New Encyclopedia Entry: The Psycaster Classes | Archrebel: Prelude

The psycaster classes are now available in the encyclopedia. While their perks' names on this set of classes remain the same, their functionality suffered great changes, and the results can be found here.

So, what's new about the whole job situation to become a full-time game developer? Well, the response is tied with what chance will be brought to the table next week. There are some pending issues at my job which involve going to a new project, which may not fit my current needs and expertise.

As destiny plays its card, I started working on Archrebel: Prelude to get myself familiar with Unity's 2D functionality to create a proof-of-concept strategy/roguelike game I had in the drawer for a long time.

To my surprise, in 7 days, I managed to develop nearly as much as I had done previously in 4 months creating my own engine and editor for the same project. Sure I knew it would be faster but not this faster.

Below is the resulting effort. I drew all sprites myself, learned to use tilemaps, tile pallets, tile slicing, implemented pathfinding and got the grip of some critical features like layer sorting, which was getting on my nerves at first, and develop a grid (thanks to Code Monkey on youtube) to work with pathfinding features when using tilemaps.

So, yeah, I'm quite pleased with the results. Archrebel aims to be a strategy game with a 20 mission campaign. Units can be customized, upgraded, hired, healed, and repaired (in the case of droids/robots). You will get paid with the completion of primary and secondary objects and all equipment you grab from enemies can be sold or added to your arsenal. With a persistent army, your successes and failures will reflect on the performance of future missions.

As for Underlair, "my precious", I'll just continue to upgrade its encyclopedia, for now.

Stay safe!

New Encyclopedia Entry: The Rogue Classes | Announcement

Another major entry is now available in the encyclopedia, this time covering more details of the Rogue class and its respective class specializations. The new entry can be found here.

The UI for the character generator has been finalized, (YAY!) and I've been considering what to do next since yesterday. The original plan would set me on the path to implement the in-game UI, which means going back to Inkscape and try to convert the related project to Affinity Designer. But I've been considering also other aspects, like focusing a bit on its mechanics and re-analyzing the laid foundation for main and secondary attributes.

Apart from this, I've been thinking about starting another project. Hold on! It's not a project to replace Underlair but a project far smaller in scope to provide the needed income to finance Underlair and perhaps letting me quit my current job to focus on game development. It's getting frustrating wanting to develop Underlair but instead being forced to relocate my free time and mental effort as a web developer (my current profession). With each passing day, this frustration is getting stronger.

Nothing is decided yet and soon I might have more info on the topic. I need to check with a friend of mine that is currently learning C# and wants to get into game development too. Regardless, even I decide to move on with a secondary project, I'll still keep working on Underlair and update Underlair's blogger as usual.

Stay safe!

The Encyclopedia Gets Some Attention

I've concluded the first template entry for the encyclopedia regarding the playable classes. You finally get to learn more about the Warrior's perks. During the next week, I will create another entry for the rogue classes - there are still some aspects I need to consider for their perks and they will probably end up being different from what I originally described.

Apart from putting some effort into the encyclopedia, I've continued with the integration of the new characters' generator UI. It's about 75% done at this point and it has suffered some unscripted improvements. Also, the cooking skill has been replaced with camping.

Click here for a shortcut.

Stay safe!

And Finally, the Scholar Class Set

So, here are the scholar classes. To my surprise, this was the easier set of classes to create, since each one of these class specializations is quite specific.

Now, with the class sets out of the way, I'm returning to the development of the new character generation screen, which is about 50% complete. If all goes according to plan, it will be finished during the next week. 

After the UI gets finalized, I'll focus a bit on the site's encyclopedia which has been neglected for a long period of time - far too long. 

I'm now off to watch a movie and after that, I will resume work.

Stay safe!

Psycaster Classes

And here they are, the psycaster classes. I decided to change the procedural generator class's name and symbol so that each base class will be unique. Instead of 'Eye of the X' it will appear 'Disciple of X', where 'X' will be a fictional name.

It was a fun ride going back to my notes created almost a year ago. I've tuned some class specializations and changed some of the old perks. While everything is still theorized, the present information is quite solid at this point.

As you may have noticed, I'm not using the traditional Battlemage and Archmage names as they are not particularly compatible with the world of Underlair. There is no concept of magic in Underlair, 'spells' are referred to as abilities and these abilities are the product of using cerebral waves that can manipulate matter to an atomic level. There is no concept of 'magic' damage either. Damage is strictly based on logic, i.e. throwing a rock with psycrum abilities will cause impact/crush damage and not magic damage.

Next week, I'll present the last set of classes belonging to the Scholar branch. I'm curious to see how it will turn out as I haven't thought about their icons yet. 

Stay safe!