Hi,
since some of you folks were worried about this project, I decided to give you a little update. First of all, I can relieve your minds: Monomyth is still very actively under development. Things are still happening (almost) daily.
However, as you can probably imagine, this year went a little different to what we all expected. As a result I had very little vacation time, which is what I need to really prepare the updates that would push the alpha forward. Instead I focused on level design / content creation, because if you get interrupted there - say, for a couple days - it's not so dramatic. So here's a little overview of some of the things I've been working on over the last couple months:
Lysandria is a coherent environment. Naturally it needs a sewer system.
Magic devices may sometimes reveal things you were not supposed to see.
Long ago Lysandria was a center of trade. The mines underneath brought wealth and prosperity.
Verticality plays a major role in all areas.
Not every corner of Lysandria is dangerous. Some places are peaceful and allow you to relax for a while.
The Lysandrians were rather devout. The whole area is filled with shrines and temples to worship their ancient gods.
The roots of the fortress reach deep down into the underworld.
I also improved the level design workflow quite a bit. Some of it is now handled through a tile map interpreter which makes it easier to block out / prototype simple dungeon environments. Basically, with this method I "draw" tiled environments on a layered image, which is then interpreted as a 3D environment (z-axis information is coming from the layers). Here's an example on how that works:
A tile map drawn in UE4's internal tile map editor
The interpreted 3D environment (early)
A more complex environment produced with the same method
I've also been overhauling the character animation setup. Many NPCs now share a single animation rig, which is again (essentially) a workflow improvement because it allows for modular characters.
I posted an example for this over at Twitter. My main gripe with Steam's update section is the size limitation on gifs. Then again those are absolutely terrible on twitter as well (plus the compression is awful), so I might look for an entirely different solution.
Further, I also put some time into making friendly NPCs attackable. Attacking them naturally has a negative effect on your faction relationships. I will have more information on this (and other stuff) in the next update(s).
Talking of which, I'll try to keep this place more up-to-date in the future (haha, whoops!).
Sorry for that! See you soon!
Yours,
Rat Tower