Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone~ Hope you're all doing swell and had a fab Halloween! It was raining in England again this year...shocker..
In Vahrin's Call you'll be able to block and parry incoming melee attacks. Incredibly useful if you're not a sword swinging psychopath such as myself, and prefer a slightly more tactical approach to combat.
I thought I would take today to go over those two mechanics in a little more detail, and so by the end of this you should have a better understanding of how blocking and parrying work in the game.
Let's start with blocking!
In Vahrin's Call, you'll be able to block enemy melee attacks, preventing you from taking damage.
You can do this with any weapon you have equipped (besides the bow), but it's important to remember that not all attacks can be blocked...If you find yourself pinned down by a greti, then I hope you have the firepower or stamina to deal with the situation and escape unharmed, because those giant fists will smash through anything in their way.
Speaking of stamina, you'll want to keep an eye on that if you plan to block often. You'll find that with every attack you block, your stamina will decrease.
If you try to block an attack while your stamina is low, your enemy will tear straight through your defence and leave you open to attack.
That's about all there is to say when it comes to blocking, so let's talk parrying!
Much like with blocking, you can parry attacks with any weapon of your choice, minus the bow.
Parrying an enemy will cause them to stumble, leaving them open to attack for a short while. You can parry an enemy by blocking just before their attack hits you, but again be careful, not every attack can be parried.
Hitting the attack button immediately after parrying an enemy will deliver a counter-attack.
Lastly, if parrying isn't your kind of thing then you might want to consider using a shield. Unlike with other weapons, shields offer a more defensive playstyle, automatically deflecting enemy attacks.
So! That concludes today's update, taking a closer look at blocking and parrying in the game.
Whether or not you decide to use these mechanics in combat is of course entirely up to you, and will largely depend on your chosen playstyle.
Regardless, I hope you enjoyed today's read!
Have a lovely weekend and we'll catch you again next Friday~
Almost every sound in the game uses this effect
Howdy everyone! i hope you're all getting into the spooky spirit and have some nice plans for Halloween this year~
Every time we add a new sound effect into the world of Leyda, we apply something called attenuation.
What is attenuation? Well that kind of depends on the context, but in this case, it's what allows us fade out the volume of certain sounds depending on how close you are to them.
As you can probably imagine, almost every sound in the game uses attenuation. There are very few times where we want a sound to play at the same volume, no matter where you are in the world. However, some exceptions include background music and certain ambient sounds, like subtle wind.
After initially applying attenuation to a sound effect, there are tonnes of cool options we can customise, and which of these options we customise will vary depending on the the type of sound we're adding and the area we're placing the sound in.
Changing the shape of the attenuation is incredibly useful and we do this often, as certain environments and types of sounds are better suited to certain shapes.
A bird chirping in a tree, for example, is well suited to spherical attenuation, whereas box attenuation works nicely for adding ambient sounds to a room.
Another interesting option we have at our disposal is the ability to spatialize audio.
Applying spatialization to a sound essentially means that you'll be able to hear it in 3D space. If the source of a sound is on your right and you're wearing headphones, you'll hear it in your right ear.
Picture yourself strolling through a forest and suddenly an arrow whooshes past you. Even without seeing the arrow, spatialization would allow you to hear which side of your body the arrow flew past.
Despite this being the more realistic approach to sound design, we don't use the effect too often in Vahrin's Call. Applying it to too many sounds can feel jarring when turning your character, as the sounds constantly dart between your ears.
That being said, we do have the option to customise spatilization further. We can adjust the non-spatialized radius, which controls how close you have to be to a sound before it returns to being 2D.
This means we can have a sound play predominantly in one ear at a distance and then slowly transition to playing in both ears as you near closer and closer to the sound. This is useful for voice acting in Vahrin's Call, particularly when enemy bandits spot you and call out before attacking.
Attenuation is something you're likely not to notice while on your adventure, and that's a good thing! It's one of those things that helps sounds to blend into the background and feel natural, and so most of the time we don't want it to demand your attention.
I think we'll end it there for today!
I hope you all enjoyed today's post, a mini-introduction to what attenuation is and how we're applying it to all manner of sounds throughout Vahrin.
Have a spooktacular Halloween and we'll catch you again next Friday!
Do you hear that?
Hello hello once again all! I hope you've been doing splendidly this week as always~
Today, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about a small feature in Vahrin's Call, a feature that I hope you'll put to good use while exploring the world.
