Book of Travels; The Legacy, the Present and the Future
about 3 years ago – Thu, May 25, 2023 at 07:16:10 AM

Greetings Khelim!

Since our last community update, our team has expanded quite a bit, and we have been hard at work on many different parts of the game. As you all know, there have been technical challenges for us to overcome, and we’re slowly but steadily reaching a point where our work is not just happening on a systems and tools level that is mostly out of sight to our players, but where we can actively put out new gameplay content, and expand the world of Braided Shore.

We are now at a point where we have a wonderfully diverse team of engineers, artists, writers, user experience, level and audio designers, and this has enabled us to work on many features and events in parallel. For now, we will focus on the work that’s been done in recent months, but know that you’ll get to know more members of our team soon!

We have put a lot of work into our backend, development tools, and improving the game performance overall. This work has enabled us to finally inch our way to opening the gates to not only Kasa, but other new areas in Braided Shore as well. Right this moment, there are ways to sneak into the locked city, and as the mysteries of Kasa develop, you will find new stories to pursue, and new areas to explore. There are both technical and narrative reasons as to why we’re rolling out the city in these “chapters”, but we’re confident that the slow burn will be worth it, and we hope that you’ll find the new adventures rewarding.

Before we get into some of the other features being worked on, we have a note from the narrative team:

Greetings from the scholars of Braided Shore!

Kasa is a city with a long history. With parts stretching beyond even the Asken Folk’s arrival on Braided Shore. Even though parts of its history happened many ages ago, it can still be felt in her inhabitants and current events. A dire incident has recently closed down the city, and has impacted not just the ones stuck outside, but also the ones trapped within the city walls.

With the helpful recent addition of a new Quest and Flag system, we now have a lot more tools to work with in order to design more reactive, varied and branching events. With these new tools we have been hard at work, writing and designing events and quests for the recent addition of Kasa and beyond!

Just the Old Town district of Kasa has currently surpassed the Event count of the town of Crossings, with more being worked on and added in coming updates. It may take many trips into the locked city to uncover all her secrets and lore. Expect to meet Moonsoakers, Alley Grocers, Visiting Historians and more.

Other parts of Braided Shore have also received new events with new items, along with updates to older ones. A Mystical Gravedigger, an Old Travelling Smith and a Fall Gem Searcher are just a few of the additions and updates to the outside.

To complement the new fishing update that we rolled out a little bit ago, we have also included 20 new fish and fishable creatures to the waters around Braided Shore, with many Prize Catches hidden in certain out-of-the-way locations for the brave and talented Fisher to discover.

-Simon, Narrative Designer

As you can tell from this update, many of the features being worked on overlap in some way. The fishing update ties into a bigger collaborative effort to introduce cooking to the game. This work is not limited to only the cooking itself, but includes a complex system of recipes that are culturally significant to the inhabitants of Braided Shore, as well as inventory updates to support the feature.

Similarly, many disciplines have come together to design an in-game journal. Since many of the Book of Travels developers are also active players of the game, we’re well acquainted with the habit of keeping a notebook on your desk as you play, to take notes on both areas that you’ve explored and interactions you’ve had on your travels. Our goal is to create a journal in-game, and that we can update it with new features overtime, so that you have proper in-game tools to chronicle your journey.

But wait, there’s more! (we say, as if we were a peddler found at the outskirts of Crossings, trying to trade you overpriced umbrellas on a sunny day)

For the past couple of sprint cycles, we have been able to focus on combat once more. It’s a long process of reviewing what we already have, redesigning some of it, and creating completely new animations and ways of fighting. It is also very rewarding work, though, and it’s bringing us one step closer to finalising the vision that we set out with back in 2019.

We’re very excited to show you the things we’ve been working on during the first half of the year, and as we get closer to releasing these completely new features for the game, you can expect in-depth looks at them, both through updates such as this, and videos.

Until next time, take care, fellow travellers, and may your tea never grow cold.

