Way back when we jumped from RPG Maker to the more expansive world of Unity, we had a vision for not just our dream game, but for a creation tool so user-friendly it could be given to anyone who wanted to make a tactical RPG (one of the most notoriously difficult genres to create).



That dream is beginning to become a reality concurrently with the creation of Arcadian Atlas. Patrick has been hard-at-work on the foundation for what we are dubbing the BITE engine enhancement - an add-on that utilizes Odin Inspector’s tools to create easily-modifiable units, scenarios, skills, items, weapons, and scenes. The best part: this tool is being developed in conjunction with Atlas, meaning every benefit to the system is a benefit to the game, which includes the following:



More Power to the Game Designer - A large portion of a game designer’s life is turning knobs and whistles to balance values and to create the best possible experience for the player. You’ve all probably played RPGs with horrid difficulty spikes, or gotten bored going hours without a challenge. BITE allows us to easily and quickly implement your feedback when it comes beta time!



Smaller File and Patch Sizes - To get Arcadian Atlas’ prototype off the ground, we initially utilized Unity Prefabs. Moving to a new different segmented form of data means we can be much more efficient with the size of the game, as well as any patches we make on Steam (and elsewhere). We know some of you backers have internet data caps, so we want to keep file sizes as user-friendly as possible!

Advanced Cutscenes and Scenarios - We’ve forged a giant pyramid of stats, classes, status effects, and skills out of the prototype’s design work so far. Cutscenes and scenarios (missions) rely on pretty much everything, so being clean and organized with those building blocks allows us to quickly create, reorder, and modify events.

Plug & Play Capabilities - We’ve re-structured the logic and data to separate it from the graphics, which is a fancy way of saying Arcadian Atlas and future tactical RPGs using BITE will require far less digging into code-bases to create and play!

Effortless Changes - With BITE’s data-driven design, we can remove, add, and change everything from units, status effects, skills, missions, locations, cutscenes (or most anything else) effortlessly midway through development based on new needs and feedback!





Iconic

To celebrate BITE, we wanted to show off some of the graphics we’re paring with Patrick’s data-driven systems.

Iconography is an integral part of the user experience, and serves both as localization tool (because images require no translation) and ease of navigation. We love the design challenge of creating icons for our stats, items, text boxes, and menus that are at the same time simple, clean, and communicate efficiently. See below just a handful of those we’ve cooked up for our items:

