It's been a while since I've done one of these updates, so I thought I'd share a couple gifs of some things I've been working on.
This Lilin, a new friend you can meet in the act 2. She's traveled to Dusky Heights with the goal of restoring a famous abandoned bath house and opening it up for business again. You'll have the option to help her accomplish this as part of the main questline for act 2.
That's all for now,
shru (ᆼↀᆺↀᆼ)
Dev Log III
What's up, gamers!
I'm back with a little peek at another new area.
This is Dusky Heights, which will be where the bulk of the Second Act will take place. It's an autumny locale which is home to an abandoned bath house and a secret network of underground tunnels.
One of the characters you'll meet in Dusky Heights is Ashta. She's a zoologist who is currently studying a curious group of critters who have started appearing in Dusky Heights, the "Mui".
Not all is well with the Mui, though. You will be able to work with Ashta in order to help them out.
As always, everything in this post is a work in progress and is subject to change. (In particular, there's some spritework that I'm not 100% satisfied with. I'm looking at you, Ashta world-sprite...)
Have a lovely weekend,
shru *.ﾟ+ヽ(○･▽･○)ﾉﾞ +.ﾟ*
PS: Here's a bonus gif (circa-December 2016) of the prototype which would eventually become Vacant Kingdom.
Dev Log II
Hey gamers! I just thought I'd give you folks another peek at what I've been working on.
I've started building a new area. It's still a work in progress, but I think so far it's shaping up to be the best looking locale in the game so far.
You might notice that the colours are more vibrant than anything in Prologue. That's because I'm experimenting with a new way of constructing my colour palettes, where lighter colours are more saturated and darker colours are less saturated. In contrast, most of the art in Prologue is the opposite, where dark values tend to be the most saturated. This new way of constructing palettes gives the the art a more "crisp" and bright feel, which I think works well with the relative cartoonishness of the characters and environments. Let me know what you think!
I've also worked on some engine enhancements to the ways I can paint with tiles to construct the world. The difference here might not be super obvious without a look under the hood, but just know that it's easier for me to create more varied environments now. In particular, building exteriors can have much more flexible designs now.
Anyways, that's all for now. I had hoped to have things a little further along for today, but I've caught a cold and didn't end up getting a ton done in the last few days. Remember to eat your veggies so that you don't end up like me!
Thanks for reading, and have a nice weekend, lovelies!
shru (๑・ω-)～♥
Dev Log I + Patch Notes
Vacant Kingdom Dev Log I
Hey gamers! This is the first entry in a series of little development logs that I'll be writing in order to give you a sneak peak at the things I'm working on for the final Vacant Kingdom game. I'm going to try to turn this into a weekly thing, but no promises!!
The theme of development for this week was definitely "Combat Enhancements".
First up are some changes to the boss HP bar. I tweaked it to show how much damage was done in the last 1.0 seconds and added a time tracker for each boss phase. The first change should help give better feedback for the DPS difference between safe/risky positioning. I hope the time tracker will give players a better sense of improvement as they work their way through multiple boss attempts.
The other big thing I worked on was a sub-weapons system. As the name "sub-weapon" probably implies, most of these items will be offensive in nature. However, I do have some ideas for some more utility and defensive items. I hope to share some of those in the future as they're added.
The first one I've added is the Coconut Lantern. It's a close range blast of sorts; Its damage really drops off with distance, so you'll want to run in close for a quick hit whenever it's up. It has a short cast animation that can be cancelled by dashing; This started out as an oversight, but I turned it into a feature. (The damage and cooldown here isn't final, I still need to experiment with different values and figure out what feels right.)
In case anyone is wondering, unfortunately these changes will not be coming to the demo, Prologue For A Vacant Kingdom. I'll be saving them for the final game. Sorry about that, but I'm just one person and it really isn't realistic for me to backport and test these kinds of changes to the Prologue.
PS: I released a small fix patch for Prologue For A Vacant Kingdom today. Here are the notes for that!
Prologue Patch Notes
Tweaked visuals for dialogue / menu selection cursor.
Balance Changes
Sarcoph Augustus (slightly harder)
Intended Experience - Phase 3: Saws circle the room a little more quickly.
Intended Experience - Phase 4: The lines of bullets now have a bit more of a curve to them.
Orobas (slightly harder)
Intended Experience - Phase 1: Spiral of bullets fired while Orobas is moving is now more dense. Burst of bullets fly more swiftly.
Masochist - Phase 1: Burst of bullets fly more swiftly.
Bug Fixes
Fixed typo/grammatical errors in the descriptions for the Curse and Tiny Tube Of Hair Conditioner. (Thanks intix!)
Fixed crash which would occur when no audio devices were available. (Thanks rabbitboots!)
Fixed unlikely crash that could happen during the Verrithe fight after tens of thousands of bullets were fired. (AKA the m1dy bug. Thanks intix!)
Steam Launch Update (Patch Notes)
Hey gamers!
Prologue For A Vacant Kingdom is launching on Steam today, did you know? About a month ago the we launched on itch.io, but the version that's launching today has been updated with new content and changes. I'll highlight them here for those of you who are curious!
A New Optional Boss
A brand new boss has moved into Spectral Suites. She's a little bit hidden, and actually fighting her involves a small side-quest of sorts. I won't say much more than that so as not to spoil anything. I hope you'll all have fun tracking her down and battling her!
Technically speaking, I'm very proud of her. In particular, she comes with a new dynamic music system where the music builds up and becomes more dramatic as you get further and further into the battle. It's a touch subtle, but I think it'll make things seem more intense when you're at her last phase, with 1 HP and just barely managing to hang in as you work away at her last sliver of health.
Masochist Mode
You "learned the ropes" of Easy Mode. You conquered Intended Experience. Are you ready to take things to the next level on the new hardest difficulty setting: Masochist Mode?! Statistically speaking, probably not... but that won't stop me from telling you all about it!
Masochist Mode makes bullets fly faster, patterns more dense, and lowers the amount of time you have to catch your breath between waves of fire. Besides making existing patterns more difficult, Masochist also features exclusive boss phases: some which are totally new, and some which are variations which put a new spin on existing phases.
I don't expect Masochist will be for everyone, but it'll provide a truly challenging gaming experience for the Core Gamer Demographic. This is for those of you who love to brag about your herculean gaming feats like: attaining a 6 figure GamerScore®, defeating The Bed of Chaos, or reaching 99 in Mining and Runecraft.
But Wait, There's More!
One other thing that I've taken a look at is performance, and I think I've made things run a good deal better. I think that Easy and Intended Experience (Medium) should be a smooth ride through and through for anyone on relatively modern hardware. It's still not 100% at where I'd like it to be though, in particular, when playing on Masochist, Mandrake (the 1st boss) can get choppy during a couple of its phases.
I also added achievements! I somehow simultaneously managed to not add achievements at the same time. You'll see.
Some bullet sprites have been modernized too, in case it bothered you before that some of the bullets were just single-color circles before. Now with 50% more epilepsy triggers!
Also, you can now keep firing while lunging/dashing. Pretty insignificant, but it feels better to me.
And of course, some new "jokes" and some good, old-fashioned bug fixes have been peppered in as well!
Thanks for reading (and playing?!),
shru.
Launching On April 18th, Mark Your Calendars!
I'm very excited to finally be able to release this!
I'll be making a post later this week detailing the changes which have been made since the itchio version.