We've talked about sound design many times over the course of the game's development, but we've never really touched on audio settings and how much control you, the player, will have over audio in the game.
Every sound used in Vahrin's Call falls under one of these categories:
Music
Voice
Effects
Weather
Ambience
UI
In the settings menu you'll be able to adjust the volume for each of these categories independently from one another, creating a more bespoke experience while you explore the world.
*Work in progress UI*
If you're looking for the most immersive experience possible then you may decide to increase the ambient volume and lower the music volume.
Having a bit of a hard time understanding those villagers over the rainfall? No problem! Turn the voice volume up and bring the weather volume down.
Now, I realise this isn't a breathtaking, exciting new feature that will change the entire game, but it's still something I really wanted to talk about. It's nice to have full control over the volume of everything in the world and I've personally found myself customising these settings more than I thought I would.
So! I want to hear from you guys now. Do you think you'll play around with these settings at all, or do you tend to hop into a game and not touch the settings unless you need to?
Of course, you'll have more settings to customise beyond just audio, but I think we'll cover those when our UI is feeling more polished.
I hope you all enjoyed today's read! I know it was a bit of a minor update, but it's something I've been wanting to cover for a while now.
Have a lovely weekend and we'll catch you again next Friday!
Cheers all :)
Lights, Camera, Action!
Hey again everyone! Hope you're all doing swell on this Friday 13th and are having a day filled with luck and good fortune!
It dawned on me that when we talked about the voice acting we're currently working into the game, we didn't really cover cutscenes all that much, and that's what I wanted to talk a little bit more about today.
In Vahrin's Call, we're using cutscenes in two main places.
To introduce a new boss
In NPC conversations that progress the main story
Both of these, the latter especially, are very time consuming to implement. It requires several of us on the team working together to get everything functioning as intended.
In the case of NPC conversations which require more attention to detail, we have a step-by-step process that we follow for each cutscene.
Working in UE4's Sequencer, we begin simply by creating a new sequence and then positioning each character where we want them in the scene.
Next, we import every line of dialogue that will be used in the scene and time them to play like a natural, back and forth conversation.
Once we're happy with the flow of the conversation, we mark specific parts of the sequence with key frames.
Thanks to a system set up by our programmer, this will allow you to skip to the next line of dialogue in a conversation with the press of a button.
We then go through the cutscene, adding animations and facial expressions to characters, as well as setting up where we want characters to look at certain points in the conversation.
The next step is adding different camera shots. This step takes the longest, as adjusting the timing and positioning of each camera can be tricky to get right and involves a lot of fine-tuning.
After this, all that's left is putting on the finishing touches! In this stage, we may add a fade to the start or end of the cutscene and/or make lighting adjustments.
As you guys can see there's quite a bit that goes into making each of the cutscenes in Vahrin's Call. I hope you can agree that all the time and effort we put into them is absolutely worth it though!
I know you haven't had the chance to see too many in action just yet and of course everything is currently a work in progress, but I'm looking forward to showing you how it's all progressed once things are more polished.
As always, I hope you enjoyed today's post and we hope to see you here again next Friday!
Cheers all~
Revisiting the Barathrum Forest
Hey again everyone! Hope you're all doing swell and are getting into the spooky spirit in preparation for Halloween~
Today, we're going to take a bit of a closer look at the Barathrum Forest, the first area you'll explore when you set off on your epic adventure into the unknown.
This area has seen massive amounts of change over the many years the game has been in development. It's been through countless iterations, some of which completely redesigned the environment and flow of gameplay.
Being the very first area you'll traverse in Vahrin's Call, the tutorial is one of the things here that has changed and evolved a lot over time. To this day, it's still being tweaked and polished as we work on finalising different parts of the game!
And if we were really interested in how much this forest has changed over time, we could go all the way back to 2019 to see what it looked like then. Spoilers, it's completely unrecognisable.
Gifs like these make me appreciate how far the game has come..
Despite all the changes we've made and continue to make to this place, one thing has always remained the same. We always knew we wanted this to be the area that introduces you to the Forsaken Realms universe. It's here, amidst a sea of trees, among the chirping birds, that your adventure will begin!
Oh and, while this location is centered around a tutorial to get you used to the game's controls, it's also there to give you a little taste of what to expect from the rest of the game. So why not explore a little? You never know what you might stumble across!
I can't wait to see you guys explore all of these handcrafted areas that we've spent so much time working on and I hope you'll enjoy what we've done with the world. There's so much to be discovered!
