Wow. Nearly a month has gone by since the last ! We can only apologise, we didn’t realise it had been so long.
You are probably wanting some sort of explanation, and don’t worry, we have one… And no, it’s not enjoying the sun due to lockdown!
Welcome to DevBlog 12, in this week’s devblog, we will show you a handful of new assets, talk about some of our plans and also showcase the first monster… and it’s historic progression! So let’s get into it…. It’s going to be a long one….
The Scarecrow
A popular asset from the previous blogs, the scarecrow was finished and is now in place in game, complete with physics on the ropes, allowing them to dance menacingly in the wind…
Here’s a close up…. you may want to be cautious getting too close though!
Eza has since been working on the next monster as well as a bunch of collectible skulls which will be required!
Super cool and you will have the opportunity to find them in game yourselves! Texturing has begun so they will be ready to display next devblog.
Dave Is Rapid
You may remember Dave joined the team in the last blog; He’s been hard at work on various props for the game, take a look at a few of them:
Alongside some props, Dave’s also been working on some of the usable items ingame. Take a look!
Zak gives them life!
So far the items are all in game, and networked too! Like we said, we’ve been busy, have a look! (some videos in this blog may need to be clicked to play)
Oh and if you’re wondering…. Yes, the compass is fully functional!
Alongside the inventory system, a bunch of existing bugs have been fixed, the texture quality of various assets have been improved and lighting is now substantially better with the inclusion of moon light. It’s hard to see due to the gif compression, but check out below;
Lonnie's Big Reveal
So up until now, we’ve kept a lot of the monster’s info secret to create more of a surprise. Now that we’ve progressed along and we have some big news ( further into the blog ), we have decided that it’s about time we tease one of the first monsters you are likely to encounter and show you some of it’s progression.
SHE'S A WITCH!
Indeed, she is a witch. That said, some of you were able to piece it together from some of the information given… Clever! Let’s have a look at it’s history.
Back in the early days of the project, when the maze looked like the above. We didn’t have access to any real source of art assets. Requiring a model to use to demo the game, we played around with “makehuman” to create this monstrosity (and not in a good way!).
Then, as members joined the team, we had an old artist, Rodrigo, offer to have a go at making the witch. Despite him being adamant that his organic skills weren’t as good as his hard surface, he was able to recreate it to be much better….
And this was how the witch stayed until we recently did an art review and realised that it just didn’t quite fit in as well as it had prior to the new assets. Seeing as it was a center stage asset, Lonnie was eager to take on the task to bring her up to quality with a much scarier feel….
As you can see, things have progressed to a much higher quality level! She may look frail and decrepit, but you really don’t want to bump into her while she’s prowling the maze….. You will learn.
Another New Face!
We realise we haven’t been as active on social media or the public channels of our discord as we could have been. With 99% of the messages in developer channels hidden away from the public, it leaves our discord looking abandoned. It’s not! But we need to make sure new users who join (Go join if you haven’t!!) feel like they can get answers to questions and suggestions they have.
Enter VSRambo, or known formally as TJ. He has stepped up onto the team to assume the role of community manager. His role will include interacting with everyone on the social platforms as well as chatting with our discord community. Make sure to drop him an @ on discord to say hi!
Big News Comes Last
As mentioned, we have some big news for everyone. First off, I just want to say that we are now a fully licensed and registered business with all the bits, ie business bank account, accountant etc. For anyone who has had to go through that process, you will know it can be confusing and tedious as you try work out what you need to do and the correct way of doing it.
But that’s not big news, you say? Oh but it is. Now we are set up correctly, we can finally get ourselves listed in the right places. We are part way through setting up our kickstarter page to generate some initial funds to help progress the speed of the development of the game and get the word out there.
Still not big news? Okay well how about this, assuming our applications are approved in time, we are looking to showcase our game in the upcoming steam indie festival! This is still a big IF as we had delays in deliveries due to corona but we are hopeful! What does this mean? It means playable demo for everyone in June…!
And that is part of the reason we’ve forgot about the devblogs. We’ve been hard at work getting things ready for a playable demo, cutting off parts of the game, playtesting, having others playtest. There’s a ton of work to cram in a small timeframe but by god we are going for it!
So there we have it, we apologise again for the late release but we hope we’ve made up for it in content. Join our discord if you haven’t already, it helps more than anything right now!
If you haven’t yet, please join our discord, we love seeing new faces and we are excited to hear people’s feedback, suggestions, questions, theories and everything in between!
Don’t use discord? No problem! You can still support us by liking our Facebook page or following our Twitter:
