The scribes are hard at work, chronicling the world of Braided Shore
over 3 years ago – Mon, Aug 15, 2022 at 09:57:35 PM

Dear Traveller,

Today we wanted to talk about how our work looks in regards to the story of “Book of Travels”. We're thinking a lot about how we want to present the larger story of the game to the player, and how to expand it over time while still holding true to our original vision and design philosophies about not wanting to hold the player's hand too tightly or spoon feed them.

When it comes to story in the world of Braided Shore, there is much to do. We are both looking to introduce more lore details to the world, and to expose the intrigue of the Prologue so that more players have the chance to find and play through it.

We’re introducing new lore both through item descriptions and, eventually, new encounters and events. We want the storytelling of Book of Travels to feel intuitive, and like something you unveil as you travel. With every item in the game world telling you bits and pieces of information, we’re hoping to add another layer to your roleplaying and immersion.

We also want the world to feel alive, whether you’re wandering through the deep woods or bartering in a bustling town. Ensuring that interactions with NPCs feels worthwhile, and that the world highlights the quests and events available to you, is also a major focus of our current work.

When looking at the Steam Achievements, and talking to the community, we can tell that the main intrigue of the Prologue is incredibly hard to find, and that many players simply have not played through it. We want to expose this story to the player, and ensure that the way we tell the story is in line with how the game is played; what if there wasn’t one singular path to the great city of Kasa? What if there was a way for Travellers to find many clues that point to the city, and the cause of its peculiar lockdown?

This autumn and winter, you can expect hundreds of new item descriptions in-game (our story team has already written over 15 000 words of new lore in the past two weeks), many new dialogues and small encounters, as well as a mystery that seems to permeate the lands of Braided Shore.

For a behind the scenes peek at what we’re up to, you can find our work on the Beta, where it will be featured alongside bug fixes, polish of features, and experiments with new gameplay mechanics.

We’re hoping that, from the very start of the game, you’ll feel the call of the open road, and that the stories you encounter along the way will not only entertain, but stay with you whenever you brew a soothing cup of tea, or when you walk past a grassy field and feel like you might spot omin hiding amongst the underbrush.

You'll hear more from us in the coming weeks. As always, we encourage you to sound off in the comments and on the forums about what you think of any new information we put out.

Until next time, Traveller. May your tea never grow cold...

Best wishes,

The Might and Delight team

Elaborating on the Updated Roadmap
over 3 years ago – Sat, Aug 06, 2022 at 10:41:50 PM

Happy Friday, Traveller!

Earlier this week we updated our roadmap. Since we didn't provide much context to the changes that were presented, we knew that the community was going to have questions about them. Since then we've been putting our ears to the ground, listening for what the most frequently asked questions were, and today the team has put out their response. 

You can read it on our Steam forum. Click right here.

Best wishes,

Oliver and the team at Might and Delight

We've Updated the Roadmap!
over 3 years ago – Tue, Aug 02, 2022 at 01:09:44 AM

Good day Travellers! 

I hope everyone has had a nice summer. Today I want to bring your attention to the fact that we updated the roadmap, which you can now see on Book of Travels' Steam store page (as well as below), as the previous one had become a bit outdated. 

You may recall that we put out our first Achievement pack, a set of new skills and spells, the new area "The Miskeeper's Toe" and the new outmark "The Underbelly". Therefore they are no longer represented on the roadmap - but stuff that we haven't yet delivered, like the Heirlooms and new Forms, are still on there. 

You may also notice completely new items on the list, and these are things that we decided that the game needs on top of what we've already promised. 

I'm sure you'll have questions about this, and I encourage you to ask them here. We'll then take stock on your Q's and try to have some A's ready soon. 

In the meantime, I wish you all a wonderful rest of the week!

Best wishes,

Oliver and the team at Might and Delight

3 Month Tech Work Progress update – New Beta Test Environment
over 3 years ago – Tue, Jul 19, 2022 at 12:20:14 AM

We want to thank you for your patience. As you are aware we had some significant issues that we needed to take time to solve that we estimated would take 3 months. We are now 3 months and 1 week after that and finally have some news for you as well as a new Beta Test Environment for you to use.

If you followed our Tech Blogs you would have seen that we were doing “things” but as it was all short comments aimed at internal users it may not have made a lot of sense. In essence, what we have done is change some of the core tech the game uses as well as streamlined some of our production pipelines. That main change with this is an update of the Unity Engine from a 2019 version to the newer 2021.3.3f1 version. If you look this up you will see that yes there are newer versions, however we needed one that offers Long Term Support as well as not jumping too far ahead from the 2019 version.

Updating the engine comes with several benefits. You should initially notice that the game *feels* a bit smoother but mostly it allows us to add some new technologies in that we can use in the near future to give you better gameplay, from things like a new Input System (affecting mouse movement and potential controller support) to new cinematic cameras and live real time events. Now this stage is complete we need to present you with an updated Road Map which will be coming in the near future that will explain what we will fix and change as well as provide some detail on new content that we know you are all excited to hear about and play.

