Monthly Archives: August 2015

Healer Talent Tree

1 more good week of work done !

As planned, I finished the Priest specialization. The result is pretty nice, with a noticeable different style from the Druid specialization. It’ll probably make some fights harder and some other fights easier, as their capabilities differ a bit, but that was expectable.

Then, still as planned, I did in full the Necromancer specialization ! This one is a special beast : he actually bases some of his healing on damaging the enemies, so it gives a very different style from the 2 other healers. It can be a bit intimidating to handle him at 1st, but after a while, he can become very efficient. In bonus, every time you’ll get a new ability during the first levels, it’ll change the style of healing, which will give a good variety to the early game despite still having only a few available spells.

And I even had a bit of time to integrate a few missing weapons : maces, warhammer & practice sword. I still have some other swords to put in the game, as well as all the matching icons for the inventory.

So now, there are 2 specializations for the mage left to be done. 1st one will be a warlock, based on DOT. 2nd one will be, hum… I’m still not sure !    It might be an arcane mage, somewhat similar to the one from WoW, but we’ll see how he comes out. So this new week, I’ll be doing the warlock, hopefully in full, so I could also do a good part of the last mage specialization.

See you in 1 week for the next report !

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New Portraits

Ouch, ouch ! The week has been hard !

I did the Paladin specialization tree, but it took me longer than hoped, so I didn’t have time to finish the Priest ; I designed all his abilities & talents, but I implemented only 50% of them, and once all will be in the game, I’ll also have to test & tune them to be sure he has about the same efficiency than the Druid, else the game would get too hard or to easy depending of the specialization we choose for our healer.

Anyway right now I’m pretty happy with the Paladin ; it has been a bit hard to design him, as I was not sure where to go with him ; I ended with a classic setup for the Paladin : a mix between magic and melee combat, with a good hint of protection spells ; he got only very few healing abilities though, to avoid unbalancing too much the healing needs when there’s a Paladin in the party.

So next week, I’ll finish the Priest, and then hopefully do in full the last healer specialization : the Necromancer. This one will be really special, but I already noted tons of ideas, so his design is already nearly complete..!

Considering the current rate to create the specializations, I might put on hold the Rogue class. I’ll add it at a later point, once the game will be ready to release (ie: everything else will be finished & polished), or even in a free patch after game release, if the game is popular enough. It’ll depend on how much tiring & stressing the final rush will be in the incoming weeks.

PS: you didn’t get the reference of the title and you’re a fan of the Ultima RPG games ? Then head to the Ultima Retrospective Video Reviews , and watch them all starting by Ultima 0 (AKA Akalabeth) and ending with Ultima 9. You won’t regret it : it’s hilarious, it’s extremely well done and it’s a massive blast of nostalgia..!

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Intro : a Long Descent

Intro is done..!

Nothing amazing, but it nicely sets the mood for the game. You can see a glimpse of it in the screenshot above.

I didn’t start on the new specialization trees, but I updated the save system, so now it’s possible to deeply modify the levels and still make the saved games work. It will be useful in case of patch once the game is released. Right now, it’s useful to do a few fixes in the Dungeon without losing my saved games (I’ll need them to test the new specializations).

So it has been a pretty intense week but I’m really glad with that intro, and it means now the game is playable from beginning to the end, more or less features complete, for the default party..!

There’s still need for some polishing (mostly the GUI) and the new specializations, and it’ll be done. I’m _super_ impatient to see this game released, but I’ll try to keep calm while creating all the needed abilities and talents.

Goal for this incoming week : create the Paladin specialization for the Warrior class, and the Priest specialization for the Healer class. I’m not sure I can do all that in 1 week, but I hope so, else it’ll mean I’ll still need too much time to finish everything…

PS: yup, from the Doors to an ex-Spice Girl for the post title reference, the fall is harsh..!

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Kaboom !

I usually almost never write about my life in this blog, but I’m going to make an exception this time.

A couple of weeks ago, the management of my apartment building decided it would be a good idea to fix the roof so water would stop to infiltrate into my room & another one.¹

It sounds like a great idea, right ? Except here, in Thailand (where I’m living for the moment), it’s the rainy season. And they started by destroying the roof without putting any kind of other temporary protection first.

The result ? After a few days, I got more and more water flowing into my room ; I put buckets and stuff, but as it was dripping a bit from everywhere, there was still some water getting on the wood parquet.

Then what ? The wood started to swollen…

Enough was enough, we couldn’t stay in that room anymore, so last week, with my wife we had to move to the next one, spared from all that watering issue. It took the best of 3 days to move & set up everything in the new room.

But the problems didn’t stop there..! Apparently, this new room is a den for singing pigeons, who like to train between 6 & 9 am everything damn morning..!

So my nights have been sharply reduced. I’m trying to go to bed early, but it’s not always possible, so I missed a few hours of sleep…

So as you can see that last week has been eventful and busy on the personal side. So the professional side took a hit, and I didn’t do half of what I hoped.

I put almost everything in place for the intro sequence though, so I’m relatively confident I’ll be able to finish it this week (except if the bad mojo keeps going on ). And I may even be able to start on the new specialization trees & classes, which is the last main part missing to finish the game..!

Oh, also last week, the 2D artist delivered the game logo. I tuned the color theme by myself, and I think the result is pretty nice ; you can see it at the top of this page, and if you hadn’t noticed it so far, I’m putting it againt just below :

That’s all for this time, see you next week with better news I hope !

1. this issue has been going on for years, and they haven’t been able to fix it so far ↩

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The Fall of the Dungeon Guardians’ Boxshot

Another week that went as planned !

I did the rolling credits screen, nothing special, just the classic stuff.

I then did the ending scene. The ending is very low budget (ie: there’s no 5-min CGI movie), I just worked with sound FX, music & dialogues ; but considering that, the result isn’t bad, it could even be seen as refreshing and original. At very least, it should be a bit surprising..!

I also got the boxshot finished by the talented 2D artist hired a few week backs. You can see it above. Pretty awesome, right..?

So next week, I’ll do the intro scene. I’m not sure I’ll able to do it all in 1 week. There’s a bit more elements to create than for the ending scene. But we’ll see..!

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