Hi all, The 1.2 demo game version is out that features a more easier starting economy and 2 new tutorial steps that teach you about the importance of map exploration, as well as numerous fixes and improvements.
This update combines 2 patches together, the bigger 1.1 and smaller 1.2.
1.1 Changelog
New Features
- added explore with hero tutorial step - added reach level 2 tutorial step - each warrior now has map icon over their head when zooming out to better see them
Balance
- energy recharge rate increased by 33% - fireball cooldown increased from 3s to 6s - woodcutter build cost decreased - quarry build cost decreased - farm build cost decreased - storage build cost decreased - salvaging items now rewards much more resources - decreased cost for some building upgrades - lamp aura now costs charcoal instead of mana orbs - undead camps now drop more mana orbs - stone gate hitpoints increased from 1500 to 2500 - increased damage of fire circle
Improvements
- hero energy now gets refilled to full when hero levels up - roads can now be built around outpost - can now upgrade wooden walls, even when both wooden and stone walls are selected - added tooltip to hero level and experience count - added new sound effects - added text scroll-up when collecting mana orbs - increased loading screen tip duration, so you can read it better - added arrow above Grimwick, so people know where to begin - auto-save now gets triggered every 10mins instead of 5mins
Fixes
- fixed fireball hitting small bones instead of intended enemies - fixed fireball sometimes hitting enemies behind hero - fixed assigning workers via cursor not working correctly - necromancer can no longer shoot through walls - fixed multiple errors reported by users - fixed 2nd worker unable to work if only 1 resource left - fixed game end screen does not pause the game - fixed salvage tutorial sometimes cannot be completed - possible fixed issue where loading a game freezes enemies or spawns them at 0,0 - fixed audio and video settings not saving correctly - fixed enemies can sometimes get stuck when trying to reach unreachable position
1.2 Changelog
Balance
- decreased bow and armor drops
Improvements
- improved fire circle effect
Fixes
- can no longer construct structures near enemies - fixed ambience volume is sometimes not correct - fixed typo in one of the tutorial steps
Demo is LIVE !
Demo LIVE
Hello everyone, our Steam Demo is now LIVE and available for all to play!
You can play the Demo up to day 6, but the top 1% of skilled players may be able to reach day 7, after which a demon invasion will wipe out your city and end the demo.
Share this Demo with your friends and boast about your high scores.
Explore the map to find secret "streamer trees" placed randomly throughout the map, and share your findings in Discord channel (trees are quite hard to find)
Report any issues you encounter and share your suggestions throughout our in-game feedback panel.
Make sure to join our Discord channel, as we may be holding a Steam Key Giveaway contest once a week.
This Demo features
The first playable map, "Grimwick", set in a grassland biome
The option to play as the hero character, Archmage
Survival mode, playable up to day 6, where players can compare their scores with others
Demo difficulty
In terms of difficulty, the Demo wave structure is as follows:
Waves 1-3 are of normal difficulty
Wave 4 is of hard difficulty
Wave 5 is of very hard difficulty
Wave 6 is of ultra hard difficulty, only 1% if players can get past this
Wave 7 is impossible to survive, ending the demo
The Full Early Access version will not include ultra-hard difficulties, allowing players to fully experience Grimwick and other levels with all game features included.
We are excited for all of you to get a taste of Darfall and enjoy this "quick" preview. See you in the game!
Martin and Lukas from beyond the darkness of Darfall.
DevBlog #6 - World Map
Hello everyone and welcome to our 6th Darfall update. It's me Lukas and today I’m going to show you the world map for the game.
We hope you enjoyed the last Legendary Items Update, where we explained how the various legendary powers can be obtained within the Darfall.
We're excited to share with you a more detailed look at the development of the survival world map for our game, which takes place on a part of the continent known as Aganor. The survival map is an integral part of our game, allowing players to test their skills and endurance as they fight against waves of enemy attacks.
To begin, we prototyped various ideas for how a survival mode in our game might look. Our first idea was to have a series of tiles, each representing a different biome and level of difficulty, that would unlock as players survived through previous tiles.
But we wanted to incorporate more lore and world-building into Darfall, so we decided to go with a full continent map where players would have to fight their way through increasingly difficult parts of the map.
Initially, we thought about creating a 2D map in the style of classical maps you might find in other games.
However, we quickly realised that a 2D map wouldn't allow us to include the kind of effects, animations, and depth we wanted to achieve. So, we decided to go with a full 3D map instead.
(Me drawing a rough shape and outline of the map and its locations)
Using Magica Voxel, a 3D modeling software, and Adobe Fresco, we drew a rough outline of the landmass and its various biomes, including forests, mountains, and deserts. We also gave each location and place a unique name to help immerse players in the game world.
Martin then created the first version of the world using these designs. After several iterations, we brought the map into the editor and added locations, models, and particles like clouds to add to the overall atmosphere.
