NEW MAP, WORKBENCH, WOOD BUILDING PART, BARE FIST FIGHTING AND MORE
Welcome to this new dev blog!
The past few weeks have been very encouraging for our entire team. During previous playtests, feedback has been very motivating for the whole team.
We want to thank you all for your interest, the previous playtest was a great success. Don’t forget! If you want to test Reign of Dwarf, you can join the Discord here to become a playtester you can also add the game to your wishlist on Steam here!
NEW MAP
The map is changing!
We have integrated into the game and the playtest server a new map offering an atmosphere and a more explicit overview of the universe that we want to bring to life. The Reign of Dwarf is a world populated exclusively by dwarves. The old human civilizations are gone and magic with it. There are only ruins left for you to explore and become the strongest dwarf. However, we plan to add enemies roaming the map or having their camps. You will be able to face orcs or goblins patrols still living in this world.
Discover towers that can be used as dangerous dungeons. The ruins will be able to keep treasures and precious metals. Farm wood and create your first base.
BUILDING SYSTEM, HARVESTABLE ROCKS AND MORE
Welcome to the new devblog,
First of all, thank you. On September's playtest, it was beyond our expectations, we anticipated a 30 minute session, but people played for hours! Thanks to all the people supporting and playing the game and helping us to make it a reality. Especially the people being invested as Engineer (our playtesters) on our discord, giving us precious feedbacks. Discover how to become a playtester (Engineer) on our discord.
Building System
As you know, the build is an essential feature in a survival game, and we are happy to present you the first steps of this one in Reign of Dwarf.
Have you already designed jigsaw puzzles? This is a bit of the way we feel when designing the Building system! Indeed each new piece should perfectly and seamlessly match all the existing ones. For now, we work with placeholders to ensure the mechanics are well in place and add new pieces progressively. We focus on building and not on destruction yet (it will come!). Stay tuned for creating your best houses or even castles!
We started modeling wood-building modules as a stronger version of the straw ones. This is currently a work in progress because at the same time we are reworking the scaling on some meshes to fit with the building system which is almost implemented! You can also admire our straw-building modules.
Harvestable Rocks
Here is an update about our harvestable resources! We’ve been working on creating different kinds of harvestable rocks in order to collect different resources, here is what we have so far. The rock base we stay the same for each variant, and the materials will change, allowing us to use 3D models for different kinds of resources. You’ll be able to collect Stone, Metal, Sulfur, and Mithril usable in building your base or crafting precious items.
We’re planning to have 3 steps of harvesting, showing how much rock is left. The next step is applying texture and crystals on our rock, see you soon!
Icons
We now have icons fitting with our 3D models of weapons and armor. These are simple 2D sprites but efficient enough to represent the gear you will be able to equip and fight with. We also created resource icons such as metal and mithril you’ll be able to gather, stay tuned!
New combat function incoming!
In the last playtest you were able to test the basics of our combat system, and we don’t intend to stop there! To give you more possibilities we will add a kick. You can now repel your opponent’s attack or stun your fellow dwarves with a powerful kick. Use this potent move to take advantage of your enemy.
We are happy to tell you that you will be able to test all this at the next playtest.
Well that's it for today.
An other devblog ending, a new era coming! On that playtest we are going to feature the building system, inventory & resources farming and consuming.There might be other features but you’ll have to find out when trying it!
Join our discord, there you’ll be able to find the list of things needed to become a playtester !
Thank you for reading and see you soon in the dwarves caves!
ASSETS, ANIMATIONS AND PLAYTEST NEWS
Welcome to this new devblog! Enjoy the new assets and advances of our work on Reign of Dwarf, this is also an opprtunity to remind you that you can join the discord and become a playtester. On this subject, read this devblog until the end, we have some exciting news!
Catapult!
After the cannon and gatling… The third weapon for our cart is here! A powerful catapult ready to throw anything everywhere on the battlefield, to burn down your ennemy’s base and prove that you are the strongest dwarves!
Straw Building
Drive through the island and defeat your opponents with this deadly machine. Reign of Dwarf will use a building system which allow you to transform the ressources you’ll collect into amazing fotresses and defensive systems. The first material used will be the straw, so we started to create some building modules.
Fight Animations
We’ve been working on our dwarf model for a while now ! The form shall stay the same but its 3D model has been optimized for better experience! We’ve placed controllers on its model in our 3D software to ease the animation process. The character’s idle while holding a weapon has been reworked in order to have a better feedback !
Music
As you know, the map of reign of dwarf gathers different biomes and we want each of them to have a specific music! I’ll leave you with a little extract of the music from the snow biome.
Playtest News
As promised, it’s time to reveal something you’ve all been waiting for! We are happy to announce that the playtest will take place on September 24th! If you want to participate, join our discord here and find out how to become a playtester!
And don’t forget to wishlist Reign of Dwarf on Steam here!
Well that's it for today.
Again, thanks for all the support you guys, and be ready to test the game on September 24th. Join the discord here and take your playtester role!
Thanks all for reading, see you soon!
PLAYTEST NEWS, ASSETS, MAP AND MUSIC PREVIEW
Playtest
We’ve been working hard to make this playtest come true for several weeks, soon, our team of engineers will be able to discover Reign of Dwarf !
The main focus of this playtest will be the combat system of Reign of Dwarf. You will be able to equip the different armors set to find your own style. From our side, we will also take this playtest as a fantastic opportunity to connect and discuss with some of you. It’s also a way to see how the system behaves and we will carefully keep an eye on how our server react. Don’t forget to join our discord here if you want to become an engineer and test the game. Lots of fun incoming!
