Hey all!

Haven't posted an update in a while because I was struggling to keep productivity up and I'm going through a pretty turbulent period of my life.

I'm recovering from depression that made it quite difficult to do anything so making updates was a low-priority thing for a while.

Despite all that, I'm pretty proud of the progress I made in 2024, it may be some of my best work.

Let's get into it!

[h2]The initial idea[/h2]

It all started with me deciding to work on the 8th story quest - Shadows That Remain.

This quest is supposed to take place in a stronghold somewhere in the lands ravaged by the King's Spell,

So I thought it would be cool to create a new overworld area and have the player explore it to find the stronghold.

[h2]The overworld area[/h2]

LOTLW already had two large overworld areas - as I call them.
They have been bothering me ever since I have implemented them.

Every overworld area has three mini areas where the overworld events take place.
These mini areas are the source of my dissatisfaction: I made them quickly, so they are undetailed and very boring, not matching the quality of other areas I made.





Bad!

Mini areas do their job, but if I was going to make a new overworld area, I was not going to let the mini areas be as bland.

So at the beginning of this year, I quickly put together the overworld for Spellscarred Desert and began building the mini areas.

They have not turned out so 'mini' and have a lot of nice details.




Obsidian formations, craters, and dry grass for that post-apocalyptic look.

Not only do they look better and are larger for a more comfortable combat experience - they also are more rewarding than other overworld areas.

The players might find three tiers of loot chests and gold ore geodes for experienced gatherers to crack open.

Quick lore overview of the Spellscarred Desert: It's an area of the world that was ravaged by an apocalyptic spell that was allegedly unleashed by a king who was brought down by the rebellion, during the greatest war the world has seen.


[h2]The spider tank[/h2]

With the 'mini' areas figured out, it was time to populate them with enemies for the player to challenge.

Instead of reusing existing enemy types like demons and rogues, I have decided to add an entirely new enemy type: Sentry, basically a spider tank.



They are denizens of sci-fi and cyberpunk genres, which I am currently drifting towards.

In the future, I plan to focus on sci-fi games, so I'm pretty glad that LOTLW was never *truly* fantasy: It has plenty of steampunk and industrial elements.

It would be pretty hard for me to work on a purely fantasy game at this point.

Anyway, sentries are autonomic military equipment brought to this world by the Order Tempest, a peace-keeping organization of this universe.

Order Tempest has not had a presence in this world for almost 200 years, but their machine soldiers still patrol the vicinity of their old headquarters - the central location for the new quest.



They are not aggressive to the player the first time the player encounters them, so it's up to them if they want to make sentries their enemies.



[h2]The abilities[/h2]

Animating the sentries took weeks - it's my most ambitious enemy so far!
It took quite a lot of iterations to get it right, but I'm very happy with the end result.

With animations in place, it was time to make my beloved spider tanks to show teeth - or to be more accurate, missiles!

What I mean is giving sentries the ability to attack the player.

It's the first archer-type non-human enemy, so making it attack and behave properly was a challenge.

As I said, it is an ambitious project: Sentries are equipped with three unique abilities: Shell, Missile Strike, and Spirit Breaker.



Spirit Breaker has been added to the player's arsenal as well, it has been attached to high-level weapons.

Steel sentries are not the only new enemy types in the Spellscarred Desert: There are also 3 variants of charred demons.

One of them - charred balloons - has also received a new ability: Dark Star Singularity.
It's a mage variant of Spirit Breaker and it's probably my favorite of all the abilities I made.



Spirit Breaker fires an arrow that pierces enemies and dazes them, reducing their movement speed and making them easier to catch with consecutive attacks. The piercing property is especially useful when fighting more than one enemy at the same time because it deals damage to every enemy it will pierce.





Dark Star Singularity is similar to Spirit Breaker in the sense that it creates a piercing projectile.
However, instead of a lethal arrow, it's a tiny exotic star! Summoning this unusual astronomic object to this reality creates a shockwave that deals damage to all enemies in range and prevents them from attacking for 3 seconds.



[h2]The demons[/h2]

As I just mentioned, the player may encounter not only steel sentries but also demons in the Desert.



These are variants of demons encountered in other areas.
They have been scaled up to match the intended difficulty of the Spellscarred Desert, which is an endgame area.

[h2]The loot[/h2]

With the Desert populated with steel sentries, it was time to implement unique loot to make these tough new enemies worth fighting.

So here are the new items!



From left to right:

Steel parts
Crafting material for crafting new steel weapons.
Uncommon drop from steel sentries.

Reactor
Neck accessory, crafting material for steel generator.
Uncommon drop from steel sentries.

Steel generator
New level 30 mage class weapon.
For 'glass cannon' builds.
Crafted from steel parts and a reactor.
Comes with Dark Star Singularity ability.

Steel accelerator
New level 30 archer class weapon.
Behaves like a regular arc but is slightly faster, which makes it very powerful.
Crafted from steel parts.

Steel cleaver
New level 30 warrior class weapon.
Has stats comparable to a two-handed melee weapon, but is one-handed.
Crafted from steel parts.

Ability instructions: Dark Star Singularity
Unlocks this ability.
Tier 3 and Tier 4 reward: Found in high-level loot containers, dropped by high-level enemies.

Ability instructions: Spirit Breaker
Unlocks this ability.
Tier 3 and Tier 4 reward: Found in high-level loot containers, dropped by high-level enemies.

[h2]The stronghold and the quest[/h2]

With loot implemented, now it is the time to work on the 'Shadows That Remain' quest, which will feature steel sentry as a boss encounter, unlock steel weapon crafting, and reveal the most important details of the story.

The quest will take place in the Order Stronghold area which is yet to be implemented, so I still have a lot of work to do for this set of content.

* * *

So that was my last three months!

Phew, it was a challenge to just write down all that, so I'm going to wrap up this update post right here.

Thanks for reading and until next time!

Hi all,

As Magic of Spring - my other game - is going on hold, I am slowly returning to the rhythm of working on Light of the Locked World.

It's been two very long years and I'm excited to be back to this project!

For the next few months, I will be making three final quests in the game's story campaign - this will include new items, new enemy types, one new large area, a final boss, and so much more!

After the story campaign, the largest of the remaining tasks will be the Classes 2.0 update.
I am planning to give every class a talent/perk/skill tree and fill them with interesting nodes.

The development blog should also resume shortly, so keep an eye on that for weekly development updates.

See you soon!

Hey all,

Happy new year! It is sort of a custom at this point to write something about my plans for the upcoming year.

So, this year I am planning to be finally done with the adventure that was the development of Magic of Spring.

That means I am finally coming back to Light of the Locked World!

My head is full of ideas for the game - I am planning to simplify the structure of the game's story campaign and squeeze several planned quests into one to finish the game faster.

I also want to implement the Arena: A place for the players to duel.
This will come with an entirely new way to play LOTLW: Arena Mode, in which players have to duel in the Arena every X minutes in order to keep gaining experience.

LOTLW's splitscreen RPG PVP is rather a unique feature and I want to showcase it more with this mode.

So the Arena Mode will be the first thing I will work on after I return, after that, I will be making the last few story quests, then Classes 2.0 and class skill trees, and... Well, there's a lot.

It is not very likely that LOTLW will be completed this year, but perhaps we will do an Early Access release - so who knows?

Sorry for taking so long with Magic of Spring - but I am committed to finishing LOTLW no matter what - so I hope you will continue following the game!

Thank you and until next time!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/465020/Sector_Six/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1786910/Magic_of_Spring/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1184450/Magic_of_Autumn/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2152950/Beyond_the_Gate/

Hey all,

Just wanted to share links to games I am currently working on right now.

Beyond the Gate

I recently added this game to Steam: I plan to release it early next year.
It's a small game I made years ago - I decided to update it and release it on Steam.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2152950/Beyond_the_Gate/
The graphics of Light of the Locked World are partially inspired by this game ^_^
It is an RPG (ARPG?) with loot and other procedurally generated content.

Magic of Spring

Magic of Autumn's sequel - a card game and RPG hybrid with a conjuring mechanic: Turn everything in the game's environment into playable cards.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1786910/Magic_of_Spring/
Currently, in the late stages of development, we are about to start preparing for release.

This is good news for everyone waiting for Light of the Locked World - after Magic of Spring is done, I'm back to LOTLW!

So, yeah, I'm working hard as always to make the best games I can make for you guys and the next year is going to be pretty exciting!

Thank you.

[h3]Follow Small Moons to be notified about the new games[/h3]

Hello everyone!

As mentioned earlier, I am working on a new game, Magic of Spring.

I'm happy to say that the development is going well and that a demo version is available now!

[previewyoutube=IbRoDd_r3S0;full][/previewyoutube]
The demo can be downloaded from the Magic of Spring Steam page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1786910/Magic_of_Spring/
I am hoping to be finished with Magic of Spring in the coming months and come back to working on Light of the Locked World in the summer.

Until then!

Hi all,

As I've mentioned earlier, the LOTLW development is paused at the moment.
The reason for that is that I'm working on a different game.

Normally I wouldn't start a new game while the previous one isn't finished, but I made an exception for that game because it's a "now or never" situation.

Anyway, that game is Magic of Spring!



It is what I've been calling a card adventure game - there is a story, a world to explore, deckbuilding, and a lot of card fights.

I've been working on Magic of Spring with extremely skilled Minho Kim and Bert Cole.

Bert Cole composed the music for Sector Six and Light of the Locked World, so you know he's good =]

Minho Kim is the artist of Devespresso Games, the team that created the great-looking Coma games, Vambrace: Cold Soul, Scarlet Hood and the Wicked Wood.

The demo for Magic of Spring should be ready to play next month.

Hope this sounds interesting - if it does, don't forget to follow and wishlist the game <3

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1786910/Magic_of_Spring/
Anyway, that's all for now, until next time!

Hey all,

The big news is that Light of the Locked World has a publisher now - WhisperGames!

Thanks to WhisperGames, Light of the Locked World's demo has been translated to Simplified Chinese and Japanese.

WhisperGames have also brought the game to the Tokyo Game Show 2021!



We hope that all of this will help the game reach more people than ever and we welcome the new fans.

Have fun!

Hi all!

A small update for those wondering what's going on: Small Moons is a studio created by me, Zuurix a.k.a. Aivaras Klimas.



I've created it in case I'll want to expand in the future and because saying that these games are made by me isn't entirely correct.

Two of my biggest games are made with the awesome Bert Cole of Bit By Bit Sound.

Please follow Small Moons creator's page to be updated about new game releases:
Link >>

Also, I have some bad news for those waiting for Light of the Locked World: The development of this game has been paused by at least 6 months.

I will have more news about that in the future, and these will be some pretty big and exciting news, but I have to be quiet for now.

Until next time!

We are going to join the MGN Indie Gamecarnivalonline on May 31, 2021, at 5:00 (PST)!

Steam event link: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/mgn

Event Stream: https://live.acfun.cn/live/934542



MGN is an online conference focus on indie games, hosted by @Steamparty and collaborated between STEAM and ACFUN, we are aiming to bring more exciting games to Chinese players.

Event process (PST):

May 31, 4:30 Warm-up phase

May 31, 5:00 Online conference

May 31. 7:00 Demo showcase

Despite being streamed, all videos will be pre-recorded and edited to ensure the best performance.

Dont worry if you missed the show! We will upload all content on ACFUN and Youtube Channel (nmb.ad/ytb) after the event ends.

Hey all,

I've just updated a demo with a bunch of minor changes.

For those who might have saves made in the previous demo version: Please start a new save.
The old one will probably immediately crash because of engine changes in the new version.

Have fun and see you all in July when LOTLW might have a big beta test =]

In this entry: Making Adventurer class.

[h2]April 6[/h2]

Before I start working on the new class, I still have a few unfinished things I have to take care of.

Today I have been making final improvements to the town of Siw.