Have a great rest of your week as always, and we'll catch you again next Friday :)
Cheers all!
Why Single Player for Vahrin's Call?
Hey again everyone! Hope your week is going swimmingly~
"Is the game co-op?" and "Can you make the game co-op?" are two questions we've been asked countless times throughout the development cycle for Vahrin's Call.
For those of you who weren't sure, Vahrin's Call is solely a single player game. There are no plans to introduce co-op/multiplayer, but we completely understand the want for it. So many games are much more fun when experienced with a friend or two, after all!
That being said, would it surprise you to know that we were originally developing the game to be co-op?
Many years ago when the game was still early in development and wasn't even named Vahrin's Call, we were designing it to be a 1-2 player experience. You could dive in as a lone mercenary or tag in a friend and explore the world together.
This was long long ago, back when we were still trying to figure out what we as a team could achieve with our first game.
So! Some of you might be wondering, "Why did you change the game to be single player only?"
As the scope for the Forsaken Realms universe devleoped over time, it became clear that making a high quality RPG of this scale that also delivers fun and engaging co-op gameplay, was not going to be possible. We would love nothing more than to implement co-op into the game, but unfortunately, that requires a ton of resources that we just don't have at our disposal right now.
Don't get me wrong, all of us on the team absolutely love co-op games, it's why Vahrin's Call was originally being designed as a co-op experience. However it's incredibly important, especially because we're such a tiny team, that we carefully assess each task and determine if we have the resources to execute them to the standard we've commited ourselves to working at.
Approaching game dev with this mindset is essential, lest we end up working on the game for the next decade...
With all that being said, our focus for Vahrin's Call is delivering a high quality, story rich, single-player experience, with the vision that future titles in the franchise will allow you to traverse the world with your friends.
Apologies to those of you who were hoping for co-op, but we promise we'll do our absolute best to include co-op in future titles if Vahrin's Call is successful.
As always, have a lovely rest of your week, stay safe and we'll be back again here next Friday!
Cheers all!
Who's ready to take on some side quests?
Hello hello everybody! Hope you're all having a lovely Friday as always :)
How many of you like taking on side quests or going on little tangents in RPGs?
When I'm playing a game that isn't designed to be a very linear experience, I always find myself deviating from the intended route. I love wandering off in a random direction to see what I can find!
In Vahrin's Call you'll have many things to discover by exploring off the beaten path. This could be anything from a hidden area full of loot, a challenging enemy to defeat, or maybe even an NPC that offers up a brand new side quest for you to embark on!
Palawan racing work in progress
And as we mentioned in last week's update, all the characters you encounter will be fully voiced, so you'll have lots of interesting individuals to interact with while traversing the world.
Of course, these side quests and extra activities are by no means mandatory. If you want to focus solely on the main story then you're absolutely free to do so!
But if you're looking for a little extra loot or just a change of pace, maybe pay a second visit to the areas that you didn't quite explore 100%. You never know what you might find!
So! Today's update was a little clarification on what to expect from quests in Vahrin's Call. I wanted to address this as I saw some of you asking if there was more to do in the game besides progressing the main story.
When Vahrin's Call is closer to release we'll be sure to update you again on our quest system, so let today's post serve as a brief introduction to what you might discover while on your adventure!
Wishing you all a lovely weekend and we'll be back again next Friday for another update.
Cheers all!
The world is alive with the sound of voice acting!
Hiya everyone!
As always, I hope you're having a lovely Friday and have some nice plans for the weekend.
Today I wanted to talk to you all about voice acting in Vahrin's Call.
First of all, I would just like to clarify that while we would love to have areas densely populated with NPCs, each one interactable and with paragraphs of dialogue, that's a massive undertaking for our tiny team. We're all about pushing ourselves as much as we can to ensure the game delivers the best experience possible, but we also have to be realistic and ensure we're always prioritisng quality over quantity.
Anyway! With that being said, what I can guarantee is that almost every character that you meet in the world will be fully voiced.
I'm even more excited than I was before for you guys to meet all these quirky individuals. The introduction of voice acting has really pushed our characters to the next level, and interacting with them now feels even more interesting and engaging.
So, besides talking with NPCs, is there voice acting anywhere else in the game?
Well I'm glad you asked!
Certain enemies that you encounter throughout the world will make comments in the middle of a fight. They might threaten you, insult you, say something cocky, or maybe something not so cocky if the battle isn't going their way.
