Vince

There's coverage and there's coverage. For example, for EA launch we hired a small marketing agency and they sent out a bunch of nice press-releases and contacted every YTer in their database. Three months later they did a targeted push for the gaming media. The results were poor - a few sites reposted the press-release which did nothing (no sales spike or wishlist spike), but no major previews or impressions. We emailed them too, of course, everyone who covered AoD. Didn't get a single reply. Most YT videos do very little (or nothing at all). Splattercat's videos work well and always generate a spike rivalling summer sale events. Mortismal's videos don't have the same effect. No spike from Warlockracy either despite 258k views. Not sure why. Maybe different audience. We contacted a lot of YTers ourselves including Sseth and Mando. They didn't say no but didn't say yes either, so a weak maybe down the road.

No money, no marketing. And no, a press-kit won't make any difference. Or a press-release that nobody reads. To do well, one needs: - a proper marketing campaign (need at a least 100k) - media love and attention, goes hand-in-hand with a large marketing budget - big name Youtubers - Steam's front page It won't make any difference either. No idea why they're charging money for it. We certainly don't sell press-kits

Full changelog: Improvements - Added Custom Difficulty options, you can now pick and choose which bonuses you want, plus new middle points for several of them. - Added ship events to the "Taking the Lander" ending slides. - Added an epilogue to the "Landing the Ship" ending slides. - Added Chapter slides. Interface - Added follow and focus camera options. - Implemented game speed options, they can be set for combat/stealth and enemies and player's turns. - Added Always Run as an option (enabled by default). You can disable it and characters will walk around (Shift+Click for run). - You can now switch between small and big inventory grids in the options menu. - Increased inventory scroll speed. - Increased size of several fonts. - Standarized arm armor icons. - Added icons for damaged/old versions of some items. - Improved help screen. - Improved feedback on which training is being given. - Improved camera position in several events. - Tweaked dialogue screen. - Missing pieces are listed on Romeo when repairing it. - On leaving the factory and the habitat, the quests that will auto-resolve is listed. Changes - Artful Dodger: Evasion +12. 30% of hits are converted to grazes, 70% to misses (from 50/50). Removed under 13 HP bonus. This will lower the very high graze chances in the late game against high evasion builds. - Minimum graze chance increased by 5. - Spitter: Increased attack damage, lowered accuracy. - Adjusted armor stats for better progression. - Adjusted loot progression for better inventory management. - Tweaked some item prices that didn't correlate to the item strength. - Leaving the poison in the security room no longer triggers combat. - You can now use another character for sneaking towards the armory door. Your main character will participate as well, and both characters need to reach the exit zone. - Stealing the card in the church habitat is now steal 7, better loot in the apartment. Warning: Old saves will have the text as 6. - Fanning AP lowered by 1. - Added more options to use the initiative bonus. Fixes - Fixed slots in inventory screen at 4:3 resolutions. - Fixed buying items for 0 credits with Master Trader. - Fixed armory gang being alive when you killed everyone in stealth and reached the door. - Fixed pistolero premade character granting free stat and skill points. - Fixed being able to remove companion personal items by drag and drop. - Fixed missing door collision on mind worms combat in MC. - Fixed missing sounds on some doors and interactions. - Fixed issue with clicking the first character in stealth selection with a party of 4. - Fixed potential issue after Braxton/Mercy fight.

New update with a bunch of screens (work in progress): http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,7703.0.html

Ultimately, your XP gain = Enemy's HP x Difficulty Modifier, so it doesn't matter if you kill the enemy quickly, in 2-3 hits or shots, or take your time. As for Strength: "Strength increases *max* melee damage by 1 per stat point (from -2 to +4), so if a melee weapon’s range is 4-10 and you have STR 8, then your damage range is 4-12, not 6-12 the way it works in most games, including AoD. If your STR is 4, then your damage range is 4-8. Thus STR gives you potential damage you may or may not roll rather than guaranteed +X to whatever you roll. Before you start complaining, high STR unlocks a feat reducing your attack speed with two-handed weapons, so it’s not a dump stat." Using AoD as an example, you can have a heavy fighter who hits once with a two-hander for 11-14 points of damage (power attack with a two-hander) and miss 2-3 out of 5 attacks on average or a fast fighter who'd hit 3 times for 3-6 points of damage (9-18 points of damage per turn) and miss 0-1 out of 5 attacks. Well... imagine fighting Antidas in his palace (the third IG quest); imagine doing nothing for 2 turns to farm XPs. Odds are, by the time you're done farming, half of your team will be dead and the battle will be lost. 1. Can't save in combat. Anyway, the idea - as always - is to keep combat challenging. By the time the fight is over, after 3-4 reloads, you should be happy that your party is still alive somehow, not thinking of doing it again to gain extra 10xp. Not planned.

Among other things. I rarely check the refund data (reasons given when people ask for refund) because it's a fairly depressing read. Here is a recent sample:

Fair enough.

It's not bad but it's more fitting for a No Man's Sky type game where you hop from planet to planet. What do you think about Born Beneath No Sun? It didn't score very high on our forums but we're looking at the results across the board, including the Codex: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/the-great-renaming-poll-2.123764/ Colony Ship is the winner so far. It's plain and uninspiring but it tells you what the game is about in very clear terms. Such plain and uninspiring titles often worked very well and even made iconic brands (not that making brands is our goal here), like Aliens, for example, or Platoon.

The only thing in common is the format (X of Y) as pilgrims and orphans hit very different notes. Ours drew parallel with Mayflower's pilgrims, the puritans who left the old world to practice their own brand of crazy in the new world. They aren't orphans of the old world, they are professional assholes. http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-seed/ However, the name got a very mixed reaction, as way many people associate the word pilgrims with travelers to Mecca or as someone said, "I still don't really care for Pilgrims. At least to someone of my generation, they are basically childish because your first, and last, engagement with them is in the context of school pageants and shit from ages 5 to 8. They are like the Easter Bunny or something." We'll still consider it but I doubt we'll go with it.

Pretty much. The biggest mistake we can do is aim for too many features, so I'd rather add them slowly. In Dungeon Rats we added a Charisma-driven party system with XP split between the party members. In The New World we're adding a stealth system and grenades modifying the battlefield's conditions rather than doing direct damage. In the 'Inquisition game' we'll add a magic system and add more complexity to the dialogue system.

I liked Elex a lot (and sandbox games in general, from Daggerfall (one of my all time favorites) and Gothic 2 to Jeff Vogel's Avernum games, but for some reason I've never thought of making one. Thus, I don't really think of what features to 'borrow' there. Plus I look at everything through the prism of what we can actually do (since we're a small team - not a lot). For example, I'd love to have destructible environments from Silent Storm, but we can't and so I don't think too much about it. Loved that engine though. What a marvel. Fantastic animations, the best I've ever seen. Anyway, overall, I'm fairly conservative. Rather than looking for cool, new features I want to focus on 3 things and do them as best as we can, hopefully improving with every game: - tactical TB combat - good dialogues (writing, branches, less restrictive checks - we don't want to let you do anything you want but we don't want it to feel like guesswork either) - interesting quests with multiple solutions and consequences My ambitions go no further. PS. One game that did make me think that it would be cool to make something like this was Battle Brothers. Brilliant concept, great foundation to build on.

It's a good idea, but animations aren't my area of expertise, so I'll leave the decision to Ivan. In general, yes, it would be nice to have different animations for different skill levels corresponding to beginner, skilled, expert.

Well, not exactly on the demo but on the combat system, armor models and animations, the starting town, etc. When the combat system and all the assets are done, we'll package it into a combat demo and release to get some feedback.

We're aiming to release a combat demo by the end of the year. Full demo - 6 months after. The dialogue system will be the same as in AoD. PS. Some female animations: Before anyone asks, many characters have datajacks so shaved sides are fairly common:

We post monthly updates but most of them are about the gameworld. Like the Monks: http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,7551.0.html The animations are still work in progress. We posted them to show what to expect. The "nano-gun" effect is temporary. The animations have already been updated to reduce the recoil (old vs new, side by side for comparison):

It was sold in stores and overall was very well received by the hardcore crowd: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=95 Even GameSpot and IGN praised it and gave it 8/10, calling it a turn-based tactical treasure: https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/silent-storm-review/1900-6087043/ http://ca.ign.com/articles/2004/01/28/silent-storm-review-2

My point is that we can't hire him to work full time. All we can do is what other small studios are doing - hire him to write a couple of characters or quests, which is nothing but a marketing gimmick. Basically you pay him for the right to use his name and claim that Avellone worked on your game. We do discuss everything but via email, which, in my opinion, is a much better way (it's turn-based!) as it gives you time to think and consider your response. If I come up with a "bright idea", I don't call up a meeting to announce the change of direction. First I ask the person directly affected (like the animator, for example) whether or not it's doable. If it is, I submit my proposal to the rest of the team. If they like it, great. If they don't, we discuss their concerns, trying to address them. If we can't, then the idea is discarded. And attack types. For example, aimed attack: head will set the graze range to 5 (i.e. very low) but increase the critical range by 10. If you have a scoped rifle, it will give you a bonus to your "aimed THC" (but not any other THC) and a further bonus to your critical range. Alternatively, a "one-handed" SMG will have a very high graze range, which will go even higher if you switch to Long Burst, making it nearly impossible to miss at close range.

