Tag Archives: Gameplay

DevBlog 146 / The adventurer’s diet

Hello fellow adventurers!

In today’s blog post, we’ll be talking about the adventurer’s diet.

As you may already know, being adventurers yourselves, a dangerous profession such as this one can be very taxing on the body, and at those times where neither magicae nor alchemy are available, sustenance may still be within your grasp if you know where to look!

The adventurer’s diet!

There are, of course, risks involved when seeking nutrition from nature.

Certain sources of nourishment might get you to full strength, while others will surely lead to an upset stomach, or even death.
It’s common knowledge that the berries that are favored by many wild animals are not edible but fungi, on the other hand, can be pretty safe if you know which ones to pick.

What’s your poison? I mean…

There is always reward to the risk involved, even if the result is an undesirable one… * wink wink *

And on the technical side of things, we’ve been performing several optimizations in order for the game to be more stable!

That’ll be all for this week, be sure to stop by again next Friday for more goodies!

Thank you for reading!

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DevBlog 128 / Everything old is new again!

Hello everyone!

The team is currently really busy finishing up some major tasks, so the post this week is gonna be just a quick update!

We are all adding those finishing touches to every aspect of the game that will surely bring the whole thing together and really make it shine. Working on porting the game to consoles is also very time-consuming, and that’s where we’re at.

Here’s a little teaser of one of the early locations, now reworked, that you’ll get to explore!

An imposing statue guards these lands.

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DevBlog 118 / A new hope?

Hello everyone!

We’ve just finished adding new props to the village, in order to breathe more life into it, as you can see in the image below:

The Song of Drying!

These include clothes drying poles, swings, pottery and more, some of which will appear as you progress through the game. The hamlet will reflect the protagonist’s actions, be it the outcome of a great battle or some other event that took place in a different area, and every time you return you’ll notice that certain changes took place. Could these be signs that life might eventually go back to normal, and that peace will take the place of war?

Cabbage fight!

The pottery is also one of the new destructible items, adding more variety to certain areas of the game, here’s an image on what can happen if they’re not handled properly:

Who knows what may lie inside?

All of the dungeons, or Arx, have been finished and might still undergo a few tweaks in order to make them even more interesting, such as improved enemy placement or even ambushes. Also, some of the new combat animations and movements were polished, and we’ll keep play testing and tweaking them throughout the next week.

On the more technical side, as the time for furthering the development of the console ports draws near, we’ve redone the input system, in order to allow for more flexibility when integrating with other platforms.

That is all for this week, see you next Friday!

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DevBlog 117 / Hammer to the Forge, Mace to the Face!

Hi everyone!

We’re excited to share with you that we’ve finished the combat animation overhaul, they’re all in-game and being tested as we “speak”!

This brought dramatic changes to the combat’s feel and pace, bringing it much closer to our vision. Here’s a taste to brighten up your weekend:

Mace to the Face!

There’s also another noticeable change which should be quite apparent in the above image if you’ve been following our devblogs for a while, and that is the visual polish we’ve been doing. We’ve tweaked the post-processing and illumination of our initial areas, and also took the opportunity to tweak environment sounds, improve loading times between different zones, tweak the enemy placement, add some ambushes and even some additional surprises throughout the game!

Some new assets were added as well, including new item icons and the town blacksmith’s tools:

Hammer to the Forge!

That’s all for this week, thank you for reading!

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DevBlog 115 / Let the old be new again!

Hello friends!

This week we’re starting you off with a little treat, a comparison of the old version of the game with the new one!

Let the old be new again!

We’ve also been having a whole lot of fun with the new combat animations, both in their conceptualization and in the in-game testing!
They truly add a whole different feel to combat, putting additional emphasis on the weight of the weapons and the effort put into each specific attack, also allowing for better feedback when it comes to executing the combos. Also, we’re about half-way done with them!

Together with the combat animations, the logic for the Knuckle and Spear weapon classes has been implemented, both being new weapon types that have been discussed before and will definitely provide more options and variety on how to keep baddies at bay.

The canyons sure seem inviting!

The cutscenes are also continuously being refined, we really want them to convey all the emotions and personalities of our NPCs and scenarios, so we’ll keep on tweaking them until we believe they’re perfect.

Always mind your surroundings!

Last but not least, additional props have been created to embellish our world, as the new windows and shrubberies were a good starting point but not nearly enough, so here are some of the latest additions that are specific for caves and the likes, spider webs and roots!

We hope you’ve enjoyed this post, see you next friday!

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DevBlog 113 / Polishing like there’s no tomorrow

Hi there!

This week we’re bringing you some polish-in-progress screenshots and details, so lets get right into the news!

New environments!

