[Devlog] Mystery Babylon

[copywright]

Hmm, not sure why, but all my videos are unplayable now… That’s troubling. The raw links still work

Anyway, we made progress this week.

Map and Room Transitions

I worked on this one – man, it took a lot of work. Way more than expected. We were in a single level for so long, once we entered a scenario where we’re switching levels (or “Scenes” as Unity likes to call them), it’s a whole other ballgame.

Before, every level in our game had some of the same scripts and objects in them repeatedly. So, I had to move to a new architecture where we have one “Manager” level that loads the other levels and feeds it the data it needs. Manager Scene has all the persistent stuff like UI, Audio, other important scripts that every level needs.

That took a while to setup and debug. Once I did, I found more trouble handling transitioning between levels. Mainly stuff like handling fade in/out and preventing my camera from going batshit.

If you want to see it while I was in failure mode:

God, that was annoying as hell. But, I took a break earlier today and ended up fixing it tonight:

That’s an example of a level being loaded and unloaded: Map Transitions. Good news is that the load time is really fast for now. At least, until I add a ton of NPCs but meh; it’s still a 2D game. Not like I’m loading a GTA open world map with 20GB 3D models lol.

With that massively annoying part finished, I quickly added the first iteration of “Room” Transitions. Which is basically the same deal, except you’re on the same map… but a different “room”.

As you can see there, the camera is still being annoying for Room Transitions. This is because I am not yet repeating the annoying code it takes to prevent this.

I am actually using this handy plugin: ProCamera2D for my camera system. I was loving it, until this BS started happening… but I’m in an email thread with the developer trying to get that stuff squared away without me having to touch his source code (which would just get overwritten on the new version update anyway…).

Pro Camera 2D - Unity Camera Plugin

Anyway, my programmer troubles aside: Map & Room Transitions are just about done. The camera is annoying, but since I have a hacky fix and I think the developer will fix it long-term, it’s not too much of an issue.

The good news here is that adding levels will be much easier going forward, so there’s always that!

AI Update

Had another call with the engineer working on this, Group behavior is nearing completion. Took some low quality video of what’s going on behind the scenes:

To explain what you’re seeing, the green squares are the paths to take to reach the formation. Every Unit in the Group in working towards reaching their assigned place in the formation. The Grey squares show the formation they’re trying to build. At that point, he had it set to “Horizontal Line”, but as we showed in our Formation Builder, it could have been any formation.

The Vanguard role is pretty much complete, they’re driving all the action. They set the target points for all the other AIGroups, sort of the driving wheel.

The two AIGroups behind him are Flank Defenders. Originally, I intended that every Vanguard Group only have 2 Flank Defender AIGroups, but he’s made it in a way that we can have as many as we want and they’ll position themselves in the best manner to assist the Vanguard Group they’re assigned to guard.

In the video near the end, you can see he moves our PlayerUnits to the right. Once he does, the Flank Defenders immediately move to cut off their escape, while the Vanguard recovers.

The AI is smart enough to know where to position itself to do so, really awesome.

There’s a few things left to wrap up for Flank Defenders and Group AI.

In the video, you’ll notice that they’re all just moving their max Movement range to reach their assigned destination in the formation. BUT, we’ll want the AIGroups to be able to move in a way that they hold their formation – a way where all the units can reach and yet keep their formation.

The current behavior is cool for situations where the AI wants to move quickly to a target – more time constraints like “Survive X amount of turns”.

But, for instances where they’re in a mainly defensive position like a “Seize” map, we’ll want them to hold their formations and do their absolute best NOT to break them – since you’ll have to come to them in the end.

That’s where AI is in a nutshell, exciting stuff.

Next Steps are:

• Adding the other Teams: Ally, Other Enemy, and Neutral Teams to test this behavior when there’s many teams in a battle map

This one should be fun, yet difficult. An AIGroup’s role can change pretty quickly. Say, a bunch OtherEnemy units spawn within a Flank Defender’s Line of Sight. They’ll have to decide whether to keep defending the Vanguard or engage the new threat (essentially becoming a new Vanguard themselves).

• Adding Leadership Units and a Morale System

• Fleshing out Individual Behaviors and adding an AIUnit “Personality” feature

How likely is the unit to cooperate in a Group? Is he a bloodthirsty loose cannon? Or is he coward, who’ll flee and disregard goals once he’s hurt a little?

