Tales of Kathay News

[p]Greetings everyone![/p][p]Work continues on creating the new spider dungeon - and all the new little systems that come with it.[/p][p]Spider Species:[/p][p]I have pretty much finished the new Spider species, revising the art, creating new sounds, and giving them a new ability, a little ball of web that restrains the target. "Restrained" is a new status effect that stops the actor from being able to move, and gives some penalties when attacking while restrained.[/p][p]I still have to do some balancing of their stats, but the new enemy is pretty much done![/p][p]Dungeon:[/p][p]The new upgraded dungeon is by far the task I have underestimated the most. This is mostly because I'm adding several little systems that didn't exist before, such as the ability for tiles (Spiderwebs) to inflict status effects on actors, applying the new lighting system, and also adding some very much needed features to my dungeon generator.[/p][p]Overall, I'm really happy with how the new dungeon is turning out, and the new modding tool to edit structures is coming in handy![/p][p]Fire simulation:[/p][p]I have made good progress with the fire sim, adding a flammability stat to objects that affect how easy it is to catch on fire, and also creating the art for the flames (still not final).[/p][p]Fire now also affects the lighting, which is a cool effect when burning the spider cave to the ground![/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]
I'm also starting to work on some bug fixes, polish and performance issues in preparations for the Alpha 0.5 release. There's still a lot of work ahead, but soon it should be up on Itch![/p]

[p]Hello everyone![/p][p]In case you have missed, this Monday the Alpha 0.4.0 was released on Itch.io, featuring the new trading mechanics.[/p][p]After the final touches for the new update, I debated a bit about what should come next, and decided that version 0.5 will be focused on basically adding more fun encounters to the game. Basically, there are 5 possible encounters at the moment, but they all feel kinda basic samey.[/p][p]So, for update 0.5, I plan of adding a new full-fledged dungeon, with a new enemy type. And, most importantly, I want this dungeon to feel more interesting and interactive than the current encounters.[/p][p]For this, I have decided to create a nest of giant spiders. I already had the art for the spider ready from earlier game prototypes, but I want to evolve it to have more exciting abilities.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]I knew I wanted the spider to live in an underground cave, so I started thinking about what I could use to populate the dungeon. The most obvious answer was cobwebs. The player can get entangled in them if not careful, reducing their movement speed, and alerting all spiders nearby. I mocked up a little sprite to test my idea in-game. The spiders can also have a skill to shoot these web at the player![/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]So now I have created a new problem for the player. Now I started to think on how it could be overcome. Obviously, hacking the web would work, but then I thought about a staple mechanic in sandbox games, as well as the standard way of dealing with spiders: Fire![/p][p]So, I spent a good part of Wednesday working on a fire simulation (that still lacks any art or sound design). Basically, I mixed the fire spread mechanics from Rimworld (fire spreads to another flammable tile up to 2 tiles away) with the concept of an "environmental turn" from Baldur's Gate III. In the end, it looks something like this:[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Finally, I was thinking about how I can leverage the new lighting system for the spider caves, and came with the idea of glowing mushrooms that can also be harvested, although I'm not sure what the effect is gonna be yet.[/p][p][/p][p]Overall, I have started a lot of bits and pieces to make this a good dungeon, but haven't finished any of them yet, so I can't put it all together into the cohesive dungeon that I want. Hopefully, by next week, I will have something more concrete to show![/p][p]This is it for this week![/p]