You may also overhear them talking to themselves from time to time. They tend to let their minds wander when they don't realise anyone is nearby..
And finally, there's also your voice!
While your mercenary won't be very vocal when interacting with NPCs, you will be able to choose between a couple of different masculine and feminine voices during character creation.
This voice will change how your character sounds when you jump, attack, take damage and so on!
So, you've heard all about where and how voice acting is used in Vahrin's Call, but you haven't actually heard it. Let's have a listen to what all of the above sounds like in game!
Of course, everything is still very much a work in progress and this video isn't a representation of the final, finished game. Many of the talking animations shown are placeholder and you may have also noticed that the characters are a little lacking on the facial expressions side of things..
We'll update you all again once everything is feeling more polished, For now, we just wanted to give you all a little peek into how the characters in Vahrin's Call are feeling, with voice acting making its way into the game.
And that will conclude today's update!
I want to know how you guys feel about voice acting. Is it a deal-breaker for you when a game doesn't have it? Are you more interested in meeting the characters in our fantasty world now that they have voice acting? Let us know!
Either way, have a lovely rest of your week and as always, I will catch you again next Friday.
Au revoir~
I want you to meet my new friend
Gooood morning, afternoon or evening everyone! Hoping the first week of September is going swimmingly for you all, though I know some of you are probably not super happy being back at school..
Today, I wanted to check out something a little different. Or someone a little different, perhaps?
On your adventure through Vahrin and its surrounding areas, you'll meet all sorts of fantastical beasts and creatures; some friendly and some....not so friendly.
Anyway! This little dude is who I wanted to talk about today! Without spoilers, it's a mysterious creature that you may or may not encounter while out exploring..
Getting this thing fully implemented has kept us pretty busy, as it needed a unique set of animations to match its rather unique body. You'll be able to talk with this little fella, so here's a little look at some of the animations we've been busy working on!
It's been really cool watching it slowly develop from nothing but an idea, to a fully modelled, textured, rigged and animated creature that now inhabits the world. The recent addition of voice acting especially has really helped bring it to life.
Part of me wants to go into more detail and explore this creature further with you guys, but where's the fun in that? Discovering all of Vahrin's hidden secrets and unravelling the story is a big part of what makes Vahrin's Call fun, and that's a unique experience I don't want to take away from you all.
With that being said, keep an eye out when you begin your adventure into Vahrin, you never know what might be around the next corner!
As always, I hope you guys enjoyed today's update.
We've been making great progress across the board lately, especially when it comes to the voice acting side of things, so maybe we'll check that out next Friday!
Until then, have a lovely rest of your week :)
Cheers all!
A Fresh Look at Lantern Exploration!
Hiya everyone! I can't believe it's September 1st already. What happened to the rest of 2023?
Either way, it's yet another Friday and today I want to revisit the lantern in Vahrin's Call. So without any further ado, let's dive right in!
First of all, what is the lantern?
Well, it will be your most important asset when navigating all the areas in Vahrin that require a little light to lead the way!
By default the lantern will be holstered on your character's waist.
Your can take it into your hands and light it with the press of a button.
The lantern can then be holstered again while remaining lit, allowing you to hold weapons in your hands while having some light to help you navigate your surroundings.
After some recent lighting changes, the lantern will be even more crucial to navigating caves, mines and any other dark holes you might find yourself in. Not only that, but the lantern light should feel much more realistic and make exploration much more immersive, and above all else, fun!
Now for those of you that enjoy exploring, solving puzzles and finding hidden loot, you'll be happy to hear there are many different types of lanterns you can find throughout the world.
While these lanterns don't increase the stats of your character or shine any brighter than the original, they do look pretty damn cool; and if you're going to be using your lantern a lot while exploring the world, then why not do it in style!
Finally, let's check out the other way you can customise your lantern in Vahrin's Call.
If you're getting a bit tired of the standard, orange flame and want to keep lantern exploration feeling fresh, head on over to the local blacksmith. For the right price, he may just be able to provide you with something that allows you to experience caving in a brand new light!
And that concludes this week's update, taking a look at lantern exploration and customisation!
i'm excited to see you guys traverse the deep, dark depths of Vahrin's ruins, personalising your lantern along the way.
I'm curious, are you eager to customise your lantern with a unique flame, or are cosmetic upgrades not really your kind of thing?
Either way, we hope you all enjoyed today's post and would love to hear what you think in the comments!
Have a great weekend and I'll catch you all once again next Friday.