Or a hotshot Unit who simply loves war and doesn’t need to group up.

Situations like that.

AND that’s AI. It’d a long road, but once it’s finished — oh, baby!

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That about wraps up programming progress. One of our programmers was sick, so things got a bit clogged. But, Walk-Behind and Silhouette Shaders for battle should be coming up soon. We had to basically rewrite a lot of our Grid System and features like Line of Sight, etc. to handle this, so it’ll be tested pretty hard before we let it in.

About Dialogue – We’re going with Ink. I like it. We did get the articy team to fix our problem, but Ink is open source, has a Unity Integration, and it’s simpler to use + single purpose: to write interactive dialogue.

Should see more of that coming in the next week or so, I’ll most likely be doing that one myself.

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Art Dump

I am working on getting our finished carriage up and running. It’s awesome, lots of moving pieces.

Really cool stuff, it’ll even cooler once I wire it up completely and get it moving. Done by @vnitti_art

Got a critical attack animation for Sword Knight. The in-game animation will be quite different timing wise, and I’ll add some camera shake juice. But, with all the Map Transitions and carriages – it’s been a lot going on. So, I’ll plug this in soon.

Most likely significantly slow down the wind up, then BLAM release the dragon and shake the screen. I always have fun keyframing these

Oh. MrTheNoronha is doing these battle sprites. Upcoming animations to finish SwordKnight’s set:

You’ve seen some of the new tiles I’ve been getting, awesome stuff. You’ll be seeing even more since I ordered a lot more – officially should be able to build every level for the demo. There’s some issues wit stylistic consistency, though. Palettes and artist’s drawing styles – trying to clean it up but it’s tough.

The Outdoor tiles are for the most part done by Seliel the Shaper. She is awesome and I asked her about palettes, but she uses 128 colors per tileset with no restricted palette. Yet, I’m working with pixel artists who swear by DB32 and think using any other colors is a sin…

Soooo, trying to balance that out. I think it is what it is for the demo stylistically, but post Kickstarter, I’ll have to be strict. Either we define a palette that’s flexible enough to work with Seliel’s many colors or get restricted… probably the former. If I could, I’d just have Seliel get on board with us. Maybe post-KS, she does do Ko-fi commissions from time to time.

That aside, I say all this because I will do something unwise and share my tiles here: please don’t use them for anything you sell. There’s artists here, and I figure it may be educational or whatever

By the talented Dokitsu. More tiles coming from him plus tons more Gecimen who made the Fort Interior so far.

That’s about it for art. If you’re into seeing early WIPs, I can share one for our upcoming Fort Interior battle background – humble beginnings:

By zaicuch, who made our last beautiful background. Pretty sure he’ll pull off another masterpiece, I have faith lol.

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Ok, that’s all folks. Back in a few days, maybe I’ll treat this place like TigSource and only post on Screenshot Saturday lol

[copywright]

Fixing and setting up talking animations ahead of this week’s dialogue system advancements with Ink:

Lol forgot to change the name for Artur. This was manually done anyway.

oh, btw. Just opened up source code on GitHub. All the AssetStore Tools, Plugins, Sprites and Tilesets are missing – but the code is visible for anyone interested in that sort of thing.

hjoseph96/codename_mystery_babylon

[copywright]

Doing that UI Quality Check I talked about some time ago – non-combat movement is in a pretty good space to move onto other stuff.

Should be seeing some in-game gameplay of AI very soon.

Lots of cool art in the making. I have a town tileset coming up, have a peek:

Dialogue System using Ink is underway, should be a great week both programming and art-wise.

Hard at work to get this vastly improved alpha out the door and have time for playtesting ahead of any KS campaigns.

[copywright]

Just stopping by for two reasons:

1. One of our programmers is still sick, so I’ll be busy. Meaning, I’m on dialogue duty instead of AI this week. But, our third programmer is handing that. Still, I wanted to be at service to speed things along.

Anyway, so I’m doing a deep dive on these game writing tools tonight ahead of coding an integration – sort of a last minute decision before its too late.

I’ve read the Ink documentation. It is not very easily picked up, it reminds me of learning a programming language tbh.

I could use it, but likely not enjoy it at all. Neither would my team or any future writers, especially since they can’t code.