Our design goals: http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,7120.0.html From another update: As I’ve mentioned earlier, the CSG is a party-based game and the party dynamics will be one of the areas we’ll focus on. There will be 12 potential companions (max party size is 4) filling different roles: psychotic paranoia, racial superiority, religious intolerance (works best when mixed with homicidal tendencies), political idealism, and other delightful personality quirks. In other words, the party members won’t be loyal and obedient slaves but will have their own beliefs, agendas, and personality traits (or in some cases, programming). To give you an idea, here is a quick overview of the top four gunmen who might be persuaded to join you (keep in mind that men of violence are rarely well adjusted individuals): The Gunfighter – an unstable and somewhat paranoid (which is why he’s still alive) gun for hire. He doesn’t care which side he’s fighting for as long as he gets paid. He doesn’t have much patience for diplomacy or long winded conversations, and if he gets a bad feeling he goes for his guns. Being paranoid, he gets bad feelings a lot, so unless you like shooting your way in and out, consider getting someone else. Holding out on him might give him the wrong ideas about the partnership. Other than that he’s a great guy to be around. The Preacher – a man of God dedicated to saving sinners’ immortal souls but showing a callous disregard for their mortal bodies. He’ll join you if you join the Church of the Elect to make sure you deliver what you promised and keep you from having second thoughts. He won’t act against the Church’s interests and won’t tolerate your lack of faith, should you ever display it (he would find it very disturbing). Once he’s in your party, you either do what he says or you kill him, which will displease the Church greatly. You might think it’s a bit harsh but religious fanatics rarely make great traveling companions and joining the Church is more than a cosmetic choice. The Colonel – a former officer of the Protectors of the Mission, makes the best damn fried chicken on the ship. He failed the Mission one time too many and had to switch sides in order to avoid honorable death by firing squad of his peers. The Protectors want him dead more than ever and tried to kill him several times, so he’s well motivated to help you, should you side with the Brotherhood. Then again, he’s equally well motivated to fuck you over if it ends the “misunderstanding” with the Protectors and restores him to his rank and privileges afforded by it. The Wastelander – a rather antisocial mutant who makes a living exploring the damaged areas of the ship and stripping them of anything valuable. Sort of the ‘mountain man’ of the ship. He had a falling out with the Covenant, so now he bears a special hatred for all religious folks, including the Church. Religion is the only topic that can get him all worked up, so don’t take him places where someone might ask if you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior. He will leave you if you join a faction, but if you’re a “burn it to the ground” kinda guy, the Wastelander is your man.

More screens (wip): http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,7255.0.html

Most likely. I'm happy with it but we have 4-6 weeks until release and the build is updated on a daily basis with new tweaks and improvements. If Oscar and Mazin decide to tweak the interface again, I won't stop them.

We toned it down

The game is almost done. It's fully playable from start to finish and all the content is in. It will be released in Oct or Nov at the latest. Edit: on the subject of development and different aspects. First, you need an engine, but that's not even half the battle. It seems like something until you have it and realize that it's nothing. You need the systems (character, combat, inventory, crafting, alchemy, dialogue, journal, pathfinding, AI, etc) - that's years of work, and the main assets (animations, items, icons). You have the systems and the assets - you can put together a combat game with light storytelling, which is what we did. To make a game like AoD you need tons of quests with multiple solutions, parallel, interwoven questlines, plus hundreds of thousands words, enough for 3 books, to go with it. It took us a year and a half to put together a town (quests, scripting, and testing taking at least 70%). In comparison, making a combat game is a relatively easy affair. It took us 5 months to put together the arena demo. It took us 10 months to put together this dungeon crawler.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I hope that AoD shows that we don't have a habit of promising more than we can deliver. In general though, I think it's fairly easy to script the above mentioned interactions as it's not a new feature, but a feature that's always been done half way. The way I see it, all attempts to breathe some life into party members always fell short because the party is one of the main RPG conventions, a toy that must never ever be taken away from the player. The party members can say what they want when you talk to then, they can even participate in conversations with other NPCs, but when you're "questing", you lead and they follow without question, ready to back you up no matter what. You make all decisions, they stay silent and indifferent. Even if they say something like "did we really have to burn down that orphanage?", you say something and they happily move on. On rare occasions a party member can leave the party, but it never really affects you as you just tell another tool to take his place. That's what we want to change. I'm talking about combining what we did in AoD (tons of choices at every step) with the party members having opinions and agendas that interfere with your ability to do as you please. In other words, the consequences will be instant and reloading to avoid the negative outcome will force you to make a different non-cosmetic choice (that might have lasting consequences).

Absorbing the alien essence changes you and gives you a different 'perspective'. Regardless of what you once were, you are no longer human, which is a very significant change. Keep in mind that while the ritual is described from your perspective, the ending text is "written" by your priests two hundred years later, who aren't very reliable narrators as they weren't there to witness what actually happened. You don't know how everyone reacted to you when you returned to the cities, looking like a freak. Etc.

In a shocking twist of events we moved from "it's just, like, my opinion, man" to "my opinion is an objective fact and as such is beyond contestation". Well played.