This is how the map looks currently before the demo release. It's still a work in progress, but it's shaping up nicely. As you can see, the survival map only covers a part of the continent. The rest of the continent, including the capital, will be part of the campaign mode.
In the game, players start in Grimwick, located on the northwest point of the map. This is the first map players are tasked with attacking, rebuilding, and purging of undead corruption. As players progress through the map and complete each area, new biomes and locations will unlock, each with their own level of difficulty. Each biome - grassland, desert, and swamp - has three maps, representing three levels of difficulty (normal, hard, and very hard).
Creating the survival map was a challenging but rewarding process. We hope that players enjoy exploring the various biomes and locations on the map and testing their skills against the undead.
Thanks for reading, and we can't wait to see you in the game!
Martin and Lukas from beyond the darkness of Darfall.
Playtest opened again NOW!
Hello everyone,
closed "beta" is open again from NOW for all who register via the Steam playtest button. The playtest will last till January 11 (Wednesday) 23:00 CET (14:00 PT)
Please don't hesitate to record & stream the gameplay anywhere you like. Also please try to submit any bugs you encounter or send us suggestions, either via discord channels (there is dedicated channels in playtest category) or via integrated in-game feedback panel ("bug" button). We'll really appreciate those of you who'll report and may promote you to @Tester on Darfall Discord server to get more early builds in the future.
Who is comfortable can record their gameplay and share it with us devs (e.g. google drive or youtube as unlisted video) as this helps us greatly to analyse player behaviour or issues you may encounter (you can write us DM with the link afterwards) As this is only a playtest, it will offer just a limited amount of gameplay where you can survive up to day 6 or 7, maybe some skillers will make it till day 8 (then a final wave will come that wipes your entire city and all living things in it).
Martin (and Lukas)
Play Beta version NOW!
Hello everyone,
closed "beta" will open this Friday 15:00 CET (06:00 PT) for all who register via the Steam playtest button.
The playtest will last till next Monday 23:00 CET (14:00 PT), so reserve your time 😜
Please don't hesitate to record & stream the gameplay anywhere you like. Also please try to submit any bugs you encounter or send us suggestions, either via discord channels (there will be dedicated channels) or via integrated in-game feedback panel ("bug" button). We'll really appreciate those of you who'll report and may promote you to @Tester (on our Discord channel) to get more early builds in the future.
Who is comfortable can record their gameplay with, or without commentary and share it with us devs (e.g. google drive or youtube as unlisted video) as this helps us greatly to analyse player behaviour or issues you may encounter (you can write us DM with the link afterwards)
As this is only a Demo playtest, it will offer just a limited amount of gameplay where you can survive up to day 6 (then a final wave will come that wipes your entire city and all living things in it 😈 )
For those who request access during the playtest period, we'll regularly let you in.
Martin (and Lukas)
DevBlog 5# - Legendary Items
Hello everyone and welcome to our 5th Darfall update. It's me Lukas and today we have something interesting to cover.
We hope you enjoyed the last AI Update, where we explained the workings behind our unit "brains".
Since our last update, we have been hard at work on fixing bugs and adding quality of life improvements, as well as some new features.
One of those features are legendary item powers. Legendary items drop very, very rarely and thus have a huge glow you just cannot miss. This was heavily inspired by Diablo, those of you who played know this :)
You can see the huge orange legendary glow compared to other item types: epic (purple), rare (green) and common (white).
Finding a legendary item boosts your hero power significantly and can decide whether you survive the next night or not.
Moon Robe
One of these legendary items is the Moon Robe of Defence. It’s used primarily by caster heroes (such as our Archmage) and also gives a huge boost to healing and ability damage.
As the description states, it has a chance to activate a protective barrier around your hero that absorbs all incoming damage for several seconds.
Phantom Mask
Next one is another legendary with an interesting power, a Phantom Mask, which has a chance to fear an enemy, making him unable to move or attack.
As you can see, the enemy skeleton archer has a fear icon over its head, as it was feared by the hero's Phantom Mask
Other Legendaries
Here are some other examples of legendary power items you may come across when defeating powerful enemies.
How to Get Them?
All of the legendary items have a very low chance to drop, but they only drop from the most powerful foes you can find roaming the map, such as Orc Warchief from the orc camps, or the Undead Warlord protecting its graveyard.
(Angry Orc Warchief)
(Undead Warlord)
It will not be easy to defeat these enemies, but once you do, the rewards can be great, giving you a huge help surviving more nights.
We hope you liked this dev blog and are eager to find these items on your own and use their powers to your full advantage.
If you have any thoughts to share, please don't hesitate to share them in our Discord.
See you in the next blog post! Martin and Lukas from beyond the darkness of Darfall.
DevBlog #4 - AI
Hello everyone and welcome back :)
It's me Lukas and today I will talk about how the AI (Artificial Intelligence) works in Darfall and what we use in the background to drive it.
