New ZpellCatz Trailer
Hey there. I polished the spell effects and the environment over the last weeks. Check out the updated trailer and screenshots:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
ZpellCatz News
"Great on Deck" Update (0.93.0) April '22
*** General ***
- Added more epic items
- Friendly rooms are allowed to spawn closer to the dungeon entrance now
- Advanced blacksmith services are now cheaper when the base item is of normal quality
- This change makes normal items worth being picked up in midgame / lategame (e.g. to craft epic items)
- Treasure rooms and boss rooms now drop at least one item of quality special or higher
- Added an option to change cursor speed when playing with a gamepad
- Reworked main menu scene
- Small bug fixes
*** World ***
- Greatly improved water / ocean mesh and added a wave animation
- Wall and doodad meshes have been improved
- Crystal cave (pumpkin prologue) walls now have crystals in them
*** UI ***
- Dialogue box now supports colored text
- Adjusted quest item info icon position
- Added new logo graphic
- Name box of the new game screen is now on top to better work with on screen keyboard (Deck)
- "Box" gamepad layout now has proper button images for "start" and "select"
- Added "Deck" gamepad layout
- Minor UI fixes
*** SAVE STATE ***
- Audio & video settings are now saved locally only
- There is no reason to share these settings between multiple devices (e.g. main PC and Deck)
- Breaking change: Your previous audio & video settings will be overwritten by default values
*** Engine ***
- Game engine update: Unity 2021
- Library updates
Full Changelog
Do you own a Steam Deck? If yes, you should definitively try ZpellCatz: Pumpkin Prologue!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1679590/ZpellCatz_Pumpkin_Prologue/
- Added more epic items
- Friendly rooms are allowed to spawn closer to the dungeon entrance now
- Advanced blacksmith services are now cheaper when the base item is of normal quality
- This change makes normal items worth being picked up in midgame / lategame (e.g. to craft epic items)
- Treasure rooms and boss rooms now drop at least one item of quality special or higher
- Added an option to change cursor speed when playing with a gamepad
- Reworked main menu scene
- Small bug fixes
*** World ***
- Greatly improved water / ocean mesh and added a wave animation
- Wall and doodad meshes have been improved
- Crystal cave (pumpkin prologue) walls now have crystals in them
*** UI ***
- Dialogue box now supports colored text
- Adjusted quest item info icon position
- Added new logo graphic
- Name box of the new game screen is now on top to better work with on screen keyboard (Deck)
- "Box" gamepad layout now has proper button images for "start" and "select"
- Added "Deck" gamepad layout
- Minor UI fixes
*** SAVE STATE ***
- Audio & video settings are now saved locally only
- There is no reason to share these settings between multiple devices (e.g. main PC and Deck)
- Breaking change: Your previous audio & video settings will be overwritten by default values
*** Engine ***
- Game engine update: Unity 2021
- Library updates
Full Changelog
Do you own a Steam Deck? If yes, you should definitively try ZpellCatz: Pumpkin Prologue!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1679590/ZpellCatz_Pumpkin_Prologue/
ZpellCatz DevRecap Feb - April '22
Hey there, fellow catz! After some technical system adjustments earlier this year, I was able to make some progress with the story of ZpellCatz in the last months. Want to know more? Read on.
Chapter 1 Progress
The story of ZpellCatz will be told via the mandatory main quests. Finishing main quests or clearing main quest related dungeons will reveal some small parts of the story. In addition to this, NPCs have a personality with a distinct welcome dialogue. So talking to them also gives some info on the Isle of Mana (the island where ZpellCatz is played).
In terms of workload, chapter 1 is clearly the most extensive one. But I managed to write all welcome dialogues and default dialogues of NPCs that exist to this day. In addition to this, the early quests now have proper dialogue and we have the first two cinematics / flashbacks finished. Progress!
Dialogue with Colors
When I was working on chapter 1, I noticed that the dialogues looked a bit dull (visually ^^ ). So, I added colored text functionality to dialogues in order to let the NPCs emphasize certain words.
