Trials of Ascension Exile 
Save
Exile .15 Patch NotesApr 6, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsGreetings players! I’ve got a few new changes for both beginners and veterans to have fun with! Read below to see some fixes and some new features! Fixes: • Mortar and Pestle and Shovel are officially added to be crafted! Check your workbench and human crafting window! New features • The first part of a magic system has been implemented! Can you tame the energies of TerVarus? Read below for more info • Double the resources for double the fun! We have increased the spawn rate of all types of resources! Get molting, building, and other things twice as fast now! Magic! Tame the elements of TerVarus by reaching out to an energy to attune yourself to it, then to capture it! In order to even see the elements though you’ll need to craft special rings which you can find in the forge! Get your crafting on as you’ll need nuggets and special gems to craft a ring to contain the magics in the land!Exile is back online!Dec 16, 2019 - Community AnnouncementsAs always I don’t want to over-promise, I’d rather over-deliver. Straight to the good news, everyone, Exile is back online! Also, for a limited time, Exile will be on sale for $8.99 starting December 17 before moving to a permanent price of $9.99! And those that have already purchased Exile will not have to purchase it again-you're free to play it already! After emails, Discord DMs and message ravens, I’ve had more feedback than expected about Exile and I hear you all loud and clear. Those who bought or wishlisted Exile want the game brought back online, post haste. I’ve made some time to do just that and am hosting a master server. With that said, the news is bitter-sweet as the future development of Exile is still going to be touch and go while I focus on Trials of Ascension, though if continued support and requests continue I’ll place more focus on Exile. All purchases of Exile will be used to help fund Trials of Ascension until such time I can put more focus back on Exile, however again, if more interest is shown in Exile I will put greater emphasis and money into Exile. For information on the progress of Trials of Ascension, join the Discord channel, follow on Twitter and Facebook, and keep an eye on the website as news will be posted there. Thank you and see you soon in TerVarus! Open Letter to the Purchasers of Trials of Ascension: ExileDec 6, 2019 - Community AnnouncementsHi All, I’m Parthuin, the owner of Dragonfire Entertainment and the new holder of the Trials of Ascension intellectual property rights. I’ve written, re-written and written again this letter and after a lot of thought, I decided it’s best to be honest and somewhat blunt. Over the past two decades, Trials of Ascension has changed from an idea to a game in development, then that development was canceled. The project was resurrected, altered, compromised and yet again canceled. Reasons for those changes and eventual demise of the original Trials of Ascension are many and beyond the scope of intent for this letter with the initial founders of the project selling the IP to me with heavy hearts. With that short history and explanation, I want to rip the band-aid off about Exile. The development of the game will resume at some point if there is sufficient demand. Those of you who bought the game are rightfully disappointed, upset, angry or a combination of. I do WANT to continue the development of Exile in earnest for all of you, to a point the game is as close to bug-free and stable as possible, however, I cannot say when that time will be. It may be in a week, month, or 6 months, but I don’t want to make promises I cannot keep, so I will not say the game will never be developed again, but for now, my attention is best utilized elsewhere. However, some internal testing has taken place and it isn't totally out of the question that the servers themselves for Exile may come back up and those that purchased it will be able to play again. This isn't guaranteed, so again, I won't promise that Exile will come back up, but it's a possibility in the future. If it does come up in the future though then the revenue from Exile will be used to further the development of Trials of Ascension. All is not lost, though! I didn’t acquire the rights to Trials of Ascension to sit by and do nothing, quite the contrary. We have decided to focus on some of the original intentions set for the game, a multiplayer game with 3 initial races that all play very differently in a world full of lore crafted over many years by some very creative people. Some of those who crafted the lore were even fans of the game spanning back over those two decades. It wouldn’t be moral to scrap all of the love and dedication to start fresh with only my own ideas, because I’m a fan too! In fact, Trials of Ascension is already in a state of a late prototype with an early Alpha just around the corner! The reason we were able to get a working prototype so quickly is that the original game we at Dragonfire Entertainment started on, an ambitious multiplayer game called Dragons of Ramrys, was halted when we learned that ToA was in trouble so we could figure out how to help. Some of the underlying framework and great knowledge gained from that initial project are instead being used to bring TerVarus to life. I’m a college-educated programmer working full time on ToA, in-excess 12 hours a day at times. We ha...Ringing in 2019!Feb 5, 2019 - Community Announcementshttps://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/8948b617f1013e528ec60bde438586a8c49b5605.jpg What a rollercoaster 2018 was for us! Just six months ago we Early Access launched ToA: Exile, and it has been an exciting journey since. In that time we have welcomed new team members, parted ways with a few others, and received a great deal of fantastic feedback from our community that has helped us improve the game as