Hey everyone, Vildravn here, one of the devs of Starveil. I have posted this on my blog, but I think it's good to also post a variant of the postmortem here on Steam so without further ado, here goes. [hr][/hr] Its been two years since I have started a very ambitious project with my friend, Sukkoy. We have set out to make an online game, a little MMORPG, just to see if we could. That project has turned into Starveil. In a way you could say weve succeeded, in small scale tests the game is quite playable, and in my humble and totally unbiased opinion, quite fun as well. But two years on, Starveil is nowhere near being playable by the public and the reasons for that are multiple. In this post, I want to take a look back at Starveils development. Please note that I am writing this only from my own perspective and am not speaking for Sukkoy or anyone else who has helped out with Starveil.

The Beginning

As we set out to make a small prototype, a technical test, or a proof of concept of sorts, we settled on Godot Engine. At that time, Godot 4 was in an early beta but it was already showing a lot of promise with improvements over Godot 3 when it came to multiplayer. The initial tests were very promising. Sukkoy very quickly put together a simple test, a game client with a standalone dedicated server, both in Godot. First we just connected a bunch of game clients to the server and ran around, then we added some bots, and attacks, fixing issues and figuring things out along the way. Performance seemed quite good, so we excitedly moved onto fleshing out the game design, art and even a bit of lore, to give the game some identity.
Early network benchmark prototype of what would become Starveil

The Gameplay

Starveil was to be a multiplayer action RPG of the likes of Diablo, but mixed with traditional MMO elements. From this, two different types of areas emerged: Hand-made public open world maps, intended for solo play as you would see in most MMOs, and randomly generated dungeon maps usually experienced in action RPGs serving as the group content. The skill system was very much inspired by Magic: The Gathering with 6 colored groups roughly representing a different functionality or role. For example, white skills would represent healing and red ones were all about dealing direct damage. Each skill then had one or two colors, based on what it did. The colors also acted as equipment costs for the skills, which tied into player classes: Each of the four classes had a differently colored pool of resources to spend on equipping skills, with more room to add more classes down the line. And yes we called this pool Mana because we couldnt come up with anything more original :)
An interface window showing the library of available skills Perhaps the most controversial decision that has also informed some other things about the design of Starveil was the fact that it was supposed to be a strictly seasonal game. Each season would run for a few months, after which all characters would be wiped away and the world would reconfigure itself, with a new pool of zones, dungeons, enemies, loot, and so on. A central hub would serve as a kind of community meta-progression with long term goals to unlock upgrades, advancements and features, and it would also be the only zone in the game that would not get reset and reconfigured. To take some sting out of deleting player progress periodically and to make sure its possible to jump back into action quickly, we settled on not having any leveling up, and even gearing up should have been quick enough so players could have reasonably powerful characters within a few hours. The motivator to keep playing would be earning rare-ish skins and other cosmetics, which of course would not be wiped between season resets either. In retrospect, I think the skill system has held up really well, and even though it wasnt explained properly it was received well in playtests, with players grasping even some deeper complexities of character building. The seasonal aspect though, while a sort of roguelike take on a whole server level is definitely interesting and comes with some benefits - namely balance and cheating is in theory not that big of an issue if progress gets wiped - it comes with some severe downsides especially on the development side of things. We have set a really crazy pace for us before we even really started, providing a fresh set of content every few months is just too much. Even every year would probably be quite ambitious for two guys working on an indie game in their free time, while juggling lives and jobs. We have never gotten to a spot where we would be able to test and prove the concept of the seasons either. Its very possible that losing progress on a regular basis is something players would have a hard time reconciling. I wonder how many would come back for subsequent seasons.

