Serpent in the Staglands - Trailer & Updates

[Couchpotato]

Whalenought Studios posted a new post-funding update for Serpent in the Staglands that has a new video trailer, and talks about a few other game updates.

One location we didn’t feature in the preview trailer was Tratis Saltis, a favorite due to the very different environment it brings. The area’s subsurface is an expanse of hot springs like veins breathing heat from depths below, and it gives some variety to the usually snow blasted peninsula. The persistently wet ground has made the few surviving settlers here build above surface level upon giant trees and mushrooms, and you wade through a dangerous bog below to traverse the district. Vol is an "eye ball" planet, and in the perpetually cold regions like the Staglands heated places like these are hard to come by and usually cherished for what vegetation and life they provide. Regrettably for these settlers, some of that is quite dangerous.

We'll be showing this location off in a future update more in-depth!

More information.

 

[BrianOConnell]

Looks like a May 28th release date too if my decoding skills are up to speed.

 

[Nephologist]

This game is looking more and more amazing with each update. It's a toss up between this one and PoE over which I'm most excited for.

 

[Deleted member 18181]

they said if there are different levels of camera zoom or font sizes like in bgee for example?
Also anyone know, the team is from Romania? saw romanian names for characters

 

[daveyd]

they said if there are different levels of camera zoom or font sizes like in bgee for example?
Also anyone know, the team is from Romania? saw romanian names for characters

The development team isn't from Romania, they're from Chicago, IL. But the world is heavily inspired by late Bronze age era Transylvania, hence the Romanian names.

Not sure about camera zoom or font adjustments.

 

[you]

Sadly I think the game will be awful on my 27 inch monitor. I wish the textures were higher resolution so it would scale better for larger/higher resolution system. Looking at this video on a 24 inch monitor the pixelation was awful. It really began to fall apart.

 

[daveyd]

Sadly I think the game will be awful on my 27 inch monitor. I wish the textures were higher resolution so it would scale better for larger/higher resolution system. Looking at this video on a 24 inch monitor the pixelation was awful. It really began to fall apart.

Did you watch it in 1080p? It seems youtube's default is 720p, you have to click on the "gear" to select the res. Granted, it still becomes rather pixelated when they zoom in, but we'll probably have control over that, so if it bothers you, the solution would be to never zoom in.

 

[Deleted User]

Oh, yes. I WILL be covering this game for the 'Watch. I've already spoken briefly to the developer.

I cannot WAIT for this one!

 

[mercy]

Very strong Ultima 8 Pagan nostalgia. Devs apparently listened to our cries for a more readable GUI and everything is okay now. Also massive unique atmosphere, WOW!

 

[daveyd]

This game is looking more and more amazing with each update. It's a toss up between this one and PoE over which I'm most excited for.

I'm more excited for SitS than PoE. Haven't backed high enough to have beta access for either game, but based on everything I've seen in the updates and heard from those who have played the betas, PoE is going to be a lot more streamlined... Serpents has a lot of really awesome ideas, like the ways you can interact with objects and sort of write your own spells, and will probably lack any sort of hand-holding and have much tougher combat; which appeals to the old-school gamer (masochist) in me. But I hope I'll enjoy both games; I'm not crazy about RTwP and hope we won't have to fight with the pathfinding all the time.

 

[Black Rune]

Sadly I think the game will be awful on my 27 inch monitor. I wish the textures were higher resolution so it would scale better for larger/higher resolution system. Looking at this video on a 24 inch monitor the pixelation was awful. It really began to fall apart.

Bigger is not always better, hehe.
Here are some comments about that, hope it helps.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/335120/discussions/0/616198623976675867/?insideModal=1

 

[Nephologist]

I'm more excited for SitS than PoE. Haven't backed high enough to have beta access for either game, but based on everything I've seen in the updates and heard from those who have played the betas, PoE is going to be a lot more streamlined… Serpents has a lot of really awesome ideas, like the ways you can interact with objects and sort of write your own spells, and will probably lack any sort of hand-holding and have much tougher combat; which appeals to the old-school gamer (masochist) in me. But I hope I'll enjoy both games; I'm not crazy about RTwP and hope we won't have to fight with the pathfinding all the time.

