Sins Of Night 1st Anniversary – R4 Progress & 2025 Plans
Hello Sinners! Sins Of Night will turn a year old in a few days, and I have to say, the year has gone by in a flash for me. Maybe not so for those of you waiting patiently for updates, but I hope you’ve enjoyed it all so far.
I do at this milestone have to try and convey my gratitude for all your support and positivity since Sins’ release. Transitioning to a new game was more than a little nerve-wracking, not to mention all the work that went into it, so to see so many willing to throw their weight behind the project is humbling to say the least. Thank you all for making it possible!
It’s been challenging juggling multiple projects and learning new skills, but I have only just missed my target of 4 releases in a year. Not ideal, but all the more reason to hit it harder in 2025. Before I go over my goals for the coming year, I’ll give you a quick update on what’s happening with Release 4.
Release 4 – Combat
The combat system nears completion. Most of my recent efforts have been spent getting the combat abilities fully implemented, a task that proved way more complicated than I originally thought. Seemed like every time I finished something, several new requirements sprung up in an ever-growing list, at least until it was suddenly finished!
I can finally show you a preview of the combat UI. Bear in mind some of this still may be changed, but it’s close to what you can expect. I’ll reiterate again, that this system is intended to be avoidable if you don’t like this sort of thing.
There are still some placeholders to replace, but this should suffice for a brief “tour”. As a general outline, this combat system is turn based, with Action Points and Movement Points being your main resources to spend each turn. I’ll go over some individual parts of the UI to give you an idea of the individual mechanics.
Movement
Along the top there, you have the enemy unit cards and their “spacing” buttons. These are my implementation of combat movement, working around the limitations of the game and engine.
In a nutshell, it’s essentially a range mechanic. Weapons and some abilities have optimal ranges at which they do damage, with it falling off depending on how far off you are. You can see there are two sets, one for being at range (think firing from a distance) and one for grappling with the enemy (or wrestling, if that’s easier to picture). It’ll be up to you to manage your spacing to do optimal damage and ideally frustrate the attempts of your enemy.
This is my most “experimental” mechanic, and there are a few quirks I need to work out. Regardless I hope it’ll add that extra dimension to the combat you usually only get in a 3d or isometric game. Look forward to seeing what you think of it!
Abilities & Ability Catagories
In the middle, I hope you can recognise the row of ability icons like which I shared in the last post. I’ve broken down the ability bar into three separate categories, which you can switch between using the “diamonds” on the left-hand side.
Weapon & Skill Abilities: These are derived from your equipped weapon, and your combat skills (Unarmed, blades and firearms). These will be your go-to damage dealers, featuring a mix of standard attacks and some more powerful abilities to give your build and weapon of choice more flavour.
Cruor Abilities: Your vampire abilities. Spend cruor to increase your strength, speed, or even heal yourself. Here you will also see your character build come into play, giving you access to new abilities.
Combos: The big one. This category features a number of special abilities that only become available once you have fulfilled a combination of conditions. These may include having a certain weapon equipped, having certain buffs, the state of your enemy, and other factors. It’ll be up to you to discover these combinations and exploit the powerful abilities they unlock!
The Rest
And the bottom of the screen is mostly dedicated to your stat resources and an unpictured buff/debuff display. Also there with the silly placeholder graphics is your party. This combat system will support 1v1, 1vMany, and party v party or any combination of those. Throughout the main story you will be fighting alongside Hugh and Kate a lot, with more solo action going on in side missions and jobs.
Tester Version
Obviously I can only show so much with a static screenshot. Only by playing it yourself will you get the full picture. I have been working to get a separate tester version of the combat system ready for you to play around with; sadly I don’t think it’ll be ready in time for the Christmas break. So it probably won’t be out until after new year. Sorry!
So that’s a brief breakdown of the system. A lot of what’s left to do is polish, audio work and finally integrating it into the main game.
Story Event & Combat Tutorial
I have also started work on the main story event that introduces the combat system. In this one you’ll receive helpful advice from your supportive patron and get to spend some quality time with your bestest friend.
It’s still early in the overall render work, but I have got a nice chunk of it done alongside setting up some blood and clothing effects that will hopefully do a good job of giving the violence the weight it deserves. Coming with the event will be the introduction of a new (male) npc.
2025 Plans
For 2025, I want to pivot back to the character content as much as I possibly can. There’s been a lull in this in the later half of 2024 as I shifted work over to the combat system.
I do have to apologize for the amount of time that I ended up using in pursuit of it. I had thought the whole endeavour would be long over by now, but it’s easily turned out to be the most complex game system I’ve ever made. Looking ahead, I have no intention of doing anything quite like it again for this project, so this should just be a bump in the usual proceedings.
So for the focus on character content, here’s some things I want to get done in 2025:
Hazel Introduction content
Kate as an accessible character
Evelyn new content stage
Harley new content stage
This all conveniently fits into four separate releases, a good pace I think. So I’m going to do my best to get it all done for this time next year.
Hazel will be the next step after the combat release is finally out. She’ll likely be more of a side character, kinda on the same scale as you saw with the Valeria content. This does mean a faster pace, and I have some grand plans there for her to be a nice way of getting other characters all together for some shenanigans. That’ll come later though.
Kate meanwhile, is very heavily integrated into the main story, so that’s a good two for one as getting the story moving is something I’ve been wanting to do all year. I’ll have to put a lot of work into the events that lead to her becoming accessible, so she’ll probably be on the small side once available. She’ll continue to grow as the game progresses.
Both Evelyn and Harley will see their content diverge into the separate vice and virtue paths. This will probably necessitate a slight change in the event content to avoid it becoming too much to handle. I’m thinking I might do a smaller amount of events that have multiple outcomes on repeat or other factors. Making renders in a series is a lot more efficient than setting up tonnes of different scenes and locations.
On top of the character content, I still have quite a bit of work to do in establishing the world of Sins Of Night. New jobs, skill trainers, npcs to interact with and side activities… It’s a lot, but I’ll be sprinkling this stuff in around the character content. So in the sense of delivering a new character stage and a smallish general world feature alongside.
Conclusion
Hope at least one of these many things has piqued your interest. I will again just say thanks for the great year! Sorry I didn’t manage to end it with a bang, but all the more reason to do better in the coming one.
I will be taking a couple weeks off over Christmas and New Year, the first real break since Sin’s release in fact. It’ll probably do me some good, and hopefully soon after new year there will be some new content for you to try out.
In the meantime, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!