Now you might wonder why colored text is worth mentioning at all... Well, I already used colored text to slowly reveal the NPCs dialogue over time. The revealed text has the default color while the hidden text has color "invisible".
Example, 4 steps:
- The first part is revealed the rest is hidden.
- The first part is revealed the rest is hidden.
- The first part is revealed the rest is hidden.
- The first part is revealed the rest is hidden.
So, if we just add a new tag for emphasize color (e.g. ), we might get in trouble. Lets have a look at another example.
Example with emphasize color:
- Hey you! // full text
- Hey you! // start, only one character shown
- Hey you!
- Hey you!
- Hey you!
- Hey <color=green>you! // boom! unparsable text
The solution was to tell the reveal dialogue system how to handle other rich text control characters (e.g. , , ). I won't go into implementation details at this point. If you're interested in the code, please write a comment. :-)
Overworld Overhaul
Although the player will spend most of the time in dungeons while playing ZpellCatz, the overworld is still an important part of the game. As a first step to polish the game for one of the upcoming Steam Next Fests, I overhauled the overworld elements. Have a look.
Hills:
Beach:
Graveyard:
Unity 2021 Upgrade
I started working on ZpellCatz a long time ago. Back then, the scriptable render pipelines (LWRP) used to be slowish, so I decided to use the built-in render pipeline of Unity. I created tons of materials with custom shaders in the meantime, so there's no way back - haha.
With Unity 2021, we finally get shader graph for the built-in render pipeline, yay! I have some very basic understanding of HLSL, but the option to try around different parameters in a GUI will definitively speed up the shader writing process. Lets see if I'm able to enhance the hero spells' visuals in the upcoming weeks.
Steam Deck Polish
My Steam Deck finally arrived. I started up Legends of Pixelia and was surprised that everything works out of the box. When I ran ZpellCatz: Pumpkin Prologue, I noticed a lot of issues. So I spent some time in the last couple of weeks to polish the game for Steam Deck usage. It's nearly finished, you can expect a new version of the Pumpkin Prologue in the upcoming days that runs ultra smooth on the Deck.
That's it for today. Thanks for reading. What do you think about the changes? Are you interested in more hands-on technical stuff like C# code? Leave a comment or join our discord.
Have a nice day!
Chapter 1 Progress
The story of ZpellCatz will be told via the mandatory main quests. Finishing main quests or clearing main quest related dungeons will reveal some small parts of the story. In addition to this, NPCs have a personality with a distinct welcome dialogue. So talking to them also gives some info on the Isle of Mana (the island where ZpellCatz is played).
In terms of workload, chapter 1 is clearly the most extensive one. But I managed to write all welcome dialogues and default dialogues of NPCs that exist to this day. In addition to this, the early quests now have proper dialogue and we have the first two cinematics / flashbacks finished. Progress!
Dialogue with Colors
When I was working on chapter 1, I noticed that the dialogues looked a bit dull (visually ^^ ). So, I added colored text functionality to dialogues in order to let the NPCs emphasize certain words.
Now you might wonder why colored text is worth mentioning at all... Well, I already used colored text to slowly reveal the NPCs dialogue over time. The revealed text has the default color while the hidden text has color "invisible".
Example, 4 steps:
- The first part is revealed the rest is hidden.
- The first part is revealed the rest is hidden.
- The first part is revealed the rest is hidden.
- The first part is revealed the rest is hidden.
So, if we just add a new tag for emphasize color (e.g. ), we might get in trouble. Lets have a look at another example.
Example with emphasize color:
- Hey you! // full text
- Hey you! // start, only one character shown
- Hey you!
- Hey you!
- Hey you!
- Hey <color=green>you! // boom! unparsable text
The solution was to tell the reveal dialogue system how to handle other rich text control characters (e.g. , , ). I won't go into implementation details at this point. If you're interested in the code, please write a comment. :-)
Overworld Overhaul
Although the player will spend most of the time in dungeons while playing ZpellCatz, the overworld is still an important part of the game. As a first step to polish the game for one of the upcoming Steam Next Fests, I overhauled the overworld elements. Have a look.
