Heroes Update: We're Back and Better Than Ever!
We're back, baby!
After a few months of hiatus, Heroes development is back on track! This time, moving faster than it ever has before.
As some of you know, we paused Heroes development for a few months so that we could finish Drop #3 of the AI Renaissance. This included introducing the new Memory System for AI Dungeon, one of the biggest improvements to the core gameplay we've made in years.
We felt that it would be a significant enough improvement for AI Dungeon players that it was worth pausing Heroes for a short time to get it out the door. However, now that it's finished, we're going to be shifting more and more of our attention to pushing Heroes forward and getting it ready for early access.
And now, Heroes’ development is screaming forward. Where before Heroes was a solo effort by me, we're now adding more team members to the Heroes team to accelerate development.
We've already added several new major improvements to the experience in just the past couple of weeks. Our next major version of Heroes will likely be the biggest update we've ever made to the experience. Here are several of the improvements (though there are many more) we are working on as part of this update:
NPC Action Generator
One of the issues we ran into before was NPCs either taking too few actions or taking unnecessary, weird actions that didn't fit with the story. To fix that, we implemented a new system that actually simulates what actions NPCs might take before the story generator writes what happens. This gives us much more control over NPC behavior, preventing weird actions while allowing characters to take actions completely unrelated to the player. Now, only nearby NPCs will take actions, and these actions are more interesting and contextually appropriate than before.
For example, yesterday, I played a game where a man entered the tavern complaining about bandits chasing him. I sent a village boy to fetch the guards, who then entered the tavern and interrogated the man. After a few actions, the NPC action generator decided that the guards had finished and would leave. The AI narrated them leaving the tavern to search for the bandits without me doing anything to prompt them. This created a much stronger feeling that I was in a world with characters taking actions independent of me, making it feel much more alive.
Tier System
We've introduced a comprehensive tier system that affects players, NPCs, and items. Characters now have levels and class tiers, with health, damage, and healing all scaling accordingly. In the past, there wasn't a significant difference between the stats of different NPCs, sometimes making it far too easy to defeat powerful NPCs. Now, very strong NPCs can have significantly higher stats based on their tier.
Combined with the NPC action generation system, it's made combat significantly more interesting.
For example, I recently played a game where I tried to kill the queen of Larion and take over her kingdom at level 1. I completed a quest for the local guard captain to win an audience and got into her throne room.
I tried to jump up to her dais and hold her hostage with a dagger to her throat. Unfortunately, she was a high-tier NPC. She immediately cast a magical barrier to protect herself while her high-level griffin companion slashed me, taking off 30% of my HP right off the bat. With her four guards joining in, I was completely wrecked within three turns 😅.
But I actually loved this! Part of the goal of Heroes is to make an AI Dungeon with meaningful, realistic challenges. If I'm able to defeat the queen at level 1, then progressing has no meaning and isn't fun. Now, I'll have to get much stronger before I can exact my revenge on her 😈.
Item System
We've also completely overhauled our item system. Items now have tiers, levels, types, and categories defined in the world config. You can now explicitly equip items in equipment slots, making it clear what you're wearing and what items you're using.
This sets us up for another overhaul we're still working on, enabling items to give you bonuses to your armor, damage, skills, and attributes, or even special abilities for unique items. This will make the collection and progression of items a much more meaningful and fun system.
To further enhance the “fight, loot, get stronger” loop, we've also implemented a looting system where you can easily loot defeated enemies and get tier-appropriate items as rewards.
Dynamic Music System
One thing I've found myself doing while playing Heroes is turning on background music depending on the mood. It improved my experience so much that I wanted a system like that built into Heroes. So, we've created a new dynamic music system that auto-detects the mood of the current story and plays music to match it. If the story is peaceful, you'll hear calming tunes; when combat starts, the music will shift to match the intensity. We're still tuning how this system works, but I think it will significantly add to the immersion of the game.
UI Improvements
We've made a TON of improvements to the user interface as well. A few bigger changes include:
- A new character slots screen for managing your heroes
- Enhanced inventory management with improved search and filtering
- More intuitive character and achievement displays
- Mobile-friendly updates to make Heroes playable on a wider range of devices
There's much more to come!
This is a huge number of changes, but we're just getting started. We have several other massive improvements to the engine planned in the next few weeks, and we expect Heroes to become a dramatically different experience very quickly.
More and more, I believe Heroes is going to deliver an experience unlike anything that has ever existed before: an immersive game world with true freedom, where you can be whoever you want to be, choose whatever you want to choose, and shape the world in any way you can imagine.
I can't wait to get it to the point where you can all play it. Until then, we'll be hard at work making it the best version of itself it can be.
– Nick Walton
