Mezdritch

Gamedev & weird arts. @Mezdritch Current gamedev project: Nox Striga

[mezdritch]

1 Year later...

Last update was in October of last year, ouch! No I am not dead, nor is the project. However, life as proven to be quite demanding in the recent months. I will soon celebrate the end of my studies (finally!), after an interesting but long chain of events including a field changes and a few bumps along the road. A new chapter is about to start, and I fully intend to resume my activities (and more). -Mez

[mezdritch]

Nox Striga: October Update

Pretty busy month with multiple games projects and life stuff. My time has been divided between Nox Striga and Roll the Bones, which is a small game made for an Halloween game jam (a bit messy but 'ok' for ~1.5 week of work and my first game jam).

Two things were done in Nox Striga this month:

1) A redesign of some cards’ aspects and mechanics. A few cards didn't feel right and didn't properly capture the overall themes. For example, the Path cards of each player was merely filling their decks, while now its part of their identity and offers them short and long term goals. A few types were cut to simplify things a bit and make other types matter more.

Not all classes are redesigned. In fact, only the Necromancer is more in line now with the desired vision. I'll keep things that way till he feels right to play and then I'll move to another class. Hopefully, the adjustments will make every class feel fresh and interesting.

2) A bunch of new weirder arts & textures were done. These looks bizarre but fits the theme nicely. It might be a bit early to do more arts, but I can't stop myself. Some of them were used for the jam instead.

If you're interested by the AGDG Halloween jam's results of each participant: https://itch.io/jam/agdg-halloween-jam-2017

Happy Halloween!

[mezdritch]

Nox Striga: September Update

This month the cards and board were developed and polished further.

A few cards were scrapped and each class got more defined. Also, a lot of simplification was done to every aspect of the game to make it a bit less convoluted. For example, players initially had 6 attributes that were modified and were used for various rolls. This was changed to 4 attributes, each class having a focus on 2 specific ones. The rolls themselves were removed on some cards and are used mostly for crafting new cards during a match and effects that scales.

Beside that, a few areas changed. Due to time constraints the development is a bit slow right now.

Have a good one.

[mezdritch]

Nox Striga: August Update

The basic card set and templates are now done. It possible that I tweak some aspects, especially after testing the mechanics more intensively. In Unity, the cards are objects with multiple UI elements to customize each parts. When played, they’re simplified to their card's art and border.

All the arts are done with pain.net and sometime with the help of Alchemy, PaintOnline/One Motion and Gimp for some specific effects. Most are made from scratch, others are altered photos or altered landscape or other elements made in Unity.

The board as also changed. The space one seemed a bit small so I made a new one. This new board has each areas properly separated (Deck/Burial ground - Hand - Play - Class/Path). The only missing elements are a few buttons and icons for the cards abilities once into play.

[mezdritch]

Currently doing all the card templates for the encounter. You can see most of them here with some mock-up text hovering over everything. The main menu also has the option to go directly into an encounter (which will help for testing). This will expand into a card/collection area where the player can mess around with his decks outside of the story.

For now, the templates are grouped by card type and effect. Cards that are played the same way have a similar card frames. The Entities have some extra ones since their behavior will vary (there wont be that many entities in play). I’m not sure which one I’ll cut yet.

Since the strife works well I don’t expect much trouble with the encounter cards and deck basic functionalities. This will be a lot bigger to build and there will be a bunch of mechanics to explore so it might take a while.

I think the real challenge will be the A.I., oh boy. But hey, it’s one of the reasons why I am interested in doing this.

Let me know if there’s any current card frame that you particularly like/dislike.

[mezdritch]

Revised my strifes (quick encounters) to improve it since it was pretty basic. Now:

The player has its own set of scrolls.

Each enemy has its own set of scrolls (depending on their type).

The enemy avatar/name change depending on what it is.

All scrolls have some visual effects (nothing too fancy for now).

Some scrolls have properties, like the Nil scroll which cancel the current ritual, and so the ones implemented so far all works

Enemies can also have a lot more scrolls than what they will use, which can be interesting for some variation during the encounters. For example a Flayer could have 9 scrolls available, and when encountering him, he would use 3 of them (either randomly or some specific and some random). This feature is not currently used since I need to increase the variety first.

The current order of effects during a ritual (when the scrolls are used) is:

[Pre]: If something like a Nil scroll needs to cancel the rituals, it happens first.

[Cleansing]: The character reduces his distress rate by an amount.

[Distress vs Prevent]: Pretty straight forward.

Then there's a check to see each character's distress rate and what is the current round to determine if there’s a new round or the strife is over (won, draw or loss).

[mezdritch]

Part II:

Here’s a few more pics of the various ruins and other oddities.

[mezdritch]

Part I:

During the weekend I  “decorated“ the current area I’m using for dialogue/encounter testing to make it more appealing. Here’s some of the results.

[mezdritch]

The strife (quick encounter) is pretty ok now. Can be improved but at least things work and visually its okay. And since I was doing some UI stuff I revamped the dialogue window, much better than the one on my first post here. I guess next week will be spent on improving these 2 systems, and also on doing some inventory management (at least for the strife, being able to mix new scrolls + materials should be interesting).

[mezdritch]

Main focus at the moment is doing one type of encounter. Making sure things are done properly (state machines, db and whatnot) is the big focus. Progress is slow but steady. This is also good preparation for the main card encounters. Other images are a few visual ideas I’m testing for some side areas.

[mezdritch]

So this week I’m working on the enemy AI and some interior areas, like this “Rain Temple” here. The card encounters are also being developed but there’s nothing really fancy to show yet.

[mezdritch]

Here’s a few images of a new area under construction and its “lovely” inhabitants.

[mezdritch]

Working on the card/encounter at the moment. The environment is looking pretty clean.

[mezdritch]

Nox Striga

My current project.

Started this game ~2 weeks ago. So far the progress is alright. Since this is more of an introductory post I'll simply say that the base game is in place and now the good stuff can start. The game is an isometric rpg where you explore the Dreamlands. Most of the encounters will take the form a simple card game. I will update so you can follow the development. Here’s some early looks:

Stay tuned for more occult details.