Before we continue on with Arcadia though, I feel it's time to return to the desert portraits for a short while. It's been a rather long break after all! This time we'll make another sailor lad from the Merchant Isles:
Like most of these characters, his story is not fully fleshed out yet, but we're drawing ever closer to putting the town together. Exciting times ahead!
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Here we go! The final piece of the Arcadia Rework: the Fae tree! This tree will house a bunch of fae, which needless to say brings more NPCs to your town, in the shape of tiny colorful sprites. The fae will be animated and added once it's in the game, but for now, here's their home:
And here's the finished thing! Of course, the map still lacks paths, a bridge and a ton of decorations among other things, but now all of the [.....]
The second to last plot of the Arcadia Rework houses the player statue! It's been available in the original Arcadia for quite some time, and showcases a statue version of the character that has your highest score.
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More changes incoming this week, courtesy of playing through the game with more skills.
First of all, Chain Lightning will get a slight rework. Instead of seemingly randomly jumping to any enemy within a cone-shape before you, the skill will now favour the enemy you're looking straight at (though if there isn't one there, it will jump diagonally still). The main target will then take a bulk of the damage, leaving less damage for secondary targets the lightning then jump onwards to. We hope that by making this change, the skill will feel more satisfying to use, as you can select which target you want to kill first rather than doing rather underwhelming damage to a bunch [.....]
Truly, this week has not been so much about art or programming as it has testing. We really want to get the balance right this time, so we've decided to play through the game at least once per skill, giving each of them chance to be the main skill in a playthrough. It's truly a challenge to tweak the numbers to make them mathematically balanced vs each other, without losing the soul of each skill.
Because the game is already quite a few hours long, and we [.....]
The theme of the left side of the map is more tranquil and nature-y than the rest, as we've decided to put most of the decorative spots in this part of the map. One of these is a small garden with a fountain, which serve to bring more people into town (and more people equals more quests)!
Like the other decorative slots, this plot in itself does not affect the mechanics of your arcade run, but the quest(s) you unlock with it might!
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Some grasp the mechanics of Grindea almost immediately, others struggle to land a perfect guard for the whole of the game (so far). To help the latter ones along, and add a challenge to the ones who think they've mastered the fine art of the shield, we're adding the Dojo!
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As more stuff is added to the new revamped version of Arcadia, it's time to create the Cinema! While we're still not completely sure this will be available at the end (it kind of depends how well we can solve some of the issues with the mechanics), for now we're fairly sure we want it there in some shape or form.
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So, initially we kind of had hopes of having the patch up and running already. The skill changes have all been made and are fully functional, but we realized there are some more things we want to test and some things that need to be fixed before we're satisfied enough to hand over rest of the testing to you guys!
First of all, Teddy is now working on improving the player experience when playing games with high ping as we realized some of the changes we made [.....]
This week more interesting things are happening with the combat system and its skills! For one, we've upgraded the graphics of Blade Flurry, making the skill faster to use. Being rooted while casting a skill isn't exactly ideal, and Blade Flurry (especially at Gold Charge) has felt rather clunky to use as a result of that. Let's take a look at what the old version looked like:
And now, the new version:
As you can see, in the latter version your character finishes casting [.....]
Using the Aquarium as a base, I made another new building that hasn't been available in Arcadia before: The Bank. Here you'll be able to trade Essence for gold, or the other way around, something which might be useful in your quest to fully expand your town or get all unlockables:
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And now the time has come to add another exciting building we're all looking forward to: the Arena! In this building you'll not only be able to battle your friends in a set of mini-games and challenges, you'll also be able to do practice runs against bosses and other cool things:
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In Arcadia, we continue with adding new buildings! Here's another that weren't available in the old version of the town: the Aquarium. This place will help bring more inhabitants to your town, as well as housing a display of the fishes you've caught on your travels inside.
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This week, the skill rebalance and Arcadia Rework continues!
Fred and Teddy are both hard at work getting new and reworked effects and mechanics into the game, and one of the possibly bigger changes have been coming together over the last week: the new chill and freeze effects!
The ice skills, or rather the Ice Nova and Ice Spikes, will both be able to chill and freeze every enemy on the game! Previously this was reserved for regular enemies, but now they'll affect bosses as well, [.....]
The skill rebalance is on it's way, and Fred has wasted no time jumping into refining and reworking the effects. One of the skills that's getting a visual and mechanic change is the Flamethrower, which as mentioned earlier won't deal damage as you move. This meant new smoke effects had to be used:
When we talked about this last, we decided that neither silver nor gold charge would deal damage when moving. However, upon seeing various players distress at the idea of making it that much [.....]
Next there's another addition to Arcadia which weren't available before: the farm! This building will house a set of animals - once you catch them. You'll have the option to either let the animals roam free in town or keep them inside the pasture surrounding the farm, where no doubt Oak will be working:
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The clock tower is a brand new addition to Arcadia, by which you'll be able to change the time of day from day to night (and possibly somewhere in between: we'll see!). In this video I also add the Bishop, with a new and improved Grindea statue, and remake the old notice board:
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Cheers!