As well as the engine update we have started to make other performance improvements by re-writing portions of code and changing some visual effects to give a higher frame rate. The area you will see the biggest change here is with water. We use a very detailed reflection system which lead to water being always on, which is very costly. We have now managed to improve this system so only a small amount of water around your character is rendered leading to a significant frame rate improvement.

Overall one thing we need to avoid is making things worse. The problem with game development, especially in small teams, is being able to test all of the content to make sure its bug free and smooth before it gets released. This is one of the benefits of early access but also one of its greatest curses. One thing that greatly aids in this is a Beta environment, and that is what we want to share with you today.

Please understand – a version released on the Beta environment will be more unstable than one released on retail. It will also be a lot more restricted. However it allows us to have people play test updated versions without impacting the majority of players. We have now prepared an updated version of the game and propped it on the Beta Environment for you to try out if you wish to take part in testing new features.

Also it is important to realize that we have only addressed underlying core tech issues and general performance. Many of you wait for specific issues to be fixed regarding quests etc and these are not delivered as part of this update but will be addressed soon.

Be aware of the following:

• The Beta Environment is more unstable than retail.
• The Beta Environment will be turned off and restart at random with no notice.
• Characters created on the Beta environment will be wiped periodically – do not use this for long term game play.
• Only 7 seats exist per region – therefore only a total of 28 people can play on Beta at any one time.
• On Beta you will occasionally see content that is not fully known by other players. Please avoid Spoilers.

This gives us the following development pipeline so you can understand how we will release content going forward, where the quality of the game needs to be higher in each stage before it can be released to the next. This environment is Windows PC only.

Local Development environment –> Internal QA environment –> External Test environment –> Public Beta environment –> Public Retail environment.

Our goal is that a version will spend a week on the Public Beta environment before moving to retail. For those of you who play the current build on this Beta environment please be aware of the following issues:

• Boats will periodically teleport you when they reach docks – this might lead you to landing in water and having to walk to land.
• Some water has rapid wave effects (most notably in Siram Fields)
• The game client might hang during logout. You should be able to close it with Alt+F4

You may join with the password BetaShore2022 – for details on how to join a Steam Beta, see the Walk Through written by moderator Genghis Pawn  below.

Thank you for your patience,
Joe & the team at Might and Delight

– – –

Steam Beta walk through

Here are instructions for how to access the beta.

1. Navigate to Book of Travels in your Steam library (where you would normally go to launch the game).
2. Near the left side of your screen, right-click on the title, "Book of travels" in your library list (or alternatively: left-click on "Book of Travels" to pull it up in your library, and then click on the gear icon that appears near the right hand side of the screen)...
3. ...and select "Properties" from the bottom of the drop-down menu that appears.
4. In the pop-up control panel, Select "BETAS" in the left-hand navigation pane.
5. On the right, type in the beta access code that M&D have provided (BetaShore2022) and click "Check Password." This should be case-sensitive.
6. Install the required update (2.3GB) -- the title of the game in your library will change from "Book of Travels" to "Book of Travels [braidedshore]" to indicate that this is a different version of the game.

After installing the update, when you launch the game as usual from your library, it should automatically launch into the beta environment.

NOTE: Once you have verified the beta passcode, you can use the drop-down on the pop-up menu in steps 4/5 above to switch between the beta and the retail version (select "None" as your beta), BUT you will always need to install updates/patches to alternate between versions of the game. At the moment, this is a ~900MB patch to revert to the retail version, and a ~1GB patch to go back to the beta. Given that space in the beta is extremely limited (See the announcement) if your bandwidth is limited you may not want to be switching back and forth and doing all that downlading.

Technobabble for Those Fluent in Game Development
almost 4 years ago – Fri, May 20, 2022 at 12:04:23 AM

Dear Traveller,

Not too long ago we announced that we would be laser focused on the technical issues of Book of Travels and that we would seem quiet as a result. We've discussed ways to still give small signs of life and indications of what kind of work is being done and at some point it was suggested that we talk more openly about what tech work our programmers are up to. 

Why not just literally post exactly what tasks we do in list form and let the community try to decipher it as best they can? Now, for me personally, most of the tech jargon goes right over my head so I was mainly concerned about how interesting it would actually be to the average Book of Travels player.

But hey, it is entirely possible (plausible, even) that I have below average understanding of this stuff so we thought "why not". A while ago we launched a new subforum on Steam for this purpose, and we currently have three entries published. You can check it out for yourself on this link. 

Check back once a week or so for new entries if this sort of thing tickles your fancy. Right now we don't have anything else in particular to share with you, but we are making good progress and are optimistic about being able to bring you some exciting improvements very soon. Ish. 

Until then, stay safe and play responsibly. 

Best wishes,

Oliver and the team at Might and Delight