May 2021 update!

Hello people!

There goes another month, and I'm very sorry about the slowdown, as I told this past month I had to pick up a day job and there is plenty to fix at my house still.

I know in the April update I talked about doing far less than I wanted but turned out pretty good on that aspect. This month most of the time I spent was doing a background and the new menu graphics and code. And the background turned out bad, so that's being redone.

Well, lets start with the new menu.

I did do start by finishing the stones and coding the text animation, it looks so cool but first was only the rune by itself and the text appeared, but that felt too confusing.

Then I put the grey text to help with the menu and first just the stones were mouse sensitive, but then I decided that making the whole text interactable would be better, and also changed a little bit the graphics, the black stones were hard to see on this kind of background.

Finally the stones will be transparent blue, as a gem to make it look more cohesive with the options menu.

I also redid the code on the save and load to show the progress.

I finally settled with a center screen box type of menu, that will show Rynn stats like health level, abilities and the game progress/time played. On the top the file will show the act you are currently in, and an image related to the zone where the save point was used (that isn't done just a black box).

A huge step towards starting the "real" game is the coding of the quest system. I've been putting small bits of what I needed here and there but finally i got to the point where I could mostly finish it (It will be feedback about what npcs will have quests and if they are already active or not).

And about K'thani I did a bunch of sprite animations of her because she will be the first friendly npc you encounter, and will have a kind of tutorial zone vibe. So she will be moving around.

Because she is a druid, currently she doesn't need the run or the jump animation bc she will be transforming into animals to move around quickly.

And Talking about sprites, I just did a recolor of the wolf enemy to have Skath also in the game.

Feels like cheating, but welp. I suppose that recolors are used in games for a reason.

I tried to do some stuff with the new Rynn fire attacks (Because she lost her sword and she unlocks the fire powers after the prologue) There is a lot of work still to do here though.

I did make a fireball attack that looks pretty lame, so that's gonna change, maybe for the first ranged attack instead of a fireball it will be a moving blade of fire that fades after some distance. And the fireball will be unlocked some time after.

Talking about shitty graphics, I spent like 2 weeks (or maybe more) trying to do some forest background, that I was kinda happy with it.

But turned out bad in-game. So that will be redone. 

I like the concept of giant trees, but those are too big, and detail is lost on them because of the sheer size, like we cant see the bottom really when the player is on Ground (The blue transparent part.) Will be better to make all the good detail of the tree be visible and then the vertical parallax (the hardest thing to get right tbh) just be the leaves.

At least doing this taught me a good quick technique to draw leaves.

You are dead (Not really, this is a sequence I made to put some small transition between the prologue and the Act1) Rynn will wake up at K'thani's house after this.

Some closing words:

Keep deving! my final message. Goodb ye

Discord link

Twitter link

April 2021 Update!

Hey there! How is it going?

Last month the prologue build just got released, did you play it, how was it?

I feel this month I did far less than I wanted, but well there is irl stuff with my house, being renovated and all that.

 Still, lets check what is being worked on this month.

This time there is a lot to show and I might be reaching the newgrounds gif limit, if you wanna see more, please check the link at the top!

Finally an animation for drinking the potion is in the game (both, sword and no sword).

Rynn will also litter the bottle, and that made me think of a "minigame" or a "game mode" where cou can throw the bottle to do damage but cant attack normally.

Silly but could be cool as a challenge. (I may develop a drunken version, where Rynn just chugs ale and does massive damage but the game gets harder as you drink more).

Idk, those are silly things and I need to focus on the normal game.

Also I finished some long pending assets for the ruins, those are just building tiles that can be used for decoration. (or even doors if I put the door transition object.)

Those are a couple of buildings I put in-game.

I did start (and nearly finish) working on the first full patreon enemy, the Velvet Worm, some annoying enemy that wont damage you but will paralyze with their silk.

I did do a rework of the old Yasha portrait, to put it better ingame.

Fully animated and in the right scale now.

On a more long note, I started a rework of the menu system to have multiple (better) ways to put the savefiles and to make it look better in general (the scroll thing looks cool but to be honest that was always a temp thing).

concept mockups.

where the white ball would go a rotating rune(and maybe the text will appear when mouseover the rune).

