Category Archives: sneak peek

SOTW act 2 should come soon!

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Riley
Riley showing of an unexpected six-pack (for a Mage at least!)

Yes I know that I announced several times an estimate release date for SOTW Act 2… but this time, I am fairly confident that could happen at mid-July 🙂

I finished coding the main plot until end of act 2 while I was waiting for Dingirra’s tileset art to be finished. Now is only missing the banners of the four families that run the town, but even if artist doesn’t make in time I’ll just use temporary placeholders.

There will probably be also some temporary skills icons, but the important is the gameplay, right?

So what is left to do? In practice I coded the plot like if was a straight linear story, but of course like in Act 1 you’ll be able to visit several places (even if for plot reasons this time will be more linear). I now need to “connect” all the scenes in a way that works with the tileset map and the passing of days, like with the first act, define maximum number of quests/location to give the bonuses, and so on.

Luckily this part is already big enough that I won’t need to add any extra sidequests myself. I might add some short ones, like “defeat this champion one on one” but nothing more, since is already big. Is probably the biggest part of the game, that’s why took me so long to code (even if 2 months is honestly not that much, considering I also had to release 4 new games on Steam!!).

goodshea
Shea is starting to learn how it works.. even if Krimm doesn’t seem particularly touched!

During Act 2 there’ll also be the first “camp talks” with the romanceable characters, and the infamous bathhouse scene (will be also in Act3, just a different location).

So in summary, SOTW Act 2 could be out the week from 14 to 20 July, if nothing else happens (both in my private life or indie business side). I’ll update next Friday on the progresses made 🙂

Roger Steel world: meet Ann

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ann

Above you see Ann in full color and some preliminary sketches done by the artist 🙂 This week, a guest post by Roger Steel’s writer himself:

“Greetings, patient Roger Steel fans! Civilizations have fallen; continents have collided; the sun’s a little dimmer … or maybe it’s just my eyes. Yes, it’s been a while since my last appearance, I know, and for that I humbly apologize. But in the void, things are stirring. Progress is being made. The chronicling continues… but such is the nature of game development that, even as I write, Roger and the gang are being brought to life in another way – the artwork has begun!

It’s been a strange experience, the last few weeks, seeing characters that have only been resident in the musty confines of my imagination (believe me, there’s a lot of rubbish in there, and the light’s not too good…) for the last ‘few’ months being brought to life in another medium. A bit like the transition from book to film, seeing Ann emerge from words on a page to pixels into her full-colour glory has been an exercise in managing expectations. But the results are here, and they are great.

Ann is a complex character, and made more so by the need to have her develop over the course of her adventure with Roger Steel and the gang according to her player’s vision. (The same goes for Arthur, of course, but he will have his day in the sun another time.) Whether she develops as a tough-as-nails leader with a sarcastic streak or as an easy-going girl who is content to hang out as Roger Steel’s trusty lieutenant – whether you see Ann as your protégé or as your avatar – her portrait will have to resonate as true to your reading of her character.

In this respect, I think the artist has done a great job. The Ann he has brought to life shows just the right amount of resolution and vulnerability that players will recognize something of their Ann whatever particular conversational, skill, and plot choices they make when developing her character over the course of the adventure.

She is not the Ann that was in my head while writing her adventures, but in many ways it is a better realization of her than I could have hoped for. When I open her picture, she looks at me directly, her own woman: strong enough to tackle the perils that lie ahead, to open her heart to any of the people she will be traveling with, or simply get the job done without any romantic distractions at all – just rescue her idiot brother and hope none of this gets back to her parents before their return to India.

I hope you too, her potential player, will see aspects in her portrait of the character you envisage playing, and help define the memorable adventures you will experience together.”

I just want to add that, as you have noticed already, this time the characters use a “full rendering” technique. Something I’ve never tried in my other games before, but the results so far are great. Is time to experiment with new art styles, writing, and games! 🙂 Stay tuned, the plan is to give a new character preview each week, though some week could talk also about SOTW and other stuff.

The Spring Of The Wolf

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madness
Rowinda in her typical serious attire, featuring the Madness spell 😀

This Spring will be the Season Of The Wolf (when I’ll release the first beta of this game). So technically I have time until the 21st June 😉

Jokes apart as I said in previous post too, I hope to have the beta done by next month. The extra delay is due to some last minute decisions: as you can notice from the screenshot above, I decided to remove the skilltree system, allowing the players to decide which skill to learn in any order.

This also means that each character will have 12 unique skills, no more variations like Blizzard I, II & III. Of course, some skills are variations of others, I don’t claim that I have made over 100 skills ALL UNIQUE! 🙂 However, I really feel I have pushed the original Loren RPG framework to its limits in this game, some spells/skills are quite interesting.

