Category Archives: Milestone

2nd Gameplay Video !

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Here another video showing the gameplay from the current Beta version, this time with all the sound FX !

So this is a Beta version :

  • GUI & Menus aren’t polished
  • except that, it’s close of the final result

Notes:

  • I’m playing without using Active Pause ( = press space to pause the game but still can enqueue orders), so it’s more fun to watch ; to do so, I set a lower difficulty level than the one I’m usually playing with. But normally, in high difficulty levels, you’ll have to use the Active Pause often
  • once again, I totally forgot to turn on the ambience track ! I’ll try to remember to turn it on for the next video ! :-?
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First Gameplay Video of the Game !

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Here a little video showing the gameplay from the current Beta version !

So this is a Beta version :

  • some loot models are missing, so they are replaced by a black box
  • GUI & Menus aren’t polished
  • a lot of sound FX are missing
  • except that, it’s close of the final result

Notes:

  • I’m playing without using Active Pause ( = press space to pause the game but still can enqueue orders), so it’s more fun to watch ; to do so, I set a lower difficulty level than the one I’m usually playing with. But normally, in high difficulty levels, you’ll have to use the Active Pause often
  • I totally forgot to turn on the ambience track ! I usually turn it off while working, because it takes 0.5 seconds to load each time I start the game (which is quite often when I’m working) ; I’ll turn it on for the next video ! :-)

26th Weekly Update : Beta 3 is Ready !

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Big Boss Fight

Big Boss Fight

After a week of crazy work, the Beta 3 is ready !

I’m still always amazed by how long it takes to test, tune & fix the small bugs when playing a new level for the 1st time ; so the week has been very busy, because I really needed to finish the Beta 3 now, both in term of motivation, and for my planning, as I need to work a bit on my tennis game this new week.

So, what’s to say about the game at this point ? I’d say it’s pretty amazing ! I just hope other players will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed it, but the result is really close of what I had in mind 4 years ago when I first started to think seriously about this project : putting World of Warcraft combat experience within a Dungeon Crawler game. The game could be better, they always could, but at its current state, it’s already very convincing ; for me, it’s close of what I felt when I was playing WoW (although there are tons of small and big differences, we’re very far of a clone, for many obvious reasons).

So now, the Beta 3 will go to the Beta testers (I might look for a couple new ones soon, so stay tuned) and we’ll see if they can enjoy it or not.

And my planning is finally telling me there’s less than 3 months left of work… It might mean I’ll be able to release the game for end of September, and stop pushing the release date farther and farther away. :)

 

19th Weekly Update : Dungeon is (almost) finished !

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Demon In the Final Level

Demon in the Final Level

Yeepee, the Dungeon is (almost) finished !

Creation of the Levels 19 & 20 has been very fast : their design is more classic than the previous levels, and now I’m pretty efficient to create this kind of level.

Level 19 has a big room a bit in the style of the one found in the Level 8 of Dungeon Master (including its never ending corridor, for the ones who have a good memory ;) ). Its puzzle is a relatively simple error/try & observation one, although there’s a bunch of things to watch, so it shouldn’t be too fast to solve it. It’s the kind of puzzle I very wonder if it’s too easy or not, but hopefully, I’ll get some feedback from Beta testers.

I struggled a bit more for the Level 20. I wanted to do something a bit special for the ending, but I didn’t get any big empowered vision ; however, I managed to make it a bit special anyway : it’s a bit smaller than the other levels, with less mobs, but 8 Elite fights (an Elite is a very strong mob) where all other levels usually have only 1-3 of them. I didn’t create a puzzle for  this level. I totally run out of ideas for them. But I still got something pretty nice : I put a painful labyrinth, or more exactly a small but suffocating maze, where it’s very challenging to keep one bearing. So all in all, it’s a level that is very in line with the whole Dungeon, while still offering some nice variations and unique stuff.

So as it was fast to create these 2 Levels, I got also time to integrate 3 bosses & design their fights for the last Tier (ie: Levels 17-20). Once again, these fights fit the tone of the game, while having a few specificities : 1st one is a sorceress with special spells, 2nd one is also a spell fights but with a completely different flow where you’ll have to dodge some big AoE shadow balls, and 3rd one is classic “ads” fight, where additional mobs come into play with a demonist boss.

I hoped to start the final boss fight, but I had to spend a lot of time to work on the visual FX for all the special spells of these 3 bosses. I might delay its creation anyway ; I want to be sure I won’t change my mind about its design : it’s going to be very special, with several phases.

 

So now that the Dungeon is more or less done, the game as a whole is also not far anymore to be done. Let’s review the main things that still need to be done to reach the release state :

  • Intro, Party Creation, End Scene & Credits : all these things won’t be too complex, but they’ll still need some time as they won’t be too simple either
  • Test the whole dungeon & fix all its little issues, tune the boss fights so they are hard enough but not impossible, etc…
  • Create the Talent trees and abilities for the 4 classes of the  game (each class should have 3 Talent trees) : that’s a big part, with tons of stuff to design & test
  • Final Boss fight design
  • Finish the GUI : there, the hard part is to find a talented but not too expensive 2D artist and give him clear instructions to follow ; functionally, the GUI is nearly finished
  • Sound FX : another good bunch of stuff to do ; I’m still not sure how I’ll do that, but hopefully I’ll find some library with ton of sounds for RPG games
  • Create a few additional abilities for the mobs : now a lot of mobs share some abilities ; it needs to have a bit more variety
  • Visual FX : create all the visual FX needed for the toons & the mobs’ abilities (although a good bunch are already done)
  • Loot : buy (or get custom work) & integrate the models for the items that still don’t have any model ; this one should be fast enough, as right now I miss only the armors and a few weapons
  • Marketing : mostly create a trailer video & a Greenlight page for the game
  • Bonus : if I have the time & mood for it, I’ll add some extra stuff & loot in the Dungeon

And it’ll be done..!

Ok, but before all that, I have something else to do : upgrade the project to Unity 5 ; right now, I’m still using Unity 4. So I hope it’ll need less than 1 week, but I’m really not sure where I’m putting my feet with all this, it could get really messy really fast. :-?

I’ll let you know the result in 1 week !

Beta 2 : looking for Beta Testers

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1st room of Level 5

1st room of Level 5

So finally, the Beta 2 is here !

It contains 8 levels (the 1st Beta had 4, the Alpha 1 & 2 an incomplete one), and 4 Specializations’ Talent Trees done at a bit more than 50%, and it requires about 7~10 hours to complete.

All in all, now it gives a pretty accurate idea of the final gameplay (if you can put aside the unpolished GUI, the sparse sounds & Visual FX and all other little stuff that will make their way into the final version).

So the result is pretty good, it’s nice to play it, but I’d like to make it even better, and for that, I’m looking for a couple of new Beta testers to bring some fresh eyes & opinions on the game. To be a Beta tester, you must have good analytic skills and be verbal about your impressions, and be familiar with RPG games, and/or Dungeon Crawlers, and/or World of Warcraft ;  If you’re interested, point out any review, critique, analysis of such games you may have made in a Forum or a Blog (or simply copy/paste it in your message) and write me from here : http://www.managames.com/mail_en/?subject=Dungeon Guardians – Beta Test .

A notable amelioration over the Beta 1 is that if you start at an advanced level, your party will get some decent gear, and thus it makes it much easier to test a specific level without redoing all the levels before it.

And let’s finish this page with a bunch of screenshots from the Beta 2 !