Our workflow has improved ever since we’ve started working on the game, and new materials and assets were added and improved throughout development, so we’ve decided to do a major overhaul of the initial areas of the game, as we’ve shared in a previous post.

More new environments!

Alot of work has been put into this but it payed off tremendously, we’re extremely happy with the result, especially considering how consistent the world feels and plays with this improvement!

Taking into account all feedback we’ve received and our own play test sessions, we also continued working on adding new combat animations and tweaking the ones already being used, in order to provide the best feeling and feedback we can to combat, which is one of the pillars of the game.

Take it, it’s yours!

For the next week, we’re going to add a new cutscene into the game that will introduce players to the basic logic on interaction between the Elk and Ada, here’s a sneak peek!

Have a great weekend everyone!

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DevBlog 111 / The calm before the storm

Greetings!

While our teammates from the tech side of Amplify were busy showcasing our products at Unite Berlin, the rest of us kept working on the game… So we do have some goodies to show!
To start things off, here are some shots from the last area of the game. The Palace is still work in progress, but we feel like we can already offer some sneak peeks.

Imponent King Statue !

The calm before the storm…

The process of revamping the terrain meshes is pretty much complete. Below you can see a “before/after” comparison – we added more geometry to help with both the silhouette and the vertex painting.

Terrain mesh revamp!

Meanwhile, the last cutscene is finally in game, featuring perfect integration with gameplay. Also, the intro of the game is going very well – it’s a mix of a cutscene and gameplay.

Next week we will recap the Unite Berlin experience, have a great week everyone!

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DevBlog 109 / Hoarders, rejoice!

Hi everyone!

We’re here for another weekly devblog post, this time with some fresh, new screenshots to share, and some additional information regarding our progress!

Hoarders, rejoice!

We’ve finished adding some additional content and logic to the village, such as the bottomless well, that you can see in the screenshot above, which allows you to stash all the goods you find without any limits.

Perfect for anyone who, like us, loves to hoard stuff!

Look how cozy he is now!

The NPCs’ positioning has been adjusted, and they will show up as you meet and interact with them during your adventure, and the village’s mood will be changing as you progress in your quest for the truth.

We’ve also continued to work on polishing the game, adding some further detail to the characters’ textures and animations while also reworking the terrain for certain areas, as we’ve mentioned in a previous post.

And now for something completely different!

We’re sharing a sample of the music that’s being worked on for the village, which will also change dynamically throughout the game, let us know how you feel about it, all feedback is welcome!

Next week, we’ll do another extensive bug fixing run with all the issues and nitpicks we’ve found during out daily QA sessions, which have been both fun and gratifying as we see the game shape up to our expectations!

Enjoy your weekend!

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DevBlog 106 / Work, work!

Hello fellow readers!

This week we’re writing a short post, as our efforts are currently focused on QA and bug fixing. We’re also finishing the implementation of the new UI, with special attention to user experience, and tweaking the FMOD system that has recently been introduced to the game! Here’s a totally unrelated image:

A soothing environment for your enjoyment!

There are not many details that we can share regarding the above, as bug smashing is not as interesting to write or read about as to actually experience the arguable thrill of figuring out what exactly went wrong and how to replicate the trickiest issues, which sometimes requires inhuman perseverance and unbreakable spirit!

At least we’re not stuck with recording and going back and forth in VHS tapes, right?
Thanks to technology, we make use of software that allows for recording through a replay buffer, so all it takes is a key press and we’ve captured that nasty bug on a short video file, proceeding to watch a few times until figuring out how to replicate it consistently and then jot it down step-by-step, which makes it much easier to be tackled by our code wizard.

We also make use of several debug data present on screen, including key press information, which really helps!

That will be all for this week friends, lets see what we can cook up for the next one, see you!

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DevBlog 104 / More weapons, more fun!

Hello everyone, hope you’ve all had a pleasant week!

We’ve always intended to develop some new weapons to add even more variety to combat as soon as the major areas of our game were completed, and the team has decided that time has come! Our in-house carpenter has just been shifted to the smithy, where he’s currently tackling the following blueprints:

One of these weapons lets you be one step ahead of your enemies, guess which!

There has also been some further planning and discussion regarding our older animations, while also taking into account all the feedback we’ve received so far from testers, QA and players at PAX, which has lead us to start working on tweaking and improving some of them. Below you can see our old dodge animation first, and then the new one, which is still a work-in-progress, which provides better visual feedback to the action, and provides a better feel to combat:

Guilty feet have got no rhythm!

The new dodge animation, wip!

Last but not least, we kept the QA and bug squashing going, and every week that passes the game feels better and plays better, which is extremely gratifying and motivating!

That’s all for this week, have a pleasant weekend and stay tuned for more!

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