The whole point was to choose a modder friendly tool that wouldn’t be tough to pick up, but Ink… isn’t quite that. I mean, it’s not impossible or super difficult, it’s just not very intuitive and lacks a visual sense of flow.

Twine is better in this category since its a visual tool, but integration tools are non-existent and we’d have to write custom code to migrate it in and make sense if it. It’s really only intended to make web-based visual novels. It feels like a poor man’s articy.

Now, I am binge watching these articy tutorials again and I can’t help but feel like it’s the perfect tool for a game writer. It’s easy to use and has a ton of really powerful features that really help you create a rich narrative that tracks your choices. Designers can use it, and immediately see their stuff in the game without opening Unity. It’s integrated with Unity out of the box.

Only “downside” is its 89.99 full version or 14.99 monthly. Which is not very mod friendly.

But, I can’t really see myself passing on the perfect tool only for that reason… so we’ll have to cross that mod support road for dialogue later.

articy:draft 3 - First Steps Tutorial - Lesson 8 (Updating dialogue with simple scripting)

Articy is in literally everyone’s best interests, team wise. If we get funded enough for mod support, we’ll just have to build an external GUI for dialogue. That, or be awesome enough to get a copy of articy and we’ll support imports from there. Probably both.

Anyway, I’d encourage anyone who likes writing scripts for games to watch that tutorial series and you’ll understand why it’s criminal not to use it.

I’ll be getting started with articy this week as well as programming our integration.

2. I updated our website, for some reason, it’s ranking pretty high on Google

Pretty much all stuff you’ve seen, but I link here on the devlog page. Updated our team page with most of the new additions, two or three more members need to give me their info.

Starting a mailing list soon – because apparently it’s a marketing tool that I need? Or something. Personally, I think I’ll do it once we launch this new alpha.

https://mysterybabylon.io/team

Basically just here to say we’re using articy and to convert you all into drinking the articy Kool-aid

Edit: lurkers are like “wtf bro, this is just text where iz game”

Edit 2: Back us on Kickstarter or Zenovia will have to go into a new line of work

We got the wrong casting animation

Aye, where’s @SHYUTERz, didn’t forget about you my boy. Be in touch soon

[copywright]

Just sharing some test dialogue for the carriage ride into the fort level.

It might change, but just testing out our integration. And, showing a bit of what articy can do. I think – I’ll open source the articy project as well once it’s said and done.

This sequence is linear, so it’s on the simple side. A good test, though.

Will edit this later when it’s in-game.

EDIT:

!!!

forgive me for spamming but:

EDIT 2: for educational purposes for anyone interested in concept art process:

he started out with 3D models as a base to paint over. They call this “blocking”

I literally just got this. my Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Steam page coming soon.

[copywright]

It’s under review, we’ll see how it shakes out in the next few days.

wishlist us?

more updates coming soon.

[copywright]

Pit stop for a mini update

Spent today making strides on Articy integration, working on a DialogueManager to handle both dialogue between players/npc’s with portraits and those without.

You’ll likely see more of that by the weekend.

Spent a few hours testing out these awesome tiles. They’re great but also complex. I always make a point to build levels manually, then create Tiled terrain brushes and automapping rules once I have the lay of the land.

This in Tiled, so it’ll likely look different in-game. Only testing out the tiles here, but I’d say it looks pretty good. This level is after the fort though, so really, the next level you’ll see is the fort dungeons.

Lots of little things can be just a bit off with these things, so I always go for creating a huge house or structure to test tiling ability. Usually highlights a few tiles that may need variants.

Building large structures in 16x16 is no joke. Those roofs specifically have about 3 different angles to them, so extending past their original size takes some tact.

If there exists some brave and noble soul who wishes to help with Tiled level design (though, I wont hold my breath), do let me know. I honestly love making levels, but programming time gets lost making maps.

Yet, tilesets must be tested unless we find little inconsistencies down the road when we’ve all moved on…

Anyway – just stopping in to share those tiles. Tons more on the way, the Guild Lodge/Home Base set should be in by the 28th. Looking forward to those. After that, there’s a royal castle set likely coming around this time next month.

The order of maps is generally: Fort (exterior, interior, dungeon) --> Home Base (exterior, interior) --> Town (exterior, interior) --> Royal Castle

Which will do it for the demo.

So many tilesets… only one me to map them all… One of those good problems though.

