The Age of Decadence December Update: Beta in January

The important part of the latest monthly update for The Age of Decadence is the announcement of a release date for the beta build of the title: January 19th. The team apparently considered releasing the build in December, but decided to wait a little further and polish the build, which means that, unfortunately, the game won’t get an update this month. On the plus side, we get an inside look at Iron Tower Studio’s design process:

So step 1 I write the faction questlines. It takes a while. For Ganezzar we needed 4 guilds: the Imperial Guards, assassins, thieves, and merchants. Plus 3 praetors: a praetor serving House Daratan who did not ruin House Aurelian, a Daratan praetor who did, and a praetor serving House Aurelian (they all have different paths to follow). Plus the main quest and key side quests (like the power armor quest). Overall, that’s 24 quests right there. Usually, it takes about 3-4 days per quest. When the quests are written, I enter them into the database, do ‘˜basic’ scripting that allows us to run through dialogues, and pass them to Oscar who is our artist/designer.

While I’m busy writing, Oscar is busy putting locations together, while Nick, Ivan, and Mazin are working on programming tasks (for example, now Nick is working on the power armor, which is a very unique item that requires its own interface), extra animations, and 2D art (portraits, icons, the aforementioned interface, quick concept art, etc). It takes about 4-5 days to fully implement a quest, so overall that’s ((3-4)+(4-5)) x 24 = 168-216 days right there (5-7 months) just to do the basic implementation.

Step 2 the first draft:

When we have the first drafts of both the locations and the quests, we put them together, add ‘˜advanced’ scripting (usually checking events and variables) that allows us to run through and jump between the questlines, and see what we got there.

Basically, there is a difference between quests ‘˜on paper’ and an in-game questlines. Sometimes the difference is minor and can be disregarded (i.e. ‘˜sure, it can be tweaked here and there but overall it’s ok’), sometimes it’s not and you have to go back to the drawing board.

So, after debating it back and forth we decided that everything looks good except for the merchant guild’s questline’s flow. The first quest (technically, the 7th quest) was quite good but required being sent all over the place. It was moved to the House Crassus questline as it fits it better. The merchants’ quest in question had to be replaced which is one of the reasons for the delay to January. I finished writing it last night and it’s a fun quest which will require you to perform miracles and dabble in the mysterious arts of faith healing.

Step 3 once the first draft is discussed and approved, we start building it up. The faction questlines are a solid foundation but it takes a lot more work to turn ‘˜a place where quests take place’ into a city with its own atmosphere. It needs:

– side quests
– flavor characters to talk to
– ‘˜diaries’, messages, flavor text (various descriptions)
– various intros and endings
– expanded conversations with main characters
– new quest options that become clear after you play through several times