Greetings, mighty dungeon crawlers!
Been a while since our last update but David (from Nostaglic Realms) and I have been powering away hard at work on Lair of the Leviathan. It goes without saying that this is easily the biggest thing either of us have worked on ( and I've built over 10 games for Steam already!) , but honestly this is also the most fun I've ever had working on a project.
The more we build the game, the more we realise it's shaping up to be basically our own version of the classic Gold Box D&D games from the 90s. We loved those games so much - but naturally they have aged, and have their own annoyances. We're basically trying to pay homage to them, but also remove a lot of the tedium ( all those random encounters and clunky 3D maps, gone !) , while keeping true to the spirit of the era. There's also hints of Darklands, Ultima, Knights of Legend in there. All the stuff we loved growing up.
My good friend Anders Lauridsen ( developer of Skald : Against the Black Priory ) has been a great supporter of the game, and in our conversations has given me tons of advice in how to program a successful RPG. The major thing he stressed upon me was this : make good tools! . Building deep game editors is an investment in itself, it takes time, but when you're building a huge game, if you have a good toolset , this investment will pay off tenfold later.
With that in mind, I've spent almost all of my time on the project building a massive suite of editor tools for David and I to use ( and down the road, hopefully to make the game moddable for anyone to create their own adventures using the same built-in tools that we do, something akin to the classic Forgotten Reams Unlimited Adventures editor of so long ago.
I've shown off some of these tools in earlier posts ( the character creator and overland map ), the most powerful and central to the game so far being the Encounter Editor. From here you can create conversations, trigger party members to enter and leave, play sound and music, enter towns and so much more.
I've show that editor off before, so today I wanted to show off a few others today and let you know where we are at with the game right now. First up, the Dungeon Editor - where our heroes explore the dark paths of the world in search of treasure and experience.
Aside from the combat itself, dungeon crawling is the largest single component of the game, so I knew I had to do it properly. Since David and I will be making a lot of maps for the game, the map editor has to be relatively easy to use, so I've spent a lot of time making that happen.
The core concept of the Dungeon Editor is making rooms and other props. The dungeon can be put together largely just dragging and dropping these rooms using the mouse. Handles allow us to grow and shrink walls and floors, and even move the whole room around itself. It's not using a traditional tile editor so it's much more flexible for editing on the fly.
We can drag lights into the scene, adjust wall and floor lengths with draggable handles, even add decals like blood splatters, broken debris and loose tiles easily. Lights can be adjusted and cast shadows, props are automatically Z sorted so they appear above and behind characters, and rooms can be moved around the dungeon easily. Doors open and close, and rooms are cloaked in dark shadows which reveal when the party enters, and more.
The best part about the dungeon editor is that encounters can be placed very easily, so we can create everything from simple conversation triggers between the party , right through to full scale battles. This same encounter system can also be used with the overworld editor - so its extremely flexible.
I've also just wrapped up the Monster Editor ( and its sub-editor, the Creature Editor! )
The Creature Editor represents the various archetypes a monster can belong to, everything from Humanoids to Animals right through to Magical Beasts and Dragons. These architects can be assigned immunities, resistances, weaknesses and so on - even setting the creature's general size, from tiny to gargantuan. This is largely based on the Pathfinder / D&D systems , but we'll mix things up to make them better suited to the game itself - I don't want to get too bogged down in the more complicated elements of those systems. We want to reflect the 'heart' of the game but not the tedium of the mechanics ( no encumbrance! )
When we create a monster, we choose it from a base creature archetype to base it on. So, I can create a Green Dragon, based on the Dragon archetype, and it will have all of the hallmarks of a dragon - but I could then set the size to gargantuan to make it an even bigger dragon. I can then give it special creature traits like Incorporeal to make it a ghost green dragon that can only be hit by magic weapons!
You can select an animation for the monster from one of the premade ones we've created, or even import your own images to create your own from scratch. Like all other editors, I want to make it so you can customize almost everything.
Aside from these editors themselves, I've also been working on the actual game mechanics of the dungeon. The party can now move around with full pathfinding. The party formation shrinks when in tight spaces and spreads out again when there is room. You can open and close doors with a radial mouse menu ( and this will be the basis for all interaction , everything is also fully keyboard or gamepad selectable too ).
Character sheets are fully working, as are inventory systems - see below, you can equip your heroes with a ton of great gear. Who doesn't love a Fustibalus!
With the monsters now in-game, my focus this week will turn to combat itself. I can finally put all those crazy bit of data to use ! This is a massive part of the game and I can't wait to finally get stuck into it. I estimate it's easily 3 months work before I have something to show off combat related , but once that is in place, that represents most of the engine work. We can then start on building a short demo to show off - either in time for late this year or early next year.
David's been hard at work creating the fully customizable figurines and portraits for the game ( honestly there is so much variety even now ) . He's also been designing the fully animated monsters, from goblin skirmishers to massive snake headed terrors. His pet project though is the wonderful overworld map, which is looking better than ever. David's dropped in all manner of new locations to explore, from haunted towers to abandon mineshafts and other secrets - and this is just the starter area for the game!
This has been a bit of a mega-post but there's been so much to show off, I feel like I haven't even covered it all. Really encouraged and inspired by everyone's enthusiasm for the game so far - you guys fully motivate us to keep forging ahead.
Let us know what you think of what's been going on so far and anything you want clarified, or want to see in the game as we move into year two of development. Grand adventures await!
Cheers, Oliver Joyce and David Aron
Whiskeybarrel Studios and Nostalgic Realms