[p]Hello everyone![/p][p]This week, the focus of my work was finishing up the trading / shopping mechanic and integrating it into the rest of gameplay. I also went in a small tangent to figure out lighting for the game, and some other quality of life stuff.[/p][p]With this week's progress, all that's left for version 0.4 are some polishing touches and bug fixes.[/p][p]Firstly, this week I have created a trailer for the pre-alpha of the game. You can check the trailer below:[/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]As mentioned, the focus of this week's progress has been on the trading mechanic.[/p][p]A good part of the work was with the creation of the trading UI, but I also made it so that blacksmiths are now recognizable, with a special outfit and different house. Yes, the game had blacksmiths before, but they were exactly the same as the other villagers. I also added a new profession, the Alchemist, which will sell potions and spell tomes (for now).[/p][p]These craftsmen will create items randomly throughout history, that you can then purchase from them. The system is still very bare bones, so NPCs don't buy stuff from them and any craftsmen can make any item, regardless of material and quality. These are points that I intend to address, but they don't greatly affect the gameplay aspect.[/p][p]Here's a little preview of the trading screen:[/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][h2]Devtooling[/h2][p]Another interesting point is that, since I had to create some new buildings (blacksmith and alchemist), I decided to start the makings of a devtool to edit these structures. These tools I create will be release for free as modding tools in the future.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]I also went on a bit of an unplanned tangent to figure out a lighting system that I would like to implement in the game. I've been doing this on and off for the past few weeks, often giving up on the system I started because I don't see how it would integrate with gameplay later.[/p][p]Finally, this week I decided to try an approach similar to Terraria or Minecraft, where each tile has a light value that is then used to render the lighting on top, and later I can use to check the light levels at specific tiles.[/p][p]With this approach, I use a low resolution texture as the actual data model for the lighting, and draw said texture to the screen with heavy interpolation. It works surprisingly well, allowing me to have global illumination, and different color lights and intensity.[/p][p]There are not a lot of places to apply this lighting system, since the caves are pretty bare and the surface is always lit up, but this is nice preparatory work for the day-night cycle and cooler dungeons.[/p][p]So, here's a little tech-demo of the lights in action, with a nighttime lighting and barrels emitting random-colored lights. You know, as they usually do.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]And that's about it for this week's devlog! Hopefully next week, version 0.4 will be done.[/p]

[p]Hello everyone![/p][p]After the release of the Open Alpha 0.3.0 on Itch this Monday, I have immediately started working on the next update.[/p][p]My goal is to keep this update short and sweet, with the primary goal of adding a trading and money system, as well as adding a little bit of content.[/p][h2]More enemies variety[/h2][p]The first thing I worked this week was fixing some ugly code I wrote to release the version 0.1 of the Alpha in a quickly manner. Basically, everything about the spawning logic and questing of “killing a pack of wolves” was strictly fixed to wolves. Now, the logic to both spawn the creatures, generate and describe the quest can happen with any species with a “Wild Predator” type.[/p][p]With this, I added two new species of predators, with different stats and looks: The Bear and the Coyote. The difficulty curve is supposed to be Coyote > Wolf > Bear, which is reflected by the order in which you receive quests (easier first).[/p][p][/p][p]Another cool thing I fixed with this change is that the species are now loaded from a config file, which means it’s easier for me and (specially) modders to add custom species in the future.[/p][p][/p][h2]Trading[/h2][p]I have also started work on the trading mechanic, which is gonna be the glue that connects several other game mechanics together. So far, I don’t have anything concrete to share here, so I’ll share my vision on how this mechanic is going to work when complete.[/p][p]Trading will be available with any intelligent creature in Tales of Kathay. You can try to buy whatever they have on them, and try to sell anything back.[/p][p]People with specialized professions (such as a blacksmith, a tailor, or an alchemist) will work on creating items based on available resources and their skill on that profession. Those items will be stocked in their household and can be purchased by the player, or by other NPCs that desire that item.[/p][p]Basically, for you to be able to buy a sword in the world, the materials must’ve been collected by someone, and a skilled blacksmith must’ve crafted the sword prior to you buying it. This is my goal for every product in the game.[/p][p]For now, I’m still preparing the backbones of this system, adding value to the items and creating the trading UI. Next week I’ll probably be able to share more about trading![/p][p]This is it for this week, and don’t forget to wishlist Tales of Kathay on Steam![/p]

[p]Hello everyone![/p][p]I have deeply underestimated the time it would take to create the new abilities I had planned, so this week the work continues on the skill and leveling system.[/p][p]Sadly, this means the 0.3 release won’t come out this week, but I’m 90% of the way there.[/p][p]So far, I have implemented 7 of the 10 new abilities I want to have for version 0.3, and have mostly finished all the other features I had planned.[/p][p]Since this is a shorter devlog, I’ll leave you with a short clip of a boss fight using some of the new abilities![/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]This is it for this week, and don’t forget to wishlist Tales of Kathay on Steam![/p]