A few days ago I briefly explained why development halted on Sovereign. Now I would like to showcase in detail the state of development that was reached as I deep-dive back into the project, practically for the first time in years.
Obviously there are a host of different topics to cover: The engine, the story, the art, NPCs and monsters, the world, items, charaters and their spells and skills… As well as the different modules, combat, crafting, quests, levelling, and the tools I developed to put them all together. All of these have varying degrees of completion.
Let’s take a quick look at each of these things and estimate how far along they’ve come.
Engine
While the Sovereign engine is built on the one that produced Underworld, the scope of the new project made a few changes necessary.
There are many more interactions and events. In Underworld I was able to plan the bulk in advance and use a more basic tool to integrate them all. Few changes were necessary afterwards, which is a good thing because adding content mid game made things messy.
The Sovereign event builder (NPCs and quests) anticipates adding and changing content later while keeping things tidy.
That also makes for a completely different save system, which complicates rebuilding Underworld with the new engine. I’d really like to do that and have both games on the same level but forcing everyone to start over doesn’t seem viable, and making a save converter… Well that’s possible but there’s no room for error. It doesn’t add anything from the player’s perspective so it probably isn’t a risk I am going to take.
I also wanted to rebuild the engine with GMS2 for various reasons and ended up giving up on it for now. I might end up doing that at the end of development. There are reasons for doing this I can get into when the time comes. The current engine works, so this isn’t a priority.
Story
The story is a continuation of Underworld’s, which hints at a larger world and a root cause to the conflict: the Second Blight.
This implies there was a first one, and there was. That’s because there is a prequel that preceded Underworld that few have ever heard of before. My first effort at making a game, a single-player (no party, just one character) RPG called Swords and Sorcery – Peregrine’s Song. It’ll burn your eyes and bleed your ears but it contains elements of the story that carried over to Underworld and will again in Sovereign. Maybe I’ll make it available again… Or remake it someday…
When I announced a release date way back then the story was still just a pile of notes in a binder and I was in the process of integrating it using my “state of the art” event manager mentioned above. Sadly, the story is still, for the most part, just a big pile of notes.
Now that I’m rereading this material, obviously I can’t resist making a few adjustments. It has to be perfect.
World
Peregrine’s Song took place in the large island that includes Daguerre and Solstice. Underworld introduced Highnest, Moltenore and Sylvaad. Sovereign adds the rest of the Known World all around it.
Obviously there is the surface world, A-H x 1-6, or 48 maps. The system merges these into one large map so you can fly accross in under a minute (once you’ve learned to fly that is).
That’s a bit over a quarter of the actual world. Cities, dungeons, caverns, an underwater world and a few more intricacies take the count to 185 as of today, and I’ll almost certainly add a few more.
Art
There’s art for environment walls and decorations, dozens of NPCs, 195 monsters, dozens of fullscreen story illustrations, chests, locks, alarms, levers…
There is lots to work with but I’ll need to conduct a thorough review to list the few assets I might still be missing.
Many of these were showcased in the latest teaser (along with flight):
Character Development
In Underworld characters learned skills and spells at fixed levels (à la MM1 and MM2). There were up to three slots in the combat menu for active skills.
The archer, for instance learned burst (three simultaneous shots) and Arrowstorm. The rogue filled those three slots with Stun, Bleed and Assassinate (they only appear if the rogue is in stealth).
Sovereign keeps the same idea, only you actively learn the skills (purchase, quest rewards etc) given you have the required Knowledge Points to invest, and are still limited to three.
The skill list will continue evolving, and as of now they involve hard coding.
Classes
Sovereign introduces two new classes, Hunter and Druid, which brings the total to eight: Knight, Paladin, Archer, Rogue, Priest, Sorecerer, Hunter, Druid.
Druids start with basic knowledge of three of the four schools (elemental, psychic and light) of magic, whereas priests and sorcerers specialize on just one (Light and Elemental respectively), but can opt to learn others along the way.
Hunters have bonuses against beasts and also have access to skills unavailable to the archer.
Much of this still requires integration. Conception isn’t completely final.
Magic
As mentioned previously, there are four schools of magic. The three mentioned above (elemental, psychic and light) and the one that needs considerable work to unlock: Necromancy.
Unlocking Necro may or may not be necessary to complete the main questline. Not gonna tell.
Each school of magic has categories containing frour spells.
- Elemental: Fire, Water, Air and Earth (who woulda thunk it?).
- Light: Body, Blood, Inquisition, Divine.
- Illusion: Vison, Body, Mind, Spirit.
- Necromancy: Arcane, Unlife, Demon, Power.