Those are actually the reasons I'm excited for both. I hoping that PoE provides a more modern, streamlined IE type experience whereas SitS goes for the more quirky, hardcore, old-school IE type experience. IMO there is room for both.

As for the pathfinding, it's almost a rule that isometric, RTwP CRPGs have to have wonky pathfinding. If either of these games manages to fix that, then I am screwed because a big part of my IE play strategy is juggling the crappy pathfinding to my advantage

 

[Lemonhead]

Really excited for this!

 

[you]

I'm not sure i understood the comments but we shall see. I've already paid for the game via kickstart but if it is too annoying i just won't play

Sadly i will not buy a smaller monitor just to play the game though I do agree that bigger is not always better. It was kind of funny how I ended up with 27 inch but when my 22inch kaput I couldn't find a good 22inch or 24inch more than $100 less than 27 inch so I went with 27inch. (I had a few requirements such as IPS, 1200x1920 for 24inch, ...). Oh well kind of liked my 22inch and in many ways prefer it to the 27...

Bigger is not always better, hehe.
Here are some comments about that, hope it helps.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/335120/discussions/0/616198623976675867/?insideModal=1

 

[Black Rune]

I'm not sure i understood the comments but we shall see. I've already paid for the game via kickstart but if it is too annoying i just won't play

Sadly i will not buy a smaller monitor just to play the game though I do agree that bigger is not always better. It was kind of funny how I ended up with 27 inch but when my 22inch kaput I couldn't find a good 22inch or 24inch more than $100 less than 27 inch so I went with 27inch. (I had a few requirements such as IPS, 1200x1920 for 24inch, …). Oh well kind of liked my 22inch and in many ways prefer it to the 27…

I don't understand it quite well either. But I guess it says that it will be no problem to play the game on a higher res. without loosing quality.
And maybe in windowed mode it will work fine.

I was using a 19 inch ctr monitor for a quite long time. And was very pleased with it. Only about 2 years now I have a 23 inch LG monitor. I wouldn't buy it but it just happened that my friend was selling it for a good price back then and I decided to buy it. This one is pretty good as well. But I think my old ctr was a bit more superior.

 

[daveyd]

they said if there are different levels of camera zoom or font sizes like in bgee for example?
Also anyone know, the team is from Romania? saw romanian names for characters

I asked them about the possibility of zooming / adjusting font sizes on Kickstarter and here is their response:

The way the game is set up is that it starts at DOS sizes and scales up 200 or 300 percent based on the size and aspect ratio of your monitor, so that you'll always see the game at its intended zoom level, without noticeable letterboxing or stretching. Because of the way we're doing this, and because of pixel warping that would ensue, zooming with a mousewheel is not possible.
The fonts in the game are all bitmaps (images) and unlike a typical vector font cannot be altered. That said, we've tried out several fonts to make sure they're as readable as possible within the limitations of a pixel art game.
* A fun trick you might be able to do with your graphics card is to have it auto smooth graphics when the resolution is smaller than your native resolution. We've played with this and had it resemble old arcade machine algorithms to smooth out pixel art, and is a pretty neat effect.

 

[Capt. Huggy Face]

This is currently my most-anticipated game.

For those curious about the UI and scaling, you can follow this link to a Steam update, which talks a little about those and has an animated .gif showing how the game scales in windowed mode.

Edit: Daveyd beat me to the punch a bit, but that .gif illustrates pretty well what the dev is talking about above.

 

[Arhu]

Woah, this game wasn't on my radar at all till now. It looks very charming and completely atmospheric!

Was going to go back to BG2 (which I have never played beyond the first parts of Act II) after PoE and MMX, but it looks like I won't get the chance.