Sniper
Along with the riffle and the blunderbusses, you’ll be able to craft a sniper rifle! Shoot your enemy from afar without them seeing it coming! The reloading system allows you to shot one extra bullet before having to insert a full new clip, so make it count. Like the previous firearm, the sniper is an advanced craft, composed of wood, bandages and of high quality metal!
Cart, cannon and gatling
Be ready to besiege your opponents! We worked on creating some weapons to add on our cart, such as cannons and gatlings. The cart will be operated by at least two players, one driving the cart and the other one using the weapons. To easily iterate the modeling process, the weapons are modular. Which means that for example, the base will remain the same on the cart, but the shooting process, weapon behavior, and commands will change.
We also reworked some our armor sets to fit better with our dwarf mesh and make the integration easier. We made some polish on the models and fixed skinning issues as well.
Snow Texture
With a new biome come new assets! For the first preview of the snow area, many assets have been reworked in order to place them in the snow.
New map!
We are constantly making changes to the map and the game environment. Here is a preview of the new environment with a graphic style matches more closely our art direction.
When you’ll get the chance to try the game, remember that all the elements on the map are procedurally generated. Which means that you can have an infinity of different maps and an infinity of game experiences.
We want to enhance and push to the limit the diversity of assets in our landscapes. That’s why the map has several different biomes, like grass, snow and desert..
Music Preview
Well that's it for today.
As usual, we are happy to thank you for your support. We will come back soon to give you more information about the playtest. On waiting, don’t hesitate to join our Discord here and add the game to your wishlist on Steam here!
Thanks all for reading, see you soon!
ARMORS, BLUNDERBUSS AND ENVIRONMENT
Armors!
After the sneak peek of the Ibex on the last devblog, we are happy and excited to show you our work on two differents Armor Sets. The Stone Armor set is quite easy to craft and to start with. You can gather stone everywhere on the ground, but you will obviously have more luck in the mountains and in the mines. The Metal Armor Set is much stronger. This type of metal is very rare, you can collect it in different form – like fragment, cube, spike… – only through mining.
We also improved our metal armor model thanks to our testers’ precious feedback, revealing that the design was too close to human armors. So, we edited it to make sur it would entirely fit and belong to our fantasy world. Some additional sculpting was required as well as textures improvements and skinning, and here’s the result, a brand new metal armor. The first feedbacks from community are very positive!
Discover the best armor set! Mithril is the rarest ore that you can mine on the game. With this ultimate armor set, you’ll be able to resist almost everything and properly defend your lands.
Blunderbuss!
After the magnificient automatic rifle, it’s time to see this two Blunderbusses ! The first is a small short range blunderbuss and the second is a two-handed medium-power firearm. Each weapon has a specific loading system. We will show you an even more powerful weapon in the next devblog, stay tuned!
To us, the combination of hard wood and metal was perfect to create complex weapon. There was a bit of texture research done, as the first models didn’t meet our expectetion, but we were happy with the result of hand crafted metal and rough wood. All texture details have been done in Zbrush, for a better render on our models.
Environment generation
We are working on a way to procedurally generate random biome accross the map based on a provided seed, thet could be custom or a totally random. We plan on having general biomes like Grass, Snow and more, with temperature variations that will introduce sub-biomes, where you will be able to explore forests, plains, flower plains and more.
Well that’s it for today
Again, thanks for all the support you guys, and be ready to test the game on August 6th. Join the discord here and take your playtester role!
Thanks for reading and see you soon!
Mount, Automatic Rifle & Animation
First Mount :
After introducing the concept of the mount in the previous devblog, now it’s time for the different steps of the 3D creation. It’s key to respect the complete anatomy of Ibex.
After lots of research on the style of furs, we found how to create a satisfying rendering which perfectly match with our artistic direction. Without saying too much, the Ibex is a balanced, robust and agile mount. It can carry heavy loads using a hitch.
After texturing, we need to rig the model so it can be properly animated. Rigging a 3D model is creating its skeleton to animate it later. To do so you have to follow a skeleton anatomy for the character you have to rig, with “joints” that are matching the parts of the bone which are attached to each other like a jaw, and then you limit them to move or rotate in the way you want. Finally you create “controllers”, 3D curves attached to these joints which allow the animator to easily move the joints to properly animate the character.
Automatic Rifle :
We have a newcomer to the creative team and here is the first look of her work on an automatic rifle. If you ever get tired of hand-to-hand weapons, this kind of rifle is made for you: take a better side to annihilate your opponent and be prepared to get it hard!
Crossbow Animation :
Introducing your very first sneak peek of crossbow animation! Be ready to shoot your opponent. You can also hear the sound design of crossbow shoot.
This sound can be separated on three different sounds like the rope, the crank and the shoot. To be sure that the sound is good, we work directly with the animations on our software.
Ambient Music :
In the last devblog, you discovered the full version of the Teaser Music. Now we’re working on the ambient music that you’ll hear in game. The plan is to make different loops, while keeping the same atmosphere. To create an identified sound signature, we decided to use choirs and percussions to characterize the dwarves.
Well that’s it for today :
Again, thanks for all the support you guys are showing on the game and all the awesome people joining the discord ! Don’t forget that we have our steam page and you can now add Reign of Dwarf to your wishlist !
Thanks for reading and see you soon !
Weapons, Tools and Mount
This update is not a big one, but it's here to showcase some of the items / tools / weapons that are currently being integrated in the game !
Don't hesitate to follow us on discord and on the website to be up to date regarding the progress of the game, keep in mind that everything is subject to change !
The mount :
Tools :
Hatchet / Axe:
Pickaxes :
Mele and ranged weapon :
Swords :
Automated Crossbow :
This is it for all the visuals that we will show you this week, but all the time we are going to showcase you content here ! so keep posted !
Also in case you may have missed it from our devblogs here are some relevant videos that might interest you !
