Next up, making some actual pins to try this whole thing out with:
So in order to get a true feel for the whole Badge system (which we have renamed into 'Pins' now, by the way!) I've been tasked with making an interface for it where you select whether to equip, replace of throw away a new bag that you get.
We started of with this super basic sketch:
And translated it into something slightly more visually pleasing:
And here's the interface the way it looks currently:
"Attack DMG" in white represents the name of each pin. Green "DMG" above the first info box is supposed to say "New", while the blue "Attack" above the second info box is supposed to say "Current". The numbers represent the descriptions. However, these designs might change slightly as certain translations need a bigger font size than the rest of the game, and we try to design everything so that it will work out in any translation. In other words: we'll see!
Another thing we've been playing around with is ideas for how to make each run a bit more unique compared to your previous runs, challenging you to change your play style or at least experience things more differently. We feel that right now each run is very similar to the last one, and a player is rarely encouraged to try new skills. Last week we talked about a feature we wanted to add to help out with that (Badges) and this week we have tried out some of those as well.
As a reminder, a Badge is something that will affect your run in some way, giving you certain bonuses while sometimes coming with a negative on the side (though mostly you will just get something nice). For now, we've divided the badges into seven categories depending on what they affect, such as: Arrows, Skills, Basic Attacks, Room changes, Passives, Potions and Shield.
Some examples we've been testing this week include:
* Casting a spell fires an arrow.
* Hitting an enemy with an arrow casts a meteor
* Three arrows drop after each regular battle room
* The first spell in each room is a guaranteed crit
* Every 5th spell deal triple damage
* A fae follows the player and casts a fire ball every few seconds
* Each basic attack increases the damage of your next skill
* One enemy in each room receives an automatic death mark when you enter the room
* Perfect Guarding an enemy causes them to be death marked
So far, we've quite pleased with how these serve to make each run a bit more different compared to the last, especially ones that encourage you to use other skills or abilities than what you'd normally use. We also have a ton of ideas for more Badges we want to test and play around with; the current pool isn't too big so repeats tend to happen quite often during our test runs. We also feel the lack of a proper interface; right now there's simply a message in the chat letting you know what badge you've gotten and what it does.
In order to properly test this and how it feels, we'll therefore start working on a basic interface for distributing your Badges, as well as some basic proper graphics for them to see how it all feels with some more visual cues.
Right now you will receive a badge for defeating a boss, but we've also played around with awarding them in chests or for challenges. The exact amount and what you'll receive badges for are yet to be decided, but for now we feel like it feels the most rewarding to get it post boss fight. As of now, you'll be able to have four badges, and if you receive any more past that you will need to replace one of the ones you currently have.
Part of our daily tasks right now is coming up with more badges to add, so there will be enough that each run feels new and fresh. Do you have any badges you'd like to see? Let us know and we might end up adding it :)
As a reminder, a Badge is something that will affect your run in some way, giving you certain bonuses while sometimes coming with a negative on the side (though mostly you will just get something nice). For now, we've divided the badges into seven categories depending on what they affect, such as: Arrows, Skills, Basic Attacks, Room changes, Passives, Potions and Shield.
Some examples we've been testing this week include:
* Casting a spell fires an arrow.
* Hitting an enemy with an arrow casts a meteor
* Three arrows drop after each regular battle room
* The first spell in each room is a guaranteed crit
* Every 5th spell deal triple damage
* A fae follows the player and casts a fire ball every few seconds
* Each basic attack increases the damage of your next skill
* One enemy in each room receives an automatic death mark when you enter the room
* Perfect Guarding an enemy causes them to be death marked
So far, we've quite pleased with how these serve to make each run a bit more different compared to the last, especially ones that encourage you to use other skills or abilities than what you'd normally use. We also have a ton of ideas for more Badges we want to test and play around with; the current pool isn't too big so repeats tend to happen quite often during our test runs. We also feel the lack of a proper interface; right now there's simply a message in the chat letting you know what badge you've gotten and what it does.
In order to properly test this and how it feels, we'll therefore start working on a basic interface for distributing your Badges, as well as some basic proper graphics for them to see how it all feels with some more visual cues.
