Hello and welcome to this week’s dev blog! It is me, Christian (again), and I’m here to take you through what happened last week at Stunlock Studios.

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Welcome to yet another dev blog!

Katey here bringing you the weekly update. Last week we had fun with motion capture, the gameplay designers continued their work on the tutorial and the programmers programmed (heh heh).

It looks like you enjoyed Bakko’s Egg Brawl! It’s been so awesome seeing your reactions. I’m looking forward to watching some awesome Odeum plays and hopefully community made highlight reels. Did you ever get your hands on a pink egg? Did you even notice we hid a pink egg in the last dev blog? Two, in fact!

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Why, hello there!

It’s Christian here again, thanks for stopping by! Like I said last week, the general idea of the dev blog in the future will be to give a brief recap of what happened, as the title put it, last week in development. Apparently this was misunderstood by some to mean it was “the last week of development”, while it was meant to be “this happened this last week, in development”. We’ll look into a clearer name for the future. However, this week we’ll take a closer look at an isolated topic; the upcoming temporary game mode, Bakko’s Egg Brawl. Read more »

Greetings!

My name is Christian and you might have seen me posting on Steam (Stunlock_Christian), Discord (cthriel) or reddit (sls_chris) every now and again. I have worked at Stunlock Studios since June 2013 as a Game Designer, but during most of Battlerite’s Early Access period I’ve filled the role of Community Manager. Enough about me though, let’s get to the Dev Blog!

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Future of the Dev Blog

What I’d like to mention to begin with is that we are switching focus a bit regarding our Dev Blogs for the future. The idea is that the standard Dev Blog will be a short update regarding what’s been going on at the Stunlock office the past week. Read more »

Hello Champions of Battlerite!

My name is Daniel “Prog” Fahlström and I am one of the programmers (Editor’s Note: aka “One of the lead devs”) here at Stunlock Studios. I’ve been working here since January 2013. Some of you might know me from the Bloodline Champions days as I was an active community member and moderator back then. During the development of Battlerite, I’ve been working in multiple areas such as the gameplay backend, UI and localization.

In this blog I will briefly explain how the Champion movement works in Battlerite (without being too technical) and what requirements and challenges we’ve had with the solution we use. Read more »

Katey here!

What’s happening in Stunlock town?

Well as you know, there’s been a lot of fiddling and tweaking for Patch 0.11.2.0, which we’re all pretty excited about (but also, admittedly, a teeny bit anxious for). The game designers and co have been busy on the core gameplay changes, playing it with testers, getting feedback etc. The patch date was already announced last Friday and I can confirm it will go live this Thursday.

I took part in testing the new patch and it’s been quite an experience so far. Initially, the purpose of the patch was to create more interesting and dynamic play via movement speed changes and changes to M1 ranged abilities. The goal was to get more dodging and interesting plays in neutral situations, allowing for more outplays via skill.

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We know you are very curious about the M1 changes; as it stands, the patch won’t arrive this week, but we should be able to announce a date for the patch before the week is over. Stay tuned! Meanwhile, please enjoy a behind the scenes blog from Tau Petersson, our PR & Events Manager.

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Hej!

Here you’ll get to see the one part of my life where I go to a lot of events to show off Battlerite or Stunlock. This time around we got the chance to go to IEM Katowice to hang out with Razer and play Battlerite in their booth. With me I had two of our brilliant event workers: Levox (Jens Bak) and Silfver (Christoffer Silfverswärd: that last name means Silver Sword with fancy old Swedish spelling).

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Welcome welcome, step in. Today I will be your guide through the magical world of esports. My name is Alexander and I work as Esports Manager for Stunlock Studios, but some of you may also know me by the name GrimGoon.

During this tour please remain seated at all times. To the left we have overblown drama and on your right hand side we have huge egos. Read more »

It’s me again! In case you didn’t catch the first blog, I shall introduce myself once again. My name is Katey and I am UI Designer and Brand Manager here at Stunlock Studios. My blogs revolve around what people have been up to the previous week.

Due to the Enter the Arena tournament over the weekend, we originally planned to have an esports blog written by our one and only GrimGoon (Esports Manager), but since organising a tournament is a very time consuming business, he wasn’t able to post this week. Hopefully we will get a blog from him fairly soon. Read more »

Welcome Battlerite fans!

My name is Konrad Petersson (IGN: Krab) and I’m a Technical Game Designer. I started working here at Stunlock Studios (SLS for short) November 2016, and to be honest, I have loved every minute of it. My main focus has been designing and implementing new champions for Battlerite together with the rest of the Champion team. I also do stuff like fixing bugs, analyze and balance the game together with the rest of the Design team.

This is my very first dev blog post and as many of you might have figured out already, it’s about the making of our latest champion, “Raigon, the Exiled prince”. I will go through our initial goals, how we have iterated upon the concept, bumps along the road and decisions on the way to final product (if you could ever call a champion in a multiplayer game final!) from the perspective of a designer. Hopefully it will provide you with some juicy insight on how the champion creation process works!

How we decide on a direction

With each champion we make, we want to improve the Battlerite roster as a whole. We have a lot of potential champion designs and art concepts lying around, which sometimes makes it hard to pick what to go with next. Creating design concepts and abilities is in many ways a creative outlet, but first and foremost, we try to identify what our current roster would benefit the most from. At the same time, we see great value in introducing new and unique abilities to the game as a whole, and try to not limit ourselves idea-wise. Ultimately, if it works in the game, it can potentially make the cut.

Initial direction / goals

We wanted our next Champion to be:

• A Melee Champion
• A Beginner Friendly Champion
• A Champion with broad appeal

Coupled with the general design directions of Battlerite, such as making every champion unique in the way they play, fill their own role and fit into the game, this is usually how defined a champion is from the start.

The Champion team

The Stunlock Studios Champion Team consists of Game Designers, Artists (Sound, 2D/3D art, Animators, VFX) and programmers. The team works closely together based on the original concept. We communicate regularly through messaging apps and Champion Meetings where we meet, goof around, go through the champion’s current state both visually and mechanically, discuss what to improve, introduce new ideas and plan ahead.

Early concept

We decided we wanted to make a two-handed sword fighter. We had none of those and it would fit in well with the “Broad Appeal” direction we wanted to take. Fans of BLC might notice the similarities between “Raigon” and fellow two-handed sword fighter “Reaver” from Bloodline Champions. We took some inspiration from “Reaver”, but ultimately, we wanted to find something new and unique that would fit our directions. Our 2D artists presented us with some awesome concept art and prototyping began from there.

Ability design & prototyping

One of the first design decisions on Raigon’s abilities was to include a core mechanic that would grant him life back, allowing him to stay on and pressure his targets and sustain himself.

Our definition of “Beginner friendly” meant conveying a clear goal to players, rather than just making him a “simple” or “easy” champion to play.

Croak, for example, requires a bit more decision-making (as in jumping in and out to be effective) and is thus harder to learn to the point where the player is comfortable bringing him into competitive play. That being said, we are always working with skill ceilings and viability in mind, so the goal for Raigon would be easy to learn – difficult to master.

We also wanted new players, who might be starting out with Raigon, to learn some more of the common mechanics found in Battlerite. This would allow these newer players to carry on some knowledge from Raigon to their next champion of choice. Read more »