Best wishes,
Eira & the team at Might and Delight

The Difference Between Features and Content
over 3 years ago – Sat, Dec 17, 2022 at 09:01:23 AM

One of the frustrations often expressed is “new content when?”. As our community knows, we have spent several months looking at the tech in use in the game, rebuilding systems etc to hopefully improve the general stability and performance of the game (we are aware some people still have an FPS drop). As we have been doing this we have continued to work on new content but we have not yet shown that new Content. To this end we feel its worth taking a look at exactly what is meant by “Content” and what we have been doing.

The DLC Plan:

During our Kickstarter we released a Roadmap which included different Downloadable Content packs and the order they would be released in. With this map you now get some ideas of what areas of the game world we will release in each DLC pack. This takes us to what is meant by Content, as for a large number of players content = maps, and this is a very misleading way of looking at games. Often on our reviews we see people say “there is nothing to do” and yet we know there are players who have played for hundreds of hours. This is because content is often layered within each area, and until you dig past the first few layers you don’t find the content that is hidden underneath. We realise that being unable to find that content is our fault, and that is why we needed to re-write some of the features to make it easier to reach the content.

During development and Early Access the general process is you create some “features”, people use the features and the number of features in an area reflects a level of content. When people ask for more content, pushing out more areas with features that don’t work just leads to more things not working. An easy example is our fire creation system. You can build fires anywhere, but we have some prebuilt fires you can just light yourself. If that is broken, having 20 zones with 20 broken fires makes little sense. So, it is important to make sure features work and are robust and useable before you use them at a large scale. With a quest creation system, if its broken and thus delivers broken quests, adding 20 new quests just leads to more broken quests and a higher level of frustration with our players that we don’t want them to experience. Changeable clothing is a feature, 20 different cloaks are content. If clothing is broken having 20 different cloaks does not mean anything.

This is why it’s important to us to get Features working correctly as and when we release content. This includes changing the way we explain features so the existing and new content we have already added around starting quests and exploring can be experienced the way we want. As we released new achievements, new storylines and quests are starting to be uncovered. Over the coming weeks the layers of content around the changing storyline will start to be unlocked. Some of it is already there, and some of you have found it. We have enjoyed seeing people piece together their theories and examining every piece of junk they find hoping it reveals some dark secret – there is more to come...

Until then,

Joe, COO

Community Storytime
over 3 years ago – Wed, Dec 14, 2022 at 04:38:50 PM

Good Wednesday to you, dear Traveller!

Today I'd just like to share our latest video, Community Storytime. It's entirely based on first hand experiences that you have shared with us. It's our way of highlighting our wonderful community and their stories, and I personally think it came out really nice.

Watch on Youtube: 

That's it for today, but you'll hear more from us soon. Thank you very much for your continued support, your passion and for playing Book of Travels. You are a big part of what makes our game special.

Best wishes,

Oliver & the team at Might and Delight

Content Drop: 1 Year EA Anniversary Digital Goodies
over 3 years ago – Fri, Dec 02, 2022 at 09:40:24 PM

Dear Traveller,

We hope you're having a fantastic holiday season. As you know, it's been over a year since we launched Book of Travels into Early Access and the world got to explore this world of Braided Shore that we've worked on for over half a decade. And even though there's been bumps in the road we are still fully committed to making Book of Travels the best game that it can be. More importantly, we see how much you - our players - share our belief in our vision for this world.

 We appreciate you very much. And as a small token of that appreciation, we're releasing piece of downloadable content that we call 1 Year EA Anniversary Digital Goodies.

A Bundle of Book of Travels Art

This free fan kit art bundle includes a collection of pieces of art, music tracks, wallpapers and more. It’s a small token of our appreciation of your continued support and passion for Book of Travels, and something to hold you over while you wait for the next big in-game content drop.

