Monday Update #7 - Pixel art and camping

Hey everyone, I think we're probably overdue for a sign of life. We're still pushing towards launch, and I've got some fun new art to show for it.

We're closing in on being art complete in the combat department. Here's an example of some new spell effects Valery put together for an unannounced enemy:

We're also starting to pixelize some of the characters that are only involved in story moments. You can see a few here, as well as some familiar faces.

The latest thing I've been working on is designing the title screen and intro process. The plan is to give the player a quiet moment with her party as they camp for an evening during their quest. The scene will also be a reflection of your current location and make-up of your party as you browse your save files.

Each party member is going to have a custom animation as they rest around the campfire. Here's the first pass at Brasidas preparing his latest victim:

'Til next time!

Monday Update #6 - Gameplay iteration and a new character reveal

Howdy folks. Aside from some technical difficulties this week, I've been busy designing and iterating gameplay lately, tweaking hero abilities, level layouts, and enemy stats. Once these are all feeling good, I can be confident about moving forward with final combat art assets, and then we can ship this thing!

Now that we're getting closer to the finish line, we finally moved forward with a couple of the remaining character portraits we required. I don't feel too bad spoiling this one, as he shows up very early on in the game.

This is Sisyphus, one of the early big baddies you'll encounter throughout the world of Hellenica.

For the unacquainted, Sisyphus was a dastardly king sentenced to eternal torment by the gods for his deceitful, sometimes disgusting deeds. As punishment, Sisyphus was required to push a boulder up an impossible slope, endlessly stuck in a loop as the boulder always rolled back down before reaching the summit.

In Hellenica, Sisyphus has found a way to finally crest his impossible obstacle thanks to some supernatural assistance. However, his curse is not entirely broken, as he is still eternally burdened with the remains of the boulder.

In typical villain fashion, he has converted the source of his torment into a weapon, which he will happily use to defeat your party if they get in his way. Coupled with some new supernatural powers related to his curiously transformed legs, he is a force to be reckoned with.

The original sketch YDY put together was pretty spot on. The hair and face communicated the frenzied craze that we expected of someone previously mired in eternal, divine torment. His brute strength developed over years of continuous labor was obvious. His supernatural aspects are tricky to talk about in detail here without spoiling the story, but we were shooting for a craggy, ancient forest vibe. I think it works pretty well.

After some tweaks to the chains, we moved on to coloring. The first pass was good, but we felt there wasn't enough contrast between the leather bands and the boulder. Switching over to the green of the cloth also reduced some complexity which we thought helped to tie things together.

Let us know what you think of Sisyphus in the comments!

Monday Update #5 - Feedback and visual polish

It's been about a month since my last update here, and you're probably wondering what we've been up to!

Our focus has been on bringing the player experience closer to final polish, which means we've now got a good chunk of new visual stuff that I can actually show off!

Here's a quick breakdown of things we've updated/added:
- Final combat UI!
- Combat objectives and progression system
- Icons for all playable character skills
- Effects system to drive visual and aural feedback effects
- Lots of WIP visual/aural effects
- Final skills for all ally and enemy characters
- Lots of juice added to the character animations

We've also finished creating all of the city location music and the narrative outlines for all the possible endings! Hopefully we'll be wrapping up the final script in the coming weeks.

Here's a quick peek at some of the party skill icons before they get stamped into brass buttons for our UI:

Can you tell which party members correspond to which icons? We're curious to see how closely you can guess what each skill does from the icon alone!

Here's a shot of the objectives screen:

The current design calls for each combat level to have three objectives. The first is the main objective, to be announced with great gusto: "Defeat all of the enemies", "Escape the bad place", etc. Completing this objective will allow you to progress further in the story. You'll also gain some favor from the gods, which can be used to upgrade your party's skills and impress your friends.

The second objective is a bonus objective that's meant to help teach the player a tactic they may not have considered. Completing this objective should hopefully make the level easier for those that are struggling, while also providing some bonus favor to spend towards skill upgrades. Sometimes this objective may call for a specific skill that the player hasn't unlocked yet, hinting that they should replay it after they've unlocked that skill.

The third objective is the elusive challenge objective, and it is unlocked once the player has completed the main objective. Currently, there's no explicit reward for completing the challenge objective, though I will be thrilled if you complete all of the challenges. These challenges are meant to satisfy those players that are looking for some added difficulty, the achievement hunters and expert tacticians out there.

Each objective is loosely associated with a Greek god or goddess. Since you're on a quest from Artemis, hers is the main objective (the moon). Apollo provides the second, more teaching-oriented objective (the sun). The final challenge objective (the shield and spear) is a challenge from Ares, the god of war himself.

I'll be doing some streaming later in the week to show off some of the other improvements we've made to the visual/aural feedback. Once I get a recording made I'll be plopping it on here for you guys to watch at your leisure. Stay tuned!

Monday Update #4 - Combat UI and Usability

Hello!

This update I've focused mostly on working with Andrea to get the new combat planning UI in, along with some other usability improvements.

Here's a WIP shot of the new UI:

We're trying to reinforce the mechanics throughout each stage of combat.  To that end, during planning the damage type/armor type relationship is called out immediately, in addition to any other bonuses or penalties that affect your attack. In this case, Brasidas deals piercing damage, but that doesn't do any bonus damage against light armor. He does gain a damage bonus for attacking the rogue from the side (flanking), but takes a damage penalty for attacking her from below.

Andrea's planned out mechanical sequences for how these panels will slide in and out. Once the various bits are in place and animating, I'll get some more gifs up here for your ogling.

One of the other usability improvements worth mentioning is the actor outlining:

Not only is it handy for finding actors that are blocked by terrain, it also increases player confidence when it comes to clicking on the actors in the world.

