A patch preview has been posted for City of the Shroud which includes some major updates.

Patch 1.05 Preview

29 September - Shibusuke

Greetings, Fellow Citizens of Iskendrun,

We’re working on the first big patch for City of the Shroud while Moira writes Chapter 2, so I wanted to take some time to go over what’s coming:

Major Updates:

Revamped AI:

• The AI is getting an overhaul to make it more interesting, more challenging, and to let it better highlight what makes CotS’ combat unique. When the new patch releases, enemy characters will:
  
• Enemies will be more aggressive in their movement and usage of combos. Enemies will be better at picking out vulnerable targets and hitting them with clever combos. This will speed up combat and make timing and anticipation much more critical.
  
• Personalities: enemies will have “personality traits.” Each class will have a base setup (prefers being aggressive / defensive / using support abilities, etc.), and these can vary across individual units.
  
• Ability-specific decision making: the classes in CotS are designed to be deep, with variety within each class coming from the types of Link Gems they have equipped. The AI will have a better understanding of how it can use the abilities it has equipped on a character to torment you more effectively, and rewarding you for keeping track of and responding to them.

Other Additions:

• Combat Details Display: pressing the new “Combat Details” button during combat will display a variety of useful information on screen. This includes:
  
• Range Preview: when you press the Combat Details button, yellow range indicators will appear on the tile you are currently hovering over, showing you what your range would be on that tile before moving there.
  
• Player Character Shortcut Numbers: the shortcut number for each of your characters will be displayed over their head so you can quickly pinpoint where everyone is relative to the UI on the side of the screen.
  
• Enemy Location Arrows: all (conscious) enemies will get a red arrow specifying their positions.

Minor Updates & Bug Fixes:

• Update: We have made additional NPC character art for characters who are not important to the story to avoid repetition.
  
• Update: The game now prompts you to select a difficulty when starting a new game.
  
• Update: The AP cost of moving to a highlighted tile is displayed on that tile before moving.
  
• Update: Shortcuts for Wait Mode / Combat Details are now displayed on-screen during combat during tutorial battles.
  
• Update: Wait Mode can now be set to toggle by holding the button or tapping the button to turn it ON/OFF in Gameplay options.
  
• Update: Improvements to flow when connecting to another player for an Online VS battle.
  
• Bug Fix: Tile Targeting arrow for controller now gets drawn on top of Machinist’s backpack geometry.
  
• Bug Fix: Fixed hidden tiles acting as pits in the Market Gate map in the Refugee Quarter.
  
• Bug Fix: Fixed location and portrait of an NPC who should have been a refugee in the Refugee Quarter but appeared as an regular Citizen in Old Town.
  
• Bug Fix: Long quest names in the Quest Tracker should no longer bleed out into the border graphic.
  
• Bug Fix: Return To Game button on the pause menu no longer enters the “selection” sprite state when pausing even if the player is using mouse/keyboard.

The team has been under the weather with colds and whatnot for the last few weeks, so it’s taken us longer to get this done than we would have liked, but we’re slowly recovering. The patch will need some more time to thoroughly test it before we can release into the wild, but hopefully this gives you an idea of what we’ve been working on since launch.

We’ve also been following the responses to the game and seeing where players are having fun and where they’re not. We’re working on ideas to address these pain points - some will be harder and take more time than others (especially because we want to prioritize working on new chapters), but we want everyone to know that we’re seeing the feedback and will aim to address whatever we can.

Of course, if you’ve got any feedback on what you’d like to see improved, please feel free to share it with us in the forums.

In the meantime, Chapter 1’s influence period wrapped up recently, so if you haven’t read about what went down, you can do so here!

Chapter 1 of City of the Shroud is out now:

City of the Shroud

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Chapter 1 of City of the Shroud is available on Steam for Windows and Mac! Take part in a live, player-driven story as it unfolds over four chapters. Your choices, and the choices of every player, will drive a living tale of shifting alliances as you race to uncover the truth of the magical shroud that holds Iskendrun captive.

The first chapter of City of the Shroud lauches on August 9:

City of the Shroud | Release Date & Story Trailer

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Chapter 1 of City of the Shroud launches August 9 on Steam for Windows and Mac! Take part in a live, player-driven story as it unfolds over four chapters. Your choices, and the choices of every player, will drive a living tale of shifting alliances as you race to uncover the truth of the magical shroud that holds Iskendrun captive.

City of the Shroud will be presented at the Denver Comic Con:

Denver Comic Con and Making Art Assets

Hi Everyone,  

We’re taking City of the Shroud to Denver Comic Con! The show runs from June 30 - July 2 at the Colorado Convention Center, and we’ll be there in style. This is a big deal for us, as it’s our first chance to take the game to a show in the US - and it’s a big one!

