Darfall News

Hello everyone and welcome to our 8th Darfall update. It's me Lukas and today I’m going to show you the new Axemaster hero.

We hope you enjoyed the latest Prologue update, where we included all the new features coming to the Prologue version of the game, like demons or unit upgrades.



The Axemaster is a melee expert who wields a greataxe to slash enemies in half.



This hero has an armor penetration stat that allows him to ignore enemy armor completely.

To elaborate more on the armor mechanics: if an enemy has the armor stat, any physical damage dealt to them is reduced by 30%. This means your archers or spearmen will deal less damage, which is represented by gray damage numbers in the game.



However, as the Axemaster has armor penetration, it will deal full damage to enemies wearing armor as orc elites or warlords.

As an Axemaster is a heavy hero unit, it also wears armor. This means any enemies will deal 30% less damage to him, making him great at soaking damage and being first in the fight.



One of the first abilities is the Power Strike



This makes it a good single target dealing ability, which eviscerates the enemies.

The next ability is the Cleave



This is the only AOE ability you can pick. This makes the Axemaster more single target focused hero than the rest.

Another ability is the Charge



This makes sure you are the first in combat to wreak havoc in the middle of your enemies.

When you are low on health, there is a Bloodthirst



This can heal the Axemaster as long as he deals damage, making an aggressive play more rewarding.

The last ability is Harden



In case you want to make your Axemaster more “tanky”, you definitely want to pick this ability.

This concludes today's devblog. We hope that fans of heavy-hitting warrior-type heroes will not be disappointed.

See you in the next debvblog post, where we will go over the Archmage and his new abilities, not available in the current Demo.

Lukas and Martin from beyond the graveyards of Darfall.

Greetings everyone, we are excited to announce the upcoming release of the Prologue for Darfall, a brand new and free addition to the game that will be available before the Early Access release.

WISHLIST now, as it helps us immensely and that way you won't miss the Prologue release.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2306730/Darfall_Prologue/


The Prologue city will act as a prelude to the undead invasion of the Aganor continent, introducing the basics of the game's lore.



In this new map, the biome colors will be different compared to the green of the grasslands currently shown in the demo. You may see a snippet bellow.




We are also introducing a new hero, the Axemaster, a warrior-type unit that wears heavy armor and is effective against elites. More details about the Axemaster will be covered in upcoming devblogs.





[h2]Several new additions in this free update include[/h2]

• demonic portals now spawn in the map. On the last day, an invasion emerges from one of the portals set to destroy your city.
  
• unit upgrades! Now all your units and their ranks stay relevant, as you can upgrade you units into more stronger variants. For example, your Archer can be upgraded into Gunman.
  
• reworked ability book featuring all 6 abilities for your hero. Pick the 3 that best suites your strategy and play-style
  

Make sure you don't forget to WISHLIST the Prologue itself on Steam in order to be notified of the release of this version. It's important to stay on top of updates and new releases, so you can have the best possible experience with the game.

Stay tuned for the next devblogs, where we will present you the Axemaster, Archmage and 3rd mystery hero in more detail.

Lukas and Martin from beyond the darkness of Darfall.

Hello everyone and welcome to our 7th Darfall update. It's me Lukas and we are going to look at what we have been up to since our last devlog and what are our future plans.

We also hope you enjoyed the last World Map Update, where we showed you some details about our continent of Aganor and how the survival mode plays on this map.



Over the past few weeks, we've dedicated most of our efforts to preparing the demo for release by addressing bugs and enhancing the player experience with quality-of-life improvements. So if you haven't downloaded Darfall demo yet, don't hesitate and play it now yourself.

In addition to development work, we've also been actively engaging in marketing efforts by participating in events like Steam Next Fest and Builder Fest. While these activities can be time-consuming, we recognize their importance in building awareness and excitement for the game.

We're thrilled to have recently launched the public Steam Demo, which allows players to experience Darfall for themselves for up to six days (or even up to eight days for more experienced players). We hope that this demo will give players a taste of the exciting city-building and strategy gameplay that Darfall has to offer.