The biggest change is that I've improved the contrast of Siw's tileset:



[h2]April 7[/h2]

I've been fixing glitches and minor issues today.

Also done a few balance changes:

- Reduced character starter health.
- Reduced Mage equipment health bonuses.
- Reduced "No Smoke Without Fire" quest class level requirement to 12 from 20.

The health was reduced to speed up the combat. This will probably require further tweaking.

[h2]April 8[/h2]

I did some testing and bug fixing today.

[h2]April 9[/h2]

Preparations are over, time to work on Adventurer class!

It's an exploration and questing class that unlocks areas and unique activities.



Today I have implemented Adventurer leveling and area discovery system: Visiting an area for the first time grants experience in Adventurer class.

I've also started working on explorer marks.

Explorer marks will be objects found in remote corners of areas - finding and interacting with them will give Adventurer XP.

So today I've made sprites for most of the planned marks:



Cairns and ribbon posts.

The idea that, for example, the player would find a cairn in Moonrise Desert and would add a rock to it to leave a mark that the player has visited the place.

Tieing ribbons to posts and building cairns should feel pretty good and it makes exploration even more rewarding.

[h2]April 10[/h2]

Has only a few hours today, I'm nearly done with the explorer marks.

[h2]April 11[/h2]

Explorer marks are done and quests now give Adventurer XP.

[h2]April 12[/h2]

A good day!

I have finished implementing the removable obstacle systems.

Leveling Adventurer class unlocks items that are consumed to remove obstacles, which can give access to new areas and create shortcuts.

Currently, there are two items that destroy obstacles: Metal cutters and alchemical bombs.
Cutters destroy barbed wire fences and bombs blow up iron bar fences:





Bar fences are new and have been added to places in Moonrise Desert and Eastern Trilith.

[h2]April 13[/h2]

With today's additions, Adventurer class 1.0 is now done!
It's lacking content just like Alchemist class, but this will be addressed in the future.

For now, it's enough for me to design quests with Adventurer class challenges.



The strange things in the screenshot are talkstone teleporters. Using a teleporter activator item, the players can teleport between teleporters. This requires level 44 in Adventurer class.

I will use teleporters to design special locations, shortcuts, and quest challenges.



First of the locations accessible with teleporters.

It's a puzzle - there are several ways to get to the red chest, which contains the highest level Warrior class helmet in the game.

The players need two iron square keys to unlock the locks on the way to the chest. The knight with red armor drops one of the keys, while the other one has to be obtained from other puzzles that feature locks and iron square keys. The chest contains a square key as well, so the players will not lose the key required for other puzzles.

There's also a completely unique way to get to the chest: By using alchemical bombs to destroy iron bar fences to the right of the chest. This way the player can get their hands on extra iron keys and bypass other puzzles. However, alchemical bombs are rare, so this could require some grinding. This could be very important if the player manages to lose some of the square keys - it's an 'expensive' option to increase the number of available keys.

Destroying iron bar fences is a puzzle in itself because by carefully positioning their character, players could destroy more fences with fewer bombs, so there could be several solutions to that as well.

This whole thing is a good example of how interconnected I want my game to be, with interesting decisions for the player to make emerging from simple mechanics interacting with each other.

Anyway, that's all for this entry.

Looking at the design notes, it seems like I have everything implemented to work on the quests nonstop from now on.

it's likely that I won't post another entry for several months until the quest campaign is completed.

So thanks for reading and until next time!

In this entry: Spore demons, making western settlements: Siw, Western Trilith.

[h2]March 18[/h2]

Started working on spores today: Made sprites for idle and attack animations.

Spores originate from worker demons - occasionally they become aggressive and no longer suitable for their intended purpose.

They are common near industrial centers that "employ" large numbers of worker demons.
Thousand Towers in Rannah's Domain is such a center.

Spores are encountered in Rannah's Domain events and they can spawn in swarms of up to six demons.

[h2]March 19[/h2]

Spores have been implemented!



They are quite unique enemies: They only use the "Strike" ability to attack, but they have enough curse chance to often apply the "Sever" curse that deals damage over time.

Spores also have a very fast attack speed, so they can drain health quickly, even though they might not look like a big threat at a first glance.

[h2]March 20[/h2]

Spent the day testing the game and made a few fixes. With that, the new overworld area is now complete!

I have also planned to make chests spawn in the event areas, but decided to skip that to save time.

[h2]March 21[/h2]

Started working on Western Trilith!

Did a lot of progress already - it's going fast because Western Trilith is a small area.



[h2]March 22[/h2]

Done a lot again, Western Trilith graphics are going to be completed soon.
Scroll down for the screenshots =]

[h2]March 25[/h2]

Exteriors are complete!



[h2]March 26[/h2]

Interiors are complete! And characters, so Western Trilith is pretty much complete.



Western Trilith has:

- A merchant that sells alchemical silver and supplies.
- Banisher that buys up to 20 demon pearls for Triliths reputation and guldens.
- Talkstone chest.
- Matter kiln that will be used in a future quest and that crafts arrow bundles.
- War chest with Spell Instructions: Long Street Gate. Currently cannot be accessed.
- Several silver rocks and volcanic geodes.
- War chests and black bags.

All in all, a decent little piece of content that I'm glad to have in the game =]

[h2]March 27[/h2]

Western Trilith is now 100% complete.



I'm immediately starting to work on Siw, I'm done with the area layout and I placed a dozen of assets.

Siw is a mining town and for the last thirty years, it has been in a bad shape.

The town council's decision to invest in expensive matter kilns left the town's treasury almost empty, and then a disaster struck: A minor earthquake damaged support structures of Siw's mine, making it too dangerous to operate.

Siw's mine was the town's major source of income, so with it closing down, there was no way to collect enough funds to re-open it.

Not immediately, at least. For years the brave miners of Siw have been venturing into column-infested Silver Fields to mine surface ore and volcanic geodes, giving every spare gulden to the town's council.

It's been tough thirty years, but the hope is that the hard times will come to an end soon - the council has recently begun negotiations with New Grawas companies to repair the mine at least partially.

For the players this is an opportunity to earn Siw reputation - the town is accepting donations of silver geodes and pickaxes. It works similarly to Triliths banishers.

Reaching 50 Siw reputation will let the players access a faction-exclusive matter kiln that can craft silver pickaxes.

Siw will also have:

- Silver ore rocks and volcanic geodes near the town.
- A treasure chest behind a lock. A key that unlocks the lock is dropped by a nearby elder column.
- Faction-exclusive merchant.
- Three matter kilns with efficient recipes for all tiers of equipment.
- Banisher.
- Unique Siw assets.
- Talkstone pillar and Silver Gate spell that teleports to it.
- Talkstone chest.
- Talkstone teleporter shortcut. This will start working after the Adventurer class is added.
- Ore grinder.

[h2]March 28[/h2]

Started making assets for Siw. I like how this area is coming together - it's going to be interesting for both its visuals and gameplay.



Treasure chests: Iron, silver, gold, amalgam. I needed an iron chest for Siw and because it was fun, I've made other chests as well.

The chests will contain rewards and will be placed behind exploration and combat challenges.

[h2]March 31[/h2]

Done a lot of progress making Siw exterior. Still a bit early to show.

[h2]April 1[/h2]



WIP UI for game balancers tab.

An April Fools joke - no worries, that would never happen in my game.

Besides fooling around, I've done a lot of work on Siw's exteriors. The town is pretty much complete, but I still need to place some stuff in the outskirt.

[h2]April 2[/h2]

Completed Siw's exteriors, interiors, and characters today!





That's the end of this entry.
In the next one, I'll be writing about Light of the Locked World's 8th class - Adventurer!

Thank you for reading!

In this entry: Making western Rezelot areas - Rannah's Domain and Silver Fields.



[h2]February 28[/h2]

The work on western Kayos starts with an overworld area with an internal name of the West: An area that combines Lockfall, Rannah's Domain, and Silver Fields locations.

Today I've made most of its graphics.





[h2]March 1[/h2]

Graphics are now complete, it's time to work on gameplay!

The current plan is to have up to 6 overworld events active in the West: 3 in Silver Fields and 3 in Rannah's Domain.

Events in Rannah's Domain will be for low-level players: They will contain rogues with timeworn weapons and low-level demons called spores.

The reason why players would want to come to Rannah's Domain to kill low-level enemies is that they will drop T2 items, unlike other enemies of a similar level.

This will be a reward for attentive and exploring players.

Events in Silver Fields will be for high-level players: Enemies here will be the strongest the game ever had so far.

These enemies will be demons called columns - a variant of demons not found anywhere else in Kayos, a breed that was conjured during the War to destroy Grawas.

The toughest of them are elder columns - they have been killed thousands of times and have grown extraordinarily vicious.

Elder columns will drop T3 and T4 loot and will be the most rewarding enemies in the game.

Besides new enemies, Rannah's Domain and Silver Fields events will also sometimes contain silver ore rocks, living ice clusters, and volcanic geodes.

Living ice clusters:

Can be mined by high-level Gatherers for living ice.

Volcanic geodes:

Can be mined by any level Gatherers.
Mining results are based on the player's Gatherer level.
E.g:
Having level 10+ in the Gatherer class adds a chance to get silver ore from the geodes.
Having level 40+ in the Gatherer class adds a chance to get gold ore from the geodes.
Etc.
Geodes also have a small chance to contain unstable pigments.

Another unique feature of events in the West is New Grawas guard raids.

Because New Grawas is inaccessible, killing these guards and losing New Grawas reputation will not be as big of a deal as killing other faction guards.

[h2]March 3[/h2]

Didn't do much today, just coded a bit of what's needed for the overworld events of the new areas.

[h2]March 4[/h2]

Today I have made a bunch of new assets for the new areas.

Pretty happy about volcanic geode sprites:




These should be fun to crack open =]

In other news: 800 Wishlists reached!



[h2]March 5[/h2]

A productive day!

Added more assets and new items:



The most interesting of them is the silver pickaxe:



Normally, a chance of getting a geode from silver and iron rocks is quite low, but a silver pickaxe increases that chance significantly.

[h2]March 7[/h2]

Today I have made event locations.



Now I need to fix a few issues, implement the new demons, create new events, and add new loot containers.

I'm planning to add locked iron, silver, gold, and amalgam chests.
The chests will spawn randomly in the overworld events and event enemies will drop keys to unlock them.

This should make things even more interesting.

[h2]March 8[/h2]

Added new events and made other additions to the new area.



[h2]March 10[/h2]

Added columns!



[h2]March 11[/h2]

More progress! Gave columns masks, made some engine improvements, etc.



[h2]March 12[/h2]

Columns are now done minus minor adjustments.



Added a new ability today just for columns - it's called "Cage" and it creates that glowing circle.

It's designed to mess with player strategies, it'll make it more difficult to just run away from the enemy avoiding all attacks.

This ability will eventually be usable by players, like all abilities.

[h2]March 13[/h2]

Didn't do much today, just fixed a few bugs and made Eastern Trilith and Eir Meadow demons drop silver equipment. It felt like they weren't very rewarding to kill - this will fix that.

That is all for this entry - in the next one, I'll write about building Western Trilith and Siw.

Thanks for reading!

In this entry: Finishing work on Luma and resuming work on story quest chain.



[h2]February 3[/h2]

At the end of January, I was participating in Global Game Jam. After it was over, I took a few days to rest, and today I was back to development.

I have implemented Luma city guards and merchants.

[h2]February 4[/h2]

Made little progress today - began implementing the rest of the needed NPCs.

[h2]February 5[/h2]

NPCs, new matter kilns, and a way to gain Luma's reputation have been implemented!
All's that left for this part of development is to fix bugs and make some minor engine improvements.

[h2]February 6[/h2]

Today is the day! I have made a bunch of screenshots of the final Luma looks:







More screenshots are available on my Twitter.