well as determine where to focus future development. The team would like to share the departure of two team members with the community. Michael “Dyer3D” Dyer, one of our 3D artists, has decided to start down the hard road of creating his own studio. Meanwhile, one of our programmers Jesse “emrys90” Norris accepted the opportunity to pursue his passion for VR programming. We wish them both the best of luck and thank them for their contributions to the project. Now that they have had a chance to settle in, I am excited to announce our new team members. First is David “KaliGS” Partouche. He joined the team as a programmer and has previously worked on AI at Atari and Frontier Development. We are very excited to have him on the team and David has already made solid contributions to the game’s development. Our second new team member is Corbin Reeves, who filled the position of Game Designer. He teaches game design at a university during the day and spends his evenings reviewing our game design documentation and improving the design. We’re eager to begin implementing several of his changes in the coming months. We’re also looking to expand the team further! If you head over to our Hiring page, we have postings for a C#/Unity programmer, an Environmental Artist, and an Audio Specialist. If you have the skills for the job and think you would be a good fit for our team, you can send your application to [email protected]. During the last two months, a few members of our art team have been busy working on a major upgrade to our customization system. Once all their changes have been fully implemented, players will be able to customize their character at a whole new level. Character height, shoulder, hip, and waist width, and facial characteristics will be customizable for humans. We are still determining what kind of customization we can include for raknar and dragons outside of the basics. Additional steps for the dragon nests have been implemented and are in testing. More bugs have been tested, confirmed, and fixed as well, including the odd one that allowed for tree climbing. Our first goals for 2019 include upgrading Unity to allow for greater native support, implementing several much requested improvements to the user interface, and the continued work on the dragon systems. We also want to make it so that the tutorials are less intrusive, correct some of the inconsistencies with interactions, and move the inventory to a grid system, so that icons won’t overlap anymore. We haven’t forgotten the dragon gameplay imp...Build .12 is Now Live!Oct 23, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsBuild .12 is live and pushed to the official servers. Remember to backup your database if you host a server before you update! As always please report any bugs that slipped through testing in our official forums at: http://trialsofascension.com/forum/forums/bug-reporting.26/ Feedback on the new features and changes are always welcome. Thank you for your support as we continue to grow and improve Trials of Ascension: Exile! Full patch notes can be read at: http://trialsofascension.com/patchnotesBuild 0.12 is in Beta!Oct 2, 2018 - Community Announcementshttps://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/d0eaf20ba2cde4ad5746c01bc0c45d8f3e8dbe3b.jpg The focus of the last two builds was on improving overall gameplay, fixing quality of life issues that rose up, and on laying the groundwork for the dragon improvements we have planned. But since most of that work is very programming-centric, the art team has been working on what they do best; models and animation! They started with new customization options for the raknar and dragons, giving our players more eye and skin colors to choose from when they create a new character. My personal favorite is the green skin for the raknar and the charcoal color for the dragon. I’m still undecided on my favorite eye colors, though onyx does look good with the charcoal. The hatchling animations received a lot of love from the animators in this build, and dragon players will notice the overall improvement when they go to raise their new-colored hatchling. The improvements include adjustments to the digging and swimming animations, the strafing animations, and the falling animation. They should all appear more natural and less twitchy. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/66069f5a8fb70b298cb688d0bf7be21f88d78dc3.jpg Dragons weren’t the only ones to get animation improvements. Both the human and raknar received much needed healing animations. The humans also received a better sleeping animation and nearly a dozen emotes! You can see the complete list in this build’s changelog. The human model received his shoulder fix, and tweaks were made to most of his animations to work with that change, though it is still a work in progress. The walk and run speeds of the Juvenile dragon have been adjusted to better match its size and animations. We’ve also slowed dragons’ max flight speed down, while increasing the Juvenile’s max climb speed while airborne. We think that these changes will give a better feel to flying, and we look forward to hearing your feedback on it! While we’re on the topic of flying, thank you to everyone who reported the bug with the Dragons’ flying ability; we are trying to identify why that ability seems to be having issues while the other dragon abilities are working as intended. As soon as we have a fix for it, we will let you all know! Since raknar webbing was seriously tanking performance, we have introduced a decay mechanic to it. Raknar webbing will now last anywhere from 16 to 48 hours, based on the individual raknar’s Webbing evolution. We have plans to expand on raknar webbing in the future, along with other improvements for their game play once we finish our initial dragon improvements. The new design elements for the dragons are coming along nicely. Though they are not usable yet, new