(You can see the score of one of our Discord players, Pattat, quite impressive, right?)


You can compare your own score on our Discord as well!

We're thrilled with the positive feedback the demo has received from players. We're collecting and using valuable feedback via our in-game system to improve the game for our upcoming Early Access release later this year.

We've decided to keep the demo available to give players more time to try it out and provide additional feedback. We're excited to continue working on Darfall with the help of our community.

h the help of our community.



We've recently introduced a new feature to the game that allows players to craft backpacks at their Tailor building. These backpacks can be equipped on your hero, boosting their carrying capacity and reducing the need to return to base after a successful loot run.



With this new addition, players can now explore the game world more efficiently, collecting more resources and items without worrying about running out of inventory space.

We hope this feature will improve the overall gameplay experience and encourage players to venture further into the game's world.



Fishing has been a highly requested feature, and we're excited to announce that it will be available in the next update. With the Fishing Hut building, players can catch fish for an alternate source of food, particularly useful on maps with reduced farm production.



Simply locate fishing schools in bodies of water, and employ a worker as a fisherman by building a Fishing Hut nearby. We can't wait to see how this new feature enhances gameplay.



The work is slowly starting on our 2 new biomes, Desert and Swamps, which will provide a refreshing change from the grassland biome. Our goal is to make each biome feel unique, with different strategies required to gather food, resources and fend off enemies.

For example, on desert maps, food will be scarce, so players will need to collect special fruits or catch fish in rare oases to feed their units. However, stone and iron will be abundant, making it easier to mine, build, and craft.



We're excited to see how players will adapt to these new challenges and are looking forward to sharing more details about these biomes in the future.



For developers and Unity3D enthusiasts, I'd like to share some technical details about our project. We've been working hard to rewrite and improve many background systems to increase performance and make the architecture more robust for the future.

[h3]Terrain Generation[/h3]

One of the changes we've made is to our terrain generation system, where we're generating chunks and meshes for the game. Part of the code is run through Unity's new job system, which has helped to improve performance. However, we've been revisiting this code as we believe that stuttering may have been caused by this system, particularly when corrupted tiles change into grass and the terrain needs to regenerate.



Overall, we're committed to delivering a high-quality gaming experience, and we'll continue to optimize our systems and code to ensure that players can enjoy the game without any issues.

[h3]User Interface Refactor[/h3]

In addition to the technical updates, we've also made some improvements to the user interface. Previously, all of our UI was in a single scene, which was difficult to navigate due to the large number of objects. It was also a mess, which made it challenging to manage.

(As you can see, all of the UI is in a single scene, bunched together)



To address this issue, I have refactored our UI and separated all of the UI parts into separate "widget" prefabs, such as the inventory, minimap, build section or top bar. This has significantly reduced the complexity of adding or changing UI elements, and has made the scene much faster to load.

(example of ability book widget)



[h3]Project Structure[/h3]

We've also made some changes to the naming convention of the asset files we're using in the game. To improve organization and ease of use, we followed the guidelines outlined in the Unity Style Guide found here.



By using this guide, we were able to create clear asset prefixes and group similar assets together. For example, we now use "SM_" for static mesh and "T_" for texture. As a result, our assets are now much easier to find and access.

For instance, we've grouped all of the assets related to the Knight unit, such as its mesh, icon, blueprint, and prefab, into a single folder, making it more convenient for our team to locate them.



These changes may seem small, but they have greatly improved our development process, and we believe they will enhance the overall quality of the game.



We also have a Prologue Steam Page up you can check out!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2306730/Darfall_Prologue/

Add to your WISHLIST, as a prologue version will be released before Early Access with additional features you can play beforehand.


Thanks for reading, and we can't wait to see you in the game!

Martin and Lukas from beyond the darkness of Darfall.

Join our Next Fest LIVE chat session #2 NOW!
We are ready to answer all your questions.

Join us during our LIVE chat session #1 during the Next Fest!
We'll be ready to answer all your questions.