Fog of War, Character Sheets, and the road to beta.
10 months ago – Tue, Jul 11, 2023 at 12:01:49 PM

Hello adventurers! Today’s update is based from our last tavern hall.  

But before we dive into it, I just want to add a brief personal message, thanks for all the well wishes while I was down during the last update. I am for the most part recovered, and back to working on this wonderful project. – Alejandro / !Nox

So, what many of you are surely wondering about, how is the beta coming along? We are still working hard on transitioning multiplayer SDKs (the SDK we were working with was deprecated). There is still no fixed date on when the beta will be coming out, but rest assured we are hard at work in bringing our taverns and dungeons online. Expect more details on this process for the next update.

Meet the Team: During the stream we also introduced some of the members of our team, talking about who is working on 3d modeling, character sheets, animations, fog of war, networking, asset optimization / integration, and more. Feel free to check out the 40 minute stream on Twitch.

Fog of War

The star of our latest update was the Fog of War system, traditional fog of war methods are basically a darkened layer between the camera and the world. When it came to our fog of war needs, we had to find a solution that worked from any perspective, be it top down, at an angle, or from a first person perspective.

While its still a work in progress, we are happy with the direction the fog of war system is taking.

Fog of war will be completely optional, true line is a more immersive experience, but gameplay mechanics that come along with Fog of War can be useful to some GMs / tables. As always, we aim to give our players the flexibility to play and run their games, their way. 

The fog of war system will be a tool that the GM can customize to fit their needs. When the fog of war is enabled the GM will be able to tell what players can see, while still having a clear view of the map.

Character Sheet Creator

During the stream we also covered the character sheet creator, it allows players to build character sheet templates, or grab an existing template and fill it out. The character sheet creator has logic nodes that will allow power users to dive in and create some custom automation. 

While we did cover more of this system on stream, we will be diving into it in a future post featuring how it integrates to the chat system and other online tools.

Upcoming Assets Survey

Finally, we went over the latest assets that we have brought into QuestHaven, including more knights, castles, vikings, and feudal Japan themes. Our next asset pack to work on will be more involved than usual, we went over the complications of these two asset packs on stream. We are running a survey on our Discord as to which asset pack our asset team should integrate next.

We would love to hear from you on Discord.

A challenging month. (personal message)
11 months ago – Mon, May 22, 2023 at 03:19:31 PM

Hello everyone, this is going to be a bit of a more personal message from myself (Alejandro / !Nox). I’ve been debating whether to share this here and eventually decided for it as my personal health affects this project.

May was off to a great start, I participated in Game Dev Guild, an online conference where I had the opportunity to talk shop with other developers and give a talk about some of the optimization approaches, we are taking with QuestHaven given its user generated nature. Unfortunately, a bit after the conference I injured my back.

I was hospitalized and bed ridden for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been taking it one day at a time, focusing on getting better. At this point I’ve been through physiotherapy and can walk again. Being on my own two feet feels like an incredible win!

In a few weeks’ time I am expecting to make a full recovery, all be it with some changes to my habits. The main concern over these weeks when it comes to QuestHaven is the fact that I can’t really sit down to code for hours at a time, I've now set up a standing desk which helps! That being said, I’m by no means anywhere near 100% productivity, and I believe its going to be 2-3 weeks until I’m fully back in the game.

Now back to QuestHaven! The good news is that the team has been able to pick up some of my slack. The character sheet system that we showed on our last stream has made some significant advances.  And Israel (one of our developers) has been leveling up his skills big time, tackling all the networking code needed for multiplayer.

All in all, this month’s events have been a setback, but rest assured we are working to build this game for all of you who supported the project.

The journey so far, and new features to come!
about 1 year ago – Mon, Mar 20, 2023 at 01:13:43 PM

The Journey so far

Since the Kickstarter we have been focusing our development on improving our world builder. From overhauling our UI, to reworking our object placement system. We’ve also added thousands of pieces for you to place in your maps! As we keep growing the amount of objects in the world builder, we've found that we need to work on a better system to more conveniently search and sort through all these parts. 

We had originally planned on adding close to 3,500 assets by release and are excited see this side of the project advancing ahead of schedule. So far, we’ve added 5,500 objects for you to place in your game, with 600 of them coming from the latest patch!

Speaking of the latest patch, we released World Builder Alpha 1.01 last week. Here are some of its highlights:

World Builder Alpha 1.01

We've started to add color variants to many of the objects inside of QuestHaven, this will remain an ongoing process, expect more variations for objects that didn't get them this patch.

We've added some much needed functionality to the room creator, you can now select what floor and wall you want to place.

As we move forward with development and work towards the beta, we are working on refining our player tools. We've updated the figure movement system for PC.

The road ahead

We wanted to share this visual representation of our roadmap. Its split into 6 core sections of development:

• World Builder
• Art
• Player Tools
• GM Tools
• Backend Servers (Data)
• Multiplayer (Gameplay)

As you can observe above we have focused most of our development so far on the Art, World Builder, and backend servers. We have recently shifted focus to working on game master tools, player tools, and multiplayer as we build towards beta.

Character Sheet Creator

Early on in our project we decided to have QuestHaven be rule agnostic, allowing you to play any system or homebrew within our platform. Because of this we are making a character sheet creator that allows you to create templates.

In template creation mode you can create a character sheet from scratch. You get to decide where to place stat boxes and different types of input fields. Of course, we will allow players to share templates. Below is an early prototype of this functionality:

Once you have a template, you can then fill it out as you would any other character sheet.

Are we getting closer to Beta?

As our development team works on different aspects of QuestHaven we are getting closer to beta. 

We are currently in the process of switching networking solutions, which ties into many tools, like dice rolling, player movement, music, and much more. While we are hesitant to give an exact date, we are pushing ourselves for late April. 

Beta will be PC and PCVR, as there is still a lot of optimization that we need to work on for a smooth standalone experience. As for PCVR we've transitioned to using OpenXR, so you should be able to run it on a number of headsets!

As always, we welcome you to join us on Discord »

New features are live! World Builder Early Access
about 1 year ago – Wed, Feb 01, 2023 at 04:36:21 PM

A lot has happened since update #20 when we announced that the world builder early access was live! During December we focused on your feedback regarding bugs, quality of life changes, feature requests, and more. We're very thankful to our community for being with us through this journey. 

Throughout January we've been working on a number of features, including a new object placement system. 

Previously you would drag and drop each individual piece, you could still place multiple pieces by using Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V while using the magnetic tool. The new object placer instead allows users to click and place object continuously. 

We noticed many of you were frustrated by unintentionally moving objects  with the magnetic tool, since alpha launch we've introduced a selection tool and set it as default, no more moving walls and floors by accident.

New map selector: but we wanted to also highlight the new map selection screen. When saving a map it will take a screenshot of what you're looking at to use as a preview for your world.

A few of the other features we've worked this past month:

• User Input system refactor, we now have key bindings :)
• 3 new map sizes
• A number of performance optimizations (we still need to do a lot more of this)
• UI Bug fixes
• Working on reducing keywords / tags for objects. 

PS: Yesterday we released our new OST made by one of you! You can also find it as the background music in our tavern. 

Next update will include another major system and new models! 

As always, we'd like to invite everyone onto our Discord

QuestHaven - WorldBuilder Alpha is live!
over 1 year ago – Sat, Dec 10, 2022 at 05:01:36 PM

Good news, the world builder's early access alpha is live! Keys have been sent out via Backertkit to backers with the Pioneer tier or above.

Create your account by clicking log in at playquesthaven.com where you can download the launcher to redeem your key.

Expect there to be plenty of bugs, and please join our Discord community to help report them!