DevDiaries

Ave! Welcome to DevDiary #5, where we take our first detailed look at some of the metagame features of Expeditions: Rome! In our previous DevDiary, we made a brief expedition into the world of art direction to show you how we’ve approached the challenges of bringing the ancient world of Rome to life in a way that feels authentic, yet vibrant and exciting. Today we’ll return to the world of gameplay and system design as we delve into the meta systems of Expeditions: Rome and explore how we’re selling the fantasy of being a Roman legatus on a campaign of war. This time we’re dealing with some systems that are still very much under development, so buckle up for some serious inside baseball.

Ave! Welcome to our very first DevDiary for Expeditions: Rome. After being quiet for so long, we are very excited to finally share more about the next instalment in our Expeditions franchise. This is the first in a series of DevDiaries where we’ll be sharing insights and behind the scenes looks at Rome and its development process. To start, we’d like to share with you our vision for Rome, and maybe a little more on what the game is all about.

Ave! Welcome to DevDiary 15, and boy do we have a doozy for you this week. It’s companion week! Every day starting today, we’ll be releasing a new video about one of our five companion characters, introducing the role they play in the story as well as in combat, and hinting at the personal problems they’re saddled with, which you will hopefully help them deal with throughout your adventures together.

Ave! Welcome to our third DevDiary for Expeditions: Rome. In previous DevDiaries, we’ve laid out the broad strokes of our vision for the game, and we’ve delved into detail about the combat system and given you a hint of the myriad tactical opportunities introduced by our skill and item design. Today, we want to focus on what makes Expeditions: Rome a role-playing game: the story, the characters, and the way you interact with them.

Ave, and welcome to our 18^th dev diary – the second after the release of Expeditions: Rome. As we mentioned last week, the first major update is currently undergoing testing. We were hoping to release it last week, but QA did their jobs well and found a new issue that had slipped into the game due to one of our stability fixes, so we had to push the patch until this week so we could get that fixed first and give QA time to re-test the build.

Ave! Welcome to our second DevDiary for Expeditions: Rome. In our previous DevDiary (link here), we covered the vision for Rome and what the game is about overall. We also discussed this live in our first DevStream which you can watch a replay of here (link here). For DevDiary 2, we’re going to get a little more specific and take a deep dive into our core combat system. So gear up and let’s get started!

Ave, and welcome to our seventh DevDiary. In DevDiary 5, we gave you a glimpse into the design of our conquest and legion battle systems. We explained how this made up just a part of our metagame systems, and that we would be dealing with the rest of the meta systems at a later time. That time has come!

Ave! You have discovered our eighth DevDiary. Last time, we went over all the character progression systems in the game, including how the loot system works – but there was one part of that we didn’t have time to touch on: Crafting.

Ave! It’s release week! In a mere four days (count them!), Expeditions: Rome will be released to the world in all its glory, and you will finally be able to continue your demo playthrough into the full game. Will you manage to save Cotta from the clutches of Mithridates? Will Archelaus prove to be a useful hostage if you left him alive? Will Julius Calidus ever drop the act and admit to very clearly being a woman? You’ll find out soon!

Ave! After a small break, we have another DevDiary for you with an update on two of the major things we’ve been working on for Expeditions: Rome. Since our last update, we’ve made excellent progress on the new legion battle system, and we’re pleased to report that it’s shaping up to be a lot more interesting than the old minigame. At the same time, we’ve been working to improve our gamepad support to get rid of the cursor emulation in most parts of the game, to make it a better experience to play Rome from the comfort of your couch.

Ave Legate. Side quests! What are they? Where are they? Why are they? And how did they come to be? These are the questions that we will answer in this, our sixth DevDiary. All the way back in DevDiary 3, we gave you a glimpse into our overall approach to storytelling, and an outline of the plot of Expeditions: Rome as well as the major characters that drive it – but when you’re playing a roleplaying game, you don’t expect to just follow the main questline from the menu screen to the credits, you expect distractions; tangents; quirky adventures. You expect side quests, and so help us Jupiter, we will meet those expectations.

Ave, and welcome to our ninth DevDiary. If you were expecting something spooky, you’re in the wrong place: Ancient Rome obviously did not observe All Hallows Eve. Come back on December 17 for the Saturnalia.

Lately our DevDiaries have been delving into very concrete and specific game systems, with diaries discussing character progression and the specifics of the crafting mechanics. Today we’re going to take a step back from all that and look at a more high-level aspect of our game design: how we strive to support multiple play styles.

Ave! Our music event that launched two weeks ago is still ongoing, and since we’re all in an auditory mood already, we thought it would be good to stay in that general area by delving into the topic of actors and directors of voice-over.

Ave Legate! The day has finally come! Today we are releasing the DLC expansion we’ve been working on for Expeditions: Rome. Pop open a flask of passum or mulsum and get comfortable because this DevDiary will have a lot of information.

Ave, and welcome to our lucky 13th DevDiary. It’s been a very big week for us since diary 12 just last week – you’ll notice the schedule has sped up now that we’re getting closer to release. The Christmas break will put the brakes on that for a few weeks, but we wanted to be sure to get one more DevDiary out before the holidays seeing as how we just released our public demo of Expeditions: Rome.

Ave, and welcome to another DevDiary – the first one since the glorious release of Expeditions: Rome in fact. We skipped last week due to being rather busy with the launch, but this week we are back to talk about the reception and our support plans.

Ave and happy new year! Although the Logic Artists office has been closed between Christmas and the new year, several members of the team have enjoyed hanging out on our Discord server to chat with all of you who are eagerly awaiting our fast approaching release date. We’ve also been monitoring the Steam forum to see what you guys thought of the demo, and the reception has been heartwarming. It’s truly wonderful to see how much you loved what we showed you of the game, and if possible, we’re now even more hyped about releasing Expeditions: Rome to the world on the 20^th of January (this month!) so you can all get to experience it for yourselves.

Today’s dev diary follows up on our diary from just before Christmas, which laid out how we go about designing a good combat encounter. This week we’re going to talk about how the AI has been designed.

Ave! Welcome to DevDiary 12, and this one is going to be special. This week, we’ll be discussing how we’ve collaborated with Twitch extension development expert Muxy to build the most ambitious, expansive Twitch extension to ever exist for any game. This has been an effort that has stretched across many years, with collaborations with many different entities, including

some streamers themselves. We’re incredibly excited about sharing these details with you!

Ave! Today we have a special, fun treat for our 4th DevDiary. Up till now, we’ve been talking about game mechanics, story, and characters, but in each of these posts we’ve been showing off cool concept art and beautiful screenshots. For DevDiary 4, we’re going to be focusing on the Visual Style we’ve been building for Expeditions: Rome. Since the game is so big, we’ve decided to focus on the challenges we faced in recreating the environment of North Africa in ancient times specifically.

Hey Guys! Thomas here, the composer for Expeditions: Rome - I wanted to talk a little about the scoring of Rome, the process, the recording, and some cool and unique things we got to do with this score.