The Art

The cornerstone for Starveils art was color. We looked at other action RPGs like Diablo, Path of Exile, Grim Dawn and all we saw was greys and browns and darkness. We wanted something different, something where you could tell what was going on from one still screenshot. We looked to Hyper Light Drifter and a few others for inspiration as pixel art was the obvious choice here given Sukkoys great skills as a pixel artist. My artistic skills unfortunately are those of a weathered brick. Being set in a sci-fi fantasy universe with varied pockets of realities gave us a lot of freedom to experiment and come up with vastly different environments and enemies. The two zones settled on for the initial demo were Necroforge, a factory overrun by zombified workers and rebelling automatons, and Mycotic Grove inhabited by sentient mushrooms and a curious society of robots stuck cosplaying for renaissance fair.
Necroforge and Mycotic Grove side by side I do not know how this even came about anymore, perhaps to allow for more player self-expression, but we have decided that headpieces, body armor, leg armor and weapons should be shown on characters separately, reflecting the kind of item the player has equipped. This decision has resulted in a frankly massive amount of animations, and was something that again, was definitely too much for a hobby project. Except this time poor Sukkoy was pretty much alone for this, as all I would really be able to help with are simple recolors, definitely not original item art, let alone animations. Since we had multiple weapon types and attack animations, every single piece of armor needed to be animated to match those. Pair this with a large library of skills that should ideally all have separate visual effects and youre starting to wish for a small art department to handle all that. I certainly did. Despite that though, the art has definitely been a big highlight of Starveil. Its eye-catching, in my opinion gorgeous, and even if the gameplay wasnt everyones cup of tea, the visuals were consistently getting compliments from people who have seen or played the game. What has also elevated Starveil art-wise was the UI art. I initially tried my hand at drawing some, and I was very happy with what I came up with considering Ive never done this kind of thing before (you can read more about that particular journey in this Mastodon post). But then a friend reached out and offered help, and made some very professional interface art, and even though I spent a lot of hours drawing mine, I was so happy to replace it.
Reference image for Starveils UI with authors name blurred out as they wished not to be credited Looking back, I am really happy with how Starveil has turned out on the visual side of things and I am super happy and proud to show it off every chance I get. The only regrets I have is not being able to help more, and Sukkoy ending up in a special circle of hell, drawing dozens of animations of every little piece of armor. We really shouldve gone with full body skins, perhaps with multiple movesets matching the equipped weapons.

The End?

Theres still so much work left to do on Starveil to fulfill its ultimate goal as a pay to play multiplayer online RPG. There are backend bits that are still missing, the whole season system isnt in place, and we dont even have sound effects or music. And then there are other issues that haunt me. Us stubbornly rushing into making an MMO-like game with a dedicated server means we have to contend with latency a lot more than a peer to peer game would. Hosting a dedicated server isnt cheap, and realistically we would need at least two or three to provide a satisfactory experience for players anywhere on the planet. A P2P game would be a very different game though and we would have to almost start from scratch. But ultimately, the energy just isnt there. Either for continuing Starveil in its current form, or for restarting it as something different. We have decided to put it on the back-burner for now, and were comparing it to something of a zen garden, poking at it slowly when we feel like it. One of the reasons for writing this post was for me to get a bit of closure on the whole thing, and to learn to move on. Thats not to say the game is dead, or that we are abandoning it even though I have been using the past tense. But it is time to focus attention elsewhere, and who knows, maybe regain the strength to continue one day and pick Starveil up where we left off. ~ Vildravn

[ 2025-01-13 19:34:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Want to talk to us directly, get peeks at some behind the scenes development and even get invited to some limited closed playtests? Join our Discord server! See you there!

[ 2024-10-17 19:09:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, long time no see! Let's jump directly into this announcement by addressing the first question. Life has been quite hectic for both of us, and that led to a lot less time we could spend on Starveil. While things are probably still going to be quite in the flux, we're really itching to get back to working on Starveil and get it out of the door, and we're figuring out the path forward. Development might be a bit slower coming forward, but hopefully not at a standstill like in the past few months. That brings us to the other half of the title. Starveil is not going anywhere yet, and we're looking at what needs to be done to release as early access and what the current pain points are. We found one really major pain point and that is our server host, it's cheap, it's good, but it's just simply not good enough to host a game server, and some of you have probably noticed a lot of various lag related issues. So while we figure that out, we have disabled the Playtest and are going to develop more locally, since a more powerful server really isn't in our budget right now. We will still run some very small scale tests but since it's means running the server on a home network, we're simply not comfortable opening it to the larger public. But worry not, once we've figured out a good solution that would actually make the game playable for everyone, that doesn't involve hosting a server at home, the larger scale playtests will be back. And we might even invite some people for smaller tests just to make sure the gameplay still works. Thanks for the support you guys gave us in the past playtests, we still believe the game is really fun to play, even after stepping back for a few months, and we can't wait to have you guys back playing it again :)

