August update time!
AlphaThe main news is that the game is in alpha! I have completed development on all of the missions for the final level, and added in the concluding story and end credits screens. That means at last the whole main campaign can be played from beginning to end.
KingPart of the above work to complete the last level is a new character model for the king. The king previously only spoke to the player in story cutscenes. His arrival in the game meant I had to create this 3d model based entirely on the artwork from the illustrator. I think it came out pretty well!
UI & SettingsThe other fairly large bit of work I did last month is to completely re-do the UI. A lot of the menus were sort of placeholders - and I had not really confirmed in my mind what I was doing with them. So I finally spent some time improving all of the menus, and and getting the UI consistent. Here's a knight levelling up menu:
Levelling UpThat brings me on to the other big development. An xp overhaul. This is the third, and final, (and best!) iteration of the player knight advancement systems I've tried. The first one involved attempting to earn esoteric achievements which could be converted to titles. Then I tried making it linked with the construction of training dummies - but neither felt very good.
With this last incarnation - I have gone with a more straightforward & well understood xp and level up system, where your knights earn xp (mostly from participating in events), when they get enough they go up a level. I've done away with calling it “training” altogether. It only seemed to cause confusion.
As you can see from the menu above levelling up allows the player to choose skills, rewards and unlocks, and so there is some control over progression. I think it’s much more engaging and I’m a lot happier with it!