At the very early stages of the development, the AI for our units was quite simple, like moving to a position, or attacking a target. I wrote this behavior in pure code with my own implementation, but it turned out to be super messy and unreadable quite fast. Even such a simple AI behaviors takes A LOT of code to write.
Later on I tried to research what other tool I could use for our AI. I came across Behavior Designer, the most popular AI asset on the Unity asset store. In the Behavior Designer, you put nodes on a visual graph and depending on how you place and connect your nodes, it will create AI logic you desire.
Simple Tree
Here is a very simple node example, showing how the AI waits for some time, then picks a random position and walks towards it.
You could probably deduct what these nodes do even if I did not explain the logic behind them. This is why having a visual tree such as Behavior Designer helps immensely during the AI development and navigating its different parts.
Woodcutter AI
The following tree shows a small example part of the woodcutter AI. The nodes are evaluated from left to right, where left nodes have the highest priority and always try to execute first.
1. Do we have any resource to carry? - If yes, carry it to storage - If not, continue to the next node segment 2.
2. Have we found any resource to gather? - If yes, move towards it and gather it - If not, continue to the next segment 3.
3. Wander around aimlessly until the worker faints out from exhaustion :D
Player Unit AI
Here is another example, a full tree that represents the AI behind the player warrior units:
You can see how complex this can get very quickly even with a such visual tool :) Now you can imagine how hard would it be to write all this AI logic in pure code, without any visual tree representation.
The AI is usually the most challenging feat to handle during any game development. I had to rewrite the entire AI in Darfall for several times already, using different approaches or plugins, such as NodeCanvas.
I'm happy how it turned out and that Behavior Designer trees were a good choice, reducing future bugs, or making it much easier to implement new AI logic like possible boss fighting mechanics.
See you in the next dev blog post.
All the best, Martin and Lukas from Play Square Games
Darfall on Czech & Slovak Games Week
The third annual event celebrating the Czech and Slovak games starts this week (Nov 14th - Nov 21st). Just like last year, the unique Czech & Slovak Games Week event will take place on the occasion of the national holiday of November 17th.
We're proud to present to you that Darfall will be part of the Czech & Slovak Games Week.
DevBlog #3 - Map Generation
Hello everyone and welcome back :)
It's me Lukas and today I will talk about how the map is generated in Darfall.
Since maps in Darfall are procedurally generated, we needed a versatile system that would allow us to modify any part of the map generation, like which trees are placed into the forests, what areas will our forests cover, or what units and structures are generated into which parts of the map.
This system is fully "scriptable", this means that Martin, our artist, can modify any part of the map generation without me needing to touch the code.
Grassland Map
Let's start with few steps of how the Grassland map is generated. First, an empty body of water is placed onto the map
Next, the terrain tiles are generated, with mountains and bodies of water. Both use perlin noise to make them look natural.
Then resources like trees and iron veins are placed into the map. Trees are also generated using perlin noise, which gives the tree clusters more natural look.
Finally, enemy camps are placed into valid locations, like orc camps or undead zones
Camps
Any enemy "point of interest" location is called a camp. These are also procedurally generated. We have a simple system that allows us to quickly populate these camps with props and loot in the Unity editor without touching the code.
Some simple examples of orc camp can be seen here:
All these tools allow us to create quite an impressive locations, like undead zones which create an atmosphere of dangerous corrupted lands
Above were just quick examples of the processes we currently have in its initial stages. In the future, we plan to generate entire villages, forts or encampments for different races, that will be present across different map biomes.
I hope you liked this quick sneak peak of how Darfall is generating its map :)
See you in the next dev blog post!
All the best, Martin and Lukas from Play Square Games
DevBlog #2 - Menu Improvements
Hello everyone and welcome back :)
Today, we want to show you the work we have done on the Main Menu in the past weeks. It was not the only improvement to the game, far from it, but it's something visually interesting we can show you.
As we are moving closer to the testing phase and giving the game to other people, the menu is the first thing player sees when they start it up.
Our old menu was not changed for more than a year, it was full of empty screens and placeholders, since it was not a high priority during the development.
Bellow you can see how was the main menu screen looking before
and now the reworked menu page
Following is the old page where player could choose which survival map to play
and the new version with additional info and improve art
next we have the load game menu, which was a complete mess :)
now its a clean and dedicated screen with all your save files
and lastly, we have a loading screen, which was really just an empty screen with simple status text
and we transformed it into a more informative page, giving you a loading progress bar, as well as cycling game tips, which can give you more hints and info about the game as you wait for your new world to generate
Martin, our artist, did an amazing job on designing the UI and we are really satisfied on how it turned out. There are still improvements we want to make to the menu in the future, as having a 3D animated scene from the game.
We hope you liked this new visual update!
See you in the next dev blog post, where we will talk about how the AI works in the game.
All the best, Martin and Lukas from Play Square Games
