Lands of Crown
Weekly Dev Log #19
As we left off last week, the work on the Rival system has progressed well. I believe I have everything in place for the system to work, At the start of the game you will see who your rivals are, and after each level you'll be able to see how much stronger they've gotten. Then, when you reach the final level you'll have to contend not only with the King but also all your rivals from the start. I just need to make sure it runs smoothly and without too many issues. I would also like to add more variety to the different modifiers that can affect these rivals, so that will be on my todo list as well.
Beyond that, most of my time has been taken up squashing bugs and other issues kindly brought up by the Lands of Crown discord. Everyone there has been a huge help not only in finding bugs but also for suggesting a lot of interesting and fun ideas. Thanks, everyone!
Finally, I've been spending a bit of time trying to create some better music for the game. I think it will be some time before you see any new tracks come to the game, but stay tuned! I think it will really increase the immersion and fun you have while you play.
Sadly, this week's development has not been as exciting as weeks prior. Unfortunately, that's how it goes with game development sometimes. I also have less time to work on the game since starting University, but I won't let that stop me!
Thanks for reading, and as always I look forward to hearing from you.
Until next time,
aGoldenFly
Weekly Dev Log #18
Last week we ended off talking about Agents and how they'll be this troublesome element to your quests in a particular level. However, what if we took this one step further and had some sort of persistent threat that was present throughout your entire run?
Introducing... Rivals! Upon starting a run, you'll be introduced to your rivals for the journey. These are characters who are also travelling to the land of the Crown at the same time you are. Of course, you're all after that Crown, but you guys aren't going to take the same path to get there. This means that you generally won't be seeing your rivals throughout the game, except in certain scenarios, because you're all in different lands completing your own quests and stories.
However, once you complete a level you'll get an update on your rivals, which will show them getting stronger. This can include base stat boosts to gaining new traits or items. Rivals can also gain titles, such as 'The Unbroken' or 'The Giant' that will give them an immense boost in combat. This means that by the time you do see them, they're going to be quite dangerous foes!
When do I see my Rivals?
Because you're all headed for the Crown, once you make it to the last level, where the King resides, you'll finally meet them. Instead of having to deal with regular Agents like in any other level, here you'll have to contend with your personal Rivals. Just like you, they've traveled far and survived many experiences to get a chance to take the Crown, so watch out!
Rivals, like Agents, will not typically be hostile to you. This means that you'll be able to talk to them or otherwise dissuade them from their goal. Could you bribe them, give them something of a particular value, or just take them out? Yes! However, if you don't, you can be sure they'll be hunting for that Crown, no matter who is wearing it.
I have the basic system for Rivals up and running, however there still is a lot of work to be done. However, the work for Agents is mostly finished, so expect a new update for the demo within the next couple days.
Thanks for reading, and as always I look forward to hearing from you.
Until next time,
aGoldenFly
Weekly Dev Log #17
At the end of last week's dev log, I announced that I had something 'in the works' that would, if it turned out well, would accomplish the feat of differentiating Lands of Crown from Streets of Rogue, my main inspiration, as well as doing so in a way to make the game more fun rather than just needlessly adding a new mechanic for no reason other than to differentiate the two games.
So, what's this new thing?
Well, I did some brainstorming and, along with help from a friend, came up with a mechanic that I'll dub for now as 'Agents'. Agents are characters that you will find in every level that will act and behave as regular NPCs... for a while. It turns out that these Agents are quite similar to the player in that they also have been tasked with accomplishing a variety of quests for the Witch in order to progress to the Crown.
What this means is that while you're going about your business working on your quests you've been assigned, these Agents will also be doing the same. They can break into houses, free prisoners, rob a shopkeeper, etc. Agents can have any type of quest that the player can have. This means that sometimes an Agent will have the same quest as the player, meaning that they can steal your quest reward if they beat you to the punch.
This mechanic will help to create a living world for the player, making them feel a part of this world rather than the sole force moving things along. This will also encourage players to take a more active approach in how they play, rather than always planning out the perfect scenario to accomplish their quest. The player will be encouraged to think on the fly and take the initiative, which may mean taking some extra damage or going through with a plan somewhat unprepared.
However, this does not mean total chaos and constant action. The Agents will not move from quest to quest like a robot, they'll wander around town and scope things out before striking. Once they've accomplished a quest then they'll go wander around some more before doing another quest. This will allow the player to feel the pressure of the Agents without constantly rushing through a level to do everything as fast as possible.
