Introductions
Hello all!
It’s been only a short time since our last development blog, but I really am aiming to post these updates more frequently going forward. If you are interested in an even more in depth look behind the scenes or want to give feedback or suggestions, feel free to join or discord community!
Loot has arrived!
Some of the first loot drops have now been spawned in-game! We now have the necessary systems in place to tag each monster to drop unique loot based on predefined drop tables.
We also used this opportunity to polish a few remaining items related to inventory code. You can now pick up loot and drop that loot from your inventory! Your friends or others can also choose to pickup the loot you have dropped.
Another behind the scenes look at our editor application!
Our editor application grows in complexity by the day as we implement editor modules for all of the main game systems that we have added.
We now have four different modules in our editor application. These modules give our team an ever increasing ability to modify the game world on the fly. My goal with this editor is to allow us churn out engaging content in an efficient manner.
For the loot mentioned in the previous section, it was only part of the effort to have these items dropping in-game. We have also needed to implement the functionality to edit loot into our editor program that our team could utilize and expand on in the future.
Introducing… the Loot Builder module!
I was hesitant for future team members to be tasked with creating these drop tables in a text editor as this sounded like it would be a pain.
Utilizing this module, our team has most of the necessary mechanisms in place to build a robust looting system which will allow for many different drops for you to obtain during your adventures. Each monster can have multiple tiers of drops, some rarer than others. We also intend for some drops to only occur when on a quest or some drops may always drop.
Damage Indicators, knockback, and new in-game footage.
I have been hard at work revising combat to make it more engaging. As part of that, I have started working in damage calculations and have added very simple damage indicators to show how much damage is dealt when you get hit by a monster or when you deal damage to a monster.
I have also add a simple knockback system. This first iteration as previewed in the video below will get expanded on in the future as I plan for certain items to have more knockback than others.
I have also updated the monster AI patterns. If a monster is flagged as aggressive, they will now engage the player until they move out of range. This is different from their standard wander behavior that has been displayed in previous videos.
You can see the culmination of everything discussed above in the videos below.
Stay tuned for our next blog, and thank you all for following along on our development journey!