Each school also has a fifth category called Higher Magic (formerly Synergy). Access to those spells requires mastery of the four others. Only then can you learn those juicy spells!
So, lots of going around chasing down grimoires that you can only learn if you’ve saved the appropriate amount of Knowledge Points (optionally gained when levelling, at the expense of attribute points… Choices!)
Grimoires are reuseable, so multiple characters can unlock a school, category or spell from one book acquisition. Thankfully there’s a new type of store called a bank that you can safely stash them in.
Stores
Speaking of banks, there are two new types of stores in Sovereign. Banks are one, and the other is libraries.
Banks
Stash whatever you want to keep safe but don’t need on your current journey. Books, gold, or items of any kind.
Libraries
You’ll find a few basic spells and skills there, but their main purpose is lore. You can opt to delve into that by purchasing books from them. They’ll also buy those back, as well as books you’ll find exploring or questing.
Some may give useful clues. It’s not just poolside reading for the summer!
Naturally, by books I mean a few pages of text. Like the goblin engineer’s diary in Underworld. That’s a fun one. You should play Underworld, find and (U)se that book to read it!
Combat
Combat remains the same as it was in Underworld. I haven’t pondered it too much and might get around to making a few changes but for now, the only real difference is that the three active skills will be selected by the player as opportunities to learn them present themselves, as mentioned above (Skills). Also, the spell pool is much larger.
Monsters
195 monsters and not a single vampire bat to be found anywhere. That’s just to say I may still add a few more.
Most of the encounters will be scripted. There’s some RNG in determining what group will pop up (based on location, not party level) as well as some leeway for how many of each monster appears in the enemy group. In Underworld, such encounters were common but there were also many random encounters. I’m almost certainly going the MM1 route on Sovereign: few random encounters.
Much of the world is still unpopulated, but the event builder covers that pretty quickly as well.
I’ve been pondering fleshing out the monsters a bit more. In Underworld, Monsters have 0-2 abilities. They lack a mana pool, so they can repeat their attacks unhindered while characters cannot. Giving them a mana pool also gives casters the opportunity to drain mana to replenish their own… Which is already one of the new spells…
Yeah, duh. I have to add mana pools for mobs.
NPCs
Sovereign counts 136 small size NPCs and a few more represented full screen. They do typical NPC tasks: sell, teach, give quests and drive the story elements forward. Much of this work still lies in the form of piles of notes.
This is where most of the remaining tasks lie: finalizing the NPCs and integrating them, along with the quests. Thankfully the event tool makes that pretty handy as well.
Quests
In Underworld when you get a quest it is added to a simple list. It works because it is a much smaller game. In Sovereign the quests are grouped by the geography of the quest giver. They’re also color coded to determine feasibility. Then there’s tracking of the quest’s current advancement if it contains more than one component (list of things to find or kill or talk to).
The system is pretty much complete, but there’s a lot of data entry in my near future. Also the content isn’t set in stone yet.
Items
I’m trying to keep that to a reasonable minimum. The current total is… in the hundreds, but still evolving, especially with the gestation of…
Crafting
Crafting gives opportunities for extra content (finding the recipes) and it’s fun. But not MMO-style crafting. Learning by making dozens of the same items, trying to optimize your route using online ressources to max level faster and cheaper… No thank you.
Crafting in Sovereign is still only in my head. Zero implementation as of yet I’m afraid. Aside from the crafting icon, which I may end up moving somewhere eslse and/or replacing anyway.
Factions
I like the idea of factions… Sort of. Not nearly as much as crafting. In MMOs they’re an excuse to have you grind reputations endlessly. That’s not what I’ll do here. Actually I’m not sure I’ll go through with it. I haven’t given it enough thought to determine if it is worthwhile.
Tools
Much of the game content is entered via an external files generator. It handles maps, loot, monsters and NPC/quests. The event maker was the Underworld version and is now defunct.
I’ve had requests for modding tools and I honestly don’t know yet. A lot of aspects of content are still hard coded (item effects, skills, spells…). The current generator is still too limited.
It’ll also need reasonable visual attractiveness and (much) better ergonomy.
So What Now?
I am not going to announce a release date for a while. Last time I did I focused on Iron Ruler a bit, convinced I’d then get Sovereign done in a couple months. Years later I’ve made next to no progress. If you missed the lame excuses post it’s there for now. I’ll probably delete it at some point.
Now I’ll work slow and steady and publish updates. With a chart for quick visual progress monitoring!
You’ll see this chart again in future entries of State of Sovereign (nice name for a series!) with longer green lines (the part that shows progress since the last version will be blue). Once they all reach 100, given I haven’t left anything out… All done! (Ready for testing).
Thank you for your interest, support, and patience!
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