2 BoT Cover images, Digital art (HD):

The First Cover.png
 The Second Cover.png

3 Hand painted Forms, Digital Art (HD)

The Crested.png
 The Goodward.png
 The Veiled.png

4 Hand painted Digital Art (HD):

Kettem Rajh.png
 Kettem.png
 Maisu.png
 Saida the Sea Fury.png

1 Timelapse video:

Painting Ketten Rajh.mp4

Music:

Two free songs from the Soundtrack as MP3
 Paths (Main Theme).mp3
 The Elden Road.mp3

1 Map:

A new map of Braided Shore (Updated artwork, HD)
Wallpapers for desktop and smartphones - a selection of beautiful and hand painted art from the world of Book of Travels: Maps, art with forms and creatures you can play or meet in the game, items, clothes, food and much, much more:
 14 x 1080 x 1920 (smartphone)
 7 x 1920 x 1080 (desktop)
 7 x 1920 x 1080 (desktop)
 5 x 1920 x 1200 (desktop)
 6 x 2160 x 1920 (desktop)

We hear from a lot of you that you'd love to get some high definition Book of Travels art in bulk, so we hope that this will come as a nice little surprise. Again - thank you for being with us as we continue to grow and improve Book of Travels. You'll hear from us again soon! Here's the link to the Steam page. And if you can't download it on Steam, here you can just download a zip file with the contents.

 May your tea never grow cold!

Best wishes,
 Oliver & the team at Might and Delight

The Looming Future for Book of Travels
over 3 years ago – Mon, Nov 14, 2022 at 10:31:01 PM

Greetings Traveller,

As we know you are all feeling hype over our coming updates and feel something big is coming we think it's only fair we give you some ideas of what you can expect.

Many of you who have played recently will be aware of the many performance increases we have delivered as well as minor lore changes that hint to the many story lines that exist within the world of Braided Shore. The question we are often asked is “Where is Kasa?” and we understand the level of frustration people have where they want more of the world to explore. As you will know, Kasa is closed. Something happened. Someone died.

Over the next few months as part of the developing story, you, Traveller, will need to find out what. Once that is solved, hopefully the Coroners will allow Kasa to be fully opened – assuming it is now safe to do so. Be aware that this part of the story will only be active during the Prologue period. There may well be items that can only be collected during the Prologue period…. We know some of you may solve this in hours, and some of you may take days. We also think some of you may take steps to stop it being solved…

Here’s what you can expect over the next few weeks and months:

Starting Scenarios – Prologue means the start of the game changes. There was often talk of “character wipes” which we really don’t want to do. However, please be aware that the starting scenarios you have completed for your current characters will change to be a more robust introduction to Braided Shore, with changes to the starting quests to help you on your journey. Some part of this have already happened, but there is more to come. Changes to quest systems run the risk of severing what your current character has done and how quests evolve over time. We don’t expect any major issues but there may be a small period of time where if you are halfway through an introduction quest it will change and your progress may need to restart.

More Vehicle Improvements – We continue to iterate on the quality of vehicles. We will soon be rolling out the need to use tickets for your journeys as well as improving the overall experience.

Quests – Take a step into Kasa. Find out what happened. Help ease the worries of those in Braided Shore. Or don’t…

The Journal and the Log - Track where you have been, write down your thoughts.

Weather Changes – Seasons change, and with it the weather. This will affect how you survive and explore Braided Shore. Whilst Braided Shore is a temperate climate you may need to think more about those wind shelters and where you build your fire. Nights will get longer but the brightness of your lamps will aid you in your travels. Be hopeful though that brighter days will return.

The importance of food – Survival elements of the game will lead to changes in the food system. Travellers may need to huddle around a fire in the rain and see what they can cook up to keep themselves alive.

Fishing for fun or survival – Fishing may be a mellow pastime for some, but there may be a need for a more professional fishing skill to find scarce resources.

Combat – Duelling a Warden is not the same as battling wolves. The combat system will evolve to reflect these differences.

Death will return – Travelling alone will be far more dangerous than travelling in a group. Die alone and prepare to complete your journey from the spirit world at a cost to your immortal soul. Winds are fickle, and prayers of the lone Traveller are not always answered. Die in the company of friends and hope their mourning will make the Sefra show pity on you.

May you always travel safe roads

Joe