June DevLog
June is a comparatively lowkey month for us. There was still a lot of work done but most of it are revisions or improvements of existing features. Now that we are satisfied with the fundamental simulations in the game, we'll start turning our focus towards our World Invasion System. This is the last but biggest missing piece in the game which includes the random world generation, corrupting world tiles, minion growth and management, win and lose conditions, threat meter, and more. This is a big feature that will take time to complete. I don't think we will have another significant update this month but expect a fully playable (albeit barebones) game by end of August.
Prototype Build v0.4
We've updated our prototype build with more features and improvements. Here's the link: World's Bane Prototype
Gameplay Trailer
Finally we were able to complete our first gameplay trailer which should give players a clear idea of what we're going for with World's Bane. This is only the first one and focuses on how the player interacts with an internal map. We'll have another trailer in a couple of months that will show an overview of the whole game flow once the initial structure of the World Invasion System has been developed.
Revised UI
We've revised the way the player performs actions. Now, there are icons on the right side for available minion abilities. The player may select one, and then click on a valid target to cast it. We'll conduct some playtests to determine whether this is the best way to perform actions in interior maps.
Revised Event System
Events now are stored by NPCs as part of their memories. They can now react appropriately to a piece of event when they witness it, or when they have been informed about it by the player or by another NPC. We've not implemented complete reactions to all available actions yet but most of the major ones have been applied. Due to the overhaul, there will be some major weird/illogical reactions for now. We'll smooth it out in later updates.
Watching Event
NPCs are now able to watch some events that are taking place (ex: two factionmates in combat, someone poisoning food, someone playing music) and may react after the event ends. This is an initial setup, and will be a feature that will keep expanding throughout development.
Updated Combat
In previous builds, combat results occur instantaneously. Now, we've introduced a new combat system where the NPCs actually have attack range, attack speed, hitpoints and damage based on their Race and Class. This is only an initial version that is still heavily imbalanced. We'll revisit balance of combat in the coming months as well as add unique combat abilities to different classes.
Combat Animations
Skeletons, male human and elves and wolf NPCs now have combat animations. More combat animations will be added in the future.
Ruler Succession
When a faction ruler dies, is kidnapped or becomes a criminal, he will be replaced by another resident as the new ruler. There is a hierarchy amongst the residents based on the relationship with the current ruler, class and gender.
Raise Dead
The player can now raise corpses (including those buried in tombstones) from the dead and turn them into hostile skeletons. This is an Instigator minion ability.
Mouse Drag
Players can now drag the interior map using the mouse.