I spent the rest of the day fixing bugs.

[h2]February 7[/h2]

Today I fixed a few issues and then spent 3+ hours playing/testing the game.
And, well...

When making a game, I build it from a loose idea in my head. I have faith in that idea and I work very hard to make it real. For a large portion of the development that's all I have - the game is too incomplete to match the idea.

But at some point game becomes complete enough - and then I see that what I was working on is real, not just something in my head. It's a huge relief and a milestone for the development.

So today's test did that to me, and I'm very happy =]

[h2]February 8[/h2]

Today I have fixed the bugs I've found during testing and uploaded the new version to my Discord server.

Going to take it easy for a day or two - rest and celebrate the release of such an important version.

To summarize, it contains the city of Luma with all its new merchants and crafting stations, Tier 3 and Tier 4 equipment, and new events for Eir Meadows.

[h2]February 11[/h2]

Today I have started working on new quests. Spend the day writing dialogues.

In other news: Light of the Locked World has entered Independent Games Festival!



There are a lot of great games in there and it's a huge honor to have my game among them.

[h2]February 12[/h2]

Done writing the dialogue. Can't wait to introduce the players to the new characters and exciting new parts of the plot!

[h2]February 13[/h2]

Maintenance day: Cleaning up before the end of a workweek, updating stuff, charging wireless devices, etc. I've also spent too much time writing LOTLW description - it's a constant struggle for me to describe the game...

[h2]February 14[/h2]

...luckily today I've managed to put together something I'm okay with. I went ahead and updated the description in all sites the game is in.

With that done, I've gone to take another look at the dialogue I've written for the quest earlier.
The secret to good writing is to rewrite the thing you're writing a dozen times. Probably.

[h2]February 15[/h2]

All I did today was give the Immigrant Guild immigrant members appropriate looks.

[h2]February 18[/h2]

18th already?! Gah!

Haven't been productive lately, mostly because I've started a side project. I'm not happy with losing time, so tomorrow I'm going to put an end to it.

Anyway, I still managed to do a bit of work - added icons for items required by the quests, polished quest script, added new quest UI icons, implemented a new music track, added Luma teleport spells which - a surprise for me - weren't implemented before.

[h2]February 21[/h2]

21st?! Help!

I'm fully back to LOTLW though and made some good progress today.
I have moved new dialogue strings - containing 2000 words! - to the game's files and began piecing together the quest.

Feels good to be back =]

[h2]February 22[/h2]

I've done quite a bit today, but I can't write about it, because it's story content.

Because of that, I'm going to stop writing entries until I'm done with the current batch of story content.

So in a week or two - when I'll start working on Western Kayos content: Western Trilith mini-area, Siw mini-area, and Silver Fields overworld area - exciting stuff.

I'm going to end this with a small teaser:



What you see above is the Foreign Aid Bureau of the Immigrant Guild.
It's an immigrant organization and a "self-deployed intervention force".

The Bureau is working to protect the young democracy of Kayos, accelerate the world's development, to "Make Kayos into a place people would want to immigrate to if there was an option".

The Bureau's leader is an immigrated knight of Order Tempest.
Which is basically UN with more teeth - their motto is "Peace or storm".

Thanks for reading! <3

In this entry: Adding 100+ new items.

[h2]January 11[/h2]

I've actually managed to make pretty much all of the required sprite sheets.

I've expected to be making sprite sheets for a few days, but I've done it in a day.
It's a good feeling - and it's twice as good when I know that for a while I will be doing only exciting tasks!

Creating sheets is quite tedious.

[h2]January 12[/h2]

Added new items to the item database, so I could see how they look in the game.
Looking at them in the game revealed many tiny graphical issues.

[h2]January 13[/h2]

Spent the day fixing the many tiny graphical issues.

[h2]January 14[/h2]

Finished working on equipment graphics!

It's all looking correct now.

With that done, now I need to code items - set their stats, and implement new systems for the new item types.

I was about to do that, but I've got distracted by writing books.
I'm implementing several books, so I need to write a text for them.

Planning to add eight books - four of them will contain the historical timeline of Kayos, three will explain the magic system, and one will be about demons.

This should give players who will read those books an explanation for many of the things that happen in the game.

I've managed to write most of the text today.

[h2]January 15[/h2]

I was meant to finish writing books today, but I wasn't in the mood for it and so I decided to postpone books for now.

Instead, I was making equipment icons.



[h2]January 16[/h2]

Most of the icons are now complete, going to start working on the item gameplay soon - setting the stats for equipment, implementing food, drink, and elixir systems, etc.



[h2]January 18[/h2]

I am done with icons now.



New crafting materials, spell instructions, alchemical products, etc.

Notable items:

1)
Aura battery.
Increases maximum aura - goes to ammunition slot when equipped.
This means the ammunition slot will be at least a little useful to builds that don't use arrows.

2)
Steel blood elixir.
Increases maximum health when consumed.
The effect is overwritten when a different elixir is consumed.

3)
Arrow bundles.
Can be opened to add 1000 arrows to the inventory.
I'm making arrows untradable - instead of arrows themselves, the players will buy arrow bundles - this will allow me to reduce the cost of arrows.

4)
Metal cutter.
An item that removes barbed wire fences.
It will become useable in the future, but I'm adding it now for efficiency reasons.

[h2]January 21[/h2]

I've been busy with some non-game development stuff the last few days, so I made little progress.

Today I spend most of the day rebalancing item stats.
Equipment now gives significantly more defense and health, so having armor will become more important.
Also, this should help to negate the high damage of T3 and T4 weapons.

I don't have much faith in the new numbers because it's based on nothing but speculation - my current plan is to simply test the game many times and keep adjusting stats until they become appropriate.

I think this method fits the "handcrafted" nature of LOTLW, makes things more unpredictable and unique.

[h2]January 22[/h2]

The majority of items are now implemented.
The finish line for the Luma update is now in sight!

[h2]January 25[/h2]

Today I finally got back to development - had to take care of several things on the previous days. One of them was submitting my game to Independent Game Festival. Fingers crossed!

Anyway, I have implemented food, drink, elixir, and new ammunition slot item systems, fixed several problems with the items, did the arrow changes I mentioned earlier.

Once item implementation is over, I'll be adding new items into the game - mostly through Luma's characters and crafting, which will be very exciting.

With characters implemented, Luma will be complete and I'll move on to making three new quests that will take place in Luma, Eastern Trilith, and Moonrise Desert - filling these areas with even more content.

Right now the main goal is to finish the story campaign - this would make the game finished and I would be able to release it.

I will probably still continue working after that to make the game more polished and to implement the last of the planned features.

So, yeah, that's the plan. Can't wait!

[h2]January 27[/h2]

Today I have made it possible to craft multiple items quickly.
This makes crafting very fast and fun - players will no longer spend minutes rapidly clicking to turn that silk grass into silk.

I've also fixed problems with elixir crafting - vats did not support crafting non-stackable items.

Finally, I've implemented Sword Siege ability - it's similar to Curse Conduit, but it applies corrupt and stagger curses instead of daze curse, and costs 30 aura to activate.



[h2]January 28[/h2]

Today I have implemented two new abilities: Curse Arsenal and Healing Field.



Curse Arsenal can be used to change the curse of a beacon weapon type.
For example, if the player is low on health, they can cast Curse Arsenal, change the curse to Heal curse, and then apply the curse on enemies to regain health.

It's an ability with a lot of ways to use it and I can't wait to see what the players will come up with.

Healing Field is also unusual for LOTLW - it's designed to be used by in the multiplayer mode - a signature ability of the healer's staff.





Well, that is all for this entry - in the next one, I'll be finishing Luma and resuming the story campaign development.

Thanks for reading =]

In this entry: Finishing Luma and starting the next task: Adding 50+ new items to the game.

[h2]January 3[/h2]

Added new city assets:

- Decorative ferns.
- Trash cans.
- Merchant stalls.
- "Store" sign.
- Wall plaques.
- Inn sign.



It'll look better when NPCs will be added.

[h2]January 4[/h2]

With street numbers, sturdy benches, variations of pavement tile, and building shadows added, Luma's exterior is complete!

Incredibly happy with how it looks!



Now it's the for the interiors.
Hopefully, it won't take very long - the interior space is much smaller than the exterior.

The library interior is done:



I've also finished placing the floor and wall tiles in all buildings.

[h2]January 5[/h2]

Made solid progress, an entire street is done, it will be finished in a day or two.

[h2]January 6[/h2]

Interiors are done! Kind of... Still need to set a few variables. Since I'm pretty sure the game would crash if I tried to run it now, there are no screenshots for this day.

[h2]January 7[/h2]

Luma graphics are now complete!



Immigrant Guild interior.



Storage house interior.

Next step: New item batch.

- Gold and amalgam equipment.
- Arrow rework: Arrows sold and crafted in bundles of 100.
- New alchemical products and materials.
- Instructions for new abilities and spells.
- Tool for Adventurer class: Metal cutter.
- Luma faction items.
- Food.
- Drinks.

Once all of that is implemented, I can add new matter kiln recipes and stuff Luma with knights in gold armor, merchants, decorative NPCs - that's when Luma will truly be completed.

[h2]January 8[/h2]

Started working on the big item update.
For day one, the main goal was to figure out how T3 and T4 items would look.



And here are the armor sets!
(I apply colors with the code - outside the game sprites have to be discolored)
Still needs some polishing, probably.

I've figured out the looks for most of the weapons as well.

[h2]January 9[/h2]

Today I have finished making equipment - as I call them - concepts. Now I need to move them into sprite sheets.

Here's the move to-do list:

- Armor idle sprite sheet (MALE).
- Armor walking frame 1 sprite sheet (MALE).
- Armor walking frame 2 sprite sheet (MALE).
- Armor idle while holding a staff frame 1 (MALE).
- Armor walking while holding a staff frame 1 sprite sheet (MALE).
- Armor walking while holding a staff frame 2 sprite sheet (MALE).
- Armor 1H attacking frame 1 sprite sheet (MALE).
- Armor 1H attacking frame 2 sprite sheet (MALE).
- Armor 1H attacking frame 3 sprite sheet (MALE).
- Armor 2H attacking frame 1 sprite sheet (MALE).
- Armor 2H attacking frame 2 sprite sheet (MALE).
- Armor 2H attacking frame 3 sprite sheet (MALE).
- Armor bow attacking sprite sheet (MALE).
- Armor idle sprite sheet (FEMALE).
- Armor walking frame 1 sprite sheet (FEMALE).
- Armor walking frame 2 sprite sheet (FEMALE).
- Armor idle while holding a staff frame 1 (FEMALE).
- Armor walking while holding a staff frame 1 sprite sheet (FEMALE).
- Armor walking while holding a staff frame 2 sprite sheet (FEMALE).
- Armor 1H attacking frame 1 sprite sheet (FEMALE).
- Armor 1H attacking frame 2 sprite sheet (FEMALE).
- Armor 1H attacking frame 3 sprite sheet (FEMALE).
- Armor 2H attacking frame 1 sprite sheet (FEMALE).
- Armor 2H attacking frame 2 sprite sheet (FEMALE).
- Armor 2H attacking frame 3 sprite sheet (FEMALE).
- Armor bow attacking sprite sheet (FEMALE).
- 1H weapon sprite sheet.
- 2H weapon sprite sheet.
- Staff sprite sheet.
- Bow sprite sheet.
- Head sprite sheet.
- Back sprite sheet.
- Shield sprite sheet.

Now, this looks like a lot, and while It really is a lot, the list is a bit misleading.

The most work actually goes into making idle sprite sheet. Once that sheet is done, creating other sheets is a lot easier - I just copy from the idle sheet many times with minor adjustments.

Some sheets have their own shortcuts, for example when making attack sprite sheets I don't need to do anything with character legs.

I'm ending today's work and this entry with colored armor sets:



Thanks for reading <3

In this entry: Building Luma, Light of the Locked World's first city area, a high-level hub.