[ 2024-08-14 13:03:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Today, we say good-bye to our old home. The Hub's layout has been unchanged since the very beginnings of Starveil, since November 2022, when it was still called Project Ouroboros. Here's the earliest screenshot; while the art provided by asset pack is very different, the layout is very familiar :)
This patch introduces a new layout and look to the Hub. It's very much in-progress still, but as we're making larger changes to how things work, we wanted to roll it out already now. Here's how it looks like now.

0.11.2.0 Patch Notes

• Changed the look and the layout of the Hub. This is still very much in-progress.
• Changed the way players rezone into the Mycotic Grove, Necroforge and the Hub. Instead of talking to an NPC, players can now walk out. In the Hub this is indicated by a change in the tileset. In Mycotic Grove and Necroforge, players need to walk back beyond where they spawned.
• Tweaked some networking logic to try and prevent "ghost" players from spawning.

Known Issues

• Loading Necroforge may take a moment the first time a player rezones after launching the game
• The game is way too zoomed out on higher resolutions than 1080p.
  • You can use the F3 button while logged onto a character for some debug settings with resolution and scaling
• Using skills too fast with the Mouse click Cast trigger option may result in skills being interrupted
• Not all abilities have audio effects

[ 2024-02-21 23:38:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hot on the heels of yesterday's updates, here's a small patch to fix some issues that popped up

• Fixed a bug with the item list not showing quantities of stackable items
• Fixed items with the same name being sorted randomly
• Fixed an issue with the Thorns effect

[ 2024-02-16 16:53:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Steam Next Fest

The Steam Next Fest came and went, and it was actually quite good! The demo was downloaded a whooping 6960 times, out of that we've had 221 unique players check out the game and our wishlists jumped from 170 to 417! And the Godot Engine devs and community manager checking Starveil out on the last day of the next fest was certainly quite unexpected! You can check out the VoD here. Thank you all who gave Starveil a shot, we will continue working on it, improving it and getting the word out there, it is a marathon, not a sprint :) As Valve recommends, we will keep the Demo up for a while afterwards, and then we'll see what the next course of events is, we will definitely keep you up to date on that.

Patch 0.11.1.0 Notes

Now that we've recovered from the Next Fest and general life being a bit busy recently, we've also released a small patch.

• All windows that have a list of items (Character, Trade, Dismantle) had the item list reworked and unified. In practice this means all those windows now have an item list that is sorted alphabetically and can be filtered by item type or searched for by name.
  • This has been something the community has been asking for for a while and we've finally been able to deliver. Hopefully this makes it much more pleasant to find the right items to equip, trade and dismantle.
• The Character (Tab) window has been redesigned slightly to match our original design.
• The Help (F1) window no longer pops up automatically on log-in
  • Unfortunately, we've only realized on the last day, during the Godot stream, that this is probably the reason why a lot of people download the game, make a character and then immediately log out. Our theory is that they saw a window that couldn't very obviously be closed (you have to press Esc) and that blocks movement, and thought it was a bug. We'll definitely be working on improving the "new player experience" to make sure more people give Starveil a chance.

[ 2024-02-14 22:30:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcoming all viewers to come test our game Starveil on our live server! Sukkoy one of our 2 man developer team will be streaming, answering to all your questions and criticism live, come give us your feedback and help us make a better game.

[ 2024-02-10 02:55:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Welcoming all viewers to come test our game Starveil on our live server! Sukkoy one of our 2 man developer team will be streaming, answering to all your questions and criticism live, come give us your feedback and help us make a better game.

