How We're Doing & Where We're Going
over 4 years ago – Sat, Sep 04, 2021 at 12:40:14 AM

Dear Traveller,

When you last heard from us, we made the announcement that we wouldn't be able to hit our previously set release date of August 30th. Today we would like to give some more insight on why this decision was made and where we're at in development. But first things first: on behalf of the entire team at Might and Delight I would personally like to thank every one of you for the amazing understanding and support that you showed us when we announced this delay to you.

It was clear that many of you were disappointed, just like we were, but the overwhelming majority of you still voiced your support and faith in our decision and it's hard to explain how comforting that was to us. So, once again, thank You so much for still being with us!

Now, onwards...

The Unholy Trio

As we described in the delay announcement, it was thanks to the feedback and data provided by our beta testers that we realized that we weren't in a releasable state. And while there are many things that could use some ironing out, it was mainly three issues that we felt absolutely needed to be looked at before launch. Since I'm so cool and edgy I've been calling this set of bugs "The Unholy Trio".

The Unholy First, and probably the most annoying out of the three, is a severe case of rubberbanding. This would have our players click to move somewhere, only for the game to slingshot them back to a previously occupied location and it made travelling take much longer than it should. Obviously this would be a problem in any game, let alone one called Book of Travels. Worse yet, it didn't only affect the player, but also things like NPCs and our combat system.

The Unholy Second made it so that things started spawning in places where they shouldn't. Events would appear in the wrong positions on the map, forest animals could be seen in densely populated cities and enemy characters would pop up into tea houses. Is there any place more inconvenient to be ambushed in than a tea house? The Unholy Third is simply making NPCs invisible to the player, which happened randomly here and there.

We can't have that, now can we?

Blessings in disguise

Now, I'm happy to report that the team is very close to fixing all three of these issues so that none of the players jumping in on launch day will be haunted by them. 

Of course, since we are launching into Early Access, we do want to emphasize that the game will have issues like bugs and balancing issues on release. It's just that these particular bugs were too prevalent and too detrimental to the general play experience for us to just roll with it, despite the fact that Early Access titles aren't expected to work flawlessly right out of the gate. The Unholy Trio needed to go.

Besides polishing work, there's another upside to the extra time that we've allowed ourselves. The team is currently deepening the experience further than we would've had time for previously, with more quests and dangers for the player to dive into. Additionally, we are making new areas that we'll add to the game world early in the Early Access period. We will have a more detailed roadmap of what is to come after launch soon.

We're not announcing the release date today, but we have decided on one and it's not as far off as some of you have been speculating. We're so excited to start this journey with you, and that's what it is going to be – a journey. That's why we're doing the Early Access period, because we want to shape Book of Travels together with our players. The game we envision in our dreams wouldn't be possible to make without you and we're so appreciative of every one of you who wants to be a part of it.

Until next time,

Oliver & The Dev Team xx

We need more time…
over 4 years ago – Thu, Sep 02, 2021 at 12:43:06 PM

Dearest Traveller,

Thank you for being excited for Book of Travels, and tagging along on our journey with us – whether it’s in the comments on Steam, replies on our various social platforms or with a pledge to our Kickstarter campaign. We can’t properly express how much your support and interest means to us, and how invigorating it is.

We’re giving this project our all, and have been doing so for years now. It feels strange to be so close to “the finish line” that is the Early Access launch and have all of you be able to experience our game with us.

However – we aren’t as close as we like to, or even thought we’d be. This became apparent to us during the course of our closed beta, as our wonderful testers sent their reports to us. So we made the difficult decision to postpone the launch of the game once more. The team simply needs the time to stabilize it.

We want to be able to deliver an Early Access game that we can stand by. But believe us when we say that we don’t make this call easily, and we understand that this will disappoint anyone who couldn’t wait to jump into the game this summer. At the same time we also believe that we owe it to the game, to ourselves and – more importantly – to you to make sure that Book of Travels meets our standards.

Therefore we won’t give you a new release date today. Instead, we’ll nail that down when we are in a position of confidence that we can actually hit the new deadline.

Again, we understand that this isn’t the news you want to hear. We crave for You to be able to play our game too! Right now, though, we can only hope for your understanding and patience. It won’t be long before you’ll hear from us again.

Thank You.

Sincerely,
Oliver & The Dev Team xx

Finding Friends in a Tiny Multiplayer
over 4 years ago – Tue, Aug 17, 2021 at 11:56:57 PM

Dear Traveller,

If you’ve been following our various ramblings you’ll no doubt have heard us using the initialism TMORPG for Tiny Multiplayer Online and today we’re going to try to answer some of the many questions that we’ve heard and address some of your practical concerns about playing together. Let’s dive right in…

How many people will there be in my game?

Currently we can’t give even a rough estimate just yet, and this is because the team will spend much of Early Access reading the play data in order to adjust numbers to make a good balance of player meetings and solo experience. Game Designer Beta Alves says “We’ll be watching how often groups form and balance and tweak accordingly. We’ll be avoiding a situation in which you’ll always be in groups - we want the joy of company to come with the contrast of some solitude so you can appreciate how it feels to travel alone and with others.”

To tell us what your experience of meeting frequency is and to keep your views heard, be sure to drop them into the relevant chat in our Steam forum (to be populated!) once you start playing in just 13 days - eek!

Can we play with friends?

