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Prototyping a section with various enemies. The soldiers throwing arrows are protected by the soldiers in front. This makes them difficult to reach unless the soldiers in front are eliminated first.

Fight against 2 spearman soldiers. Their sweeping attack has a wide range but is not very fast. Since there are 2 of them better to use a dodge to avoid being hit.

Blocking, like attacking and running, will consume stamina. Blocking an attack that empties your stamina will break your guard and temporarily stun you.

Today I am focusing on the UI Options menu. Among the things implemented are the Tab Selector at the top of the page and a runtime creation of list entries from a DataTable. The page is still placeholder, there are graphic things to adjust (like colors, slider shape etc.)

One of the traps in the game are the rolling boulders. Besides hitting the player they can also damage enemies. For now, the rolling boulder is in the prototype stage, it has no textures and collisions still have some problems.

This week I am focusing on the UI. I am implementing the main menu. I added some logic such as highlights on mouse-focused UI elements and some transition animations between the main menu and loading screen.

This week I am focusing on implementing some VFX, starting with the Bonefire. I’ve been tweaking the fire particles, especially the lighting intensity. A bonfire produces lighting intensity in the value of between 10,000 and 50,000 candelas. I used these values to get a more physically realistic illimination.

The backdash can be followed by an attack so that a lunge attack can be performed. It can be used to avoid the enemy attack and attack immediately afterward.

I’m focusing on the wall area, where the player will have to walk to reach the top of the tower. I was thinking of adding a boss battle at the top of the tower. I still have to finish writing the game script, but I already have clear ideas about what needs to happen in this section.

Possession is a useful skill when there are many enemies. You can possess an enemy to use it as bait and gather enemies in one spot and then attack them all at once.

Axemen are a variation of soldiers who fight with an axe and shield. The main difference is that they have more health and do not go into stunlock if you block their attacks. Only parry can make them go into stunlock.

I fixed a problem with lighting, where in build the lighting was much higher than what I was seeing in editor. I found that it was a problem related to the volumetric clouds, I removed them since they were a bit too heavy for performance anyway. I will be working on the castle again soon, I am in the final stages of the first art pass.

Fighting a Soldier Swordsman is more complicated with a Soldier Spearman performing ranged attacks. Performing a strong attack can work but you have to aim accurately to avoid missing. When I shot this video there were many rooms still in a greybox state.

An enemy soldier throws firebombs from a distance. The way to the enemy is blocked by boxes, which makes the enemy harder to reach.

In indoor areas the brightness is low, so I added a small light around the player, very similar to the light in Dark Souls. I’ll probably remove it, in a first person view it doesn’t look good especially if you have an enemy in front of you, the light illuminates the enemy in an annoying way. I’ll place more torches to increase overall visibility.

I placed the 3d assets of the part that takes you to the high area along the castle wall. There is an enemy soldier with a crossbow at the top who shoots the player on sight. There are covers along the way where the player can take cover from the arrows.

The Silver Knights are the first enemies that can give the player a hard time at the beginning of the game. Their attacks can kill the player in a few hit. A good strategy is to strike them from behind, for example by using the invisible cloak skill.

I have finished with the dungeon for now, replacing most of the dungeon greyboxes with 3D assets. The dungeon covers a good part of the area below the castle. Compared to the greybox I decided to raise the ceiling of many rooms but fortunately I did not encounter any major problems as overlaps with other rooms.

Fighting a skeleton enemy. They are among the first enemies you encounter in the game. If they see you from a distance, they start running and perform a running attack. Relatively easy to kill when alone, they are not to be underestimated when there are many of them.

I am focusing on the last section of the castle garden. This square is larger to accommodate 4 enemies without restricting the player’s movement, as this is not intended as a difficult combat.

Often using Possession Ability as the only way to kill the possessed enemy can be a good alternative strategy. The slowdowns you see in the video were before the optimisation, they don’t happen anymore fortunately (for now).

By using the Invisibility Cloak I can make myself invisible so enemies don’t detect me. It’s useful when there are enemies in the rear, for example soldiers equipped with crossbows. I need to remember to update that enemy character model, it’s currently a placeholder.