I also started working on new tilesets for the forest.

So, As I said, this month I felt I worked a lot slower than usual, sorry for that!

But things keep getting me busy, like this month I had to redo some stuff two times, one bc of GMS2 updates, and the other one bc I wanted to update the save system, to allow me to save objects in a room. (I almost forgot, this part is in theory the closure). That took me like 1 week and a half of figuring out how to integrate that into my code.

The other was that the GMS2 update broke something in the Inventory System and had to check (Its a very convoluted system tbh and I had to carefully read it again to understand what thee fuck I wrote back then) and turned out to be some minor issue with the unused code.

As a closure I will say I really appreciate all the patience and support I get from you, and I wish I could deliver stuff quicker, some days I think I should hire a pixel artist bc that is what it slows the most the production of the game for me. But still, I am advancing a lot in a lot of areas at the same time, so may look slower but I feel this will allow me to deliver better game builds with more stuff to show. 

Next stuff to work on: The Quest System, The "Experience Points" and "Level UP" and more lore.

PD: I did a dirty on April's Fools (Went almost into nsfw territory, check my discord for that :P).

Discord Link

Twitter Link

Goodb ye

March update is here, and I feel I missed a deadline :_(

I had planned to release the whole prologue before the end of February, well, my birthday happened and some stuff I had to handle irl. And also I missed the scope of stuff I had to polish for the prologue.

Anyways, as always here comes the update of what I managed to work for the game this month.

I did add some ruins in the background for this part of the game. Not a lot more to say on this part. 

NEXT!

Also, there is some new triggers, this is the combat trigger, activated when hit (or destroyed, depending on the settings that are put in it).

Used here for example.

I also have a collision trigger, and eventually some button triggers. we will see when they are done, I suppose new triggers will be made when I need them, after all the base is already done, just change some stuff on the trigger and done, new trigger!

I tweaked the flash shaders, now the flash is gradual, and can display different colors, not only white (or red and green on Rynn with separate shaders) So this is now unified.

Normal death sprite!

And a BOSSFIGHT!

Well, that's most of what I did this month, I also got ready with level design, and while doing it I felt like the maps were too big, so feedback will be expected with this next release. I will try to get it uploaded on the weekend.

c:

If you wanna try the game right now, a 1$ pledge will give you access to the Prologue Release

Check my twitter and discord also!!

It's day 4th of the month! Time  for Game dev Update and oh boy, this is a big one. Seems like the past couple of weeks I got lots of stuff done. I started a new daily schedule that is helping a lot with the development and of course not having any major setbacks like holydays or other irl stuff.

I revamped the inventory system, when I did the old one I was using a very convoluted way to manage it and also was half done, was good enough for the time being (only holding potions) but as time went on it felt too hard to use.

Now the inventory will have 10 item slots that can be stacked, throw away or used (none of the current object examples are usable though, they only are placeholders). Health potions and money have separate fixed slots.

At first I wanted potions to be stackable objects too, but while that felt "realistic" it didn't work well with the game style, where you have to open the inventory to use a potion, so I made the "H" key the use potion button, that made me think what potion to use? big ones first? look for specific potion effects? too complex so I went with the "Dark Souls" style potions, you have a maximum to stack that can be increased and also can be leveled up to heal more in one go.

As a part of the Inventory development I also added money in the game (It's really weird for Rynn to carry money, she is after all never used it xD, but I will figure something out in the story) And I went and also put some basic assets, the spinning coins and a chest.

the coins only drop from chest right now, and they serve no purpose but they are shiny and they like Rynn so much they float to her (Pick me up barbarian-sempai!) and they do tingle when picked up.

On the drawing side I messed with Rynn's idle animations a little bit.

(Secret: She will not carry the sword all the time after the prologue)

I (theoretically) finished a new character design for a patron that will appear in the game as an optional miniboss encounter.

It's Vampire Rynn!

NOT! I'm joking she is Kiuna, a vampire lady that belongs to @minirop. I will post the Bio when I get the story finished.

Now to explain all the backend stuff I can't really show a lot of that here but is nonetheless important!

I worked on the floating texts that are in-game, like the little tutorial text, the pickup numbers and the damage/heal numbers. Before they were drawn on the game layer, that makes them get affected by the scene lighting, in a dark room they wouldn't be visible and I had a workaround with that by just putting a light object that followed the text.

But now I moved everything to the GUI layer, they were harder to code on that layer, because depends on the camera position and other stuff but once I solved it now they wont require a light and always will be drawn at full color and wont be darkened or drawn behind anything except the menu.

Had some trouble adapting the cutscene system to work when far from the player and having the dialogue system integrated on that, they seemed that they didn't like to get along and in the heat of the situation the camera object lost track of the aiming system and had lots of bugs with that, but finally fixed it.

I also had some work changing the damage numbers on enemies, they were too low at the moment and if the player had their luck stat too high any attack would heal them (hint at the RPG system o_O). Touching that weirdly fixed a bug I had with the bear encounter, where if you rolled to make him turn and then rolled back again he would freeze (programming wtf).

Got some additional attacks to the paladin enemy the stab looked too boring, now they can also slash in place or attack while blocking.

And finally, I got some music (and even more coming this way) and voice lines for Rynn! thanks to @farion for helping me on that, they still are not normalized and may sound weird but I've contacted a friend that will polish them, just that it could take some time because he is very busy with his job.

Well, I think that's all this month.

I really feel like I'm getting a lot done this pasts weeks and I hope this continues, I'll probably will have something new playable ready late this month, like a birthday present for myself! Yes February 27th is my b-day!

My brother and my sister-in-law are still living with me, but they are already working on fixing their house's roof, I expect they go live there soon-ish. After that I will have a lot of work refurbishing my house rooms, after all I need them to be ready for renting them whenever its possible.

As always, I really appreciate your support and all the money I get from patreon is only used for the game's development, and right now will be directed to the music part (a good soundtrack can make or break a game).

And remember to check my twitter and discord for random updates I do sometimes!

Cheers!

January 2021 Update!

Sorry, this update took more time to make. I normally prepare stuff for the 4th of each month, but being after festivities (here really ends on January the 6th) and last month having too little time to work on the game stuff I decided to delay the post to have the stuff I started last month be more ready to show.

Anyway lets get started!

First I will start showing you what I was already working on but was the last thing I finished.

The waterfalls from last month, I improved it, before they were all sprites, I decided to start working on automate the creation of waterfalls so its easier to edit the levels, I just need to put the origin point and the rest will appear automatically.

After that I decided that the lower part of the waterfall looked ugly, so I made that part a particle system in GMS2 instead of a particle from external source converted to sprite.

In the end I made it so can detect if there is water below so it stops before hitting ground. 

(I also added random transparency to the waterfall so it looks a little better.)

Did a minor update to the bg tileset to see if it looked better, and I like the looks. Basically I'm using the ground texture but shifted saturation and brightness.

The ice one felt too random and noisy to be a background so I decided to try some different looks on it (still needs to improve).

Also, on December I promised to do both Farion and Minirop characters, I couldn't do them in time, but I finished Farion's one early this month, you can see the description here.

Right now I'll be working on Kiuna, Minirop character.

And finally an update to the poll about the savepoints:

I got suggested to use both, the camp as a normal savepoint, and the Sjaell shrine when its relevant, be it for context or as a game mechanic, like before bosses or on important locations.

Maybe also making so the Sjaell shrine also heals you when used.

I feel that's a very good idea and might just use both that way I feel the shrine isn't wasted, the idea of it was cool.

Anyways, I feel this month I really didn't work that much, sorry for that, I felt like I had no free time, between family reunions, work (my day job was being too taxing) and the fact that I had to do some favors to my brother and his girlfriend (They had some trouble fixing their house roof and winter came harsh they couldn't get it in time, so for now I have people in my house and with that it comes also more time cleaning the house and doing chores).

Remember to check my twitter and discord for random updates I do some times!

See ya!

December 2020 Update!

We are near the end of the year! I hope everyone merry Christmas even with the world falling apart!

I'm still working on the whole mockup stuff.

I added some background decorations for the ruins tileset.