Meanwhile, Bob's whipped up a bunch of new music and ambience tracks for some more of the story locations. Pretty soon they'll all be aurally enhanced! And Victor's still diligently fleshing out the end game narrative and writing more dialogue.

I'm going to be spacing these updates out a bit more than every week, as you may have noticed, just to keep the content interesting. Sometimes we're all in the middle of bigger features, and there's not quite enough publishable content for a decent update. Hopefully we can find a good balance between depth and regularity over time.

Thanks for stopping by!

Monday Update #3

Oops! This is going up a little past the due date, but hopefully you'll forgive me. We got a little distracted by Rocket League tonight. ;)

New stuff!
- Fixed some long-standing issues with the animation system.
- Implemented social hub UI for all existing social hubs
- Moved party customization so that it occurs after the intro cinematic and objectives reveal
- Reworked terrain checking for direct abilities with 3D positions
- New music for Athens Acropolis, Corinth, and Rhodes
- Completed first pass at SH6 Athens dialogue

Re-implementing the social hubs with the new UI was a big task that I had put off in favor of focusing on our critical path, but having it in place is pretty vital when we need to reference a story detail. Now that they're all hooked up, it also means playtesters can explore a bit more freely, which is a bonus. Expect another post this week with a playthrough video of the new experience.

Moving the customization screen into the combat path itself is something I'm really excited about. I always wondered why Final Fantasy Tactics let you position your troops in a precise manner before you had any idea what the encounter actually entailed.

Is the enemy going to be on the left? In front? Behind? Are the first two squares on top of a cliff? You had no idea until you locked it in.

Now in Hellenica, you'll see the introduction cinematic play out that shows off the battlefield, highlights the threats you'll be facing, and explains the objectives. Only then will you choose what abilities you'd like to take with you into the fight. Hopefully this will set the player up for success.

As for this week, I'm planning on getting back into some level building later in the week, so expect some twitch streaming right here!

Monday Update #2

Another Monday, another status update!

Last week:
- Updated visuals for each actor's in-world UI
- More social hub background music
- AI reasoning about multiple abilities
- AI reasoning about abilities that target multiple tiles
- Added a new ability for Nephele tentatively called "Sky Shot"
- Made moving platforms play nice with new 3D game positions
- Started nailing down story arcs for some lesser villains
- Added new destination descriptions and departure dialogue lines

Nothing too crazy last week, but we're really excited about the new in-world UI around the actors. The health readouts and facing arrows solve two of the biggest complaints we've heard in playtests.

Also, it's always fun hooking up a new ability to see how it changes up the formula. Sky Shot bears some resemblance to abilities like Charge from Final Fantasy Tactics and Rain of Arrows from Banner Saga. Nephele fires a volley of bolts up into the air that target a small area on the battlefield. Then, at the end of the player's next turn, those bolts land and deal damage to any enemies in those locations. Lovely payout if you're able to predict your enemies' movements, or just move them into position yourself with a few pushes or tosses. ;)

This week we're still working towards getting the final UI elements in for the combat portion of the game. I'm also planning on tackling some long-standing bugs and design improvements as we polish things up on our way to finishing the critical path.

The first Monday Update!

Wow, sorry lovely readers. You have suffered some serious neglect, and for that I apologize!

Based on the previous post, it must look like the end of days for Hellenica. In fact, that couldn't be farther from the truth.  We've made a ton of progress over the last two months, we've just been doing it very, very quietly (disregarding all of the chortling and singing that takes place in the office).

From here on out, I'm going to attempt to put up a quick post on Mondays detailing what we did the previous week and providing some hints about developments in the upcoming week. Then every so often I will try to piece together a more in-depth look into a specific topic. I know they're more interesting to read, but they also take up quite a bit of precious development time so, you know, trade-offs.

Consider this the first Monday update post!

What we've been up to:
- New social hub UI (this deserves its own post later)
- New sound effects to support social hub UI

- New social hub ambient and background music tracks (check one out here and be sure to loop it!)
- New map UI (note to Kurt: one more separate blog post)

- Ported the dialogue UI from NGUI to the new Unity UI

- New dialogue authoring tool. Should hopefully make it easier for people other than Victor to generate complex, branching dialogues.

- New combat features:

 - Neutral actors. Currently using this for destructible obstacles.

 - Moving platforms. Think steam-powered conveyor belts, elevators, and maybe some more mystical devices that make the environments more dynamic.

 - 3D game positions. This might sound a little weird since our game is 3D, and it probably deserves its own explanatory post in the future. For now, just know that it's going to let us do some cool new things, but it'll take some time to iron out all of the wrinkles.

 - New playable characters! Unfortunately, they're still a secret.

 - Status effects. Root, stun, taunt, etc.

 - Cinematics! The new cinematics editor is hooked up and we've got cinematics built for our critical path.

 - A whole slew of new party abilities and a progression system to unlock them. (My favorite new ability is code-named Beardozer, and it is a thing to behold.)

 - Some new enemy abilities

 - Smarter camera work during turn execution.

 - More intentional backgrounds to help establish mood.

- Redesign of the various UI pieces in the combat portion of the game. These will start popping in as I get time to integrate them.

- A bunch of new combat levels (you'll see this one a lot)

- Improvements to the level editor

- AI perf improvements
- A bunch of new story dialogue

This week:
- Updated visuals for each actor's in-world UI
- More social hub background music
- AI reasoning about multiple abilities
- AI reasoning about abilities that target multiple tiles
- Update pathfinding to support new 3D game positions
- Make platforms play nice with new 3D game positions
- More dialogue :)

Whew! Usually these will be much, much shorter, but hopefully you're convinced that Hellenica is still alive and kicking. I'll try to get some more detailed posts going every few weeks to explore some of the more interesting features I listed.

Until next time!