I am adding 3d assets in the castle area. I changed the layout of the original greybox a bit to fit the stylistic side of the setting, it doesn’t affect the gameplay so I think it was a good decision. I’m changing a little bit the workflow of how I’m placing the 3d assets, so for now there might be a difference in the detail between the castle and the city, I’ll fix it in the next art-pass.

Today I did a performance optimization pass, including lowering the sampling quality of volumetric clouds and reducing the quality of global illumination. I can again stay around 16.6ms /60fps on my target machine (i5/RTX 3060 at 1080p). Also for aesthetic tweaked the lighting to make it brighter and also tweaked the fog since it was blocking the view too much.

I am focusing on placing the 3d assets in the initial area of the castle. Here the player can take different paths, for now I’ll focus on the one that leads to the first shortcut. Doing the interiors has its challenges, adding walls and floors without messing up the rooms next door makes me busier than when I was doing the streets in the citadel.

It's a good strategy to use Heavy Attack to hit multiple enemies at once. Also, Heavy Attack has a higher attack range, which allows you to attack enemies from a long distance. You just have to be careful to take into account the high recovery time.

I started placing the 3d assets of the castle on top of the citadel, starting with the walls. It’s very nice to see the castle no longer as a blockout. The castle is going to challenge me quite a bit, like placing assets in rooms and underground dungeons.

Fighting against 3 enemies. Spearman Soldiers can attack from a distance and have a wide range of attack, which makes them very troublesome especially if there are more than 1 of them.

Archers are weak enemies, you defeat them with a few attacks, but they can prove troublesome when fighting other enemies.
When enemies are many and health is low, the invisibility cloak can prove useful for an escape.

I am continuing to place mesh to replace the blockout, adding one of the last areas before the castle, such as 2 indoor areas and a few roads to the castle. The more I continue, the happier I am to see my blockout turn into a medieval town, but on the other hand, I’m starting to worry about the amount of work that will await me in making it polished, it’s going to be tough.

I am continuing to add 3d models, I placed the gate with stairs leading to the upper part of the city and a square with a fountain. I’m also experimenting with a different lighting, a different sun orientation and a higher intensity, I think the warmer colors go better with the walls and floor. However the floor is too flat and I’ll have to fix it with some modeling.

Enemies have slight tracking during the attack, so that it is not too easy to avoid the attack by going behind the enemy. The tracking is only on the orientation of the attack and not on the distance to the player, so spacing is an important element in this combat system.

When there are many enemies, strong attack can be useful to hit more enemies in a straight line. One must be careful not to miss the target, as the recovery time of the strong attack is very high.

I’m focusing on the plaza, I added a fountain with a statue on top and some stairs. Also I am experimenting with various floor materials, I am trying some stone tiles with some displacement, I like the tesselation it creates. I would like to try soon some decals like ground and plants.

Maybe right now the floor is a little too defined compared to the rest, I’ll have to make the buildings and the props more defined otherwise it might clash with the style.

I am adding the art assets of the stairs leading to the square. I also iterated on the floor material, I did some vertex painting using a stone pavement, a soil mud and a mossy stone as materials. There is some repetition in the floor, which I will fix by placing some plants growing between the tiles, pieces of tiles coming out etc.

The possession ability is also useful when there are too many enemies; one strategy is to possess an enemy and use it as bait. I will have to work in being able to cancel the possessed enemy’s attacks, at the moment the combos do not work as they should.

I am starting the first (of probably many) art-pass, focusing on the level opening. Placed floor, sidewalk, buildings and some crates. The street pavement material, although I find it nice, I think I will change it to something more rocky blended with mud.

Some enemies drop rare items when they are killed. The gems are used to unlock abilities. At the moment, the knight animations are still prototype, should be fixed at a later time.

I continued to iterate the blockout, the level design is at a good point. I did the corridor leading to the boss room and finished the castle facade and other rooms. After almost a year of greyboxing, I can finally start the first art-pass.

Fighting a Skeleton enemy. If the Skeleton is some distance away it could perform a running attack. I blocked its attack and took advantage of its recovery animation to go behind it and do a back stab.