Smiths & Legends has a new demo available! Use this space to talk about how you found the game, and any bugs you experienced. Please don't forget to Wishlist. If you've played the demo, please write us a review with your honest thoughts too!

The most recent update to the game includes compatibility for the Steam Deck. New features include: 1) Complete controller support for the game and menus. 2) Touch controls for menus 3) On-screen keyboard for inputting text The game should be running at 50-60FPS on the Medium graphical setting, or 30FPS on the High graphical setting on the Steam Deck. Don't forget to go to the Display settings and change the aspect ratio to remove the black borders. See you at the Coach Co-Op fest in February! Mohawesome.

Welcome to "Game Mechanic Mondays!" where we'll be covering in-depth how things were actually programmed in Smiths & Legends! Just in time for a cold Christmas, today we'll be covering... Episode 2 - Weather Effects!
How does the snow falling effect in this level work? Well, there are two main ways that this can be done - Post-Process or Particles. Post-Process is like adding a Snapchat filter on the screen at all times. This means nothing is actually spawning in the world so it's just a visual effect on screen. Particles mean we're actually spawning some tiny object in-game that may or may not have a physical component. In general, post process has the lower performance impact but usually looks a bit more artificial. Smiths & Legends uses both of these for certain effects, but we'll focus on Particles because that's how the snowfall effect above works. #NoFilter Particle Effects
Particles are a powerful configurable thing used in many games. Essentially we're spawning tiny white balls and can control how frequently they spawn and what direction they move. In Smiths & Legends we change these in the level to affect visibility. In other levels, I might change these balls to be brown so it looks like sand or purple to look like mushroom spores. Balls. Everywhere. The cool thing is, the particles aren't actually falling over the entire level, they're just falling in your view which makes it look like it's falling everywhere.
It's like there's a cloud floating on your camera at all times. Video games contain a lot of these "cheats" that developers use to save on performance. Thought that was useful? Let us know in the comments below or in the Discord or Facebook Communities! Discord Instagram Twitter/X Facebook What caused the bug in the Monster Spawn last week? Aha did you think I forgot? Well here is the fix below...
The issue was that the "Switch on Int" only went as high as 5 - but "Enemy Count Current" can keep increasing and go higher than 5! To solve this, we use a clamp - which makes sure the random number picked to determine the level of the enemy only goes as high as 5. Of course... some levels might have monsters that are even higher level than 5! Good luck Blacksmiths!

This week we're showing off a never before seen enemy - The Batteree. This enemy gives off light and is useful for vision in dark areas. But it's still a threat to your shop! Follow us and join the community if you want to see more game development insights! Discord Instagram Twitter/X Facebook

Welcome to "Game Mechanic Mondays!" where we'll be covering in-depth how things were actually programmed in Smiths & Legends! Unreal Engine operates a visual scripting language called Blueprints. This generates C++ for you, by letting you select stuff from drop-downs and linking them together in a process flow. There was also a strange bug that took a little while to fix - skip to the bottom to see details on what it was! Episode 1 - How does enemy spawning work? Today I'm going to explain how Smiths & Legends spawns monsters infinitely in each level.
The first step runs an Event called Server_MainEnemySpawn. This runs only on the server because you want the server to be the one tracking variables rather than individual clients in multiplayer. You don't want each client spawning their own enemies or that might spawn way too many and somebody (or their computer) is gonna die! We start with two variables to keep track of how many enemies to spawn in each wave - "Enemy Count Current" and "Enemy Count Start". Current will be changing throughout the level, while Start is set somewhere else based on the number of players. To begin, we set Enemy Count Current to the same value as Enemy Count Start, and then go into a function called "Spawn Mushtump". Mushtump is the name of the enemy, because they are tree stumps with a mustache. Inside the "Spawn Mushtump" function:
(click to zoom) We first check using a "Branch" that the value of "Enemy Count Current" is not zero. If it's not zero we go to "Switch on Int" and if it is zero we run an event called "Server Spawn Next Wave" (more on this later).
(click to zoom) "Switch on int" is a function that does different things depending on which number goes in to "Selection". In our case we're choosing a random integer between 1 and "Enemy Count Current" - which is used to determine which level Mushtumps spawn, randomly each time. We then reduce the "Enemy Count Current" by the level of the Mushtump. Finally, we add a delay of 1.5 seconds for a gap between enemy spawns, and loop the whole thing back to the Branch to check if "Enemy Count Current" is zero. What might happen here for example - if there's 2 players, the value of Enemy Count Current is 2, so this system has a chance of spawning either two level 1 Mushtumps, or one Level 2 Mushtump. Would you rather fight 1 giant Mushtump or 100 smaller Mushtumps? So what happens once it's spawned enough enemies? "Enemy Count Current" will be zero and the loop will identify this and run Server_NextEnemyWave:
This starts by running a function called "Increase Enemy Count":
All this does is increase the "Enemy Count Start" by a set number called "Enemy Count Increase" and resets the "Enemy Count Current" to this value. This is also based on the number of players, so the enemy count increases faster with more players.
Finally... After increasing the enemy count, we have a set "Enemy Wave Delay" then start spawning more Mushtumps. This loop continues infinitely - making each wave harder than the last... until the players complete the level or the shop is destroyed! The bug After the wave looped a couple of times, the Mushtumps would stop spawning! Can any of you figure out what was the problem? Sound off in the discussion below or on social media! Don't forget to join the Discord channel! We'll post our fix next Monday! Discord Instagram Twitter/X Facebook

This week we're highlighting the recently implemented "Stylised Rendering System" in Unreal Engine 5! There's some improvement in the character models and environment! (Note - this is a meme template and RTX was not actually used in either screenshot ) Follow us and join the community if you want to see more game development insights! Discord Instagram Twitter/X Facebook

Smiths & Legends at Steam Next Fest 2023! Smiths & Legends is a top-down co-op blacksmithing RPG. Craft recipes within the time limit with your friends while defending your shop from monsters. Go through the 60+ levels, fight monsters and bosses, and level up your party! Join us for the first playable demo of the game, and live-streams from developers and players! Demo features include: 1) 9 playable levels from the game - including 1 boss battle! (~90 minutes content) 2) Unlockable perks and costumes 3) Local and online co-op with up to 4 players