Is that it?
Actually, no. I have another mechanic in the works that will build off this Agent mechanic in a fun way. As before, I won't say what it is, but just stay tuned for next week's dev log.
Thanks for reading, and as always I look forward to hearing from you.
Until next time,
aGoldenFly
Weekly Dev Log #14
What have I worked on this past week?
New Art! If you've seen the store page or played the demo recently, then you'll no doubt have seen the new art in the game. For the longest time I felt something was 'off' about the art, and I figured out that it was simply too similar, too plain. To remedy this, I added a variety of new tiles to all the floor/wall tiles in the game, so that you'll see randomized tiles instead of the same texture repeating over and over.
Behind the Scenes additions! As it always happens in game development, a lot of the changes and new code is not for the player to see, but rather to ease development along and add more tools to use. There have been a few of these changes this past week, including a redo of a part of the level generation that allows me to generated 'cities' with buildings as close together as possible. I've also changed how patrolling works for NPCs so I can now have multiple patrol routes in a building. There are a few other additions, but that covers the major ones.
New Demo Version! There's been a ton of minor changes and fixes that I've ironed out these past weeks, and they're finally present in this latest demo version. Feel free to read the patch notes here
Where are things headed?
The game is progressing smoothly, and I'm trying to polish it and improve it as much as I can before this upcoming Steam Next Fest. I plan to work on adding new buildings. items, and abilities to bring a lot more variety and fun to the game.
Thanks for reading, and as always I look forward to hearing from you.
Until next time,
aGoldenFly
Weekly Dev Log #13
What have I worked on this past week?
New Items! I've spent the last week working on adding 12 new items to the game that are meant to act as utility items to help the player in certain situations, rather than simply a weapon to wipe out any opposition. I plan to add more items, again focusing on stealth or diplomacy rather than combat. I want each playstyle to feel unique and somewhat focused.
Item Manual! To go along with these new items, there is now a certain NPC found on the Boat that will show you what every item does and what it's stats are. You can see armor, weapons, items, and more in the Item Manual, and I think it will also be a good place to include lore tidbits as well.
Where are things headed?
For this week, I plan to focus on creating more buildings for each available Land so far. I want a true variety when you play, so at the very least you don't always see the same two buildings next to each other in a run.
Thanks for reading, and as always I look forward to hearing from you.
Until next time,
aGoldenFly
Weekly Dev Log #12
What have I worked on this past week?
Discord! Finally, after a long time we now finally have a Discord for Lands of Crown! It is still very young and bare bones, but its good to go. If you want to join, you can click here to do so.
New Dialogue! For the longest time, the dialogue responses for all the classes was very rigid and not very interesting. NPCs could only give a single response, and said responses were baked into the code of the game. Therefore, we now have a system where NPCs can choose from a variety of lines to say, and those lines can be translated too. This is a welcome improvement that I hope will introduce some personality and life into these characters, let me know what you think!
Small Additions/Changes! As always, there's been a ton of small tweaks and changes I made over the week, such as fixing GUI bugs to changing how the Ice/Fire Orbs work. The old Fire/Ice Wands have been updated to use a beam attack. There is now a Wire Trap that shoots out a beam that can be tripped and will alert property owners and activate other traps.
Where are things headed?
Unfortunately, i did not get as much done as i would have liked this week, my apologies for that. Sometimes you just don't have the time you think you did. Regardless, my todo list for this week is to finally add some non-combat items to make the game more fun, as well as make new buildings for the other Lands that will include traps. I intend to polish these four (Human Village, Snow VIllage, Wilds, Spooky Village) Lands as much as I can in the coming weeks, before Steam Next Fest.
Thanks for reading, and as always I look forward to hearing from you.
Until next time,
aGoldenFly
Weekly Dev Log #11
What have I worked on this past week?
Traps! As I was looking at the game, I realized that it was lacking something, and that was traps. If I want stealth and non-combat play styles to be useful, I need to create challenges that those play styles excel in. So, what do we have then?
- Exploding Traps, that upon destruction/activation will explode and afflict those in range with an effect.
- Bolt Traps, which are placed on walls that upon activation with shoot a bolt that can apply an effect.
- Spewer Traps, which spew out a stream of (for now) fire, ice, or poison attacks.