[ 2024-02-07 03:54:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

We are excited and a little bit nervous to announce that the Starveil Playtest is now underway with the first handful of players being granted access to the game! As time goes on and as we test and adjust our server capacities, we will be expanding the playtest to more players, so if you did not get access in the first wave, your time is yet to come. And if you have not signed up yet, you can still do so our our Steam page! If you run into bugs and issues or have some feedback for us, you can either share it though a form in the game's Esc menu when you log in, or just come visit our Discord server and share and chat there. See you in game! ;) ~ Vildravn and Sukkoy

[ 2023-12-10 12:37:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

December has brought snow, and also the latest Starveil devlog. November has been a busy and exciting month, lets see what have we been up to.

Novel November

Early in the month, Vildravn has shown off Starveil to the local game dev community at an event hosted by Game Habitat. It was the first time ever that people outside of friends and family could play the game, and it was a very valuable and interesting experience. Speaking of playtests, we have also launched the signups for a Steam playtest, and were very happy that we got over 90 signups so far! We have been working hard all November to get the game in a shape good enough for people to play without a developer present, and we really want to launch the playtest soon. That brings us to a recap of what weve done in November, and its quite a list. Following up on last month when we talked about persisting characters, we now store everything. This means that player characters, their inventory, selected skills and equipped items are all persisted between logins and server restarts. This was one of the biggest hurdles to making a public playtest possible and its quite a relief to have this feature finally in the game. Another big feature weve implemented is client-side telegraphs. This makes combat much better, since you can now see where a skill will land before you cast it. At the moment we only support click to cast, but we are also planning to implement options to enable fast casting you know from games like League of Legends or Guild Wars 2.
We are also looking at making the game flow better, mostly when it comes to maps. Roaming maps are intended to be largely solo-able areas with some group content sprinkled here and there while Dungeons are where groups will be necessary. With that in mind, Necroforge is getting a bit of a makeover, making sure large parts of it are solo-able, putting group oriented stuff off the beaten path.
Pictured above is the Necroforge map as the server sees it. Last but not least, we worked on some UI polish. Most of the windows and panels with some exceptions are now consistent with the HUD/Action panel design, we now have new skill icons, and you can now see the status effects on your character clearer than ever with new icons placed above the floating health bar.

Dramatic December

As we mentioned above, we really want to launch a public playtest soon, as in, in the coming weeks, so our focus is on that. This means polishing up what we have into a playable experience and making sure its fun and rewarding. With persistence now fully implemented, some issues with itemization have become much more apparent, so we are putting out designer hats on and figuring out how do we want to make item drops work in each of our areas. Another area of focus related to the public playtest will be on UI and making things are easy to understand. And thats pretty much it for this devlog. If you are interested in playtesting Starveil in the coming weeks, make sure to sign up on our Steam page. And if youd like to chat with us about the game or anything else for that matter, we practically live on our Discord server. Until next time! ~ Sukkoy and Vildravn

[ 2023-12-04 09:11:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

In the Devlog yesterday, we talked about setting up a test through Steam Playtests. We are happy to report that the signups are now open! If you go to our Steam page, you can request access to the Playtest. We are not ready to open the floodgates just yet, but once we do, Steam will let you know that the playtest is live and running.

[ 2023-10-31 08:15:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's the end of October and that means the spooky season is upon us. And also a new Starveil devlog and it's yet another double month one. Lives have been far too busy, but we also got a lot done, so let's get into it!

