D&D General Gameplay Trailer of 5E-Powered Solasta: Crown of the Magister Video Game

The folks making the 5th Edition powered Solasta: Crown of the Magister video game have released a gameplay trailer, and boy does it looks good. They launch their Kickstarter tomorrow, Tuesday 3rd September.

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I chatted to the developers about the game a couple of weeks ago. I'll update this post with the Kickstarter link when it launches.

I'm definitely seeing what they mean by 'verticality' - look at the positions of the four characters in the screenshot below.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Camera is a hot topic even among the team, so don't worry we're hearing your feedback on it. As for Thunderwave:

RANGE/AREA: Self (15 ft )
A wave of thunderous force sweeps out from you. Each creature in a 15-foot cube originating from you must make a Constitution saving throw.

Someone arrest this phony! Anyway, jokes aside we're not trying to be "inspired" by 5e. Unless there are limitations due to the fact that we're a video game (example: Longbow range, no one wants to be sniped from 20 screens away), we're trying to stick to what's available in the SRD. So bless should give you +hit, otherwise that means something's bugged.

Object interaction / Weapon swapping is more early implementation, so we're not committed in leaving it as free action.

The origin of a cube in 5e is one of the faces of the cube, not the center. See page 84 of the Basic Rules.

Edit: the thunderclap cantrip has a range of 5ft from the caster, so it does act like thunderwave in the solasta demo. Maybe one of the Devs ha mixed the spells up?

 

[Myzzrym]

Aaaaand I was wrong. I just re-read a couple of other threads and yes, the common agreement is that you can indeed aim your cube where you want. I was under the impression that a range of "self" meant you had no control over the direction or anything.

 

[Morrus]

Is Mac compatibility on the menu? I very much want to try that alpha but my PC is a Mac.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Aaaaand I was wrong. I just re-read a couple of other threads and yes, the common agreement is that you can indeed aim your cube where you want. I was under the impression that a range of "self" meant you had no control over the direction or anything.

Yeah it's a bit confusing, because the rules for cubes are elsewhere in the book.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I'm pretty sure everyone I've played 5E with has misinterpreted Thunderwave. I'm also pretty sure the original 4E version was in fact centered on the caster.

 

[Esker]

It's live! Solasta: Crown of the Magister

Btw if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask (I'm the Community Lead at Tactical Adventures and in charge of the Kickstarter). I'll try to answer when I have some spare time

This is probably too much to ask for, but any idea about getting the Demo to run on Linux with SteamPlay? I downloaded it but it hangs on a black screen with a cursor (which I can move). Particular Wine libraries I might need? I'm running Ubuntu 18.04 on a machine with an NVIDIA RTX 2070 card and plenty of RAM, etc. Haven't done a whole lot of gaming with SteamPlay, but Skyrim SE runs well, FWIW. (It's totally fine if the answer is "I have absolutely no idea")

 

[EthanSental]

Out of curiosity, how difficult is it to write a program for Linux compared to Windows based? 80% of laptop and PCs still run windows, so I’m sure every game producers has to at some point balance that, development cost for other platforms...I’m just curious what that looks like to justify another platform development.

 

[Azzy]

It shows a lot of care and a decent amount of depth. Pretty easy to figure out and play. I like the combat layout of options, powers, stuff like that. They have a good system for seeing what actions you have and how to use them. The fights really felt spot on.

It's alphaness shows in a camera that fights me the fury of a thousand orc fighters. I just can't get it to give me the angle/zoom/motion I want or in some cases need to move or select or target. Moving the camera while exploring is especially more limited than a person should want, at least as far as I can figure out the controls. Also, there are maybe a few bugs in executing commands (when I tried to cast burning hands it went off without giving me an option to aim it.....or I misclicked due to a UI lag? Hard to say). Both of these might be from the machine I'm running on, so mileage may vary, I guess.

Overall, I really like what I see. Very Promising.

I agree with all of this (except the burning hands bit—I haven't experienced anything similar). But especially about the camera controls... OMG!

I've only kicked the tires a little bit, but I like what I've seen. The combat reactions are handled well. And most controls are fairly intuitive. This is definitely promising.

 

[Myzzrym]

So unfortunately we've already our hands full making the game for PC, so Mac & Linux will have to wait (we do want to add support later if we can though).

Note: For the camera, we do hear a lot of complains about it so we're looking to push out a new version with camera options in the coming week to see if it fixes the issues.

 

[Jharet]

Looks good. Gameplay recalls the awesome Kingmaker game. Hopefully, it's just as customizable.

 

[Morrus]

So unfortunately we've already our hands full making the game for PC, so Mac & Linux will have to wait (we do want to add support later if we can though).

Darnit. That’s me out then! I’ll be excited to get the Mac version whenever that comes.

 

[Esker]

So unfortunately we've already our hands full making the game for PC, so Mac & Linux will have to wait (we do want to add support later if we can though).

Oh, I wasn't even remotely expecting native Linux support. I was just wondering if anybody had had any success getting it to run through Wine. (That'd help out @Morrus too)

 

[gyor]

Solasta: Crown of the Magister

A Turn-Based Tactical RPG based on the SRD 5.1 ruleset, by the co-founder of the studio that made Endless Legend! For cRPG fans!

www.kickstarter.com

 

[Zaukrie]

This time I got into the first orc camp, and could not get the camera to show me where I was at all. Clearly I don't understand how to use it. I really want to back this, but if you can end up not being able to see where you are, no chance.

 

[gyor]

They said they will try and fix the Camera.

 

[Myzzrym]

Camera fix is now live, make sure you read the article to know how to update the demo:

Update 3: Demo Update - New Camera Options · Solasta: Crown of the Magister

Hello folks! Many of you told us that your experience playing with the camera in the Demo was... less than stellar. Well, worry no more! We're coming out with an update to the Demo, with more camera options and a few fixes. How do I access the New Version for the Demo? As we don't want break...

www.kickstarter.com

 

[DM Howard]

Of course something awesome like this is coming about after I give up video games. Bah! Good luck with the kickstarter!

 

[Zaukrie]

The new camera is much better. Still don't know how to see what is in front of me......

The team fell entering the cave after the first orc camp. The fighter seemed to be hanging, and I think I had no path anywhere.

 

[Larrin]

Camera is much improved.

I had a repeat of the flaming hands just going off in the direction the mage was facing when I selected the spell from the list, but I also had it work properly. The failure nuked my cleric and lead to a TPK though Had a similar problem when I tried to use the scroll of fireball, it went off when I confirmed I wanted to use the item.

 

[Azzy]

A map function would be greatly appreciated.