- Spike Traps, which raise up a wall of spikes that damages anyone who gets too close.
- Wall Traps, which simply raise up a wall that blocks a path.
To go along with these traps, I've also added a few ways to activate said traps, such as a pressure area and a lever. The pressure areas will be somewhat hidden throughout buildings, requiring you to take precautions so as not to trigger certain traps.
New Sounds! I also realized that my sounds and sound system needed an overhaul, as I felt the old sounds made the game feel somewhat cheap or lackluster. So, I replaced all the sounds with actual, proper sounds that actually sound like real things rather than computer noises. I also overhauled the sound system itself, decoupling sounds from their objects so that sounds don't overwrite one another. All in all, I am very happy with how things are now.
Where are things headed?
This week I hope to focus solely on creating utility items and non-combat items that will make other play styles viable rather than simply 'murder everything in sight'. If you have any ideas that you think would be fun, feel free to share them.
I also want to start adding more buildings with all these new trap types, which will also involve larger buildings than the simple 16x16 or 32x16 buildings in the game.
Thanks for reading, and as always I'm eager to hear you feedback!
Until next time,
aGoldenFly
Weekly Dev Log #10
What have I worked on this past week?
This week was definitely a 'under the hood' week in regards to progress. There have been a number of minor improvements and tweaks, for example in buildings with trap objects, such as Cauldrons, they will now always have a random effect, instead of always being two poison cauldrons and a blast cauldron in a particular Witch house. I changed how keys and owners work, so that now a key will only spawn if needed, and a key only correlates to a particular owner. This means that I can have multiple small buildings in a chunk each with their own locked items and corresponding keys. Along with these, there have been a number of small changes and improvements.
Beyond that, I've been working on adding additional weapons and classes to the game, such as the Vampire, Bat, Shaman, Plague Doctor, and Ghost. I still need to flesh out exactly how the Shaman and Plague Doctor will play, but that will come soon enough. I've also been adding more buildings to increase the variety of the game while you play.
Where are things headed?
I hope that this week I can flesh out the Spooky Town more and bring it up to par in terms of character and building variety with the Normal Town, so then I can do the same to the Wilds and add more content there as well.
I also realize that additional items that serve a utility use would be fun and increase the variety of the game, so I plan to work on that as well.
I hope that in these next few weeks I can truly polish and flesh out what I have made before delving into new Lands.
Thanks for reading, and as always feel free to leave a comment if you have a question about anything!
Until next time,
aGoldenFly
Weekly Dev Log #9
What have I worked on this past week?
A Demo! As you are probably already aware, last Thursday I released the Demo for Lands of Crown, and I think it went quite well. If you were playing the demo you will have noticed multiple updates for it, when I was fixing bugs and polishing features. There was quite a few fixes that needed to be made, but I'm glad to have ironed those out now.
Quality of Life improvements. As mentioned above, there were quite a few things that I had become used to while developing the game, that needed to be changed for someone first playing. Such as how inventory cycling works when scrolling, and changing how menu indicators worked, among other things. There will probably still be more things to tweak and change as development goes on, but that's alright.
Tons of Fixes! Also mentioned above, there was a handful of issues and bugs affecting the game, such as Quests not being completed, NPCs not reacting to characters, character traits not working properly, and a lot more. Most of these issues did not take long to fix, but as a game increases in complexity it becomes harder and harder to understand the issue, or if one is even occurring. So, if you find a bug or some issue, feel free to let me know in the discussions!
Where are things headed?
Now that the demo is released (and most known issues are fixed), work resumes on adding content to the game. I may release another update to the demo adding more content, however I haven't decided just yet. Regardless, work will continue on my end.
Now, I want to share that I'll by returning to University this fall, so development may slow down in some areas, although I will try to ensure that doesn't happen. Lands of Crown is a priority for me, and I'll work hard to keep adding content and features over the next few months.
Regardless, these weekly dev logs will continue, and I'll be sure to update everyone on the state of the game.
Thanks for reading, and as always feel free to leave a comment if you have a question about anything!
Until next time,
aGoldenFly
Demo out now!
Now, just as a disclaimer, this demo is meant to show a 'vertical slice' of the finished game. This means that all things shown are subject to change as development continues. I will of course be listening to any and all feedback I get during this time to improve the game as much as I can, rest assured.
I look forward to hearing from everyone who tries it out!
Until next time,
aGoldenFly