[copywright]

Guild home base tiles are here:

There’s no prefab (pre-built home or anything) on these, but I can already tell this one will be fun to build!

Lucked out, someone with Tiled experience emailed me and is willing to help work with the artists to test tilesets & help with level design – so I can bury my face in code all day.

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Lots of programming progress being made – but I’ll save the details for this weekend.

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I have a world map being made by a talented cartographer:

https://www.fiverr.com/chaimholtjer/create-an-awesome-fantasy-map-for-you?source=order_page_summary_gig_link_title&funnel=d8ef09f40115ab33d780e2ac1fdf3ceb

I’m intentionally balling out on these concept art pieces – because they will set the foundation of the game’s narrative. That last piece will likely be the game’s cover art – in the event we do physical copies as Kickstarter rewards.

I shared our narrative & lore with the cartographer – put in a huge order for a double sized map. I requested the high-res line arts, so the concept artist who made our last piece can digitally paint over it – combining two masterpieces into one.

That will help us develop the long-term narrative of the game as well as what tiles to make. It’ll influence tactical decisions like a mountain range as a natural barrier between two nations , as an example.

ETA is probably 2-3 weeks, but it will be glorious.

EDIT:

Steam has just approved us!

This page will definitely be updated as we progress – but if you like our stuff, give us a wish list!

Haha, don’t hold me to that release date either.

[copywright]

Programming Updates

Articy Integration & Save System with JSON

There’s some oddity happening with our text animations – changes may have gotten lost.

Boy, this took a ton of work. Getting the dialogue itself to display and managing the dialog boxes wasn’t the difficult part – it was more dealing with a better way to store data long term.

I ended up writing pretty much 70% of our save system in the process of doing this. I needed a good way to relate data from Articy & in-game data. So, I went with creating an Entity base class which PlayableCharacter and later NPC will inherit from. I imagine, we’ll have more Entities as we progress, like RecruitableCharacter and so on.

I found a great way to store all PlayableCharacter data at once. At the same time, I found a cool way to store Unit Inventory, Stats, and experience.

Articy Data in Unity:

Saved Game Data about Units:

