I hope you're all doing great. Back with a new beta update, and this one opens a door I hope will bring new life to your games eventual: custom campaigns.
Rogue Empire now has an experimental, data-driven modding layer. You can build your own campaign out of JSON files, drop it into a folder, and have it show up in the campaign selection screen. You can also publish it to the Steam Workshop and play campaigns made by other players. This is work in progress and If I see creators using it I will move more of the game's mechanics to be customizable. Be patient with me on this as this my first time implementing the steam workshop enabling stuff.
On top of that, this update brings a good batch of UI work, quality-of-life changes, and bug fixes, including a few that only affected the beta branch.
Custom Campaigns and Workshop Support (Experimental)
For the moment viewing and creating workshop items will be restricted to the beta build (obvious reasons) and to members of the https://steamcommunity.com/groups/RETesters steam group. This is the way for steam to allow beta testing the feature. So if you are interested make sure to join this group.
Custom campaigns live under CustomResources/Campaigns and are described entirely through JSON. There is no map editor yet, so this is data-driven layer, but it already covers a lot of ground:
- Campaigns can define metadata, starting levels, generated level data, level transitions, difficulty and profile choices, starting item profiles, encounter settings, and main menu entries.
- Campaign selection is data-driven through campaign_menu.json, with custom button text, tooltips, cover art, ordering, and an optional fixed character setup.
- Custom story cards through story_cards.json: story text, level-entry cards, level-transition cards, monster-triggered cards, and your own PNG or JPG story art.
- Each campaign uses a stable campaign key, so it gets its own save folder, load game entries, continue game support, and local records.
- Installed campaigns, local or from the Workshop, are automatically validated, added to campaign selection, reloadable without restarting the game, and safely preserved inside campaign saves.
- Campaign creation tools for validating, exporting, and publishing or updating a campaign on the Steam Workshop.
- A comprehensive in-game PDF guide (I also copied it as a steam guide) covering how to build a campaign from scratch.
- Smoke Test Depths is included as an example campaign that modders can open, inspect, and use as a starting point.
This is early and experimental, so expect rough edges. If you try it, I would really love to hear where it breaks or where the documentation falls short, and of course any suggestions!
Full change log next.
Changes in Beta 1.2.4
UX/UI:
- Merchant item backgrounds now reflect item quality.
- Shift + Click on the tile your character is standing on now picks up every item on that tile.
- Ammo now shows its amount directly in the item name.
- Ammo moved from the Other category to the Weapons category in the inventory.
- Load Game entries now emphasize character names and locations in bold, and color-code character information by class.
- New shader for the dungeon map screen. There should now be a much higher contrast between explored and unexplored areas.
- The merchant interface distinguishes the Traded Item much more clearly, and restock/resupply now asks for confirmation to avoid accidental restocks.
Bug Fixes:
- Added a guardrail so tooltips properly close with Esc, or when opening UI windows such as the inventory.
- Windowed Fullscreen should now work properly.
- Holding Shift while pressing a numpad up/down/left/right key no longer locks movement in that direction.
- [Beta only] New characters created on the beta branch could start with an empty quest log and without the main campaign quests, such as traveling to Arensal and speaking with the Mayor. Affected characters kept that empty quest log even after switching back to the public branch. This is now fixed.
- [Beta only] Choice-based world map events, such as searching a cache or creating a potion, could fail to resolve, granting no reward and showing no success or failure message. Events without player choices worked normally. The button texts were swapped by mistake during the TMP Pro update. Fixed.
- [Beta only] Examining an item in the merchant interface could leave its description or tooltip stuck on screen, with Esc not closing it. This should be fixed now, unless I missed a circumstance, so please let me know if you still run into it.
Other:
- Improved corrupted save recoverability through improvements to the backup system.
- Ability cards in the main menu are now saved through Steam Cloud, so the list syncs when you play on another computer.
How to Access the Beta
This has been released as a beta build. I invite you to test the new version. Here's how you can access it:
- Right-click on the game name in your library and select "Properties."
- Go to the "Betas" tab.
- Choose "beta" from the Beta Participation drop box.
- Restart Steam (not always needed but recommended).
If you have the time and patience, I would greatly appreciate it if you could give it a try, especially the custom campaign side. Your feedback will help me identify any outstanding issues within the branch.
As always, thanks a lot for the feedback, love, and support!
Happy dungeon crawling!
GW
