Hello everyone.

Core demo finished

This month, I finally finished the demo of the “Core” gameplay, i.e. exploration, investigation and infiltration. I have two playable levels: a little trapped maze and a residential level where you have to investigate to find the magical artifact … There are a lot of interactions, hidden things to discover, deadly traps to avoid (See images below). I’m pretty happy with the proposed game experience because it corresponds to what I had in mind, but the game still feels “incomplete” since the dungeon was not thought to be empty, but populated by characters.

Playtests

Thanks to Antoine for testing the game; sorry for the others for having canceled your session due to last minute bugs. The playtest was rather positive, but the micro lag problem made it a little uncomfortable for a long gaming session. I investigated it and I think I have solved the problem (it was from the Garbage Collector).

Next demo

I was finally able to start the demo “Adventurers” in which I populate the maze with hostile adventurers who seek to kill the unfortunate Goblin that you play. The purpose of the demo is to code what is needed to handle characters. Animating them went rather quickly thanks to Unity technologies that adapt biped animations to any animated model. In terms of Artificial Intelligence, I started working on Behavior Trees, and now I am coding some more dynamic systems based on decision trees.

Roadmap

I take some holidays in May, and on my return I go back to the demo “Adventurer”, and finally to the demo “Minion” in which we can finally see what it is to work for an evil dungeon master …

See you soon.

Arnaud

Hello everyone,

It’s been a while since the last newsletter, this is the time to catch up!

Gameplay demos

In January, after a few weeks breaking my head on level design, I decided to stop working on the entire dungeon and to focus on just one playable level, to make things easier and improve the gameplay. I did several small demos, containing more and more content and gameplay, to get a complete level close to what I would like to have in the final game. As usual, it took much longer than expected, but the result begins to be interesting.

Playtests

I also began playtesting the game. Players feedbacks were rather positive and encouraging. A big thanks to them :). The tests also helped me to point some problems on which I am still working today, and qualities that I am trying to improve. For those to whom I promised to participate in the next sessions, be patient, I would like to improve the demo, it should not take too long. There are performance issues that I would like to solve because they harm the experience.

Programming

I also took the time to clean my code and revise its architecture. It was necessary for several reasons, the most important being creating a savegame system. Saving player’s progress is now possible and this will make the playtest less painful.

That’s all for this time, I will try to give news more often,
See you soon,

Arnaud

Hello everyone!

As I said last week, this month I finally finished the announcement page of the game. After some communication time, I can now work again on the gameplay and on the game experience, including Exploration, Investigation, and Infiltration.

I need your opinion

I did not have much feedback on the announcement page, so feel free to tell me what you think (especially if you think it is bad and you do not want to say it, it is important to tell me what you dislike so I can improve it).

New Video

Here are two new videos:

Walking in corridors:

Physical Traps:

See you soon,

Arnaud

Hello everyone, here is the news from the front.

Art Style

This month, I worked a lot on the graphic prototype. I worked on 3D models, researching their art style, colors and textures. I also worked on the dungeon architecture, walls, vaults and archs. I am late and did not finish yet the announce page of the game, but it should be done very soon.

New website style

If you go on the website, you will see that I did a totally new skin. Do not hesitate to let some comments, and please report any problems you may encounter.

See you soon,

Arnaud.