Right now you will receive a badge for defeating a boss, but we've also played around with awarding them in chests or for challenges. The exact amount and what you'll receive badges for are yet to be decided, but for now we feel like it feels the most rewarding to get it post boss fight. As of now, you'll be able to have four badges, and if you receive any more past that you will need to replace one of the ones you currently have.
Part of our daily tasks right now is coming up with more badges to add, so there will be enough that each run feels new and fresh. Do you have any badges you'd like to see? Let us know and we might end up adding it :)
Now, back to Arcade Mode for a bit. As you know there are a bunch of changes we've been wanting to make to Arcade Mode, among them a rebalancing and removal of the dual floors per area. We've decided to take some time to focus on Arcade things for now, and so today as part of our meeting we spend a couple hours playtesting the changes that have been made so far.
To start off with, there's now just one floor per area instead of the usual two. Some floors are slightly longer to make up for it (such as the first, where you battle Pillar Mountains enemies). The earlier floors have had their difficulty slightly adjusted as well, since we want it to be possible for players to get further - at least in terms of areas, compared to before.
Some gauntlet style rooms have been added, meaning new enemies will spawn as you defeat the ones already in the room when you enter. We've tried it out both with an indicator for such rooms (meaning you will know before hand that the room you enter will spawn more enemies), and without. Which one we will go for in the end depends on how common and normalized we want these rooms to be: either they will be rare, special occurrences, meaning an indicator might be fitting, or they will be so common that it makes no sense to indicate them as anything special.
For now, to make it easier to see what is happening, we have a special spawn indicator for which enemy will spawn right before it does, to avoid any unpleasant surprises for the player. Whether this will still be the case or whether the new enemy will simply appear in a puff or smoke is still something we will need to test further.
Right now it feels somewhat odd to have cut down the floors this much, but we do feel like the overall length of a run will be a lot better compared to having to battle through twice the amount of floors to get to the end. We don't want the player to have to fight his or her way through floor after floor for hours to finish a run! More testing will need to be done, though.
To start off with, there's now just one floor per area instead of the usual two. Some floors are slightly longer to make up for it (such as the first, where you battle Pillar Mountains enemies). The earlier floors have had their difficulty slightly adjusted as well, since we want it to be possible for players to get further - at least in terms of areas, compared to before.
Some gauntlet style rooms have been added, meaning new enemies will spawn as you defeat the ones already in the room when you enter. We've tried it out both with an indicator for such rooms (meaning you will know before hand that the room you enter will spawn more enemies), and without. Which one we will go for in the end depends on how common and normalized we want these rooms to be: either they will be rare, special occurrences, meaning an indicator might be fitting, or they will be so common that it makes no sense to indicate them as anything special.
For now, to make it easier to see what is happening, we have a special spawn indicator for which enemy will spawn right before it does, to avoid any unpleasant surprises for the player. Whether this will still be the case or whether the new enemy will simply appear in a puff or smoke is still something we will need to test further.
Right now it feels somewhat odd to have cut down the floors this much, but we do feel like the overall length of a run will be a lot better compared to having to battle through twice the amount of floors to get to the end. We don't want the player to have to fight his or her way through floor after floor for hours to finish a run! More testing will need to be done, though.
Next, a look at what's happening in Fred's department! With us deciding to finish up a bunch of random things, it's time for start looking at some of the many loose ends and one of the most asked such things is when you'll be able to grow those pesky little plants into something you can climb to reach certain places. Well, the answer is soon! And here's the first step on that way, namely Fred making some graphics for it:
There are also more mansion inhabitant to make, among them a chef to make a fancy dinner for Marino's family:
Wow, I totally keep messing up with scheduling the posts I've written lately don't I? Sorry about that!
And now, here's the portrait of Marino's mom! She's the lovely lady of the mansion, making lists of all the charities they're gonna contribute to:
And here we have the second maid portrait for the mansion! A dark haired young lady dusting the extensive collections :)
As work continues all across the game there are a bunch of smaller things added here and there. One such thing is the ability to now "turn off" the fireplace in your house, which used to be burning all the time! As such, a version of it without the fire needed to be made:
And as mentioned a little while ago, we're introducing a new interface indicating when you're in bet room. Here's the initial sketch:
And the progress/final thing:
We don't want this to be too much in your face, but a low key reminder of what's happening. If you fail the challenge, Bishop will teleport away from the interface into the map and perform his punishment as usual :)
As you know by now, we've been starting to have daily meetings discussing the upcoming final pieces of the game, and today I thought I'd give you a rundown of some of the Arcade things we've been talking about last week!