“Even though they appreciate the incognito elements of the game, players want to connect with their friends” says Beta, and that’s been something that we’ve heard often from backers and community. In response, the team has been working on ways to make sure that you can find one another.

 Setting Out Together

To set out together, start by joining the same server, and then once you’ve created your character, you’ll be asked how your journey begins - choose the same options as your friends and you’ll spawn together.

Finding one another when already on the road

If you’re travelling together and log out together you’ll be together when you log back in, resuming your adventure in the same place - together. But if you want to meet with someone who’s setting out at a different time (or time zone!) an ancient temple on an island makes an ideal landmark and meeting point. It’s known as the Khelim Temple, and if you need a quick way to get there, there’s a particular knot spell that will come in handy. Don’t worry, it’s not hard to acquire, but to do so you’ll need to unravel a little - so listen as you travel!

Of course another very special place to rendez-vous is Travellers’ Meadow in the north west of Braided Shore (thanks to YOU for that one!). You can of course get there on foot, or for Kickstarter backers, use the Travellers’ Portal - and take any non-backer companions with you.

Communication

When you do find one another you’ll be able to communicate using emotes, your own collection of pictograms that will evolve through growth and usage as you travel the world and gain knowledge of its land and culture. 

We’ve been listening to your thoughts and ideas about how you’d like to leave traces of your travels or exchange thoughts or memories in the game. As part of our Kickstarter we promised to implement “Sharing memories”, a way to remember your meetings through passed on items or memories.

Finding each other beyond the game

If the chance encounters that you have lead to meetings out-of-game that would be lovely, and Steam and Discord will be the main places to find one another. We also hope to have some other ways for you to share stories in the future, but at the moment such formulations are far too raw to reveal… 

For now we are just very much looking forward to hearing all about your travels - together or alone, we hope they are many and magical!

Best Wishes

Helen & the Dev Team xx

For Secret Cultists and above only: Beta Starts Today
over 4 years ago – Mon, Aug 16, 2021 at 05:08:01 AM

Dear Secret Cultists,

We’re excited to confirm that you are now able to play Book of Travels as part of our final closed private beta. However, after some studio testing at the weekend we need to make you aware that the game is not in the state we had hoped it would be in – please read on to see how that affects your part in testing.

Choosing when to join in

While we still need to conduct a beta, we need to be clear to you about what to expect – there will be bugs and glitches, the depth is still not quite there! We know that some of you like to wait until games are through any tricky patches before setting out on your adventures.  If you are one such player, please sit tight just a little longer – we will let you know when the game is through this final stage and in all-round solid pre-Early Access shape. 

Please don’t share yet

For those of you who would like to help us bring the project to that stage, please go ahead and activate your key providing that you agree NOT TO SHARE screenshots, reviews, or any details of your experience beyond our private channels (namely Discord Book of Travels Beta Channel).  We cannot stress how much it means to us that you keep this test stage private – this game has been nearly five years in the making, the manner and mood of its public debut matter greatly to us. 

Please note that our position on sharing as stated here is contra to previous communications, so please help us by:

• Disregarding those share permissions
• Refraining from sharing in any form until otherwise stated
• Helping us to keep the test closed by communicating our new position to any other Secret Cultists you happen to know!

Accessing the beta

For details on accessing the game and on our privacy requirements, please check update #71 (Secret Cultists and above only). In summary here’s what you need to know:

​​Your Steam Key

• If you have already played – to get playing, you can simply follow the same procedure as last year, so if you’ve activated your key on Steam, you only need to update and start the game!
• If you haven’t played before – you’ll find the Book of Travels Beta Steam key on BackerKit. Just log in using the same email as you used in Kickstarter (and complete the survey if you haven't yet done that) and click the ”Get Your Digital Downloads” button. (If you lost your survey link, you can recover it here) If you haven’t used Steam before, you can download it here, and here is Steam’s guide on how to activate your key.

If you haven’t used Steam before, you can download it here: https://store.steampowered.com/about Here is Steam’s guide on how to activate your key.

Special Secret Cultists perks

To activate the special Secret Cultists perks you need to activate your account code within the Book of Travels login screen (not in Steam).

What is an account code?

An account code is how we keep track of whether you are a Backer, an Early Bird, and/or a Secret Cultist. When you have created your Book of Travels account, you can enter your account code(s) in this menu. You enter the code and press submit.

When your account is registered with your Account Code, you will have access to the special items and skills associated with your backer status on the characters you create (like the Travellers’ Knapsack and other Secret Cultist perks. The Early Bird account code will be distributed later).

Feedback

Feedback is via our Trello board which you can find via an in-game button. Please feel free but never obliged to feedback any issues or opinions there. See update #71 for more instructions. The usual Discord channels (like #Bug-discussion and #Suggestions) are also now open to chat with other testers.

We appreciate your help, companionship and very much your discretion in these final days!

Best Wishes,

Helen & the Dev Team

IMPORTANT - Please check you mailing address, we're posting rewards this month
over 4 years ago – Thu, Aug 12, 2021 at 12:27:27 AM

Dear Backers,

Our list shows that you pledged for a Book of Travels bandit memento and/or hand drawn portrait. We are very close to getting these finalised and wrapped up for posting... but we need to be sure that your address is the same one registered on your account, so please check! You don't want to miss out on these unique souvenirs! 

If your address might have changed please update it ASAP on Backerkit or Kickstarter.

If you need to recover your Backerkit account https://www.tmorpg.com/backerkit-recovery

Best Wishes,

Helen & the Dev Team