January 2023 Newsletter
Greetings Travellers!
And Happy New Year! Can you really believe it’s 2023!? And we're already trailing off towards the end of January!
I started working on Tales from The Dancing Moon towards the end of 2020, in the height of the COVID pandemic. I've learnt SO MUCH since that time, but... a new year - means new goals!
Reminiscing over the development of this game has inspired me to focus. I'll be aiming for significant progress on the main quest and story, as that really is the beating heart of what the game will be about. The sooner I can get this done, the sooner I'll be able to think about things like early-access. I'll also be aiming to get regular beta builds up to go along with these newsletters. So if you’re at all interested - make sure you sign up to that Beta!
The general theme for this months newsletter has been “progression”. I don’t necessarily mean my own progression with the game development - but more the sense of progression that the game has whilst the player advances through the quests. This applies to both story, and also gameplay systems.
The first I want to show is the new gear upgrade system. By the time the player finishes all the tutorial quests, you'll have an arsenal of tools at your disposal, such as axes, shovels, swords, and fishing rods. In their most basic form they will only be useful at the early stages of the game and will require upgrading as you advance. These upgrades will also give player perks like dealing extra damage, chopping down trees faster, or extracting rarer materials.
Upgrading your gear will be made possible by a new NPC by the name of Val. A retired sea captain who's been assigned to be the official Dockmaster of Illisor, who has experience with sharpening tools and forging new materials. Talking to him will start the quest to allow you to upgrade your gear from copper based materials, all the way to the mysteriously rare material called "shadow-silver".
Speaking of Val. As a new important NPC, he will be needing a new character portrait! Here's another new addition to the portrait roster! Credit to henryez over on Fiverr!
In my previous newsletter I showed a sneak-peak of the new procedural desert-themed area of the game, and I'm ready to show even more!
Whilst thinking about this new area I've been implementing more dangerous enemy encounters. One in particular is the shadow-beast portal, which will continuously generate shadow-blobs until you completely destroy the portal itself. These portals will also be surrounded by "Shadow-Plants". A Zelda-like enemy that will shoot sludge at the player from a distance in which you'll need to dodge out the way.
The model for this enemy is still work in progress, but I'm glad to see the sludge-shooting and dodging working in a nice way already!
There's one final thing I'm able to squeeze into this newsletter. One of the things in the back of my mind is that I've avoided having too many cutscenes in the game - in fact the only one that is in the game right now is when you die and wake up at the inn again. The work I'd have to do to have cutscenes for every quest is simply not scalable for me (being one developer). So I need to come up with a way that is efficient but still effective in telling the story. I think I've found the way.
Inspired by classic RPGs, what you see in the image above is a story plaque - in it's basic form these are snippets of text accompanied by a picture. Considering the game is quite story and text heavy anyway, I am hoping this will compliment the NPC dialog system which is where you'll be getting most of your story and information from. In comparison you'll see the story plaques a lot less anyway, but they will still be necessary!
Before I close off this newsletter, I inspired myself from last months “mindfulness” winter GIF and decided to create a seasonal image which gives us a cross section of an area during the different times of the year. Putting these kinds of images together has the added benefit of highlighting areas of improvement.
That's all for now, thanks for reading and have a lovely February!
- DjMonkey
If you’d like to join the community and discuss the content of this post, please visit the Discord or make a comment on social media! Links can be found on the store page.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1782420/Tales_from_The_Dancing_Moon/
And Happy New Year! Can you really believe it’s 2023!? And we're already trailing off towards the end of January!
I started working on Tales from The Dancing Moon towards the end of 2020, in the height of the COVID pandemic. I've learnt SO MUCH since that time, but... a new year - means new goals!
Reminiscing over the development of this game has inspired me to focus. I'll be aiming for significant progress on the main quest and story, as that really is the beating heart of what the game will be about. The sooner I can get this done, the sooner I'll be able to think about things like early-access. I'll also be aiming to get regular beta builds up to go along with these newsletters. So if you’re at all interested - make sure you sign up to that Beta!
The general theme for this months newsletter has been “progression”. I don’t necessarily mean my own progression with the game development - but more the sense of progression that the game has whilst the player advances through the quests. This applies to both story, and also gameplay systems.
The first I want to show is the new gear upgrade system. By the time the player finishes all the tutorial quests, you'll have an arsenal of tools at your disposal, such as axes, shovels, swords, and fishing rods. In their most basic form they will only be useful at the early stages of the game and will require upgrading as you advance. These upgrades will also give player perks like dealing extra damage, chopping down trees faster, or extracting rarer materials.
Upgrading your gear will be made possible by a new NPC by the name of Val. A retired sea captain who's been assigned to be the official Dockmaster of Illisor, who has experience with sharpening tools and forging new materials. Talking to him will start the quest to allow you to upgrade your gear from copper based materials, all the way to the mysteriously rare material called "shadow-silver".
Speaking of Val. As a new important NPC, he will be needing a new character portrait! Here's another new addition to the portrait roster! Credit to henryez over on Fiverr!
In my previous newsletter I showed a sneak-peak of the new procedural desert-themed area of the game, and I'm ready to show even more!
Whilst thinking about this new area I've been implementing more dangerous enemy encounters. One in particular is the shadow-beast portal, which will continuously generate shadow-blobs until you completely destroy the portal itself. These portals will also be surrounded by "Shadow-Plants". A Zelda-like enemy that will shoot sludge at the player from a distance in which you'll need to dodge out the way.
The model for this enemy is still work in progress, but I'm glad to see the sludge-shooting and dodging working in a nice way already!
There's one final thing I'm able to squeeze into this newsletter. One of the things in the back of my mind is that I've avoided having too many cutscenes in the game - in fact the only one that is in the game right now is when you die and wake up at the inn again. The work I'd have to do to have cutscenes for every quest is simply not scalable for me (being one developer). So I need to come up with a way that is efficient but still effective in telling the story. I think I've found the way.
Inspired by classic RPGs, what you see in the image above is a story plaque - in it's basic form these are snippets of text accompanied by a picture. Considering the game is quite story and text heavy anyway, I am hoping this will compliment the NPC dialog system which is where you'll be getting most of your story and information from. In comparison you'll see the story plaques a lot less anyway, but they will still be necessary!
Before I close off this newsletter, I inspired myself from last months “mindfulness” winter GIF and decided to create a seasonal image which gives us a cross section of an area during the different times of the year. Putting these kinds of images together has the added benefit of highlighting areas of improvement.
That's all for now, thanks for reading and have a lovely February!
- DjMonkey
If you’d like to join the community and discuss the content of this post, please visit the Discord or make a comment on social media! Links can be found on the store page.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1782420/Tales_from_The_Dancing_Moon/
