the Town.

Alas, currently the forest doesn’t quite have the magical feel I’d hoped for… Therefore in the next version, one of the things I want/plan to do is to overhaul/redo the trees (particularly the oak & maple), making them taller & larger (adding variations, and some unique trees & roots). This, among other things planned, might do the trick. ;)

• Homestead Window: I finally got the window encased. It is operable, as seen in the gif below-

• Shop Ledgers: a nice aesthetic addition to shops.

• [Fixed] Faster tree climbing (holding the sprint button) now consumes more stamina than normal climbing.
• In the Loading Screen, click-to-continue changes color when input is sensed.

• Horses can now trample/damage characters that you run into or jump on top of. WIP.
• Dialog improvements, adding more NPC types and more variations.
• You can no longer talk to aggravated NPCs. Previously, villagers who had a target could be talked to (even when attacking you).
• AI pathing improvements: for one, if a target cannot be reached on the NavMesh, a nearby position is sampled.
• Swapped some inputs to be sensed or occur on press/down instead of release, in order to make them more responsive.
• Started redoing/improving the tunics (including chainmail ones, reducing crunching/etc).
• Fixed some animation issues with spell casting.
• Added a “Remove Player” button to in-game menu/settings.
• Fixed: doors and windows no longer open/close on scene start.
• Edited credits & its appearance.

We’re still working away and are still aiming to release the next version before the end of the year. Hang in there! :)