News from the Lair - June

First off, after doing some testing with the various systems we decided that the separate town and exterior system wasn’t working well with the game overall. Going from the world map, into separate town/exterior maps, then into larger scale dungeon maps was all feeling very inconsistent and it also meant I was needing to draw up a whole heap of separate artwork for each of them. Like 3 games in one!

Formerly you would explore towns in kind of a mid size of map that was in between the world and dungeon exploration sizes.

So instead we have decided that towns will now use the same exploration system and view as the dungeons do. You will go from the world map straight into locations you visit. Whether they be towns, dungeons, or outdoor locations. This means you will now see your characters walking around these areas at full size and we can utilise all the cool dungeon systems to make interesting encounters within towns and outdoor areas now even having combat encounters in these locations.

It also means that the game is feeling a lot more consistent: no going through 3 separate viewpoints and separate gameplay systems. You use the world map to travel over large distances and everything else will take place on these larger maps.

Still a very early work in progress!

We think not only will this cut down on an extra level of work but it is way more interesting to explore and we can really flesh out these locations now.

As well as that big change I have started working on traps this month to go with Olivers’ new trap system Steam post image

And last of all, I have started working on the first extra large sized enemy! (still very much a WIP!)

Oliver (coding)

So much of the heart of the game is David's incredible art and I'm always in awe when he shows me new art each day, it gets my mind thinking "Oh how can we use this, how can I improve the engine to best showcase this piece." . Stuff like the giant hydra above! This is a massive monster, so I'm going to have to next month work out how large monsters lumber around a map, how the pathfinding will need to change and so on.

This month I actually took a break from combat (which is in a simplistic but workable state which I'll return to in July) to focus on some other lacking aspects of the game. Firstly I've been meaning to add in traps for some time but I needed a bunch of mechanics from combat first - perception//difficulty checks, taking damage and so on. With those working, I've been able to put together a trap system that works like this: Traps are initially hidden. When the party enters a certain radius, each party member does a perception check (wisdom) against the trap's difficulty rating. If one of them discovers the trap, it appears and a little "exclamation point!" is shown. If the party walks over the trap, whether discovered or hidden, they take damage. Damage can be repeatable, such as a flame jet that flares every three seconds, or a one off, such as a boulder that crashes from the ceiling. If the trap is discovered, we can select a party member to attempt to disarm the trap ( Right now anyone can do it but this will be a Rogue skill). I'm also thinking of maybe requiring Thieves Tools, purchasable from less reputable sources in town. ( Side note, we can also now select individual party members at any time to wander off and explore solo, select them again they return to the party! ) . By selecting Disarm Trap, the party will wait while that party member walks to the trap, a dialogue box appears, a Difficulty Check vs the trap is rolled. Upon success, the party member gains XP! (In the GIF below, the trap was difficulty zero for testing, so no XP - but in the actual game, all traps will be at least difficulty 1 ).

Should the party member fail, they take damage and trigger the trap.

There's still more to do on traps with things like dart traps and AOE based traps but I'll implement them soon. I've also spent a lot of time on Map Editor tools to add things like "Templates" for David to add in a group of items such as a table laden with cheese or a bookshelf stacked with potions.

As part of David's new larger towns, I ended up removing a ton of code to do with the zoomed out towns. Often this happens in game dev, you have to build a lot of stuff and sometimes throw out things - in this case I think it's addition by subtraction because having three different movement systems ( overworld/town/dungeon) had some real challenges. With only the two, I can simplify things so much more.

There's the added benefit of now that towns act like dungeons, we can mix and match props anywhere. Want an underground forest ? We can use props created for the towns. A guardhouse near the town entrance? Props from the dungeon's stone prison are perfect. In addition, combat can now occur on ANY town / dungeon map. Thieves could jump you in an alley. Drunken bar patrons might start a brawl. I can even implement a system where if you steal stuff in view of NPCs, guards can be summoned to battle you in a citizen's home, that kind of thing. Finally, a less exciting but absolutely core part of the game is now working - we have a working savegame system, including timed autosaves, quicksaves from the main radial menu and unlimited saves/campaigns, complete with thumbnails of your current position. Saving and loading is pretty quick and I've done a ton of optimization of file systems and data to make it as seamless as possible. Savegames are one of those things you always want to put off as a game dev because, really, who enjoys working on that stuff? I'm really relieved it went so smoothly to be honest.

What hasn't made it into this month's update is the Quest Editor, probably the last major missing piece of our game engine. I started work on it yesterday and it's a massive undertaking but I'm looking forward to revealing more about that next month.

Until next time, thanks to you guys for being part of the Lair of the Leviathan journey. It's a long road ( 2 years in at this stage ) but we're making great strides every update and we should have a new trailer to show off next month too. Cheers, David and Oliver!