Checking out our POWERFUL RPG Editor Tools

Today I wanted to show off some of the powerful custom tools we've been building to help bring Lair of the Leviathan to life. As part of the game's development, we have developed a suite of editor tools that allow us to create everything from maps and props to characters, monsters and encounters. Almost everything needed to create a full game adventure is possible with these tools. We are hopeful that in the future we will be able to release them here on Steam Workshop so players can create their own mods for the game , everything from new character classes to full adventure modules. They're still kinda rough right now in that they have a lot of quirks and need a lot of refining before that would be possible, but if all goes well with the game this will happen! So, the first up, the Terrain Editor.

The Terrain Editor allows us to assign terrain types to pixel art maps. Since the game uses a hidden grid movement system, these terrain tiles act as a guide for how to move around the world. We can assign swamps and deserts to slow players, oceans that require boats, impassible terrain and more.

Next, the Point of Interest Editor.

Unlimited Points of Interest can be placed to create NPCs, traps, events, conversation triggers and even battles against enemies. Each POI has many properties. Loot can be assigned to chests, locks and traps set on doorways and even schedules and walk cycles for NPCs.

The Lights Editor allows custom lights to be added to scenes for ambience and atmosphere. These lights can be of any colour and brightness and can even be programmed to appear at certain times of day. Maps also have an ambience setting, to create bright, dusty ruins in deserts or gloomy underground tombs to explore.

With the POI's Encounter Linker, every Point of Interest can be linked to encounters and edited in-game. Quests can be set in motion from opening a chest, multiple events can be chosen at random to POI and they can even be set to only appear between certain hours.

The powerful Encounter Editor can display narration text, pictures, sound effects, branching paths, quest assignment and more. With this editor we can even allow characters to join the party, spawn dialogue, change maps, trigger battles and more.

The Battle Creator allows us to set up combat for the party. By selecting monsters here and dragging them onto the dungeon map, we can easily create encounters. Monsters can be assigned to battle groups, have difficultly levels set, ambush flags and awareness states can be set to create a wide variety of challenges.

There are other tools I'll show off at some point, including the Monster, Item and Powers editors, but hopefully this look at the tools gives you guys a bit of confidence in the power of our toolset and the potential game we can make with it.

It's February now and the forge is fully blazing once more. December / Jan was a bit slow with kids being on school holidays and so on, but now we're right back at it! I tried to get a bit done each day during the break, and now being able to work on things every day , I'm seeing some real progress being made.

David has updated the character portraits for humans, elves and dwarves and added several hundred props to the game ( from tables and chairs to bubbling cauldrons and chests ) and our focus over the next week is to put together a little "Vertical Slice" we can show potential publishers. This , of course, is far from the demo we hope to bring later in the year ( because combat and quests still don't exist!) but it's a major milestone on our journey.

The next update we bring will show actual gameplay from this vertical slice, and we hope to show this off in a video towards the end of Feb. Until next time, may fortune favour you all! Cheers, Oliver Joyce + David Aron, Whiskeybarrel Studios and Nostalgic Realms.