Busy Bee September and October

Like mentioned above, life kept us busy, be it work or family related matters, or vacations. But we are not slowed down so easily and we got a lot of stuff done over the last two months! In Starveil, dungeons stay for a whole season and then get re-generated. It's a sort of middle ground between the typical MMO experience where dungeons always stay the same and a more Action RPG style where maps are random all the time. We want the best of both worlds and to achieve that, we have built some in-house tooling to help us generate dungeons we can then polish up, customize and add into the game ready for the next season. Over the course of September and October, we have improved our dungeon generation tooling to support the environmental hazards we have in the Necroforge - namely moving conveyor belts and lava pools. [previewyoutube=sigTE0s-01U;full][/previewyoutube] We have also refactored our Effects system (buffs and debuffs, essentially) to be more flexible and more easily support some exciting boss encounters and skills. Speaking of exciting bosses, we are doing more work on the Mycotic Grove and have added two new bosses we can't wait to test out with more people. We don't want to spoil much, but one is a banshee with a devastating sonic attack, and the other is a shaman commanding a fierce wolf. Both bosses should require some strategy and cunning to beat. And last but not least, we have started implementing persisting character data between logins and everything that needs to happen around that! For now that only means characters, storing equipped skills and inventories will come later but this is a huge step for us. As a part of the persistence work, the character creation screen got a much needed facelift, and to accompany it, there is also a character selection screen now. [previewyoutube=jfj7GLNNJnI;full][/previewyoutube] There have also of course been some bug fixes and tweaks and the never-ending work on making art assets. Check out some work in progress on those! [previewyoutube=vszaIO17RLc;full][/previewyoutube]

Full Steam Ahead November

The big ticket item for November is still persistence. We want to get in storing character items and skills, so players can actually start customizing their characters properly. After that is done, we are planning to hold a public playtest, so keep your eyes peeled on our Discord and this Steam page for that! We will also be showing Starveil to complete strangers for the first time early November, so keep your fingers crossed for us! The other very big thing on our list is figuring out how skill unlocking is even going to work. Many discussions and design sessions will be had for sure :) On top of that, we will of course be adding more things to the Mycotic Grov, truly turn it into a grove. Who knows, maybe we'll even tackle some environment sounds for that little extra mood... And that was us at Mice with Dice for another devblog. Make sure to keep your eyes peeled for the news about a playtest and see you in the next one! --- Hi, us again some hours later. We're happy to report that the Signups for the Playtest are now live!

[ 2023-10-30 21:23:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

It has been a while and the keen eyed among you might spot we skipped a month. The simple answer is that summer got in the way and we took a bit of a break. But weve also done a fair amount of reflecting, thinking and work on Starveil, lets get to it!

Sunny July & August

Lets start with the most recent news. We took a stock of the current state of the game, and with the Next Fest hurtling ever closer, weve made the decision to postpone. It was not easy decision to make, but the reality is that we were not ready for the Next Fest in October, and each game only gets to participate in a Next Fest once, we dont want to blow our chance. Instead, were really putting our noses to the grindstone, and are now aiming to participate in the Next Fest in February 2024 instead. This also means that our release will happen after February. With that bit of heavy info out of the way, lets take a look at what weve accomplished since the last devlog, outside of spending time with friends and family over the summer. We have started working on our second map next to the Necroforge, called the Mycotic Grove. Check out these awesome enemy designs.
The Mycotic Grove is going to be a more open and definitely more fantasy inspired area with a different set of enemies. Work has also been done on implementing a new UI look. UI is something that really ties any game together and it should not be neglected. Heres a quick look at our skill bar, with some work-in-progress skill icons.
It would not be a good RPG without a large variety of skills and spells at the players disposal, so we made sure to expand the arsenal and added 11 more skills. Among those freshly added are skills like an AoE taunt, a healing station that pulses healing to nearby allies, a chain pull for the pesky enemies that always run away from you, or an adorable-yet-deadly familiar that shoot laser beams out of its eye.
Apologies for the grainy gif :) We have also been experimenting with some other things like adding ambient sounds and more skill sound effects into the game, using a proper resolution so we dont play in a small 720p window, and a host of tweaks, fixes and improvements.

