Development Update

Greetings Wizards,

For the past month a whole lot of development effort has been focused into getting the new introduction to the game up and running. Mainly this has included a more robust quest system, ways of doing some simple event scripting within the dungeon maps, and the town tower building tutorial and a way to talk to people in town. Here the new town dialog user interface can be seen.

New Features

Alex and Aden finished a couple new monsters this month including the new Overseer earth creature. I haven’t figured out his magic power yet, but Alex created a couple of different hand variations, maybe they’ll come into play somehow.

Lastly, I also managed to squeeze in a new spell called Stalagmite too. This spell raises 6-8 rock columns around the caster that remain for a few turns to provide some protection from nearby melee enemies. Enemies that want to melee attack the player first have to bash through the columns of rock to get a clear shot.

Development Highlights

Here’s the development highlights and details from the past month. Want to talk about these changes or other aspects of the game, then visit us in the online forums.

Major Changes:

  • New spell Stalagmite: causes 8-13 blocking, destructible stalagmites to raise around the caster lasting for 6 turns.
  • Upgraded to Unity 5.1 engine
  • Town based dialog UI is now working including names, portraits, text typing, sounds effects, and quick complete clicks/taps
  • Dungeon dialog bubbles got a lot of polish including names, text typing, sound effects, and continue button
  • Intro dungeon quest and intro tower quest are now complete and in game (still need art for opening Wayside Inn scene though)
  • The Overseer and Harpy can now be found in the game (basic melee attacks only)
  • Enemies can now bash destructibles that are in their way such as barrels and the floating cosmic treasure rocks
  • Champion monsters now “flee” until they are 2 tiles away within certain health thresholds
  • Monsters that were fleeing and have obtained a “safe” distance now become “bold” until they get hurt, a bold enemy won’t flee

Story:

  • Rough draft of script at about 80% complete
  • First version of intro inn, intro dungeon, and intro to town are now in place complete with characters and all dialog

Art:

  • Completed Animations for Harpy and Overseer
  • Completed art for Mimic
  • Completed several armor art pieces for boots and chest pieces
  • New art for several wands

Code:

  • New tower tutorial using quest system introducing the player to the ring menu, dialog with an NPC in town, building a tower, visiting the Sundries, and then visiting the tavern to get further quests
  • Created blueprints for the tavern, tower, sundries
  • Changed blueprint reward tiers so that there is now a “system” tier, that tier is never ignored when generating randomized blueprint loot
  • Added ring menu talk option and artwork
  • Added InteractIndicator component that can show one indicator at a time with ping pong animation and icon fading in/out
  • New Actor functions to enhance interaction and quest management

Gameplay Adjustments:

  • Removed static quest indicator from Tavern
  • Buildables now have bool that says whether they should have an interact indicator instantiated or not
  • Actors no longer generate actions if there is a dialog conversation active
  • Tasks and interactions related to quests adjusted for better pacing and flow

Bug Fixes:

  • Bug fixes across various gameplay mechanics, UI issues, and interactions to enhance the player experience and eliminate errors.

Upcoming Goals:

  • Further improvements in quest systems
  • Continued tweaking of NPC interactions and spell functionalities.

This concludes the current development update. Stay tuned for more information as we continue to progress!