Hey everyone! We want to share current progress on the game by talking about changes we made in the latest major dev build.

New GUI

In previous major build we reworked skills panel. In this one we added the resources panel to display all your current resources, highlight resources you just collected and show you which ones will be consumed by actions such as building. Also, the new chat, which is an important part of any MMO game :) Few others small things have been added to the GUI, they will be highlighted in other changes below.

Gather / Mine mode

We reworked how Tool Glove works. Now it switches mode to Mining / Gathering with small GUI change and it lets you mine stuff with left click and gather resources with right click. It's possible to break world, trees, ores, gems and other stuff with many skills, but if you use anything except Gather ability, you will get less resources.

Building with blueprints

Though still work in progress, we added the main way players will build in open world and during the battle blueprints. You will be able to find them during exploration from chests or as loot from monsters or create them yourself. They not serve only decorative or structural purpose, some will be useful in battle by providing auras to allies or even attacking enemies. As you can see, you need resources to build each blueprint depending on materials used and the blueprint itself.

Bees!

In previous dev build we added Beelmo a new Lemon Bee monster. Now we added it's ability: when it stings you it starts running away and if you can't kill it in a few seconds, you yourself will become a Lemon Bee! While you are in the bee form, you can't your abilities and more vulnerable, but you can jump higher and perform double jumps to reach places you couldn't before! With this we introduced the polymorph mechanics in our ability engine that will help us make a few more interesting abilities and cool game mechanics '^__^'

New monster Enamored Skeleton

Skeletons will protect Dark Gems and attack anyone who will try to get their precious :) A bit more of them in this video.

New camera

As you can see on the screenshots above, we moved the camera above character's shoulder from above it's head and adjusted field of view and camera distance. It should provide better gaming experience. All abilities have been adjusted for the new camera position.

Graphics and animations update

You can see it in the video here, we updated a few important textures in game, like grass and gems and added Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion. New textures give the game a more consistent look. Check this tweet about restyling to see how it was before and how we are working on game style. We updated a few animations to add some character to them so they don't look plain as they used to :) It's still work in progress until it will be consistent throughout the game.

New sky

It's... not boring any more :)

Many more!

It was only things that are easily shareable in form of a few screenshots, but a lot of work we do can't be easily seen. Still, we want to share it with you to give a glimpse on the development process:

• Animation Engine rework. We use our own animation graph system, because the engine we use didn't have one when we started. Because of that we had problems with stuck or not working animations from time to time. No more of that since we reworked a few core things in it :)
• Fixed air control, it now works like in most action and action-adventure games.
• Updated sound engine to support more easy integration of sounds in game and fixed some sounds.
• New artefacts and resources that have no use for now. We will talk about them later ;)
• A lot of bugfixes!

Hope you stick with us to see more! '^__^' Next update will be a bit boring compared to this one because we are working on some things in the game engine that are required to ship the game to an alpha stage and continue it's development. We will see you with new DevLog when it's done! Please leave your comments and ask questions, we will be in comments ;)

[ 2018-07-19 22:05:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

The world of Elteria is fully changeable. You can break it, you can build it. Even with basic abilities you can make holes in the world or create platforms in midair, you can throw your enemy in the wall and there will be a hole! The landscape is your weapon: shape it and use it to your advantage in fights with monsters or players! To make it possible, we use our own lighting-fast voxel engine that was in development for the last few years.

The core principle of Elteria is more game mechanics, fewer numbers. Abilities, artifacts, and enemies - all have different mechanics. The major part of gameplay is Artifact crafting. Every artifact gives you some ability and has its own way of acquisition. Equipment slots differ by the abilities given by the items going in each one, not by anatomical forms.

Players can choose one of many character classes - Callings - which give abilities too! Each has a different playstyle. There are no artifact equipment restrictions, this way many unpredictable and funny combinations can emerge. Players will need to choose artifact sets for different situations. We love to see which combinations of abilities players will invent! We will listen to your feedback and the game will be balanced and improved continuously. Three of callings are already playable and two more in development. You can expect the continuous addition of artifacts and callings.

In Elteria, you have not only the usual MMO or RPG feel, but platformer-like too! The world is made of flying islands, some are large, some are archipelagos of small ones. For ease of movement between them, there are jumper mushrooms, sunflowers, and other fun movement objects. They create a unique platformer feel while remaining a 3D open-world RPG. Some abilities allow you to move even better. Just look at that:

Almost anything you see on the screen is interactive more than in most other games. You can break it, or it wants to break you. Explosions make huge craters and break trees, you can break walls with enemies, mushrooms propel you in the air or on another island, tentacles emerge from the floor and hit you, some plants are mines, some are collectible, and of course, monsters are trying to kill you or do other fun stuff with you!

The game has a deep narrative. The following is the part of the playable character's story.


Your old world was full of misery and injustice, but suddenly strange portals started to appear in cities. You decided there is nothing to lose and stepped in. You found yourself in the lush and magical world of Elteria, filled with peculiar creatures and flying islands! After you finished staring on the massive planet in the sky, the green piglets and another floating island, you notice the large blue crystal, hanging in the air. You came to it, and suddenly, a mysterious projection of a woman appeared and started talking to you! She wants to help you. You don't know her motivation, but she seems very friendly. You have so many questions about this world...

We have also created a backstory of the Elteria World itself, called Elteria Cataclysm. In the game, the narrative will continue to evolve, being mysterious and thought-through.

Elteria once was a beautiful world inhabited by all kinds of people. It was a place similar to Victorian London – bubbling with life and constantly evolving. But everything changed with the discovery of new properties of the very fabric of reality. Civilized world was swept away by Magic Rush – every scholar dived into the new branch of science trying to make a breakthrough.
According to her theory, such object combined with a sophisticated system of gem drainage would allow opening a stable rift between worlds, giving pretty much an unlimited amount of energy. She wanted to create a utopia and to achieve this goal a research group was put together. Thus began the “Magical World” project.
Read the full version

Players have their free personal Home Field. We plan to add large guild spaces. You will be able to build fortresses on islands, and on them you will be able to fight other players, to attack others, or to protect them from PvE events. There will be battlefields and leaderboards, but imagine how fun it will be to battle with other players using all these land-altering abilities!


Your main building tool is blueprints. The voxels are very small and placing each individually would be too slow, but with blueprints, you can instantly create some forms. Yes, you CAN use them in battle! Some BPs are basic forms; some are complex and rare ones even have aura effects on them. I.e., a wall which slows enemies around it. You still need materials to place BP. The material will define structure durability. You can find BPs anywhere in the world, and once you found one, it's yours.

To make full use of voxel world, we are considering adding a separate world with creative mode and no monsters, for players to express themselves fully. We are not yet sure and will evaluate the feedback later.

The visual appearance and style consistency of the game is crucial for us. You already can see day and night cycle, voxel lighting and you can expect continuous polishing of visual style.
We have written an entire gamepedia wiki about Elteria Adventures! If you are interested in detailed information about the game, check it out!