Refocused September

Now that we dont have the October Next Fest looming over our heads, we had the chance to refocus and prioritize a bit, and lay out a clearer plan for the coming months up until the February Next Fest and the Early Access release. For now, lets take a look at the focus for September. The first of the two big ticket items for September is finally storing player characters and their items and equipped skills in a database - no more losing progress on logging out! The other big task were setting for ourselves this month is finishing up our dungeon system, generate some dungeons and fill them with enemies and new bosses to kill and loot. Among relatively smaller things weve got some rebalancing on the public (non-dungeon) areas and some more UI work. Were also planning a larger playtest that wed like to have before the Next Fest to see where we are, so stay tuned for that! Speaking of staying tuned, the best way to do that is on our Discord server where you can chat with us and see the progress more or less in real time. And that wraps up this devlog, see you in the next one!

[ 2023-09-08 15:00:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's time to sit down, unwind and recap the development on Starveil for this past month and look ahead into the future. And wow, do we have quite the devlog for you this time! Older devlogs are available on our Ko-fi page. [hr][/hr]

Steamy June

To get the obvious thing out of the way, since this is also where you're reading this post, we're on Steam! This is a huge step for us. It will help us with getting Starveil seen a bit more, we'll also be able to use some nice features like the built-in Playtest feature. No more mailing out Steam keys manually! It also sets a bigger plan in motion, but more on that later. We will also keep updating the page so there's not just the bare minimum, definitely keep an eye on it. We'd like to thank our dear friend Hiz for his hard work on the store and library assets, logos, etc. They look amazing. Speaking of visibility, it really helps us a lot if you wishlist the game if you are interested in it, so.. Please go do that :) There's a button in the sidebar of this post. With Steam out of the way, let's look at what we've worked on in the game in June. We have revamped a few things, with a few things more visible to the player than others:

• We have a more flexible animation system that should help us add more items more easily.
• Then we've gotten rid of the button in the bottom right corner to interact with NPCs and objects, now you use F to do that instead!
• Enemies are now trying to avoid eachother, so they don't end up on one unsightly pile when being kited.
• Skills that auto-targetted enemies closest to the player now target enemies closest to the player's cursor.

There have been also some quality of life improvements, or just making things feel more like an actual game. In no particular order, those are:

• Shield effect from skills now shows up on the health bar.
• The Necroforge battery event was tweaked a little, carrying the batteries slows players down more.
• On the topic of batteries, the effect bar above player health and skills will now show what is the player carrying.
• Floating damage numbers have been refined to look much better.
• There are now transition screens when rezoning.
• It is now possible to hide all of the UI and just the chat with F12 and F11 respectively. Great for taking screenshots :)
• Several skills now have awesome visual effects instead of just simple telegraphs.
• It is now possible to rebind keys.

Starveil has also seen a lot of additions and features in June:

• Added a new area to Necroforge
• Added a new skill: Block
• Added several new weapons. A staff, a new sword, and a bow.
• Added some new enemy types to replace the placeholders we've had since the beginning.
• Added an initial version of the party system. This will allow you to invite your friends to play together.
• Added an initial version of private instances. The server will now create dungeon instances on demand, putting players together when they're in a party.

There's a few other things that are in progress and not finished, such as a big UI revamp (yes, another one), as well as a lot of preparations for the upcoming months. So let's get into that.

Kicking things into high gear in July

We've got some big plans with Starveil and the official Steam page is just the beginning. We're aiming for taking part in the Steam Next Fest: October 2023 Edition! The deadline to sign up is July 13, and a lot of things need to happen by then. Namely, we need to polish up the Steam page, add more screenshots and an awesome trailer to catch the eye of the players. Those screenshots and trailer mean we need to add some more content to the game to show off some variety. While we don't need to have the game build ready when we sign up, we want to hold a playtest anyway to test out the Steam Playtest feature and all of the big ticket features we've added in June. July very much look like a month when we'll try to stabilze a bit and prepare for what's coming, but perhaps some other big features and systems will have time to sneak into the game, especially in the second half of the month. Phew, that was a long one! If you've stuck around and got this far, thank you for reading! And if you want to ask us about Starveil, give some feedback or just come say hi, please come do so on our Discord server. See you in a month!

[ 2023-07-01 18:30:39 CET ] [ Original post ]