News from the Lair - July

David (Artist) Hey everyone! Yet another month has passed and we find ourselves heading into the second half through the year. This month has seen a lot of progress yet again on getting core systems finished and making the world feel more alive.

Town Improvements

This has been the main thing I have been working on this month. We now have over 100 props for the towns, trees, stones, buildings, animals. All the kind of things that will make exploring towns and coming home more interesting.

How it started Steam post image How things currently look in game

Oliver has also been working on getting the waypoint systems working really well. We can now do all kinds of cool stuff. NPCs can walk through town, we can set how rarely they spawn, the delay between them, whether they appear during the night or day, the paths they take, they can even walk together as a group or singularly.

I have also started doing some effects. Some of these are really difficult and large so it has been challenging to do them in pixel art but I think they are starting to look quite cool. Other than that on my end I have mainly been polishing up the player figurines, working on enemy sprites and making more props for the dungeons.

Oliver (Coding)

Greetings, adventurers! One of the cool things about David increasing the scale of the town to the new 1:1 scale, where the buildings and NPCs are larger, means we can just fit more detail in everything and also allow the party to interact with the world. That knight who gallops past the party in the earlier screenshot can be stopped and questioned, for instance. I've implemented a simple conversation / chatter system into the game now. Clicking on NPCs will trigger dialogue. Most NPCs will have one or more lines of dialogue but we don't want to get into a 'Pillars of Eternity' style lore dump. As excellent as that game was, it was really heavy on the exposition and we don't really want to build that kind of game. There'll be lots of lore but it will be revealed through the world. Short conversations, occasional yes/no style answers and fragments of lore in books/scrolls etc.

Seen here in the example below, we can talk to the pumpkin seller and he'll shout about his wares over a few lines of dialogue.

Occasionally there might be a quest overriding this. For example the pumpkin seller might need you to find a peasant who owes him money, so that dialogue will play instead. I've also been focusing heavily on combat and tactics this month. Enemies can now employ a range of tactics in combat. Spellcasters will rely heavily on (duh) spells, while spellbreakers will specifically target casters. Artillery stay at a distance and pepper you with ranged attacks, and if an attacker gets close they will try to flee to a safe space. Berserkers will attack the closest target, tanks will defend and protect allies. It's still a work in progress but it's cool to see enemies that can challenge the party already.

I've built many in-game editors for Lair of the Leviathan, here's a screenshot of the Monster Editor just showing a few of the many parameters I can edit to make them unique and memorable.

I've also been working on the various powers for the game. Ranged and Melee attacks were already in the game last month but now we have all manner of AOE, target based, line of effect and 'cone' attacks so we can create everything from "Chain Lightning" to the classic "Fireball" spells. After all its not an RPG without a fireball spell!

Unleashing a Fireball to devastating effect

Magical Missiles can hit multiple targets Steam post image

Amongst the other combat related things this month, I've started implementing status conditions like being confused ( chance of attacking teammates, walking around randomly, doing nothing etc ) , held (can't move) , afraid ( flee from the target ) and so on.

Knocking back an enemy with a Power Strike

Steam post image Here's a screengrab of the Powers Editor.

Having all the various status conditions plus the myriad damage types and 'area of effect' types for powers means I can mix and match things to create a very wide variety of powers. So far I've only created about 8 or 9 powers but there'll be lots more from low level powers like level 1's Magical Missile right through to powerful things like Meteor Showers and Chain Lightining and so on.

We've started implementing some 'juice' into the game too in the form of sound effects ( yells and screams when hit, bone crunch sounds for skeletons, eggshell cracks for critters etc ), screenshakes ( toggleable on and off ! ) and animated special effects that can light up the area and really create a bit of excitement in the heat of battle.

This will of course be an ongoing process throughout the game. More special effects, more sounds, more powers, more monsters, more of everything - but I think we're now just about ready to actually sit down and properly create some proper dungeons, side quests and adventures for the party to embark upon.

I've almost finished a "Quest Editor" now , but as this is a long post I'll save that for the August update.

Until next time, adventurers! Cheers, Oliver and David Whiskeybarrel Studios and Nostalgic Realms