Why Denver Comic Con? I’m currently in the middle of that international move I mentioned back in November, which has taken me to my hometown for a few weeks (pro tip: moving internationally is really, really hard). This layover conveniently lines up with the Denver Comic Con dates, and the fine folks at Bolder Games were kind enough to reach out and ask if we wanted to join in. Who are we to refuse showing at Comic Con?!    

If you’re planning on going, please come say hi! We know some backers are planning on coming down, and we can’t wait to meet new people and be able to show them the game in person!  

As for the game itself, we had a few production hiccups over the last couple of months that I wanted to share and thought might be illuminating for those of you interested in game production. Since we’re making most of the artwork by working with people external to the main team, there’s always a risk of delays or problems, and although we’ve had great luck thus far, this time around there were a few stumbling blocks.  

City of the Shroud uses a “hand-painted” style, which means that making the textures (the 2D images that get stretched over the 3D models) for the game generally requires artists to manually paint them, usually in Photoshop (it’s fairly uncommon to find teams procedurally generating a hand-painted style, but we’re helping pioneer that too!). Generally, this hasn’t been an issue - the people we’ve had the good fortune of working with have handled the style deftly. 

Early in the spring, though, we ended up needing to work with a team of artists we hadn’t worked with before for some of our assets due to scheduling conflicts. Everything started out smoothly, but the style of the game quickly became difficult for them to achieve at scale (it’s one thing to paint a single asset; it’s another to paint dozens), and this slowed production down considerably. In AAA, this is when a company would throw money and bodies at an issue to resolve it (I’ve been on the front lines of that process a few times), but we have neither spare cash or people to do this, and besides, we wanted to be patient and work through everything until we could all achieve something we were happy with.   

[...]

Abyssal Arts introduce the Duelist class of their tactical RPG City of the Shroud:

Introducing The Duelist, City of the Shroud's Latest Class

We are finally ready to unveil something we’ve been dying to get into your hands for months: the newest addition to CotS’ class roster, the Duelist!
 
The Duelist is a martial-arts cowboy… assassin… Basically, she’s awesome:

“The Duelist is a hybrid strength/dexterity class, and also a hybrid melee/ranged class. Armed with pistols and martial arts, she has abilities to dash in and out of melee, as well as abilities that function differently if your target is in melee or at range. This makes the Duelist a very flexible class, capable of setting the terms of the fight. However, as the name suggests, the Duelist does best when fighting a single target, so you can defeat enemy Duelists by sticking together and ganging up on them.

When you manage to isolate your target, the Duelist is without question the deadliest class in the game. The core philosophy of the Duelist is that the best defense is a good offense, and if you can get an enemy in a one on one situation you will be able to use your mobility and disruptive offense to make short work of them.

When building a Duelist, you will have to choose between mobility, disruption, or pure offensive power. Whether you want to focus on staying safe and faking out your opponent while you whittle them down or simply diving in and going for the throat, the Duelist is going to be adept at picking off fragile enemies.”

[...]

Seven days to go for the already funded tactical RPG City of the Shroud:

7 Days Left To Hit Stretch Goals! + Battle Modifiers

Hi Everyone,

Today, we’d like to hear your thoughts on Battle Modifiers! We mentioned something similar in a previous post when discussing difficulty modifiers, but this would be slightly different - like a rule change to add some spice to the mix. Read on for more:

• Battle Modifiers:
  The idea is much like difficulty modifiers, only a Battle Modifier would apply a special bonus to both teams. This would allow the game to have some battles where there is a bonus for you to try to exploit to your advantage, enabling you to employ new strategies that might not be possible otherwise.

Have ideas or suggestions for what sort of bonuses you’d like to see? Let us know in the comments!

BTW, developer Abyssal Arts has joined forces with Moira Katson, a best-selling, chart-topping fantasy and sci-fi novelist. The Cliqist interviewed her:
Moira Katson: The Voice Behind City of the Shroud

The tactical RPG City of the Shroud has been funded on Kickstarter with 20 days to go:

Dear All,

It's midnight here in England, but we didn't want to wait on this news:
WE'RE FUNDED!

Thank you so, so much for helping us accomplish this. We are eternally grateful to those of you who have been here from the very beginning, who have joined us for this campaign - you've given us invaluable feedback, and you made this campaign a huge success - fully funded in just 9 days!

We'll have more updates for you tomorrow. For now: thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Sincerely,
The Abyssal Arts Team: Keaton, Ryan, Moira, Chris, Jon, Samogon, and Grant

City of the Shroud is a tactical rpg where players choices come together now on kickstarter and almost funded. It is currently at $12k out of a 14k goal.

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A tactical RPG where all players' choices come together to drive a living story, created by a AAA veteran and a chart-topping author.