We’re back! Two weeks since the last blog post, did you miss us? It was good to get a break during Easter. I think the whole team needed to get some fresh air and sun. In fact, it feels like many people across the world are in dire need of fresh air and sun! Speaking of current events, we have now also had our unfortunate share of hampered development progress. Mostly because some of us have been sick and some of us have had kids that have been sick. Development continues but at a slower pace.
As for me, these last weeks have mostly been all about preparing freelancer contracts. I’ve also done some exciting bookkeeping stuff, preparing for the yearly audit, and had plenty of discussions with Niklas about our general workflow, etc. We are used to remote work, but as the team is growing, we need to make sure that we get new people into the right routines early on. Also, we are soon signing up a great portrait artist to work with us on Wielders, Troops, and Building portraits. Can’t wait to share the results with you guys!
Here’s another preview of how we can interrupt gameplay and pan the camera to specific points of interest while we show a text. As you can see we didn’t exactly spend lots of time creating an immersive level to show off the system.
David has been working on basic spell book functionality. I asked him what “basic” meant and he told me that “spells will only be listed with an icon, with no filtering, ordering, good looks or any of that stuff.” No good looks huh? Knowing David I’m pretty sure it will look fairly good anyhow. He tends to care about the little, but oh so important, details. But then again, implementing functionality comes first, making it shiny comes later.
Behold the mighty “Runtime graph plotter”! It’s a system where you can plot and visualize a graph-like object (at runtime!) Whenever you desire. Personally I just hate visualizing graph-like objects outside of runtime, so this is… eh. Perfect for me!
Patrik has been focusing on the inventory UX. You will be able to drag and drop artifacts to equip and unequip them (and also perhaps drop them to the ground). It’s very much work in progress as he’s not getting to put a lot of work hours in at the moment.
Our lead development code guru has, among other things, gotten Kordians home computer up to speed with git so that he can work properly from home. Kordian is now working on textures for our Adventure maps cartography system. Niklas has also been looking at refining the development strategy for the team. What we should focus on next and how to get everyone tied together, working towards the same goal. And he’s now finished the system for outlines and shadows on the text!
And finally, he’s worked along with Emil, they worked quite extensively on getting the zooming hotkeys (both keys and mouse wheel) to work in a way that felt good. Much more complicated than we initially thought but they solved it!
We can now add outlines and shadows to our fonts. I expect this news made Christian dance with joy, but I wouldn’t know for sure as we are all working from home. In fact, I don’t even know if he wears pants when he’s working anymore. I mean, why should he? Why should anyone really?
Carl has created our first tutorial map to see which interactions need explaining and what kind of messaging we can work with. On the side, he’s been working with Arleon troops, upgrades, and magic and how that all goes together. Carl even asked me to create an army to “rule them all” and the good news is that I couldn’t really do it, meaning that there is always a way to beat any army given the right circumstances. We’re very much trying to develop units and army composition that doesn’t have a “best” army. Any army can be beaten by another type as long as you spend the same resources, at least that’s the goal!
Until next time, take care of yourselves and the ones around you.
Please note that this is a dev blog. Features and graphics mentioned or displayed above may or may not change during the development process.