I made some decorations for the ramparts, still look too clean doesn't look like ruins right now...

with a foreground and background versions hip high or ankle high.

made some variations also on the floor, with wooden structures, I feel it needed a little of spice on the variation part.

Also, I'm planning on lots of decorations to put in, like stone arches and other stuff. 

If you noticed this doesn't look too dwarven, I decided to make some changes, and the ruins exterior will be human ruins. a lot of lore behind it though (I should make a Lore post about the basics of the world).

Then after some time thinking hard about doing water for the game I coded it, and use a shader I found in a YouTube tutorial (shaders are hard man).

Water shader fail... but then...

GREAT SUCCESS!!

After trying some particles, I decided to put the water mist and change the color a little bit to make it look more like mineralized water and look warmer (we don't want Rynn to freeze on the water).

And its hard to notice maybe but I coded the water/object interaction, when a game object flagged as water interactive, it will create "ripples" in the water, that looks like jelly but I will make some splash particles to make it look less jelly.

I am also working on some waterfall for the background to complement the water in-game.

Still undecided, but looks like the poll has decided for the particle waterfall, though both of those are small mockups I made, just to see what you guys prefer.

I got comments about the particle one to make it a little bit more detailed, don't worry that's not a final look.

Finally, I changed a little bit the Tier 2 as I said in the respective post.

I plan to put some basic stuff for use in your game, like assets (tilesets, basic sprites, etc.), code and scripts (like basic platformer movement and other stuff), You also can request specific stuff you would like to get your hands on.

Grasslands tileset | RareDoggu on Patreon

Right now I only put the old forest tileset I made at the start of Draken's Shrine production.

Well, I felt this month I did little to no work, but it turns out I have a lot to share about it. Sorry for the lengthy post, this kind of posts help me to get motivated bc every time I make them I see how much stuff got made, during the month I always feel I don't work enough on the game.

Anyways, Happy holidays to everyone and I hope you all are enjoying what I'm doing your support really makes a difference. Soon I will be able to pay for some music for the game!

Twitter

Patreon

November 2020 Update!

Well, has been a long month tbh, I will explain more stuff in the end but this month has been hard on me and I could not work that much on the game.

Still made some progress tbh, so lets start!

This month I started just right on where last update ended, because I'm doing some changes on the portraits after K'thani the only logical step was to redo Rynn!

I'm quite happy with the change on my style over the time.

Now, lets talk about the game. I will start with some nice stuff, I coded the behavior for the Archer enemy. 

The arrows have a drop-off and hurt, they stick to surfaces a little bit then disappear.

Worked on new assets also.

This are some assets I'm working on, I'm changing the background tiles, making them more similar to the ground tiles but with a darker shade.

That's supposed to be a Storage tent for the imperial camp.

And this is a military tent for the imperial camp.

Also I'm working on some wooden platforms, still wip though I like the structure but might be too simple.

I coded a system to allow different keyboard layouts to be in the game.

This will make it very easy to put new layouts, right now only QWERTY and AZERTY are in the game, but with this system all i have to put is a new layout and the game will support it instantly.

Finally, remember that I made a discord server where I update new stuff and have neat emojis:

Discord Server

And also, if you want to try how is the game right now the early alpha for patrons is here too!

Alpha test v0.0.0.20 

You only have to back for the Tier 1

PS: I didn't want to bring this bc its "drama" but recently some irl events happened and make life a little more sad and difficult. I will still be strong and try to keep working on stuff though.

My father just passed away unexpectedly on October 16, This year is a very hard one on all of us, but I already lost 4 relatives, my aunt first died of Alzheimer's on January, my grandmother also died in April (nothing to do with covid19) just of old age, then on June my mother also passed on bc of a very aggressive Alzheimer's too. All those were kind of of expected, just its always sad to lose someone, but the hardest one to endure was this...

My father was "healthy" he had bladder cancer, and bc of the covid19 crisis all his medical attentions got delayed, the diagnosis came late, then an early surgery couldn't be done, then the chemotherapy went badly and affected his kidneys, in the end doctors tried to do their bests and wasn't enough. 