Hills:
Beach:
Graveyard:
Unity 2021 Upgrade
I started working on ZpellCatz a long time ago. Back then, the scriptable render pipelines (LWRP) used to be slowish, so I decided to use the built-in render pipeline of Unity. I created tons of materials with custom shaders in the meantime, so there's no way back - haha.
With Unity 2021, we finally get shader graph for the built-in render pipeline, yay! I have some very basic understanding of HLSL, but the option to try around different parameters in a GUI will definitively speed up the shader writing process. Lets see if I'm able to enhance the hero spells' visuals in the upcoming weeks.
Steam Deck Polish
My Steam Deck finally arrived. I started up Legends of Pixelia and was surprised that everything works out of the box. When I ran ZpellCatz: Pumpkin Prologue, I noticed a lot of issues. So I spent some time in the last couple of weeks to polish the game for Steam Deck usage. It's nearly finished, you can expect a new version of the Pumpkin Prologue in the upcoming days that runs ultra smooth on the Deck.
That's it for today. Thanks for reading. What do you think about the changes? Are you interested in more hands-on technical stuff like C# code? Leave a comment or join our discord.
Have a nice day!
ZpellCatz "Tool and the Tip" Update 0.92.0
*** General ***
- Slightly increased base movement, animation and shot speed (115% -> 120%)
- Added more epic items
- The currency "coin" is called "Thaler" from now on
- Small bug fixes
*** Balance ***
- Adjusted Int%, Vit%, Mind%, HP%, Def% and Spo% drop table on special and rare items
- Adjusted soft cap and maximum for various stats
- Slightly adjusted / increased values for most passive skills
- Added more teleporter rooms to large dungeons (e.g. Pumpkin Ruins)
*** UI ***
- Added tooltips to various UI elements
- UI adjustments
- Notification UI is now hidden when talking to NPCs
*** Mechanic Changes ***
- Items can now be sold to the merchant, too
*** New Features ***
- Added a new type of dungeon rooms: "Friendly Rooms"
- Friendly rooms provide some coins and don't spawn enemies
*** Pumpkin Prologue ***
- Parina's quest step "sell item" can now also be completed by selling to the merchant NPC
- Pumpkin Ruins now contain some "Friendly Rooms" to pseudo-decrease dungeon size (without changing the minimap shape)
Full Changelog
Here are some screenshots that show some of the newly added tooltips:
- Slightly increased base movement, animation and shot speed (115% -> 120%)
- Added more epic items
- The currency "coin" is called "Thaler" from now on
- Small bug fixes
*** Balance ***
- Adjusted Int%, Vit%, Mind%, HP%, Def% and Spo% drop table on special and rare items
- Adjusted soft cap and maximum for various stats
- Slightly adjusted / increased values for most passive skills
- Added more teleporter rooms to large dungeons (e.g. Pumpkin Ruins)
*** UI ***
- Added tooltips to various UI elements
- UI adjustments
- Notification UI is now hidden when talking to NPCs
*** Mechanic Changes ***
- Items can now be sold to the merchant, too
*** New Features ***
- Added a new type of dungeon rooms: "Friendly Rooms"
- Friendly rooms provide some coins and don't spawn enemies
*** Pumpkin Prologue ***
- Parina's quest step "sell item" can now also be completed by selling to the merchant NPC
- Pumpkin Ruins now contain some "Friendly Rooms" to pseudo-decrease dungeon size (without changing the minimap shape)
Full Changelog
Here are some screenshots that show some of the newly added tooltips:
ZpellCatz: Pumpkin Prologue Released!
ZpellCatz: Pumpkin Prologue has just been released. Yay!
Play for free on Steam
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1679590/
If you're unsure of what to expect, here are some more screenshots:
Have fun playing!
Play for free on Steam
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1679590/
If you're unsure of what to expect, here are some more screenshots:
Have fun playing!