{
  "UnitType": "Unmounted",
  "WalkSpeed": 5.0,
  "RunSpeed": 6.83,
  "MoveAnimationSpeed": 1.5,
  "Experience": 0,
  "Stats": {
    "Movement": {
      "Base Value": 16,
      "Growth Rate": 0
    },
    "MaxHealth": {
      "Base Value": 25,
      "Growth Rate": 60
    },
    "Strength": {
      "Base Value": 5,
      "Growth Rate": 100
    },
    "Speed": {
      "Base Value": 10,
      "Growth Rate": 50
    },
    "Skill": {
      "Base Value": 28,
      "Growth Rate": 0
    },
    "Magic": {
      "Base Value": 3,
      "Growth Rate": 25
    },
    "Luck": {
      "Base Value": 8,
      "Growth Rate": 0
    },
    "Resistance": {
      "Base Value": 6,
      "Growth Rate": 0
    },
    "Defense": {
      "Base Value": 99,
      "Growth Rate": 0
    },
    "Weight": {
      "Base Value": 16,
      "Growth Rate": 0
    },
    "Constitution": {
      "Base Value": 17,
      "Growth Rate": 0
    }
  },
  "WeaponProfiency": {
    "Sword": "D"
  },
  "MagicProfiency": {},
  "WeaponsInInventory": {
    "0": {
      "WeaponType": "Sword",
      "DescriptionBroken": "A broken greatsword, no longer very useful inc ombat. A blacksmith will be able to repair it.",
      "MeleeSound": "swosh-42",
      "RequiredRank": "D",
      "Weight": 18,
      "MaxDurability": 30,
      "AttackRange": {
        "MinRange": 1,
        "MaxRange": 1
      },
      "Stats": {},
      "BrokenStats": {},
      "Filename": null,
      "ItemName": "Steel Broadsword",
      "ItemType": "Weapon",
      "Description": "A heavy, large steel blade capable of serious damage.",
      "Pricing": {
        "Cost": 0,
        "SaleValue": 0
      },
      "Icon": {
        "AtlasPath": "Assets/_Sprites/GUI/UI Materials/Icons/assorted icons/heartamulet.spriteatlas",
        "SpriteName": "heartamulet_13"
      }
    },
    "1": {
      "WeaponType": "Sword",
      "DescriptionBroken": "A broken steel sword, nearly useless in battle. A blacksmith can repair it.",
      "MeleeSound": "swosh-05",
      "RequiredRank": "D",
      "Weight": 8,
      "MaxDurability": 35,
      "AttackRange": {
        "MinRange": 1,
        "MaxRange": 1
      },
      "Stats": {},
      "BrokenStats": {},
      "Filename": null,
      "ItemName": "Steel Sword",
      "ItemType": "Weapon",
      "Description": "A durable steel sword.",
      "Pricing": {
        "Cost": 1000,
        "SaleValue": 600
      },
      "Icon": {
        "AtlasPath": "Assets/_Sprites/GUI/UI Materials/Icons/assorted icons/heartamulet.spriteatlas",
        "SpriteName": "heartamulet_4"
      }
    },
    "2": {
      "WeaponType": "Sword",
      "DescriptionBroken": "A broken fencing sword with no utility. Worthless in combat, must be taken to a blacksmith for repair.",
      "MeleeSound": "swosh-11",
      "RequiredRank": "D",
      "Weight": 3,
      "MaxDurability": 25,
      "AttackRange": {
        "MinRange": 1,
        "MaxRange": 1
      },
      "Stats": {},
      "BrokenStats": {},
      "Filename": null,
      "ItemName": "Rapier",
      "ItemType": "Weapon",
      "Description": "A slim, agile fencing sword oft used by court knights in duels.",
      "Pricing": {
        "Cost": 0,
        "SaleValue": 0
      },
      "Icon": {
        "AtlasPath": "Assets/_Sprites/GUI/UI Materials/Icons/assorted icons/heartamulet.spriteatlas",
        "SpriteName": "heartamulet_11"
      }
    }
  },
  "ConsumablesInInventory": {
    "3": {
      "CanHeal": true,
      "ActionToExecute": null,
      "Filename": null,
      "ItemName": "Potion",
      "ItemType": "Consumable",
      "Description": "A serviceable alchemical remedy for wounds in battle.",
      "Pricing": {
        "Cost": 200,
        "SaleValue": 50
      },
      "Icon": {
        "AtlasPath": "Assets/_Sprites/GUI/UI Materials/Icons/assorted icons/heartamulet.spriteatlas",
        "SpriteName": "heartamulet_43"
      }
    }
  },
  "ValuablesInInventory": {},
  "UnitPrefabPath": null
}

Sweet. PlayableCharacter essentially masses both of sets of data into one file per PlayableCharacter. So, combat & non-combat data gets saved when you save the game. I am waiting on our UI artist to give me the main menu graphics, but those should be here within the next two weeks.

I might just use ugly placeholder stuff to finish the save system, then put the pretty UI in when it’s finished.

Anyway – Lots more Dialogue Features on the way now that the foundation of Articy Integration is done. I’ll be handling that as well as a few other things, next up is:

• NPC Dialogue Interactions

These won’t have portraits, but just be the Dialog bubbles in world space.

• Branching Dialogue Choice

Articy makes doing this pretty easy, but I imagine this will still take some time.

Plus, we’re waiting on UI for this. Docs of our upcoming UI, which won’t be blatant copies lol.

Actually, the bastards at EA have a patent of fucking “Dialogue Wheels”: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20070226648A1/en

Couldn’t believe that bullshit.

But, I think we’ll just do a Dues Ex/TellTale GUI:

Group AI – Defensive Mode Formations

This behavior is coming along quite nicely. The functionality here is that AI will immediately get into formation and ALWAYS move in formation.

This is more for when the AI is prioritizing defense rather than trying to attack the enemy as quickly as possible.

You can see our fancy “Spike” formation around 1:30, then they move while keeping the formation.

Next up for AI is:

• Implement Morale: (Allied Strength - Enemy Strength) + Leadership proximity
• Create “Leadership” Units who have a “influence radius”. Allied Units gain morale and get stat boosts, when within this radius. –
  Protection of these Units will influence NeedToBeInGroup – they will protect their leader from harm.

Then of course, throwing a huge 5-Team battle royale and stress testing the system once all that is done. That’ll be fun times… /s

While our battle sprite animation sets are still being completed, both the updates to the battle system and AI will likely finish around the same time.

At which point, we’ll be able to add more units and more mechanics, like the ability to Jump in battle.