My father was maybe my most dear of all my relatives and he was always supportive of me and my projects, he wanted me to succeed and when first I got patrons he was very happy of me, and after all those years enduring my mother's illness, he had to go with her in the end when we were planning a lot of stuff together now free of the burden that my mother's Alzheimer's wasn't binding us to home. He wanted to visit Mexico again where he had close friends.

Sorry, this was a very long rambling about my family and feelings about all of it. It's just sad, and I'm still mourning, but life goes on and I have to make the best of what I got and get what I've always wanted, make games and tell stories so other people can enjoy and make a dent on the world.

See ya soon!

October 2020 Update!

Spook month is here!

But let's talk about the development of the game. :c

I'll start saying that this has been a long journey. I recall starting gamedev and wondering why I didn't chase my dreams until four years ago.

I was very lost around the 2010, back then bumbled around between a shitty job and shitty studies. Then started to make my own roleplaying game and world this ttrpg I was making (and the novel I tried do write) spawned the world this game takes place in. 

The ruleset for roleplaying game was finished but though it had good ideas I finally felt it was not worth pursuing. Parts of it were overly complicated, and other parts were too simplified, I didn't strike the balance I was seeking, and the novel I was writing got to around 200 pages, and simply stopped writing.

But I found myself when I started to develop games, and even got some money when working with an internet friend I met. And started to enjoy something to work on.

Some history about my dev time:

Image shows a 3 year difference in pixel art and game design

First try of the game I was planning, I realized I wasn't prepared yet.

But now, It's been a year since I started the new project prototype.

Now, what I've done this past month?

Well some more assets to prepare the launch of the first alpha test for the game.

The open cave for Rynn to enter the last stage of the test (fight the bear).

The ice wall at the end of the bear fight.

And some new Ice blocks to break through.

Also I coded the sound system, as I said last month, Now the sound system admits 3 different simultaneous sound for every sound emitter (enemies interactive objects, etc.).

The dialogue, music and menus stuff still need work but the idea on those, is because they aren't camera dependent I just use the basic game maker sound system.

This is the same video than last month, I felt that recording it again wasn't too important.

Look at this cutie! 

Idk why I love her so much, It was really hard to get her portrait right.

When I start drawing I always feel that I cant get where I want it to be, and to be honest I still feel this drawing has some issues I can work on improving myself. But the face specially, I feel like I nailed it my intent (Cute monster face).

Anyways, if you wanna check more info on her check her Character Bio. The bio also has some worldbuilding about dragons.

I have to say that if you want to try the game you can pledge the minimum. 

This will get you some of the builds I feel people interested in it want to try, the other tiers will get more updates on the game.

And I'm thinking if should be worth to put as a reward some source code about my tests and game systems.

Patreon

Twitter

Well not too much to say right now.

Just wanted to announce it here too, I this week saw the first playable build of the game:

If you want to try it please visit my patreon and, you only have to pledge for the 1$ tier. (If you cant afford dont worry there is plenty of info in my patreon):

Draken's Shrine alpha test

Its very early alpha and has only a few rooms, but there is plenty to test already.

Also you can join my discord or follow me on twitter server for more updates:

Twitter

Discord invite

Consider checking them!

September 2020 Update!

Hey people! How is it going? It's time to update!

Remember I did create a Discord Server, you can join in to check out the news updates more often, or just to get exclusive fun emojis for you to use in other servers!

Discord Server invite!

I'll start this month's update showing you how the archer enemy is progressing.

I did finish the shooting animations (still needs to be textured), now I just need a hit animation and the death animation.

For the time being I plan the archer not to move and just aim somewhat where the player is when in sight.

I also worked hard on some new art for the starting level.

there are more coming, I really need to learn to decorate better the environment, feels kind of empty to me.

And finally this month I started working on the sound engine, though I'm a little far behind on what I had planned because of my PC dying for no reason, some family issues and the fact that I had to take a job offer just to go by.

But anyway, here it is:

Sorry for the quality of the audio, the game is in stereo but for some reason when encoding the video it got recorded as mono. (in the original game the bat flapping sounds left and right).

Well, that's all for this month update and soon this month patrons will be able to enjoy an alpha gameplay demo of the game. (I planned it for last month but things get delayed, sorry :c ).

And remember, I love you :*