Songs of Conquest - Map Editor Update

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Written by ValH on December 21st, 2022

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Last month, the developers over at Lavapotion have put together an early access update for Songs of Conquest that added a random map generator to the game. But now, the game's latest update focuses on the actual map editor for those of you who prefer handmade maps. It also fixes some miscellaneous issues, updates the UI, and more.

Here are the patch notes:

Hello Wielders!

Today we are releasing an update containing a little bit of everything. We are about half way through adding lots of new unit abilities, and you can expect them to come early next year. So, a lot of the work done during the last few weeks is not really visible in this update, but one thing definitely is: the new map editor! To celebrate this release we’ve asked a few questions to our UI designer and Art Director, Christian. If you have any questions for him, don’t be shy to ask in the comments!

If you are looking for the Release notes only, simply scroll to the bottom.

Tell us a little bit about yourself please!

– My name is Christian Knutsson – UI and visual design is primarily my thing on this project. If you want to know more about me there’s actually an old dev spotlight of me when I was a freelancer back in 2020: https://www.lavapotion.com/blog/2020/6/25/developer-spotlight-christian-knutsson (the text still holds up, but the artwork and assets have come a long way)

Why did you overhaul the visuals of the map editor?

– The visual update was more of a result of that we wanted to make it visually a part of the Songs of Conquest game and experience. The Map editor is first and foremost a tool, but we also want the map creator to feel that they are in the Songs of Conquest world while creating. The biggest and most important part for me was to make a UX (user experience) overhaul, to make it a better editor from an interface perspective, how do we layout the tools, how do we categories the panels and make all the properties clearer to understand. The Map editor is something we use internally to create our own maps and entire campaigns so it has been great to make it something that we are also proud to release externally and have everyone be able to create maps for the game.

What are the main differences in this released version, vs. the old one?

– I think the first thing you will notice is of course the new UI, with the Songs of Conquest colors, typography, icons and other graphical UI-elements. But the new layout of tools and properties is what makes the biggest difference. We have tried to follow standards and best practices of where to place elements to lower the cognitive load for a new user. Which basically means that things like the file menu, the tools menu, the draw tools, properties panel and the status bar are all placed similar to what you would find in Google Slides, Adobe Photoshop or similar creative software. Then we have used our visual style to create a clearer visual hierarchy that should guide the map creator in making beautiful and fun maps.

Is there any design element you are extra proud of?

– I love the color palette and the typography of Songs of Conquest so it was really fun to be able to create a new interface based on those elements. I needed to expand the dark-red/blue/purple color palette (titled “Plum”-color by Robin) but otherwise I created very few new elements for the map editor. So I’m extra proud that we could build the updated UI using the game assets and style we already had established. However, one feature I really like in the new Map editor is something that Patrik added when he rewrote the menu system. I was working on the UX and UI, while Patrik was rewriting map editor code, fixing bugs and doing updates all over the place he added the Focus view mode. This will remove as much of the UI as possible and focus the screen area to the map. And if you turn off all the map gizmos you will almost get a clean fullscreen view of the map you are creating. I also need to mention another thing that is not a design element, and that is the the random map generation. It can be hard to start with a blank canvas and when you create a new map you can choose to use random map generation as a base – this is extremely fun to play with and makes getting started so much easier.

Can we expect more updates for the map editor?

– This release is what we call a “Map editor UX/UI update”, we have been focusing on taking the old map editor and making it more beautiful and easier to use. We have fixed bugs, rewritten a few underlying systems and mostly rearranged and redesigned the UI. Even though it has been internally tested during our development I’m looking forward to having more people use it and help us improve it further. And of course we have a list of features we would like to add and there’s always things we would like to polish. So yes, 2023 will see more updates for the map editor.

That’s all for this update folks! Lot’s more to come during next year, including an updated roadmap (we know the current one is slightly off mark by now, but we’ll get to that soon enough!). Have a great Holiday and see you soon!

[...]

Changelog v0.80

Additions

• Battlegrounds can now be played hotseat
• Added Buildings and Research to Codex
• Added ability for Sappers and Artificers to select which adjacent hex they want to place their palisades/mines on

Notable bugfixes

• Fixed issues with animations and positioning on troops hit by Faey Fire ability
• Fixed threat level calculations often vastly overestimating a Wielder’s spell casting ability
• Fixed confirm popup position when disbanding troops with large HUD
• Fixed issue that caused modded random map blueprints to throw an exception
• Fixed issue causing exception on some dialogue triggers
• Fixed issue when multiple players in a simultaneous turns game tried to initiate battle at the same time

Gameplay changes

• Dead wielders now drop a chest containing all their lost equipment instead of each piece of equipment separately

Map editor

• Map editor has seen a major update in UX and UI
• Map editor will be localized to all available languages, however that work is still in progress

UI

• Added (dead) suffix to dead player names in team queue HUD
• Show spell name and icon in battle when opponents cast spell
• Hide leave lobby button while game hosting is in progress
• Show troop income in town tooltip even if current amount in pool is 0
• Show “out of movement” notification if trying to pillage without any moves left
• Added new centered notification type used for major notifications, such as when player enter/exit battle in simturns
• Updated world color when an opponent is in battle during simturns
• Random events can now be closed with ESC
• Added info about rounds left for a construction in town tooltips
• Enabled double click on skill buttons in level up menu
• Validate if spells have valid targets and update button state and tooltip
• Allow loading saves from within battles
• Move occupy details into a tooltip instead of the mini menu
• Added cost to troop tooltips in build menu
• Codex main navigation bar has been changed from text to icons to accommodate more options
• Update minimap (and the ping) to be more responsive when enemy wielders are walking
• Fixed graphical glitch causing the furthest battle water to look weird

Multiplayer

• Once again allow a single computer to join multiple teams in online games
• Fixed online game being softlocked if a player disconnects while fighting an AI team on the AI’s turn

Battle

• Fixed graphical glitch causing the furthest battle water to look weird

AI Adventure

• Fix underlying check for troop inventory that made the AI think it had room for troops when it did not
• Generic fix for AI to avoid broken portals

AI Battle

• Fixed AI troops too often choosing to use the Aim ability over shooting
• Fixed AI troops not attacking and clearing blocking map entities
• Made Hellroar cannons more likely to attack rather than wait for better opportunities

Random Map Generator

• Fixed spawn issue for regions resulting in players being isolated from each other
• Win conditions can now be specified in layouts using eg. “win_conditions” : [“Beacons”]
• Win and lose texts can now be specified in layouts using “win_text” and “lose_text”
• Optimizations

Known Issues

• Sim-turns is at version 0.1
• Co-Op (Teams) is at version 0.1
• All traits and abilities for troops are not yet implemented

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