The beta will include only the first Season (Winter), but at least will give people a good idea of what to expect if they decide to pre-order the game. A part of delay is also due to new random enemies that I need to do (wild animals, etc) and also to the tileset system:

isomap
SOTW will feature an isometric multi-screen map with hotspots to explore

Now don’t expect a scrollable map, but the map can be split into several screens, so I can make bigger maps. There’ll be various “hotspots”, marked with arrows:

  • a green arrow means that the interaction will be completely safe (like traveling to another zone)
  • an orange arrow means that there’s the risk of some encounters. In the screen above you can check the trap to see if you caught any wild animal, but there’s the risk of being attacked
  • a red arrow means that you’ll surely face an hostile encounter (wandering bandits, a monster, etc)

I’m considering if to add a golden arrow to display the current objective, but I don’t think I’ll need it since the main plot is rather simple, at least in the first part.

Anyway, I spent the last week on the new skills (still need to finish them) and also in adding hidden stuff in the map. For example a graveyard location that can be explored for a big sidequest, and subsequently also to do some good old skeleton skulls bashing 🙂

I am also going to implement a sort of limited grinding: there’ll be a simulated time in the game, so players will be able to explore, but when they reach the next key event “deadline”, the plot will advance. This way, I can make sure that the player don’t grind up to level 30 (the level cap) only in the first part of the story! 😀

That’s all for now, I have more news for the other games, but will keep them for the next weeks, so I have something to write!

Next week you have a meeting with Nicole

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Nicole_OPver2.mkv_snapshot_00.18_[2013.10.09_17.12.02]
A screenshot taken from the game trailer. Apologize for the blurriness 😉

Yes you heard it well, next week (weekend probably) you have a meeting with a certain Nicole! Those are bold words, I know, but if I check the project status:

  • all writing completed: check
  • all texts proofread: almost (Sarah is checking them this weekend but she’s basically done)
  • all art done: check
  • all music ready: check
  • all GUI/icons done: only a few gift items are missing, but is not a problem, I can start the beta anyway even with temporary art
  • coding: need to finish implementing the online shopping and the gifts, but in a week it should be no problem

Of course in case wasn’t clear, I’m still talking about the beta testing version, but in this case should be very close to the final product (probably only some minor tweaking on stats/money/relationship and difficulty levels).

The goal is to have the game on sale for Halloween. Even if seems far away, I know from past experiences that it’s going to be very hard to release it officially before that date, but we’ll try! 😉

At least once this game is out I won’t say anymore every year “damn I wish I had a game good of Halloween!”. And when Undead Lily is out, I’ll have two! Speaking of which, below you see some nice (and not so nice, like the Harpy) card creatures:

creatures
From left to right: the Nymph, the Harpy and the Mermaid

Of course there’ll be a variety of genders from the classic mythology, those are only the ones which were done first 🙂

That’s all for now, going back to work on Nicole, I have a new deadline to meet!

Status update + Summer minisale

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First of all check the video below:
New Planet Stronghold: Warzone gameplay video, still work in progress

is nice isn’t it eh? 🙂 This game will have a lot more gameplay element than the previous RPGs, and judging by people’s reactions they like the idea.

The colony sim, as you can see, will have a lot of variety of building and resources. While we haven’t fully tested the gameplay yet (since it’s integrated into the main game story, it needs to be written first) it evolved quite a lot from a “simple minigame” to a very detailed colony building simulation.

Similarly, Aleema started small with the isometric exploration minimap but then new ideas popped out of our minds and voilà… 😉 Is not Diablo 3, but is quite an evolution from the first game top-down exploration map! There will be several devices on each map that will give you bonus (like the Healing Pylon of the video) and you’ll be able to interact with some objects/doors/items, see the enemy encounters (showing only one type of enemy, but the number of sides of the polygon determine the battle difficulty) and so on.

The isometric view is really nice and I’m thinking if to use it also in future games. Maybe even for the battle itself, allowing more space to move and also giving the possibility to have some “epic battles”, for example the party of 4 vs 15 enemies, like some people are asking.

In any case, this will happen in the next RPGs – Planet Stronghold: Warzone will still use the same first person view in the battle (albeit with a fresh new interface/GUI).

Summer mini sale!

Lastly, I’m doing a mini Summer sale starting today 14th June until Monday 17th: 50% off on my games Summer Session, Flower Shop: Summer In Fairbrook and Flower Shop: Winter In Fairbrook.

Use the coupon JUNEBUG to get a 50% discount. Note that if you want to buy both Flower Shop games you need to purchase them separately, otherwise you’ll get only the automatic 15% discount (sorry about this but is a limitation of the shopping cart).