dragon “stations” and items have been added to the game in preparation for the new mechanics. Dragons will also now be limited to a single nest, in preparation for the new nest changes our programme...Forged Chaos is Expanding our Team!Sep 24, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsThe team here at Forged Chaos is looking to expand with two new positions. We are looking for a programmer with experience in C# and is familiar with Unity. We are especially interested in someone who has AI or networking experience. We have also posted a position for a game designer. Their focus will be on adjusting existing game data to improve the play experience and hammer out the details of new features for implementation. You can read further details about these positions on our Hiring page at: http://trialsofascension.com/hiring.Build 0.11 is Now Available for Beta Testing!Aug 24, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsOur latest build is available for beta testing through steam. It will not require a server reset, however you should back up your server database before updating if you plan to switch back and forth between builds! You can read more about this build in our official forums at: http://trialsofascension.com/forum/threads/0-11.10862/Build 0.10b2 is Live!Aug 6, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsWith our first Early Access patch just pushed out as we speak, I thought it would be a good time to go over what it is we have been working on since we launched a little over a week ago. This patch brings many quality-of-life changes for players, along with a very important database update! While I am going to review the biggest additions that are included in this massive patch, there is still more for you to find in it! To view the full change log for this patch, visit our website at: http://trialsofascension.com/patchnotes. The biggest change that players will notice is the new options for death penalties in the game. Dragons have had a death penalty in play since day one, where their molting progress was reset every time they died. It really wasn’t fair that only dragons got death penalties, so we added them to the humans and raknar too. Now when a human dies, they lose the progress toward their next level in their skills, and raknar lose the progress to their next rank of their abilities. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/6f2406b51853d021e02caa9a92632f73e76ba2b0.png And if you prefer to play without death penalties, we have you covered there too! Server hosts can now adjust the death penalties on their servers, and can customize them on a per race basis. Want humans to lose all their progress when they die, but want to make it easier on the defenseless hatchlings? No problem! Run your server the way you want it. The death penalties cause a loss based on a percentage of the maximum required, with Extreme at 100% of maximum progress, Severe at 75%, Moderate at 50%, and Minor at 25%. Again, that is based off the total requirement for that level of skill, ability, or molting; not on the player’s personal progress. Arguably the second biggest change for this patch is a change to our database engine. Our previous one seemed to work well enough, but after our launch we received many reports on file corruption and servers crashing, which we traced back to the database. Because of the stability and corruption issues we felt it was of high importance to get a new database structure in place as quickly as possible. This necessitates the resetting of the servers as they are updated to the new build. We realize that this is upsetting to some people, and we apologize for the inconvenience. We will do our best to avoid server resets in the future, but we are in Early Access and it will happen again eventually. If you feel that is too much to handle, please consider waiting until we fully release before purchasing the game. Server hosts will also notice that the regeneration rates for resources have been removed as server options. Instead all resources will regenerate at a very fast rate, to keep up with player consumption. Server owners can still customize the scarcity or abundance of the plants, animals, and minerals to their liking, which changes the maximum limit of the resource for the island. The fauna also rec...Taking a Look Ahead: What we have planned for ToA: ExileJul 26, 2018 - Community Announcementshttps://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/93f013844504c3c58966a8a74cd57cca72cd3b20.jpg So we have pretty much covered everything that is currently in the game through this article series. At least enough for our followers and those just finding us to get a feel for what the game can offer them at this time in development. But what we have planned for the future is at least as important as what we have already achieved. We’ve updated our website this past week, and along with it we’ve added a new roadmap of what the team wants to achieve before we consider development complete. While it is still a rudimentary list, it does clearly show what we want for ToA: Exile. This list is by no means definitive; more may be added to it over time. But it does include all of our must-haves. Once we have all the details worked out for each new addition we will expand on the smaller steps to achieve our goals. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/289cb3c20476085c8eb3e283a2f1a9749c5b3994.jpg The first section covers characters. We still have three more growth stages to add for the dragons, and the female model for the humans is needed too. Both of those have HUGE resource requirements, so our art team will be kept busy on them for a very long time. We also want to add so much more to customization for the characters. Hairstyles, scale colors, chitin patterns, the list goes on and on. We want everyone to have a good chance of making a character that looks different than the others of its race. Right now all of the characters will spawn at random locations on the beach, but we want to change that so only humans will spawn on the beach. The raknar will then spawn in the caves and the dragons up in the safety of the mountains. This fits nicely into the background story of each race, with the humans washed up on shore, the dragons hatching in the peaks, and the raknar finding their way up from the depths. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/fc858c6b710cd8d1b88e65391c519101604eb11e.jpg Speaking of caves, we want to expand on our underground world. Currently needlefangs will spawn in the caves, but we want a full ecosystem to exist below. This means adding flora and more fauna to the area, and then give reasons for the surface races to seek them out. We also want to beef up combat a bit more. It has always been our goal to have siege warfare in the game so that humans could destroy each other’s structures, and so that the older dragons could also erase humans from their islands. This will require several models and animations, in addition to the supporting mechanics that will need to be programmed into the game. Being made of wood, rustic buildings will take less effort to destroy than the Norhaven. Structures are a big part of human play, so we want to continue to expand on the foundation we have for them. We want to make it so that players can add-on existin...Dragons: From Hatchling to AncientJul 25, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsIn Trials of Ascension: Exile, players get to experience the harrowing and triumphant life of a dragon in its entirety; starting with the humble hatchling and eventually growing into the boss-level ancient. Dragons face their own unique challenges, and their growth in power doesn’t necessarily mean that survival gets any easier for them. If you can overcome the trials of life as a hatchling and beyond, you will be rewarded with the strength of the most powerful character in the game. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/289cb3c20476085c8eb3e283a2f1a9749c5b3994.jpg As the ancient breeding ground of the fire dragons, the Lost Isles are ideally suited for a growing hatchling. Food is plentiful and predators can be avoided if the player is cautious and attentive to their surroundings. The size of a small cat, hatchlings possess few hit points and what little armor they have provides only minimal protection. A well placed attack from nearly any creature will knock them out, and a second guarantees their death. But size isn’t always a draw back. Their small form makes targeting them difficult, even for those intent on exterminating the dragons. A hatchling dragon will spend most of its time eating, collecting nuggets, and constructing its first nest, all while avoiding death. As growing babies, hatchlings have healthy appetites and a large number of grubs are required to keep them from starving to death. To help them along, they have three attacks to utilize; a bite, a claw strike, and a defensive tail sweep. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/dc5af555a07f9ea3bfe71ab7c8562669550813ba.png The key to dragon’s growing to larger sizes is to consume nuggets. Nuggets are rare metals found in the ground, such as copper, silver, and gold. Dragons are naturally attracted to these metals and can smell where enough of the metal is present to form a nugget in the ground. This smell appears as a wavy-air spot over the ground. Dragons become better at sensing the nuggets as they collect them, making finding the nuggets progressively easier. As they consume nuggets, their molting meter fills up, indicating their readiness to molt. Once the molting meter reaches 75%, the dragon begins to develop molting sickness, as its body begins to grow uncomfortably tight in its scaly skin. This causes the dragon to take additional damage and slowly increases its effect until the molting meter is completely full. The only way to remove this effect is to go forward with the molt. All ages of dragons develop molting sickness, and the effects of it grow worse as the dragon grows larger. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/7db0743a1013edfe573de831c3c8752a9ca56d83.jpg In addition to being a requirement to molting, dragon nests serve other functions as well. They can store inventory in them as a bank, which cannot be accessed by anyone else. They also perform as a resp...The Evolution of the RaknarJul 24, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsRaknar are a species of giant arachnids. Though they are similar to spiders, they lack pedipalps and their front limbs have adapted over time into specialized striking weapons, aptly named Strikers. They are a predatory species and voracious hunters, feeding on anything that they can capture or kill. They were driven underground centuries ago by ancient humans with the aid of fire. Trapped in the caves beneath TerVarus, they adapted to their merciless prison and sought out a way to return to the surface. Now that they have emerged they are ready to renew the hunt of their ancient enemies. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/1d3005a018dfd159d4f237168c58468c3eec9e15.png Players will find that raknar start with all their natural abilities unlocked and ready to begin hunting the creatures of the Lost Isle, and any other players they find along the way. The raknar’s primary attack is their strikers, which are controlled with the left and right mouse buttons by default. In addition to physical attacks, raknar are able to lay down layers of webbing to slow anything that might enter the strands. The raknar can move over the webbing without any impediment, allowing it to effectively trap an area and drive their targets into the webbing and to their doom. Webbing can be laid on the ground or attached to another surface to span a gap, allowing these arachnids to create raknar-only paths between two points. Injured raknar are also able to use their webbing to heal their injuries. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/765ea75c2bcf8cebc4a47e063b03e6aee3366cb5.jpg Raknar are ambush predators and as such their stamina drains very fast while sprinting. Fortunately their 8 limbs provide above average speeds for their basic movement. Their multiple sets of legs also allow them to traverse a multitude of terrains, including those that are inaccessible by the other races. This includes vertical surfaces like walls and inverted ones such as ceilings, both of which can be found in the caves under the island. They are especially well adapted to the caves, having access to a special night-vision that allows them to see in even the deepest reaches of the tunnels. Egg laying is how raknar establish their respawn locations. They are able to lay an egg on any surface they can climb every 15 minutes. They can have multiple eggs in the world at once, but when they respawn at one after dying, it consumes the egg and a new one must be placed at that location if the player wishes to use it again. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/8b1c3a3e5f19a06d8c4db2c390ec016d53aa6e22.jpg Evolution is the key to raknar progression. They can evolve their carapace to increase their armor, their strikers to increase their attack power, their webbing to improve their production and strength, their metabolism to improve their sprinting efficiency, and their size to improve their hi...How to Train your Human: Skills and DisciplinesJul 23, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsHuman progression is handled through our skill system. There are currently twenty-four skills across four categories; combat, crafting, gathering, and survival. As you probably guessed, the combat skills deal with various types of weapons, the crafting skills are associated with specific trades, gathering skills include harvesting resources from the surroundings, and survival skills encompass aspects of basic survival. Humans begin the game with zero mastery with all the skills and they earn experience for a skill by performing a related action. Each time they rank up a skill, the tasks related to that skill become more successful. This is especially true for crafting skills, where increased skill lowers the overall crafting difficulty of the related items. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/d9d082521c0dd653d593aad2dc5875ad3c2bc134.jpg As humans earn ranks in their skills they are awarded skill points, which can be used to increase the related Disciplines for the skill. Disciplines allow the player to choose how their skill is improved. For example, the running skill has two disciplines: Speed and Endurance. Speed increases how fast the character moves while running, while Endurance reduces the amount of stamina drained each second while running. They both may result in similar outcomes (reaching the other side of the island faster than without a discipline), but there are situational differences. If you find yourself running away from enemies, the extra speed may allow you to break line-of-sight to hide. Meanwhile the reduced stamina cost of running would mean you would not need to stop to rest while chasing down a fleeing Sabretusk. The player can invest up to ten skill points into a discipline, and the more skill points that a player invests, the greater the benefit becomes for them. This is based on exponential growth, so though the first skill point will not be very noticeable, the payoff of the 10th skill point is appreciably larger than the 9th. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/f2b704505680260b6d67dbcd7c877c225b615968.jpg Players can continue to earn ranks in a skill until they have fully mastered all available disciplines. The more disciplines available to a skill, the faster it will improve. That being said, the more ranks a skill has, the more difficult it becomes to improve it, so players should choose their disciplines wisely. There are many more skills we want to add to the game for humans as we continue to add content, such as fishing, tracking, and mace combat. What kinds of skills would you like to see for humans? Share with us in the comments below! Made from Scratch: Crafting and ConstructionJul 22, 2018 - Community Announcementshttps://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/454c2b92e3df250fadcf8fdfd0a496eebb9574d3.jpg Unlike the raknar and dragons, humans start the game without any weapons or armor. Using resources they gather from the terrain and plants, they can craft various tools, items, and equipment that they will need to survive on their new home. While the bestial races will be able to craft and construct a few things for themselves, they don’t require equipment and so we will focus on how crafting and structures are used by the humans. The crafting process starts with gathering resources from the terrain. This includes raw stone from boulders, logs from trees, sticks from bushes, sand from the beach, skins from animals, and so on. Primitive items, like rope and stone tools, can be crafted without other tools or stations, but more advanced tools, like iron blades or leather armor, will need them. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/c70bd1649cb9f1079cf264f974e774988b12e670.jpg We tried to follow the general steps that a craftsman in the real world would need to follow with our items are made in the game. For example, iron is harvested as ore from boulders, then purified and refined using a bloomery or a smelter into an iron ingot. From there it can be cast into a mold or forged into an item. Items made from clay can be dried and fired to increase their durability, just as in real-life. In other cases, like with leather, we went with a process that made sense to us even if it wasn’t true to life. In ToA: Exile, leather starts with a skin off of an animal. It is then stretched on a stretching rack to make rawhide. After that it goes into the tanning vat and comes out as leather. For humans, the chance of successfully crafting an item is tied directly to the related skill. So crafting metal objects improves the Blacksmithing skill, which then improves your odds of successfully crafting more difficult metal objects. We will cover skills in depth for tomorrow’s article, but it is important to note the relationship when crafting. In addition to skill improvement, players can choose to improve their crafting technique for specific items. Choosing to do this will increase the overall difficulty of making the item, but it will allow you to make better versions of the item after that. When cooking a piece of meat, you can improve your temperature and preservation techniques, and they will make the resulting edible food more filling and last longer before expiring, respectively. Nearly every usable item can be improved with a related technique and some items have multiple. Going hand-in-hand with crafting is the building of structures. Humans get access to the drafting table station, which allows them to design and customize buildings within a 3D space, like a CAD program. It allows you to zoom in, out, and rotate around the model to get a better view. Exterior walls, interior walls, windows, doors, stairs...Combat is a Balancing ActJul 20, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsWhen it comes to combat in Trials of Ascension: Exile, we’ve aimed for a realistic feel and pacing, so that most fights will not end within just a few seconds. We do not have hit-chance, auto-attack, or auto-avoidance variables in the game. Instead, we use real-time on-demand attacks that the player controls with their mouse-buttons. Attack success requires the weapon hit box to collide with the character’s hit box. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/8b1c3a3e5f19a06d8c4db2c390ec016d53aa6e22.jpg Where the weapon strikes also matters, as the character's body is made up of several parts, each with their own armor rating based on the equipment of the character. Feet are protected by boots, legs are protected with pants, hands with gloves, and the arms and torso guarded by the shirt or chestpiece. Players also need to protect the heads of their characters, as critical hits are more likely to occur here than anywhere else on the body. Just as attacking is completely in the control of the player, avoidance as well. To dodge an incoming attack, the player must move the character out of the arch of the attack swing. Blocking and parrying an attack means holding your weapon or shield out in intercept an incoming attack. This also means that your weapon takes the damage instead of your character, decreasing its durability. In the case of the raknar, blocking is best used for protecting their heads, but damage is still dealt to them. Dragons do not have a means to block. There are three resources that players need to monitor during combat, and they are all represented on the HUD. The heart represents the player's hit points. Hit points represent the amount of damage the character can tolerate before falling unconscious or dying. The lungs represent the character's stamina, which is spent with each attack, jump, sprint, and slowly drains when blocking. If there is not enough stamina remaining to perform an action, it will not occur. Stamina slowly recovers over time, provided the character is not currently blocking. Its function is to limit the amount of action that the character can perform in a short amount of time. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/36b0b768b0bcbe3c629b4f58d2ebfd2abab84b4f.png Finally there is balance, represented by the foot. Balance represents the stance or footing the character has, and is quickly spent and rapidly recovered. Low balance will not prevent action the way low stamina can, but it does impact both the amount of damage received and the amount of damage dealt. Spamming attacks will keep your balance low and ensure that they remain weak, while carefully timing your attacks will allow you to maximize their impact and prevent unnecessary HP loss. In addition to resources and collision detection, there are other factors in combat to consider. All races can perform a heavy version of their attacks at a higher stamina and balance cost. There are also s...Making Death Matter; Why we offer perma-deathJul 19, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsDeath is is a fairly common feature in video games. It is ubiquitous in RPGs, adventure games, tabletop games, MMOs, fighting games, shooters; it’s the universal punishment for failing to keep your character’s life above zero. It is the impact that death has on the player that varies from game to game. Some treat it as a resource-sink and minor inconvenience; it damages your equipment so that you must spend your hard-earned currency to repair it or you respawn away from where your character died and have to start back at the beginning of the dungeon/map. Other games swing to a harsher consequence with inventory loss, so that you must recover your original body to regain your equipment and possessions, or even progression loss. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/7119fcf30a19fb2ad0968a28d2e029ee844334d0.jpg For Trials of Ascension: Exile we wanted death to be something that players would avoid at all costs, so we looked to the more brutal side of the spectrum. We use a combination of inventory loss, limited progression loss (for dragons), random respawn locations, and life counters to encourage players to play purposefully. Like green 1up mushrooms and pink bottled fairies, life counters are lost each time the character dies. Unlike them, the player cannot earn more and when they run out the character permanently dies. We believe that Perma-death is one of those features that can really impact how gamers play their characters, and any other death-penalties are minor in light of the possibility of losing a character forever. It is our experience that players take less risks, are less likely to randomly attack others, and tend to play more constructively when their value the longevity of their character. Perma-death also has other, less apparent, benefits. In so many multiplayer games, players never have an ending to their story. By giving the character a finite number of deaths, their story has both a beginning and an ending. This closure gives the player the opportunity to try something new with their next character. It also prevents the traditional “End-Game” stagnation that happens when every character reaches the pinnacle of their potential and waits around for new content to consume. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/19c5b8c57fad6260b70e7d314de4f895e0ec48a8.jpg The most important aspect of Perma-death for us is how it cycles the power-dynamic of the game. Should a player become too powerful and then terrorizes the rest of a server, the weaker characters can topple their tormentor by overwhelming their remaining life counters. For example, if a dragon should reach adult and decide to make life difficult for a nearby settlement of humans, the humans can hunt the dragon down and kill it enough times to eliminate the threat. As good as we think Perma-death is, we also recognize that not everyone feels the same way about it. Some players become emotionally attached to...Designing Conflict and CompetitionJul 18, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsMany games offer campaign stories or quest lines to immerse the player and help them to feel connected to the game world, but the result is that every player experiences the game in nearly the same way. The really good stories, the ones that players share with their friends and tell over and over again, are the ones that the players spontaneously create for themselves. Sometimes these are the result of cooperation by the players to overcome challenges, but just as often it is a result of conflict and/or competition. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/7119fcf30a19fb2ad0968a28d2e029ee844334d0.jpg Competition occurs in game environments that offer performance-based rewards or control of non-infinite resources to the players. Conflict arises from competition when players disagree on the allotment of such rewards and resources. How competition and conflict manifest in a game depends heavily on how the studio designs their game. Offering up faction-wide bonuses or special titles are both great ways of encouraging players to complete with one another. PvP servers can empower players to resolve or deepen their conflicts with more than just their words. When we were designing Trials of Ascension: Exile, we wanted to create a game where the players were naturally inclined to compete with one another and points of conflict would occur organically. It is one thing to say that the races all hate one another and provide stories to support it, but it is an entirely different matter to convince the players that extinction of their enemies is in their best interest and not a kumbaya-circle around a campfire. So we brainstormed ways to encourage conflict between the humans, raknar, and dragons. The first way we employed was to encourage PvP through different means. We made it so that character bodies provided resources to others, including food. This means that dragons and raknar can eat each other and the humans, while humans can harvest crafting materials and meat from dragons and raknar. We even hope to include crafting recipes that specifically require raknar or dragon components in the future. Players can also loot the inventory of other characters if they knock them unconscious or kill them out right. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/8b1c3a3e5f19a06d8c4db2c390ec016d53aa6e22.jpg But food is plentiful in ToA: Exile if you know where to look for it, and by itself was only a weak encouragement for PvP. We took a closer look at the mechanics of each race to see how we could tie them in with the needs of the other races. For example, Raknar thrive in the cave environment with their wall-walking ability and night-vision, so we added better mineral resources inside the caves to encourage dragons and humans to willingly enter their domain. Since dragons need nuggets for both their racial abilities and to molt to their next growth stage, finding ways to tie this rare resource in with t...Less is More: How Removing Elements Adds to the GameJul 17, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsAt first glance, some people might think that our game is missing several features that players have come to expect in modern video games. As standard as these elements are, we believe that leaving them out actually adds to the gaming experience. Map/Minimap - You won’t find a miniature map hovering in the corner of your screen in ToA: Exile, nor can you press a key to bring up a screen that displays where you have already explored and where you are currently standing. By removing these tools from the players, we force them to really look at the world around them to determine their location. The sun, moon, and stars all move through the sky, allowing the player to orient themselves to the cardinal directions. Landmarks become vital for longer expeditions from base camp; choose poorly and a player will quickly find themselves lost. Even getting lost can be its own adventure, as the player explores their surroundings and searches for what is familiar again. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/454c2b92e3df250fadcf8fdfd0a496eebb9574d3.jpg HUD - Though not eliminated completely, we’ve done our best to reduce the Heads-Up Display to the very minimum possible; only the most important information remains on the screen. Whenever possible, we’ve chosen to relay information to the player using audio and screen effects instead of bars or icons. We believe that this makes for a more immersive gaming experience as the player receives multiple forms of feedback and they don’t need to change their focus to monitor their stats. Global Chat and Whispers - There aren’t any global chat channels or private whispers in ToA: Exile. Instead, players are given area-based chat functions to communicate. The default speaking option has a range of about 10 ft, while the /shout (/s) easily doubles that. Using /whisper is best for those standing next to you, but anyone within a few feet will overhear your conversation. While we do understand that friends and cooperative groups will will use VOIP to communicate outside the game, we felt that the feeling of isolation that comes with being alone helped to deepen the player’s immersion. Enemy Information - Many games spoon-feed the player information about the difficulty of the enemies they encounter, such as with levels, colors, and skulls. This meta-game knowledge prevents the player from learning through their own unique experiences in the world and breaks immersion. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/1d3005a018dfd159d4f237168c58468c3eec9e15.png Character Names - A character’s name does not appear over their head by default in ToA: Exile. In fact, the name of every character is hidden from other players unless they choose to utilize the “/intro” command to introduce themselves. Even then, they can lie about who they are if they so choose. Players can also choose to overwrite the name given and rename a character to whatever they wish. This can be h...Build 0.9b2 - A Hot Fix, And More...Jul 16, 2018 - Community AnnouncementsHey Everyone! We've noticed an issue where young and juvenile dragons couldn't interact with anything. We consider that a game breaker for dragons so we've put out a hot fix. We're piggy-backing a few extra tidbits into the update as well, most of which stems from feedback from our testers and streamers. Keep that awesome feedback coming! ~~~ Fixed - not being able to harvest things as a young or juvenile dragon. Fixed - caves being too dark for even creatures with night vision. Fixed - crafting unfired clay brick not giving empty mug back Fixed - footsteps not playing if holding a torch. Fixed - deer animation twitching during sleep and unconscious loops. Fixed - characters thinking they are in cave which affected sounds and visual settings. Fixed - unfired clay mug trying an error when trying to fill it. Addressed scrollbar inconsistencies in the UIs. Volume of the intro music has been turned down. Adjusted all arrow types to allow for a more consistent velocity. Adjusted audio radius curve of ocean to smooth volulme change based on distance from the ocean. Made multiple adjustments to the Bullder stats.Welcome to the Lost Isle: Flora, Fauna, Terrain, and WeatherJul 16, 2018 - Community Announcementshttps://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/3be5c2a3bf0c773ad56427bfa6e8be8f0aae26ff.jpg Whether you play as a shipwrecked human fleeing from the mainland invasion, a exploratory raknar separated from the Hive, or a newly hatched dragon struggling to survive, your story will unfold on the first of our islands; the Lost Isle. Roughly 3km2 in size, the Lost Isle is a temperate forest biome rich in all manner of flora and fauna. There is also an abundant supply of mineral sources such as iron and stone, along with trace amounts of copper, silver, and gold. Occasional rainfall ensures that the local plant life is productive and constantly growing. The warm days and cooler nights make this island an ideal paradise for all three races. Both rain and thunderstorms occasionally occur on this island, impacting the temperature and visibility conditions. Seeking shelter can help to keep your character at their optimum condition, but it can make survival difficult if you are caught unprepared. In addition to the various grasses, there are eight types of trees, six types of shrubbery, and six types of herbaceous plants currently in the game. All of these can be harvested for resources, or cleared out to make room for whatever the players have in mind. Many of them are food sources for the fauna of the isle and some are even edible for humans. But be careful, as some are poisonous and can negatively impact your character if consumed. Flora on the island dynamically spawns and expands in a natural manner if left to its own devices. It will spread, live, and die in a natural manner. Most plant-based resources regenerate on their own, though a few do require the destruction of the plant to harvest. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33188050/b077c4e21451ca9bba48d6482e0f647c8d6b8cff.jpg There are currently eight species of animals that can be found on the Lost Isle. Each plays a role within the ecosystem and provides different resources to the players. Our AI uses a variety of variables to determine the behavior of the wildlife, including hunger, thirst, tiredness, predator/prey, and if they are territorial or not. This can lead to some interesting scenarios such as encountering a sabretusk defending its territory from the evisceraptor trying to eat it, then running away when it becomes too injured. Some resources can be gathered directly from the terrain itself, and that includes dirt, sand, grass, and a few types of water. Others spawn as objects on the terrain, such as rocks and seashells. Ore and clay can both be harvested from the boulders that dot the landscape. Underneath the terrain of the Lost Isle is a cave system that spans the length of the island. Though it is as dark as night, the boulders found below are rich in the rarer resources. Life exists here as well, with some flora and fauna spawning in the nooks and crannies of the stone caverns. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/...
Show Comments