We've mentioned before that it is our goal to shorten to length of Arcade Mode now that all of the floors are being added, as two floors per area is a lot and takes a very long time to play through. Our current idea is that there will be one floor per area, and that we'll rebalance it slightly so you'll have come a bit further in the areas before it gets terrifyingly difficult; right now most people die way before even getting halfway through, which is a bit too soon for our liking.
Since we'll effectively only use half of the floors we have, it means there will be a lot of spare bosses floating around. In order to make each run balanced in difficult, you'll always meet a set number or the more difficult bosses, while the remaining bosses will be one of those we deem slightly easier. We've also discussed the option to have optional bosses out of the remaining pool spawn in their own (clearly marked out) rooms, but we've yet to decide exactly how about to go this or if it's something we wanna do at all.
We'll also add some gauntlet style rooms, so there will be some rooms where enemies respawn in a couple waves or so, just to mix things up a bit more and make each room feel a bit more unique.
Another Bishop bet we'll add is one where you have to perfect guard certain enemies before you can deal damage to them, and we'll make a new interface to indicate when you're in a bishop bet room; more details on this as I start making it.
There will also be a proper Arcade Mode version of the map, which will give you some indication of how far you've come and how far you've got left to go. Again, more on this once I start actually designing it.
Finally, we've discussed the addition of a special item we currently call a 'badge' which is something you can get as a reward or possibly purchase in the shop. A badge will change or your character in some way, such as increasing card drop rate, give new effects for a perfect guard, increase the damage of your next spell based on how many normal attacks you've hit, and so on. We might also add 'mixed' bags which will give you a stronger bonus in exchange for limiting something else. Such as your spells doing a lot more damage but you're unable to use the same spell twice in a row.
Our goal with these badges are to make each Arcade run a bit more unique, giving you various options for how you play rather than it always being the exact same playstyle. If it works, we'll see! We're gonna play around with it for now and see how it feels :)
We've mentioned before that it is our goal to shorten to length of Arcade Mode now that all of the floors are being added, as two floors per area is a lot and takes a very long time to play through. Our current idea is that there will be one floor per area, and that we'll rebalance it slightly so you'll have come a bit further in the areas before it gets terrifyingly difficult; right now most people die way before even getting halfway through, which is a bit too soon for our liking.
Since we'll effectively only use half of the floors we have, it means there will be a lot of spare bosses floating around. In order to make each run balanced in difficult, you'll always meet a set number or the more difficult bosses, while the remaining bosses will be one of those we deem slightly easier. We've also discussed the option to have optional bosses out of the remaining pool spawn in their own (clearly marked out) rooms, but we've yet to decide exactly how about to go this or if it's something we wanna do at all.
We'll also add some gauntlet style rooms, so there will be some rooms where enemies respawn in a couple waves or so, just to mix things up a bit more and make each room feel a bit more unique.
Another Bishop bet we'll add is one where you have to perfect guard certain enemies before you can deal damage to them, and we'll make a new interface to indicate when you're in a bishop bet room; more details on this as I start making it.
There will also be a proper Arcade Mode version of the map, which will give you some indication of how far you've come and how far you've got left to go. Again, more on this once I start actually designing it.
Finally, we've discussed the addition of a special item we currently call a 'badge' which is something you can get as a reward or possibly purchase in the shop. A badge will change or your character in some way, such as increasing card drop rate, give new effects for a perfect guard, increase the damage of your next spell based on how many normal attacks you've hit, and so on. We might also add 'mixed' bags which will give you a stronger bonus in exchange for limiting something else. Such as your spells doing a lot more damage but you're unable to use the same spell twice in a row.
Our goal with these badges are to make each Arcade run a bit more unique, giving you various options for how you play rather than it always being the exact same playstyle. If it works, we'll see! We're gonna play around with it for now and see how it feels :)
And here's Fred's work on the maids so far!
But first, a portrait of one of the inhabitants of the mansion, namely one of the maids! There will be more of these later on, but here's a start:
And so it begins! Taking the mansion on its first step to completion, starting with the hallway:
We're back from our little Easter holiday! Did you guys have a nice holiday? We hope you did try to find some peace even in the midst of this crisis the world is facing!
We've recharged our batteries and are excited to get back to working properly and today we started off the day with a long meeting discussing the mails we've received from a lot of the people who are to design items for the game! As I mentioned before we went on holiday, we would start sending out requests for the designs, and have since received quite a few replies which we've discussed and answered accordingly.
If you bought one of the tiers which allow you to design an item, please check your mail and get back to us whenever you can! :)
In order to make it easier for us to read and remember what needs to be made for each item and where to put it in the game, I was then tasked with sorting out a document that includes all of the most recent and relevant information given for each design. As this involves around 30 unique designs made by 30 different people, it'll be a lot of info to make easily accessible!
We also managed to discuss some more end game things that have been on our mind for a bit; mainly regarding the Bishop's role in the later parts of the game. I believe we will end up having several more conversations around this topic, and I think the specifics will be better saved for later on... But stay tuned!
Finally, we talked about the fact that a lot of people seem to misunderstand how best to farm in the game, with people often thinking you need to reset an area to farm most efficiently. The way it actually works is that the more you clear out an area, the quicker the respawn gets, so after clearing an area completely and killing the newly spawned enemies for a bit, the respawn rate will accelerate and get quicker and quicker (up to a point). To make this easier to know we'll add a loading screen tip hinting at it, as well as some info about it in the school (that once it's properly up and running will feature a lot of random mechanical information about the game).
And now, onwards to continue work on that mansion! :)
We've recharged our batteries and are excited to get back to working properly and today we started off the day with a long meeting discussing the mails we've received from a lot of the people who are to design items for the game! As I mentioned before we went on holiday, we would start sending out requests for the designs, and have since received quite a few replies which we've discussed and answered accordingly.
If you bought one of the tiers which allow you to design an item, please check your mail and get back to us whenever you can! :)
In order to make it easier for us to read and remember what needs to be made for each item and where to put it in the game, I was then tasked with sorting out a document that includes all of the most recent and relevant information given for each design. As this involves around 30 unique designs made by 30 different people, it'll be a lot of info to make easily accessible!
We also managed to discuss some more end game things that have been on our mind for a bit; mainly regarding the Bishop's role in the later parts of the game. I believe we will end up having several more conversations around this topic, and I think the specifics will be better saved for later on... But stay tuned!
Finally, we talked about the fact that a lot of people seem to misunderstand how best to farm in the game, with people often thinking you need to reset an area to farm most efficiently. The way it actually works is that the more you clear out an area, the quicker the respawn gets, so after clearing an area completely and killing the newly spawned enemies for a bit, the respawn rate will accelerate and get quicker and quicker (up to a point). To make this easier to know we'll add a loading screen tip hinting at it, as well as some info about it in the school (that once it's properly up and running will feature a lot of random mechanical information about the game).
And now, onwards to continue work on that mansion! :)
And so we take a look at the second portrait, that of the Butler:
With Easter now being upon us next week, and the Stable update released and ready, it's time for us to take a week off to rest and gather energy for the next stretch of work: finishing up all the loose threads in Story Mode and adding some more quests! Final stretch soon, can't believe it :)
As usual, the blog will be on pause during our holiday, but it'll be back up and running on Tuesday the 14th! Happy Easter everyone, and stay safe out there!
So let's start with Marino's dad's portrait! This is a character we've all longed to meet (no? just me?), and for reasons unknown we've decided to be inspired by a famous video game character when designing him, with hints being both in the portrait and the sprite itself. Can you guess who?
Now, for a much longed for update from Fred's department! Because of the spoilery nature of nearly every animation he's made for a long time there hasn't been many updates from him, but you can view all of his progress in the update which should also be on stable in one of the coming days if it isn't up already!
Now, however, as we move on to less spoiler-y things, such as the mansion in Evergrind South, we can start showing more stuff again! Here we have a few of the inhabitants of the mansion, starting with the butler (as well as a few options for how he's gonna look in the end):
Our current favorite is the second one from the left! Which one do you prefer?
There's also the long awaited(?) appearance of Marino's father, sitting in his solitude on the throne upstairs:
In the next couple of days I'll be making portraits for these guys as well, so stay tuned for that! :)