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Art Dump

I’ve basically been dumping art all week but:

This outdoor tiles for Town level is pretty much done. Interior walls, floors, roofing is in progress.

Battle sprites are still in progress, but the Sword Knight’s set is nearly complete! The annoying news is that the Lance Wielding Knight will require his own set… but I how some of the non-attack animations port over like Dodge/Damage/Death … Block.

There’s like 8-10 animations per set and one person. Well, used to be one person, we have someone else helping out who started this week:

sprite anim wip:

model:

That’s half of Zenovia’s idle. Trying to get some concurrency going with these, where he’ll start on other sets and they’ll be proofread by the main artist (at least until they both match stylistically).

Map Sprites are being redone – for resolution reasons. Same person who made our awesome knights. After Zenovia, Jacques and Penelope will get a redo.

[copywright]

Working on a 3D sketch for a teaser trailer. The idea is that this will be our first non-gameplay trailer and also play before the game’s Start Screen. (Also, it’s an excuse to play with Unity’s HDRP mode :3 )

So, I’m using a 3D scene plus maybe some animated characters as a starting point, for one of our pixel artists to make a trailer using the shots.

I’m aiming to finish this weekend, but 3D animation can be tricky. Anyway, my next project will definitely be 3D.

I went 2D because I thought it’d be cheaper, but pixel art is expensive… and takes longer than 3D animation. Though, my hate of math will catch up to me once we throw 3D rotations and physics in the mix, adding a whole new dimension lol

anyway - mini update. I’ll share this as it progresses.

EDIT:

level design is pretty much done – animation coming tomorrow

If I wasnt budget-deep in 2D already… oh man lol

[copywright]

How the sketch worked out. Looking into either a 2D animation trailer or having Dokitsu use this as a sketch for a pixel animated trailer.

Got the CarriageController done – at least the player controller version. Need to program automated movement, like “Move to this square” logic.

Also got our Carriage interior mapped out, I’ll need sitting versions of our player sprites done.

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This upcoming week will be more Dialogue work and getting our tutorial battle map working. For me, at least.

Lots of art in progress.

Still need a good pixel FX artist for battle scenes… but I’ll make do in the meantime.

This was finished, btw. A few minor cleanups, and it’s good to go.

[copywright]

Update on NPC/On Map Dialogue.

EDIT:

Rain/other effects were rendering over the bubbles, making it tough to read. Fixed that.

[copywright]

I missed May the Fourth, too bad.

Currently working on Branching Dialogue and it’s placeholder GUI. I love Articy.

AI is in it’s finishing stages and we’ll be throwing a Player + Ally vs Enemy vs OtherEnemy, vs Other battle royale! Maybe next week.

Battle Sprites keep chugging on, I’ve brought another artist to use the original artist’s palettes to work on getting those completed. We’re already almost close enough for me to start plugging them into the battle system.

I’ve been fleshing out non-combat stuff for a while now, but I can’t wait to work on core gameplay some more later.

Dialogue and Non-Combat Exploration is also important though, so no regrets. Things should start connecting fairly soon.

[copywright]

Iteration 1 of Branching Dialogue Choices.

Still mighty rough around the edges, but nearly complete!

After this, I’ll be adding Jumping to Battle mode. Usually, I only see that in isometric SRPGs.

EDIT:

Got a sneak peek at our lineart for the map. will share the full one once i have it Then, it’s digital paint time.

[copywright]

Added Jumping to battle.

If you have move points, you can move after jumping. Likely edit a bit later once I have the full map line art.

Color version in a few weeks most likely. Names subject to change.

[copywright]

Spending this weekend iterating on upcoming levels. That there is the home base level, heavily inspired by the starting home base in Suikoden II.

I’ll be getting tiles for horizontal roofs, like this:

Then, we’ll be pretty much done.

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I realized that for combat between AIs, I’d require a front-facing version of the enemy… Which means doing 8-10 animations TWICE x.x Sooooo…

AI vs AI will take place on the map. Working on that, here’s some animations for it:

The Sword Knight battle animation set is complete.

Apparently, one of our artists is super skilled at pixel FX:

Pixel Magic Spell Set

So, I’ll be good on that front for a while. Dude is super talented, if there were 3 of him, our art would be ready by now.

So, we’re adding blood. I want to add blood to the map as well, plus the ability to loot corpses (which will function much like trading).

Once Artur’s animation set is complete, the swap from 3D to 2D for battle will commence. Two other artists are at work on Jacques and Zenovia, I’ll share those when I get it.

But for now, the artist who’s done the bulk of our battle sprites is taking a detour into map sprites, because we need combat animations for on-map combat.

Once those are done – we’ll finish up Artur.

June approaches. The actual plan is to release our strong alpha by June 15th and have the Kickstarter on my birthday, July 13th after doing some marketing of the demo.

Because, we our current buzz is insufficient – we’re working to make the alpha as great as possible and get some streamers to try it out.

Anywho, I’m going back to crying in Tiled. (those slanted roofs… they are murder)

[copywright]

Completed 1st iteration of AI vs AI combat. I imagine I’ll add damage #'s, crit/dodge text, eventually dodge/death animations and ofc SFX.

Huge Battle Royale should be going down this week.

In the end result, I want to be funded enough to do battle scene animations for AI vs AI. But, for the demo, I think this will do.

BTW, I contacted Streamable about my videos dying. These links work elsewhere, not quite sure what the issue is…

EDIT:

Added idle and Damage animations for Knights. I imagine this will look pretty different by the end of the week.

[copywright]

Made some dialogue bugfixes. Also made it so a dialogue can have multiple sequences, and it repeats the last sequence.

here, the dialog will change based on if he thinks you’re a new soldier or not.

Dialog system is close to completion, then I can spend time writing tons of sequences in articy.

This one is by vnitti. More hands on deck for battle animations.

Colorization of our world map is in progress, will share any updates I get.

more coming later!

Edit:

Working on the first cutscenes in the game and the tutorial afterwards.

waiting on sitting sprites to finish the interior cutscene that happens before this.

Going to add horse and carriage SFX now.

[copywright]

Unfortunately, we’re agreeing on uniform sizing for these battle sprites. Jacques way higher res, so his crispness will dwindle.

I do want that resolution for the final post KS product.

I’ve been hard at work refining our level design and battle system.

On that note – There’s a total of 7 levels I want for Kickstarter.

In the alpha for June 15th, we will see 3/7. I’ll be releasing in episodes/chapters.

We’re missing lots of necessary props and map sprites, and portraits to do any more. Our exterior tileset is pretty vast now, we need to beef up interiors. A ton of map sprites need to be made as well.

So, next release for that. We’ll be in our fort level for this alpha, it’ll be fun

we’re scrambling to finish all our battle sprites on time. Which we wont if we kept that high resolution, but it’ll remain as a reference for the final product’s expected quality.

Anyway, I must return to the grind.

Working on art references for battle sprites, an upcoming animation of our Lieutenant Boss:

His test sprite:

Have a peek at jacques’ attack

[copywright]

Heyo, still alive!

We are in full crunch mode for our first significant playtest release by the 15th. After which, we’ll release again August 15th with all our content and may do our KS campaign then.

The 15th release will be on Steam early access, at least I plan for it to be.

There’s a lot going on. The programming team is debugging our combat system you see above. We’ll be doing a full audio restoration with our composer’s help. So don’t mind the absence of music and SFX atm, it’s for programmer sanity.

I have been fleshing out our cutscene ability, with the first cutscene of the game:

Still some stuff like turning heads to face the speaker to do, but that’ll get done.

Tons of art to do and in-progress. We’re speedrunning battle sprites to make it on time, I’m actually working on plugging it into the battle scene this week using the sword knight and Artur.

Battle Animations

Google doc to organize main character battle animations, one or two more sets of 7 animations coming for enemy/boss units. If you look, there’s greatness ahead.

This is awesome, by vnitti. We’re working on juicing up the smear.

I’ll share the wired up battle scene progress this weekend.

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Our town level is ready to be mapped out, but I’m stuck refining and debugging the battle system and plugging in battle sprites. Plus, doing cutscenes and level designs work for Chapter 1’s release on the 15th.

Once I am no longer bound by these important tasks, I’ll be making this awesome map. The Guild home base level as well.

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Some upcoming UI in the works. Working on our menu system and save UI. I wrote most of the save system in the past few weeks, so this should make it into the release.

anyway, it’ll probably get quiet again until release because we’re pixelling and coding our asses off lol

FEE3 should be fun as well