[h2]December 18[/h2]

Started the work on Luma. Just went through my notes about the city a couple of times, made a rough sketch of the place.



Luma timeline:

[h3]Year 90[/h3]

First inhabitants come to the shores of the abyst-rich bay and begin lifting.

A haphazardly constructed town of wooden buildings and dangerous abyst lifting docks appears.

[h3]Year 103[/h3]

First fire. Luma almost completely burned down.

[h3]Year 104[/h3]

Second fire.

[h3]Year 104[/h3]

The City Council established. The first constitution was written.
The most notorious of the new laws was the Stone Law which prohibited the construction of wooden buildings.

[h3]Year 95-131[/h3]

Luma's Abyst Rush period. Massive growth. In those forty years, the dirty and dangerous town turned into a real city.

[h3]Year 130[/h3]

The evacuation. Order Tempest gave the world of Kayos one year to evacuate.
During this year Luma lost ~20% of the population.

[h3]Year 131[/h3]

The world is locked.

[h3]Year 132[/h3]

The loss of independence. During the chaos after the world is locked the Celerath family took over Kayos and created the Kingdom of Azu'urunn. The City Council was forced to accept the supreme leadership of the Kingdom.

[h3]Year 131-141[/h3]

The Dark Decade. Famines, riots, shortages of all kinds - all because access to the riches of the Linked Worlds was lost.

[h3]Year 141-151[/h3]

The Gray Decade. The time of slow progress. After farmlands were established in Eir Meadows and Spirit Pastures, there were no more famines. Material shortages were still common.

[h3]Year 151-204[/h3]

Luma grows again, profits from abyst lifting. The City Council begins to talk about making the city independent from the Kingdom.

[h3]Year 204[/h3]

The City Council sends a delegation to Azu'urunn and demands autonomy. The city suffers a year of economic blockade, is forced to sign an agreement that prevents the City Council from even asking for independence.

[h3]Year 211[/h3]

The City Council makes an attempt to create the Coastal League. The intention is to unite coastal cities against the Kingdom.
The Council is penalized with another economic blockade and the creation of a legate position within the Council.

The legate is appointed by the King and oversees the Council, limiting its freedom even further.

[h3]Year 218[/h3]

The Shadow Council is created by the City Council's members that are loyal to the idea of independence. The Shadow Council's goal is the liberation of Luma.

The Shadow Council is uncovered the same year, all of the known members are executed, the City Council is disbanded and the legate becomes a one-person ruler of Luma.

The Shadow Council isn't destroyed completely.

[h3]Year 218-254[/h3]

First legate's rule.

The Shadow Council grows in power. Assembles an army in secrecy, acquires companies, forms an alliance with the Foreign Aid Bureau of the Immigrant Guild.

[h3]Year 254[/h3]

The First Rebellion.

Legate escapes Luma, the City Council is briefly reestablished.

[h3]Year 254[/h3]

Luma's army crushed completely in the short battle just outside the city gates.

The Council faces a devastating defeat.

[h3]Year 254-259[/h3]

Occupation. Luma is ruled not even by a legate, but by a general of the King's Army. The general knows she will rule temporarily, so she uses that temporary power to rob the city.

[h3]Year 259-279[/h3]

The Preparation. The oppression of the army only fuels the desire for independence. The Shadow Council's power continues to grow.

During this period Luma is ruled by a "Sleeping Legate" who barely interacts with the city. The real decisions are made by the legate's advisor - Sivetaana Ke'Tale, a member of the Shadow Council.

Sivetaana is often called the Legate of Shadows for her achievements in that position.

Sivetaana succeeds in forming the Coastal League during the legate's visits to other coastal cities, pulls off countless schemes, makes the legate get vast loans from the Kingdom's treasury.

King happily authorizes the loans, hoping to cripple Luma further, but it backfires, as Luma - thanks to Sivetaana Ke'Tale - invests that money into building infrastructure: Iron Stronghold, walls around the city.

Some of the money even ends up in the budgets of the Shadow Council and the Coastal League.

Through the Coastal League Luma forms a new army.

[h3]Year 279-286[/h3]

The War.

[h3]Year 279[/h3]

The beginning of the War. Sivetaana Ke'Tale and the Shadow Council emerge from the shadows and declare Luma an independent city once more. Legate is made a rogue in front of a cheering crowd.

Luma's new army comes to the city and swiftly takes it under control, Luma's second open rebellion ends in success.

The City Council is reestablished.

The Kingdom responds by sending an army, but it is unable to reach Luma as Iron Stronghold turns out to be completely under Luma's control.

What everyone feared happens - the Kingdom refuses to accept Luma's independence and declares a war on Luma and its allies.

Several months pass, and Luma remains independent. Siege of Iron Stronghold drags out, with the Kingdom unable to break through the soon-to-be-legendary fortification.

The War truly begins after the Kingdom stops a caravan of supplies traveling from Berelem to Luma - the Coastal League's attempt to aid the independent city.

The King sensing that his control of the Coastal Cities is rapidly weakening, orders city councils of Berelem, Grawas, and Korrev to disband and choose a legate loyal to the Kingdom.

After that, the entirety of the Coastal League joins Luma's war for independence.

[h3]Year 284[/h3]

Luma's army liberates Korrev that was occupied by the Kingdom in 283.

[h3]Year 286[/h3]

The Kingdom ends the fruitless siege on Iron Stronghold and sends the army to Luma on a newly built road that goes the long way around it.

Luma and Berelem send armies to stop the Kingdom. The armies meet and after a battle that lasts a week, the Kingdom's side declares defeat.

The Kingdom is occupied by the Coastal League's forces, the capital - Azu'urunn - is surrounded.

The rest of the Coastal Cities declare independence.

The Coastal League demands a surrender from the Kingdom - a delegation is sent to Azu'urunn when Talyaan the Fourth agrees to begin negotiations.

When the delegation enters the Royal Palace, Talyaan casts an apocalyptic spell that floods a vast area with auric energy.

Thousands die, including most members of the royal family, Sivetaana Ke'Tale, other prominent figures of the Coastal League.

The Kingdom's cities - Azu'urunn, Deldrayon, and Mirinit - are destroyed.
Refugees flee to the Coastal Cities.

[h3]Year 286-309[/h3]

Post-war times. Luma - as the most capable of the Coastal League's cities - combats countless crises as the world attempts to withstand the aftereffects of the War and the Kingdom's fall.

No longer oppressed by the Kingdom and open to refugees Luma rapidly grows. Vast wealth accumulated by the city that became a hub of commerce is spent almost to the last coin to keep the civilization from collapsing.

Luma prevents famines by sharing the food grown in Eir Meadows with the other cities.

Luma builds protective walls around the Kingdom's ruins, as it becomes infested by demons and other magical anomalies - a major threat to the now-free cities.

Luma aids the survivors of Grawas destruction and invests in the construction of New Grawas, preventing a refugee crisis.

Luma handles the Korrev crisis when the unfortunate city falls to the Glow.

Luma funds banisher campaigns to reduce the demon population that grew during and after the War.

[h2]December 19[/h2]

Today's goal was to set the Luma's layout.

To clarify, I'm not building the entire city as originally planned - I'm only making one street.

That's because, obviously, building a whole city as detailed as Locul or Eastern Trilith is insane.
One street will be more than enough.

The main goal is to create something that looks like the city skyline from the game's official artwork.

Independence Street will have these features:

- Three matter kilns with tier 3 and 4 equipment recipes.
- Coffee house. I guess I'm implementing coffee with this update!
- Library. About time to implement books as well.
- Statue of Sivetaana, the Legate of Shadows.
- Guard spire. Guard captain will sell Luma faction items here.
- Immigrant Guild. Minor spoiler: A hub for most story quests!
- Adventurer Guild. I think NPC here will sell explosives to clear rocks and create shortcuts.
- Supply store. Healing and replenishing consumable merchants.
- Luma treasury with a talkstone chest.
- Several talkstone pillars to teleport to.
- Street merchants.

Once the layout was ready, I decided to make one building.

It's the Library of Luma, the city's largest building - an allusion to the importance of data in modern times.



Well, that's a start. Now only if I could put a dome on that roof, or gargoyle statues or something...

[h2]December 20[/h2]

Looking again at the library, it's clear that it's not going to work.

Wooden doors and windows worked for small towns of Locul and Eastern Trilith, but it doesn't feel right for megapolis.

So today I was making new assets - here's the new version of the library:



I've got an exterior of another spire done as well.



Walking between those giants feels exactly how I wanted, it's working!

[h2]December 22[/h2]

Today I was placing building exterior tiles and added a bunch of new assets.



[h2]December 23[/h2]

Another day of tile placing. Also started working on water graphics:



[h2]December 26[/h2]

Water is done:



I've also added a few new assets for the water's edge part of Luma:



Then I have decided that I'm not a fan of weird windows, so I have started to make new ones, inspired by narrow windows on Locul buildings. They are quite elegant and have that shape/composition that creates the skyscraper feel.

[h2]December 27[/h2]

Done some serious progress today, Luma is starting to look quite good. No screenshots for this day because I want to wait until I have something more finished.

[h2]December 28[/h2]

More progress!



[h2]December 29[/h2]



Added advertisement columns and vertical construction barriers, expanded the city, added several fake houses outside the limits of the area. It's confirmed: Fake buildings work and will speed up the development of the area significantly.

The city should be done within a week from now.

[h2]December 31[/h2]

Getting close to finishing the city exteriors now. Made new assets - building signs and flags.


[h3]Luma flag[/h3]
The symbol is a stylized shape of Luma Bay.
The black color of the bay symbol means that the bay is rich with abyst.
It's the color of abyst crystals.
The blue color symbolizes water, an important theme for a coastal city.


[h3]Immigrant Guild flag[/h3]
The symbol depicts immigration to Kayos: Triangles pointing to the shape of a world.
Blue and white colors show the peaceful nature of the organization.


[h3]Adventurer Guild flag[/h3]
The arrow cross symbolizes opportunities and freedom, it's a symbol used by adventurers and explorers.
The white symbol in a red field stands for conquest to achieve an honorable goal, the fight not for wealth or power, but for the betterment of the world.
While most adventurers are treasure seekers, the Guild itself is created to guide adventurers to more meaningful adventures.

[h2]January 2[/h2]

So 2020 is over, huh? Neat!

Anyway, made more assets today - only a few more are needed.
It will take more time than planned to finish the city, still about a week of work is needed.

And, uh...
Yeah, that's all for this entry - in the next one, I'll hopefully start making gold and amalgam equipment.

Thanks for reading!

In this entry: Eir Meadows, event system.



[h2]December 8[/h2]

Today I have finished implementing kill messages:



They are important to show the outcomes of fights, especially when the fights are happening offscreen between NPCs. As a bonus, they show the character names.

With that out of the way, I have uploaded version 0.5.4 to my Discord server and started working on version 0.5.5: Eir Meadows!

To be able to make the city of Luma, I need to implement Eir Meadows first. Eir Meadows is going to be a large overworld area.



With Eir Meadows I'll also add the encounter system which will make overworld areas very interesting.

Basically, whenever the player is in the overworld, there's a chance that an encounter will appear.

Interacting with an encounter in the overworld will transport the player to a small area with randomly chosen enemies and objects.

Encounter ideas:

1)
Combat encounters.
The player will be taken to an area with several enemies.
It could be demons, rogues, or Locul/Eastern Trilith/Eir/Luma guards.

2)
Silk grass.
The area will contain silk grass that the player will be able to gather.

3)
Traveling merchant.
The area will have a merchant with a random inventory.

It's very likely that encounters will be a source of infinite content - enemies, merchants, and silk grass will be refreshed whenever the player enters the encounter area.

I could always cap the number of encounters the area would spawn, but I'm not sure if I want to that yet.

So to summarize, the current short-term goal is to make Eir Meadows and populate it with encounters.

I have started working towards that goal by adding area transition hints:



They are small arrows that show where the player needs to go to enter a different area.
This will be important later.

[h2]December 9[/h2]



And Eir Meadows has been added! The next step is coding the encounter system.

[h2]December 10[/h2]

Began working on encounter systems.



Because I've changed my mind about how encounters will work, it's more accurate to call them overworld events.

These "!" icons keep appearing and disappearing every X - to be decided - seconds.
The player no longer needs to move for the events to appear.
The icons can be interacted with - doing so will transport the player to the event area.

So today I have implemented some of that.

[h2]December 11[/h2]

Today's progress:

- Implemented systems for leaving and entering the event area.
- Random NPC generation system expanded to create random event characters.
- Implemented an event NPC spawner system.

That's pretty much all of the overworld event basics, going to start polishing and adding new content to the system soon.

[h2]December 13[/h2]



The first of the event areas. The event areas will be generic like that so it would feel more like they are different parts of Eir Meadows.

Might add more interesting and rare event areas in... far future. It's good enough for now.

Also, this is why I needed the transition hint arrows - with hint arrows I can make areas that aren't bound by suspiciously conveniently placed rocks/barricades/pits/etc.

[h2]December 15[/h2]

Today I have added two remaining event areas and fixed several bugs in the event systems.

Also, I have gone through some old accessory items and changed their stats:

- Silk cape health bonus increased to 30.
- Silk sash health bonus increased to 10.
- Pink cape health bonus increased to 35.
- Red cape health bonus increased to 40.
- Red gloves health bonus increased to 10.
- Red sash health bonus increased to 15.
- Enchanted cape critical hit chance bonus decreased to 3%.

The accessory health bonuses stayed unchanged, while health numbers have gone up with combat changes, so they became less useful - which I am fixing now.

About enchanted cape - it was never meant to keep the 9% critical hit chance. It only made sense during the early stages of the game when it was - if I remember correctly - the only source of critical hit chance.

[h2]December 16[/h2]

Added the remaining overworld events.

As planned, there are 4 events:

- Fight 1-3 demons.
- Fight 1-3 rogues.
- Fight 1-3 guards of Locul or Triliths factions.
- Trade with a traveling merchant of Locul or Triliths factions.

There are 5 types of traveling merchants:

- Weapon merchants: Sell iron/silver maces, staves, beacons, swords, and bows.
- Armor merchants: Sell iron/silver body armor, leg armor, helmets.
- Supply merchants: Sell healing kits, healing ointments, crystalized aura, bottles.
- Material merchants: Sell iron, silver, alchemical silver, unstable pigments.
- Instruction merchants: Sell ability instructions.

Merchant inventories are randomized - for example, an armor merchant may have:

3 x Silver body armor
1 x Iron glyph hood

OR

2 x Light silver leg armor

OR

...



Rogue and demon events.

Anyway, another new thing is a merchant price modifier.
As the name suggests, this modifier increases the prices of items in the merchant's inventory.

This will be used to create interesting merchants and control the item economy.

For example, this is a new merchant in Eastern Trilith:



I have mentioned in other entries that teleportation spell instructions will be locked behind combat and exploration challenges.

This has not changed - this is simply an option for players who will fail to find or lose the original teleportation instructions.

That's why the modifier is 1000% for this merchant, the players are still meant to find the instructions in the world.

[h2]December 17[/h2]

Made finishing touches to Eir Meadows and uploaded version 0.5.5 on my Discord. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhupYdfz67I That's all for this entry, in the next one I'll be writing about Luma - Capital of the World, LOTLW's first city area, and my next goal!

Thank you for reading =]

In this entry: Quests!

[h2]November 17[/h2]

I've been working on the cutscene.

[h2]November 18[/h2]

The cutscene is finished for now.

Today I've been fixing various bugs with it. This was the first full workday in a while, I'm feeling better now.

[h2]November 19[/h2]

Today I was improving When Luck Runs Out - the first quest.

Here's a list of changes:

- Archer's equipment crate now contains an arc instead of a bow.
- Ria now moves to a more correct position when speaking with the player.
- Made minor improvements to quest's dialogues.
- Replaced old events with the new moment and encounter systems.
- Added an encounter: A rogue that offers to show the player a shortcut to Locul.
- The second rogue player meets is no longer aggressive.
- It will become aggressive if the player steals from the nearby crates. Stealing tutorial, kind of.
- Colored important parts of the quest log text.

The most important change is the encounter and moment systems.

In 0.5.0 and older versions, the encounters like the good rogue that gives the player iron helmet/gauntlets would start when the player would enter the encounter zone.

It wasn't possible to avoid the encounter and it would stop the gameplay until the player would go through the dialogue.

That's no longer the case: NPC encounters are now triggered by speaking with them, and non-NPC encounters start when the player interacts with what I call moments.

Here's an example of a moment:



It's another tool for my quest toolkit - I imagine I'll use a lot of these in the upcoming quests.

So that was another productive day, I'm getting back into the routine.

[h2]November 20[/h2]

Today I have started working on the second quest: "Unemployment Crisis", formerly "Wanted Dead".

"Wanted Dead" is now a part of the "Unemployment Crisis" - the quest is no longer just about being a bounty hunter.

With the new dialogues, the transition from clueless immigrant to an amateur bounty hunter should be smoother now.

Also, they provide a little bit of normalcy that - I believe - will make more dramatic quests further into the story feel more special by contrast.

[h2]November 22[/h2]

An incomplete workday, but "Unemployment Crisis" is even closer to being done.

[h2]November 23[/h2]

I'll have to rethink this format because I don't like showing quest progress, so I won't have anything to show at times. Hmm...

[h2]November 24[/h2]

I'm done with "Unemployment Crisis"!

Some non-spoiler progress - overhead icons:





Players will no longer need to guess if the character is interactive or not.

Anyway, since the quests are done, I'll be able to update the game again soon.

Just want to make several miscellaneous improvements first.

Today I have:

- Fixed missing shadows and missing building tile inside 2nd Strategic Fortification.
- Reduced bow damage, gave Archer equipment defense bonus.
- Renamed "Gold" to "Guldens". To not be confused with "Gold" as a material. Plus, more unique.
- Rogues now have 100 less health. To make it easier for the new players.
- Fixed bug: Having a full inventory will no longer destroy items inside loot containers.
- Reduced the amount of loot - the inventory won't fill up as fast now. It really was a problem.

[h2]November 25[/h2]

Today I have improved the "Arrow Wall" ability.



Now it hits everything in a large zone, so it's more reliable and - while harder to avoid - will no longer cause "Why did I got hit, I was standing in between the lines?!" confusion.

[h2]November 26[/h2]

Today I have:

- Improved introduction cutscene.
- Added "Ability ready" audio and visual hints.
- Fixed a few bugs.
- Nerfed silver arrow damage bonus because it was making bows overpowered.
- Graphically improved the overworld.



Now it has wood texture in the background - the idea is that the map is on a table.

Later I might add decorations like daggers, coins, coffee cups, and other items that should be on a Kayosian tavern's table =]

[h2]November 27[/h2]

Today I have updated the demo!

I've also done some writing for the quest that comes with the next demo update: "Wanted Mad".
It's going to be another smaller update, the only goal I have for it is adding that quest.

[h2]November 28[/h2]

Today I've done a bit more writing, but the majority of the day was spent making an area for the new quest.

Aside from quest stuff, it will contain several small iron ore rocks, loot containers, and three new enemy NPCs. Bonus content!

[h2]December 1[/h2]

Today I have spent the majority of the available time to rewrite the "Wanted Mad" script.
Wasn't satisfied with the first version - this often happens when I write, I keep rewriting until I'm happy with the results.

Also decided to rename the quest to "Cold Commands".

[h2]December 2[/h2]

Today I was continuing the work on the quest area.

[h2]December 3[/h2]

A productive day!

Implemented new items that are required for the quest, added NPCs to the quest area, implemented quest challenges, moved the quest dialogue text into the game, finished making the quest area...

Nearly done.

[h2]December 4[/h2]

Only minor improvements remain after today's work.



I've written a lot of dialogue for this quest, took a while to implement it all.

[h2]December 7[/h2]

The "Cold Commands" quest is finished!

Now I want to do a competitive shooter game style " weapon icon, ability icon " messages whenever a character is killed and then I'll start working on the massive Luma city update.

Unfortunately, the "Cold Commands" will not be a part of the demo.

It's not an early game quest and I have made a decision to only include early game content in the demo.

The unabridged game versions will still be available on my Discord server, but the public demo will remain pretty much as it is.

So, that's this entry! I'm going to write more about the Luma city content in the next one.

Thanks for reading <3

This update adds an introduction cutscene and improves the available story quests.



Other changes:

- Improved Arrow Wall ability.
- Added the overworld system.
- Added Deserter Flat: An overworld area between Eastern Trilith and Moonrise Desert.
- Improved the start of the game: Fixed bugs, improved graphics.
- Gave interactive characters overhead icons.
- Archer's equipment crate now contains an arc instead of a bow.
- Ria now moves to a more correct position when speaking with the player.
- Made minor improvements to quest's dialogues.
- Replaced quest events with the new moment and encounter systems.
- The second rogue player meets is no longer aggressive.
- It will become aggressive if the player steals from the nearby crates. Stealing tutorial, kind of.
- Colored important parts of the quest log text.
- Fixed missing shadows and missing building tile inside 2nd Strategic Fortification.
- Reduced bow damage.
- Renamed "Gold" to "Guldens". To not be confused with "Gold" as a material. Plus, more unique.
- Rogues now have 100 less health. To make it easier for the new players.
- Fixed bug: Having a full inventory will no longer destroy items inside loot containers.
- Reduced the amount of loot - the inventory won't fill up as fast now. It really was a problem.

In the next update: Third story quest!

Have fun!

In this entry: Overworld, new story content, and changes to the development plan.

[h2]November 3[/h2]

Let's get right into it!

As I mentioned in the previous entry, I have to change the development plan in order to complete the game faster.

I want to have version 1.0 in early 2022/late 2021.

That means that I have to drop more content. The content that takes the most time is areas. I've dropped a lot of areas already but just making fewer areas won't help this time.

If I removed more areas, I'd have to decrease the "size" of a story as well.
Can't have a global conspiracy without areas from all over the world.

Luckily, I came up with a solution: Instead of removing areas, simplify them!
In my game's case, the areas that aren't absolutely necessary to the game's story will be moved to an overworld.

This is inspired by an overworld in Wastelands 2.

Without an overworld, in order to let player access areas, I have to make areas between those areas as well, even if they aren't necessary for the story.

For example, I don't really need Eir Meadows for the story, but I have to make that area because otherwise, players won't be able to get to the city of Luma. Which I absolutely need.

There are definitely other solutions, but I feel like the overworld is the most elegant one.
It keeps the story intact.

I'm also changing my approach to developing the story. Previously the idea was to create all of the version 1.0 areas, then populate them with quests.
After making the Eastern Trilith area, I don't think that's a good idea anymore.
It's better to have a clear goal when designing an area.

So now the priority is the story - I'll only make areas that are required for the quests.

And so the new short-term plan looks like this:

Release the new demo version.Today I have already done some progress with the overworld system.



[h2]November 4[/h2]



[h2]November 5[/h2]

Improved the overworld graphically:



I'm now happy with how it looks, going to work on the introduction cutscene now.

[h2]November 7[/h2]

I've been wrapping some things up. Now that it's done, I'm back to working 100% on LOTLW.

So, yeah, introduction cutscene.
After the player starts the game and creates a character, the cutscene will play.

First, it'll introduce the players to the game's universe: Magic, the Linked Worlds, Order Tempest, tainted lead, all the cool stuff =]

After that, you'll see for the first time the portal malfunction!

I will not be sharing the cutscene until after the next demo is released to keep things exciting. That means the entry will be a bit quiet for at least a few days.

[h2]November 8[/h2]

So after a few hours of work, I decided to not make an introduction to the game's universe.
It's quite wordy, probably not required for the player to understand the story, and I really struggled to make it work.

The idea was to show text and have simple animations that would illustrate the text:

"Several things had to happen before it became possible for your life to change this way."

"Year ???: Discovery of magic."
"It happened so long ago that no one knows anymore where or when the first spells were cast."

[Glyps appear around the image of a world and then fade away]
[The camera moves away from the image]

"Year 774: Invention of the World Gates."
"The invention lead to the emergence of something that never existed before: A network of worlds."

[Camera moves to a group of worlds]
[Gate icons appear on them and lines connect them]
[Camera moves, more and more connected worlds enter the view]

"Year 787: Linked world wars"
"A cascade of conflicts that scarred the worlds. Something had to be done."

[Worlds shatter]
[Lines become broken]

"Year 864: Creation of Order Tempest",
"And something was done. Order Tempest, an organization to enforce peace was formed."

[Order Tempest flag icons appear near the world images]

"Year 884: Legalization of the tainted lead use"
"But to be effective Order Tempest had to gain the power to isolate worlds that did not want peace."
"Fortunately to the Order, the alchemists have created the tainted lead, a material that has teleportation disrupting effect."

[More worlds with the Order's flags]

"Year 928: Beginning of Kayos lockdown"
"Kayos was the first of the worlds to become disconnected from the Linked Worlds."

[Camera moves to the world of Kayos image]
[World linking animation plays]

"It was colonized because of useful crystals that turned out to have the nasty property of making people insane."
"The Order was forced to use the tainted lead and Kayos became the Locked World."

[The link lines disappear]
[Camera moves away to an image of a world with a gate]

"Year 1106: Your arrival to the Locked World."
"Figuratively all the stars in the Universe had to align for that to happen."
"You managed to get your hands on a voucher for something that was called seal charms."
"You were told that you can exchange it in the world of Ocia."
"All you needed to do is to use the World Gate and walk a bit."

[Camera stops]
[Screen fades to black]

I think I'll explain this in different ways - lore books inside the game and dialogues with NPCs, so nothing will be lost.

I was excited about making this cutscene, so I am a little disappointed. But considering how hard it was going to be to make text synchronize with the animations, make the animations, etc., it's probably the right call.

Not to mention that asking players to do so much reading so early in the game is not the best idea. The dialogue with the immigrant greeter is already a bit much.

So, yeah, I choose to be okay with this.
Going to take this as another lesson in not doing things, which is difficult for me, hah.

[h2]November 10[/h2]

Did a lot of progress with the portal malfunction cutscene. Nothing to show yet, even if I wanted to spoil it.

It's going well, this cutscene is working, unlike the previous one.

[h2]November 11[/h2]

More progress! Should be done soon.

The biggest news today is that the game has 700 wishlists now! Thank you =]

[h2]November 12[/h2]

I think I was working on graphics this time.

[h2]November 13[/h2]

Today I was working on cutscene's animations and audio.
Most of it works now, I could even probably say that it's done, but it still doesn't click for me.

[h2]November 14[/h2]

Wasn't at home, no progress. Just going to post this entry since it's about time I've done that.

So far November has been a non-stop challenge, it's one of those dark times in development when weeks fly by and progress is too damn slow.

Got to say that I've been feeling less happy than usually and that's reflected in the amount of time I was able to work.

Will have to power though it. The improved plan and reduced content will help a lot.

Anyway, that is it.



Thanks for reading and until next time!

In this entry: Character creation UI redesign, demo update release.

[h2]Devtober 20[/h2]

Decided to redesign the character creation UI because it was too busy. I was suggested to split the UI into two pages, which was an excellent suggestion - this is why feedback is so important!

With two pages, I could arrange buttons in a more pleasant way.

[h2]Devtober 21[/h2]





Okay, now it's visually finished.

Besides doing that, I also implemented the "Random talents" button, began working on the "Random name" button, added confirmation pop-ups for canceling, and finishing the character creation.

[h2]Devtober 22[/h2]

I was fixing the PC.

[h2]Devtober 23[/h2]

Got my PC back, but only managed to work a bit on character name generation before I ran out of time.

[h2]Devtober 24[/h2]

The "Random name" button is now implemented and character creation UI is now linked - meaning it can be used without a mouse.

What's left is opening the UI when the player starts a new game and adding informational tooltips about talent point spending and classes.

This wasn't a full workday either, unfortunately - distractions and chores kept me away from the project.

But hopefully, this development drought will be over soon - I have no distractions planned for the foreseeable future and I'm excited to start working on the next big thing for Light of the Locked World =]

[h2]Devtober 25[/h2]



With tooltips for the UI implemented, character creation is now done!

Now I need to fix a bunch of bugs and implement some sort of analytics so I would get a better insight into how players are playing the game.

Maybe I could even get reports of the crashes that happen to the players - that would help a ton to get the game free of game-breaking bugs.

[h2]Devtober 27[/h2]

Nevermind, I won't be implementing analytics.
Getting feedback naturally is nice and oldschool anyway =]

With that out of the way, I jumped into version 0.5.0 polishing - I'm hoping to release it this week.

Fixed several complicated graphical glitches, made NPC AI smarter, and MADE GAME LAG HORRIBLY AAAAAA.

[h2]Devtober 28[/h2]

I have fixed the lag and finished improving AI.



This is how AI sees the environment now: Green is where it can move the character.

Besides that, I've fixed another batch of bugs, improved loot tables again, and made the Eastern Trilith area more enjoyable - during testing I've found out that there are a bit too many traps and that enemies are too difficult, so I've corrected that.

[h2]Devtober 30[/h2]



I've launched an update on this day.

The following days were emotionally difficult for me. After spending so much time working on the Eastern Trilith area, I have realized that Light of the Locked World as planned will take a lot of years to finish.

So I was in a very bad mood. But after doing a lot of resting and thinking, I've got a solution to reduce the development time.

I'm going to write about that and the improved development plan in the next entry.

So thanks for reading, and until then!

This demo update adds a whole new area - Eastern Trilith, tier 2 equipment for all classes, combat visual improvements, dozens of small additions, and bug fixes. I've done a lot in these four months!

Watch the trailer:

[previewyoutube=1fGLzDeCUiI;full][/previewyoutube]

If you do end up playing the demo, please share your thoughts about the direction the game is going, report bugs, etc.

The feedback is - as always - very important.

The information about what's in the next update is coming with LOTLW Devblog #24.

Have fun =]

In this entry: Character creation, bug fixes, Devtober, competitive multiplayer, and me getting sick, which explains why I didn't publish an entry last week.



[h2]Devtober 4[/h2]

Started the day by fixing a few more bugs, then watched videos for my Devtober challenge.

One of the bugs that I fixed was here since I have added the interior system - and it was implemented last October, pretty crazy!

Now that the bug amount has been reduced to acceptable levels, I have started working on the small improvements - going to do XP, gathering, and loot reworks.

The loot rework is done:



Seems pretty good - every container contains something useful, but it's also not too rewarding.

[h2]Devtober 6[/h2]

Today I have been tweaking XP and gathering.

Previously XP was balanced through class XP modifiers.
For example: Warrior XP = 20 raw Warrior XP * Warrior class XP modifier of 0.5

The modifiers and XP were all over the place, so I've set all modifiers to 1.

I also increased the XP rate for combat classes - because NPCs no longer respawn, it's easy to run out of NPCs to train combat on, so fights must give more XP.

For gathering, I was changing numbers a lot. I wanted to make the gathering more consistent - for example, it wasn't uncommon to get 1 iron ore from large iron rock and that just sucks.

I also didn't like that gathering was creating a lot of redundant game messages, didn't like how junk items were distributed, etc.

After a day of work, things work better now. A few more improvements and I'll be able to start working on character creation, which is the next big task on my list.

[h2]Devtober 7[/h2]

Began today's hunt for tutorials by trying to find a visual effects tutorial for pixel art. Soon I have realized that finding something that would work for Light of the Locked World's graphics and animation styles would be very difficult.

I tried to create an animation style that works with the graphics style - very stiff, blocky, no blur, etc. basically a 'bad animation' style. I suppose it's possible to make it less... that... by adding more frames, but the game will take about a year to finish if I'm lucky, so I should minimize the time costs as much as possible.

After failing to find an applicable VFX tutorial for LOTLW, I decided to learn a few things about coding and that was that.

No visible progress for the Devtober again, oof.

Back to actual game development - today I have:

- Slightly improved Sphere, basic Mage attack ability graphics.
- Improved production devices: Now they convert all resources instantly in 3 seconds.
- Fixed bug: It would say that the player is stealing when they weren't mechanically.
- Made combat music more stable - now it doesn't keep fading out.
- Made final improvements to gathering.

After that, I began working on character creation!



This is just a concept, nowhere near it yet.

Besides the usual features like buttons to rename, randomize, and graphically customize the character there are options that impact gameplay.

1)
Talents

Assign talent points to customize class experience rates.

For example, if 5 talent points are invested in Gatherer class, the player character will gain +100% Gatherer experience from all sources:

- 0 talent points: 0% XP
- 1 talent point: 100% XP
- 2 talent points: 125% XP
- 3 talent points: 150% XP
- 4 talent points: 175% XP
- 5 talent points: 200% XP

The talent system should help balance the game by letting players invest points into classes that are difficult to gain XP in and let players lock classes - this should create unique challenges.

2)
Main class

The player is able to choose their character's favorite class. That class will get various small benefits.

E.g.: The player will only be able to equip a unique Mage class weapon if their character main class is Mage.

[h2]Devtober 8[/h2]

Today I did some work on character creation UI - nothing to show still - and did new area testing.
Found a bunch of bugs so I'll be fixing them tomorrow.

If I'll be able to - I think I'm going to be sick, so might be skipping a few days.

[h2]Devtober 9[/h2]

Yup, I've caught a cold.
Today I fixed a few bugs and found a ton of new ones thanks to a long playtesting session.

Wanted to do something doing before getting down with the sickness.

[h2]Devtober 10[/h2]

(Oh, ah, ah, ah, ah)

[h2]Devtober 11[/h2]

Recovering. Watched my friends play LOTLW, was really awesome.

[h2]Devtober 12[/h2]

Just going to keep another day to continue recovering. Going to be hard, really want to get back into development =]

Finally uploaded competitive multiplayer footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMgIxF0dH6Q It has a lot of problems, but it does work - which I guess is really *sick* considering that this is functioning splitscreen PVP.

[h2]Devtober 13[/h2]

Made game run 0.3 milliseconds faster! That's it. Still not feeling strong enough to work longer than an hour.

[h2]Devtober 14[/h2]

Finally a full-ish workday! I was making a character creator.

It already can be used to change the appearance so it will be finished soon. The hardest part will be creating a text input system for a custom name, but I'll manage.



It's not much yet, but I am very excited about building this - the game will be a full RPG when I'm done =]

Anyway, today's Devtober video was about AI.

It got me thinking about AI in LOTLW:

1)

I could probably spawn random rogue/demon groups who would sometimes attack towns. Town guards could patrol outside the town as well. The "Good AI have goals". If I could pull it off, which really isn't that hard thanks to all those AI systems I have already implemented, it would create some interesting moments.

2)

When it will be possible to use consumables in battle, NPCs should bark something like "I need healing" before using a healing consumable so the player could react to that. "Good AI barks".

I'm also thinking about letting NPCs level up and showing a game message whenever that happens. E.g.: "Guard captain Aden has become a level 25 Warrior."

Another idea is to show kill messages that are common in multiplayer shooter games - e.g.: "Player A > weapon icon > Player B" - so the player would know that NPCs are fighting somewhere in the area.

This would make the game's world feel much more alive.

[h2]Devtober 15[/h2]



Getting there!

[h2]Devtober 16[/h2]



Today I was implementing character naming.

The reason why I'm not done with it is that I wasted a lot of time working on a virtual keyboard for text input.



Renaming UI mock-up.

The 50 of square buttons - virtual keyboard - would have been used for letters A-Z, numbers 0-9, and a few symbols.

But yeah, decided to not go for it because this only solves a minor inconvenience for PC players using a controller - with the current solution they will have to type their character name using a keyboard for like half a minute.

Not worth my time.

[h2]Devtober 17[/h2]



It's done visually.

I still need to:

- Implement the "Random name" button.
- Implement the "Random talents" button.
- Add tooltips for talent buttons.
- Improve the name generator.
- Make creator UI open when starting the game.

This will happen in the next entry.

To end this entry on something exciting - I have postponed/canceled Spellscarred Desert and that means the updated demo will be released soon - next week or the week after that.

I hope that is as exciting to you as it is to me =]

Thanks for reading and until next time!

[h2]September 28[/h2]

This week I'm hoping to finish the Eastern Trilith area, clean up the accumulated bugs, and do a few reworks - class XP, combat experience, and loot.



The week started with GDWC launching a new vote round which includes LOTLW - exciting!
The results should be mentioned further in this entry.

Anyway, today I have been working on small features.

1)

I have fixed bugs with banisher dialogue. Banisher is meant to take the demon pearls from the player and give coin pouches, and the whole thing was filled with bugs.

Negative gold values, "Give all pearls" working like "Give one pearl", dialogue accessing wrong inventories, ugh.

But it's in the past now.

2)

I have implemented the silk grass gathering.
Now it's possible to equip a new tool - iron sickle - and use Gather ability to get raw silk grass from silk grass plants.



There are only a few of those in the game right now - most of them will be in the upcoming Eir Meadows area.

3)

I have filled the matter kilns of the new area.
There are 5 of them:

- V1: Silver and iron weapon recipes.
- W3: Silver and iron armor recipes.
- L6: Processed crafting material recipes. E.g.: Silver ore > Silver > Silver glyphs.
- R6: Efficient armor and weapon recipes. This kiln is in the abandoned fortification.
- T5: Another kiln in the fortification. Claymore, beacon, arc, and amulet recipes.

These will be fun to use and discover!

4)

I have added the new teleportation spells!

- Desert Gate: Teleports to Locul.
- Battlefield Gate: Teleports to the battlefield between 2nd Strategic Fortification and Eastern Trilith.
- Long Street Gate: Teleports to the Long Street in the town of Eastern Trilith.

Desert Gate and Battlefield Gate instructions are hidden in the Eastern Trilith area, while Long Street Gate instructions will be found in treasure chests of Spellscarred Desert.

Teleportation spell instructions will be rewards for exploration and combat - unlocking every teleportation spell should be like a small quest.

It's inspired by Gothic 3 Forsaken Gods and RuneScape. These games make unlocking fast travel methods very rewarding.

[h2]September 29[/h2]

The day was full of interruptions, so I didn't work as much as intended.
What I managed to do is add drying racks and make the rock grinder in Locul work.

Rock grinders and drying racks are what I internally call "Production devices".
They turn materials into different materials.

Drying racks turn raw silk grass into dry silk grass, and rock grinder turns junk rocks from mining into ore. Pretty simple.

Production devices should make crafting more varied, more grounded in the world's reality, and they are interesting assets to decorate areas with.



The joke is that I have implemented grinding today. Literally =]

[h2]September 30[/h2]

Today I have:

- Made some adjustments to battlefield NPC placement.
- Added the last of Eastern Trilith assets: Door to Spellscarred Desert.
- Fixed many bugs.



The Eastern Trilith area is now officially complete!

[h2]Devtober[/h2]



It's October again and I'm joining the Devtober!
Many people seem to choose the challenge of working on their projects every day of October, but it's no challenge for me.

I confess that I'd rather spend 10 hours coming up with my own solution through trial and error rather than watch a 5-minute tutorial.

Would be great if my trial and error gave good results - unfortunately, I often feel like I'm reinventing the wheel AND not doing it well.

So I am going to try to do as many tutorials as I can during October - ideally for something I can quickly implement into Light of the Locked World for visible results.

[h2]Devtober 1[/h2]

After 7 years of game development, I still don't know how to implement sliders. That's embarrassing! Sliders are so useful - everything I tried really doesn't replace them - and my own trial and error sliders feel awkward to use.

So I have followed an excellent tutorial by HeartBeast and it's done!



I am liberated from no-slider-hell! So happy!

It did take me the rest of the day to fully integrate the sliders into my UI system so it's a bit scary. I don't really want to only do tutorials. Might have to change the plans that if it becomes a trend.

[h2]Devtober 2[/h2]

Today I have done a tutorial about a 3rd-party text renderer for GameMaker and now I can do this:



Big thanks to DragoniteSpam and JujuAdams!

Now that I know how to do it, I'm not sure where to use it, but I guess I'll figure out eventually.

Today I have also fixed several complex bugs, the game is becoming playable again =]

[h2]Devtober 3[/h2]

The day started with GDWC results: Light of the Locked World - 3rd place.
Thanks to all who have voted for the game!

It's not a big achievement, but I am very happy that the game has participated in the championship - I've got some views, new followers, and proof that my reach isn't that small.

It's great.

Today's Devtober progress:



I've learned a lot about shaders and implemented a saturation slider!

Thanks to Gaming Reverends channel!

I'm hoping to do more of his tutorials in the future - shaders are a very powerful tool for making graphics and I want to become good at using them.

That's all for this entry, until next time!

Voting for Light of the Locked World is going to end soon - this is your last to help our game to win this round of Game Development World Championship!

Vote here: https://thegdwc.com
(No registration needed)

Thanks <3

Hey all,

Light of the Locked World is participating in Game Development World Championship: It would be really awesome if we could make the game win this round.

To vote for the game, simply go to the GDWC website and click the "Vote" button under the game logo.

Link: https://thegdwc.com/

Thank you in advance <3

If you're not convinced, check out a trailer I made for the upcoming demo update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fGLzDeCUiI Until next time!

[h2]September 18[/h2]

I have started working on demons!

I have mentioned demons many times before - they are aggressive and indestructible flesh beings powered by magic.

Magic in the game's universe is aura-based. Everything in this universe emits aurae - and they can be manipulated to alter reality.

Mages use physical and mental glyphs - mental images - to create the specific aurae required to produce desired results. This is what spells are - a sequence of actions and glyphs.

It's possible to cast a spell that will a cast spell itself and loop forever consuming aurae of the world.

Demons are the result of incredibly complex spell loops and it is why they are indestructible:
You can destroy the flesh form of a demon, but a spell loop will keep going and eventually recreate it.

So, yeah, I've known what they are for a long time. I only needed to figure out how they would look.



Eyeless demons.
The first concept of the demons. Demons with wrong eyes - wrong amount, color, size, etc. - are common, so the initial idea was to make demons without eyes.

I also made them look unlike animals so it would be easier to animate them.

But in the end, I decided that I can do better than that.



Antler demons.
Idea #1: Bony antlers. Usually, demons have horns - giving them antlers would be pretty unique.
Idea #2: Eyeless creatures look kind of boring. Give them two eyes to avoid wrong eye cliche.

Couldn't go with it because no matter what I did, eyes looked weird and antlers had contrast problems with high-value backgrounds.



Cyclopean demons.
Just wanted to see how it would look, didn't plan to do it because of how unoriginal the look is.



Masked demons.
These are fun! The winning idea.

These demons cover their faceless heads with masks. They assemble the masks themselves from stolen and scavenged materials.

The problem with other demon concepts was that they lacked personality and didn't blend well with other things in the game's world.

Masked demons don't have these problems and - again - it's just such a fun idea! I had to go with it.

After I figured out the look, it was time to start coding.

I'll have to make changes to pretty much every part of the character system to make non-humanoid characters work. For example, I want them to use a simpler animation system to make implementing a lot easier.

Only changed a few lines of code today, it took a while to figure the demon look.

[h2]September 19[/h2]

Today I was coding demon systems.

For example, because demons don't use items like humanoid characters, I had to make a system that allows me to set custom stats for characters.

There's a lot of automation when it comes to setting stats, so I had to disable all that to keep initial demon stats intact.

The result:



It may look like a shovel, but it actually is a demon =]
As you can see it can attack and it has a custom set of abilities.

Demons look like that because at the moment the variables that control the appearance of characters are set to -1 for demons.

[h2]September 20[/h2]

Today I have worked on demon graphics.
I have made animations, masks, implemented custom animation system I've mentioned earlier, etc, and demons are now done!



Suprizingly, implementing a new enemy type only took three days.

[h2]September 22[/h2]

A rather boring day - I was fixing demon bugs and trying to implement interior shadows.

[h2]September 23[/h2]

This day was full of interruptions but when I managed to get to LOTLW development, I managed to implement most of the NPCs - town guards, merchants, prop characters, and rogues outside the town.

[h2]September 24[/h2]

Today I was fixing various bugs and continued implementing NPCs.



People!



New merchant's inventory - this merchant sells consumables that are supposed to restore aura. Something went wrong though. The game is very buggy at the moment - that always happens towards the end of developing a large chunk of content.

Going to have to start fixing things soon.

Important Eastern Trilith town NPCs:

- Legate. Sells faction items and a silver claymore to friends of Triliths faction.
- Armor merchant. Sells T1 and T2 body and leg armor, helmets.
- Aura merchant. Sells crystalized aura.
- Material merchant. Sells T1 and T2 materials.
- Banisher. Bring demon pearls to a banisher to get gold and Triliths reputation.

Demon pearls are the new items that will be dropped by demons. They aren't just a source of Triliths reputation - it will also be possible to equip them. They will be like magic orbs but will increase curse chance instead of critical chance.

[h2]Experience rework[/h2]

I can't sleep, can't stop thinking about the game.
Let's see if writing them down will help me fall asleep. Might as well add more content to the entry.

Recently I've become dissatisfied with the game - defeating enemies instead of killing them just isn't satisfying and enables grinding.

I think I am going to remove the entire defeating idea and make NPCs fight players to death.
Once they will die, they won't respawn.

This means the world will start feeling pretty empty after the player goes through the area killing enemies, and I don't like that.

The solution is to add a few non-hostile NPCs in each combat zone who don't have to be killed.

Another problem is that there will be no way to farm enemies. Once they are dead, the items they own are gone from the game. Because NPCs can take items, and because players drop items on death, this makes deaths very punishing.

A small price to pay for a more rewarding experience. Might even make the game more engaging by raising the stakes. If what, I can implement a system that allows players to negotiate with the enemies and buy taken items back.

This also introduces a risk of breaking quests and other sequences if the player loses the required items on death.
I'll have to be very careful with quest items.

This 'experience rework' should help reinforce what the game is supposed to accomplish - satisfying exploration, immersive mechanics, and 99% grind-free gameplay.

Yes, this is what circulates in my head most nights.
Sometimes I want to improve my game so badly that I can't fall asleep, so I don't get enough rest, and can't work as much. Which increases the hunger for development further.

Vicious cycle!

Anyway, 25th September here I go!

[h2]September 25[/h2]

I spent the day making a trailer for the upcoming update.

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fGLzDeCUiI[h2]September 26[/h2]

Today I was implementing new items.

The highlight of that is the iridescent hood:



This powerful item will be a reward for doing Spellscarred Desert - I'll write about it in future entries.

I have also implemented two new keys, which are needed for Spellscarred Desert, demon pearls, tier 2 consumables, raw silk grass material, and instructions for the new teleportation spells.

To finish the Eastern Trilith area I still need to:

- Implement banisher.
- Make a new asset: Door to Spellscarred Desert.
- Replace one group of enemies in the battlefield area with a powerful demon.
- Make demons drop pearls.
- Add raw silk grass gathering.
- Add drying racks that turn raw silk grass into dry silk grass.
- Add new teleportation spells and hide their instructions in the new area.

Once all of that is done, I will start fixing bugs and making small changes.

I will:

- Do an XP rework because currently there are problems with XP gaining.
- Do a loot rework because I am still not satisfied with what items the containers contain.
- Improve the NPC name generator.
- Fix the good old building depth bug.

After that, I will implement character creation, options for colorblind people, player data tracking, and add Spellscarred Desert.

Then it will be the time to release the 0.5.0 update.

So that's the plan =]

Thanks for reading and until next time!

[h2]September 9[/h2]

Started the day by doing the usual: Placing tiles and assets.

Finished making the meadow edge and after that jumped into making Second Strategic Fortification.

It's the remaining 1/3rd of the new area.

The fortification was built by Berelem during the War to halt the Kingdom's advance to the south - it's one of the biggest military installations in Kayos.

After the War, most of the fortification's crew was moved to other places. Later a swarm of demons roamed in from the burning ruins of the Fallen Kingdom and the fortification has been taken over by them.

Since then it was not reclaimed - doing so would require too many resources, plus it's not that important in the current times.

Anyway, I spent most of the day making new assets:



Here they are in action - exterior:



And interior:



[h2]September 10[/h2]

Today's progress:



Living quarters are now complete!

What's left is the main hall, mess hall, training hall, armory, commander's office, manufacturing, and map room.

[h2]September 11[/h2]

Today I was a bit busy with non-game development related stuff, so I couldn't work as much.

Still, I made-and-placed-new-tiles-and-assets, finished one of the rooms, and began working on the main hall.



The wall banners bear symbols of Berelem.

The symbol of the tree gold coins is from a popular story about Berelem. It is said that the land on which the city was founded was bought from Erquarian colonists for only that much.

[h2]September 14[/h2]

Wasn't at home for two days because I was in an event.

But now I'm back and I have already done the main hall, mess hall, and training hall.

Here's how training and mess halls look:



[h2]September 16[/h2]

After taking a day off, I've returned fully rested and managed to work the full day.

The fortification is now complete and I am already working on the final pieces of the area.



Map room.



The final look of the entrance.



Rogue camp behind the fortification.

For some reason, I love the lonely atmosphere of remote and neglected places - the locations behind the fortification are just that.

Currently, I only need to make an archer training site and the iron mine to be graphically done with the Eastern Trilith area.

Soon I'll be working on the characters and gameplay of the area. I need to add a new enemy type - demons, add door unlocking mechanic for the door inside the fortification, optimize spike traps.

[h2]September 17[/h2]



The iron mine.



Legate's office now has a clock spire!

The clock isn't animated yet - I still haven't coded something that would let me have animated elements on buildings. Yes, I absolutely NEED an animated clock.

Anyway, all tiles and assets are placed now.

I have also done some optimization work today - spike traps no longer spawn hundreds of damage objects attempting to deal damage to whoever is on them and prop objects like rocks are now deactivated when not in the player's view.

Hooray to a slight FPS boost!

I'm very close to finishing the Eastern Trilith area now - unless demons are harder to make than I anticipated and I'm actually three weeks away from the completion.

<<< Epic foreshadowing >>>

That's all for this entry, thanks for reading, and until next time =]

[h2]September 1[/h2]



A tiny bit of the battlefield is now done!

Today I was mostly placing tiles and correcting the no man's land layout.

I also made barbed wire fence assets.



Barbed wire fence objects are the first of the removable objects, they can be removed by the players creating permanent shortcuts.

This will not be possible for a while though, I'm saving it for the 8th class update.

[h2]September 2[/h2]

Spent the day placing everything and no man's land is done!

Got lucky making some lovely locations like this small meadow near the mage camp:



Heavily shelled area:



Center ruins:



[h2]September 3[/h2]

After yesterday's successes, I decided to make an easy day for myself, so I've done some educational reading and fixed a few stupid bugs.

For example, the quest used to not give XP reward because I just kind of forgot to make it give XP.
Me looking at code: "Yes, it all makes sense now!"

Another example:

switch(faction)
{
case faction_neutral:
case faction_demon:

change_reputation = false;

break;

default:

change reputation = false;
}

if change_reputation == true
{
reputation[faction] += reputation_amount;
}

"For some reason, it's no longer possible to gain or lose faction reputation. Hmm..."

So that was fun to fix =]

[h2]September 4[/h2]

Today I continued the clean-up work.

Spent a lot of time trying to fix various issues with teleportation. Had to rework some parts of the area code because turned out that it's not functioning properly while there are two areas active.

For the context, because the game has a local multiplayer option, the game can have two areas active at the same time - so player 1 and player 2 can be at the separate areas.

A lot of the systems around it weren't tested before because until recently there was only one area.

Anyway, that's all fixed now.

Currently, the Eastern Trilith area is 60% done: All I need to do now is make the second strategic fortification and small places in between the town, the battlefield, and the fortification.

Here are those places in between:

1)
The meadow edge.
It is to the west from the battlefield, where the road goes to Eir Meadows.
Looks like I will have to make at least some of what is required for the meadow biome.

2)
A silver mine.
It is to the east from the battlefield. It will have a lot of silver rocks and no enemies.

3)
A rogue camp.
To the south from the silver mine.
A camp of high-level rogues featuring lots of loot containers.

4)
The spike fields and an abandoned fort.
To the north from the silver mine.
An abandoned fort will be the first thing the players see when entering the Eastern Trilith area from Moonrise Desert and the spike fields will be what they will need to cross to get into the battlefield and places beyond it.

5)
An iron mine.
In the northeast corner on the area, behind the fortification.
This mine will have more even more ore rocks than the silver mine - it's one of the rewards players will get for traversing the treacherous second strategic fortification.

All of this should take no longer than a day to put together.

So, here it goes...

[h2]September 5[/h2]



Rogue camp.



Abandoned fort.



Mine.

Got distracted, so I didn't finish the other small areas - that's for the other day.

[h2]September 7[/h2]

Started the day by finishing making the spike fields location:



After that, I've done some of the boring tile placing work, now the south-eastern corner of the area is ready to be made into the iron mine.

Then - because I couldn't delay it any longer - I have started working on meadow edge.
I was reluctant to start working on it because the meadow biome is probably the hardest to make of the four.

It requires various plant assets and they have to be animated - it took me like two hours to make two large plant assets.

Currently the meadow edge looks like this:



Pretty happy with it and I'm not even finished - this should be good =]

Well, that's all for this entry, thank you for reading, and until next time!

[h2]August 25[/h2]

Started the day by placing the tiles that create shadows. All buildings in the town now properly drop shadows. Also fixed several problems with the tiles and made new shadow tile for giant diagonal walls.

After that, I made the steppe biome rocks.



They are recolored desert rocks, nothing fancy.

Since I was making rocks anyway, I have implemented silver ore rocks and a system that prevents characters from mining rocks if their Gatherer level is lower than the resource level.

Now there's a good reason to gain XP in Gatherer class: Level 11 of it is required to gain ore from silver rocks.

After I was done with rocks, I have started decorating the town with the new steppe grass assets.

Some parts of the town are now 100% finished!



Very happy with how that looks =]

After running out of places where I could put grasses, I started making ruined clay brick wall pieces.



Still want to make a few more because the battlefield zone will have lots of them. But that's for the other day.

[h2]August 26[/h2]

Started the day by making three more clay brick ruin pieces.

After that, I made a memorial statue:



"Sorrow"

The plaque says:

The War
279-286

I want to add statues and monuments in every larger town and city - something about that is very cool, plus it has to be a very powerful worldbuilding tool alongside making locations at least a little more unique.

The statue square required vertical benches, so I also made a few of those.

Was at home only for a couple of hours, so that's all of the progress today.

[h2]August 27[/h2]

Today I was polishing the town.

I started by adding minor details like protrusions to houses and placing more assets to the town.

Then I fixed a minor color issue with the new rock assets and made new giant walls for the town entrance.



After that, I made more assets for the town - flags, signs, decorations, and iron doors.



Spent an hour of so adding them to the town - now it only needs NPCs and some extra content to be finished!

But NPCs will come last - tomorrow I'm hoping to start working on the battlefield zone!

Today's screenshots:



The owner of that white house seems to be trying to make a garden. But - kings and queens! - that's a lot of rocks!



Center of the town and a trilith.

[h2]August 28[/h2]

Today I started working on steppe biome pits. I need them for mines and battlefield trenches. The pit tiles themselves are almost done, all I need to do is make shadows for them.



Yep, that's alpha!

Unfortunately, that's all progress today - lost several hours of work again.
I hope I'll get a full workday before the end of this entry, which I guess is just tomorrow.

[h2]August 29[/h2]

Pits and pit shadows are done!

Time for...



No man's land!

This part of the area will have:

- Trenches and magical explosion craters.
- War chests, loot containers that may contain silver equipment.
- Traps: Arrow launchers and iron spikes.
- Strong and weak enemies.
- Various battlefield assets: Broken military equipment, barbed wire fences, etc.

To make things interesting, there will be three ways to cross the no man's land:

Long way:
It will take a while to reach Eastern Trilith going this way, but it's a safe way - players will only encounter low-level enemies here.

Short way A:
Going this way will get you to Eastern Trilith very quickly - but this way is full traps.
It will be challenging to use this way without getting hit by arrows from launchers or iron spikes.

Short way B:
This short way will have multiple high-level enemies in a narrow passage between trenches.

Having different ways to get to the same place lets players make meaningful decisions during an otherwise boring task of moving between locations.

Plus, it's always fun to return to the area after a while and see that a section that used to give you trouble - E.g.: Short way B - is no longer a problem thanks to your new skills and items. Rewarding!

Anyway, I have started making the zone by marking where the ways would be:



Then I have placed trenches:



I have ended the workday after adding iron spike traps and automatic arrow launchers for the short path A:



Don't like how these spikes look, so I'll have to improve them in some way.

[h2]August 31[/h2]

Today I continued making no man's land.

Short way A is now finished gameplay-wise:



This is not easy to do consistently and I hope it will be fun for the players to challenge themselves with this small puzzle.

After figuring out short way A, I have started working on battlefield assets:



Tomorrow I'm planning to make the rest of the needed assets and begin polishing the zone - but that will go into the next entry.

That's is all for now, thanks for reading =]

[h2]August 16[/h2]

Spent the day polishing clay brick architecture tileset, adding new assets, and placing tiles.
Did some work on the Eastern Trilith town, it's slowly coming together.





Made giant wall assets. They will be extremely useful for defining the area borders. These are the walls seen on the world map.





In other news: The game has hit 600 wishlists.



[h2]August 18[/h2]

More tile placing!

This time I was focusing on the bastion part of the area.



This is the biggest building I've ever made, it's quite exciting.

Its size is about 1/3 of the first area!

I've decided to call the bastion "Second strategic fortification" because it has that cold military ring to it.

Other ideas were "Ber Bastion" - it was Berelem fortification during the War - and something high fantasy/Lord of the Rings sounding, e.g.: "Adzenlark".

Anyway, now that most of the basic tiles are added and everything is in the intended places I'll begin the next phase of Eastern Trilith development - I'll be placing the assets that actually make things look good.

[h2]August 19[/h2]

Today I was continuing the work on the town.

Started by making the ground look nicer.

Step 1: Placing lots of rock tiles.



Step 2: Erasing rock tiles where they intersect with different ground tiles.





That's better!

Next, I have placed street numbers and windows on buildings.





Not sure about the windows, might change them later.

The last thing I did today was starting working on roofs.

[h2]August 20[/h2]

Thanks to an engine update that I had to revert, I have lost several hours of progress.

I also lost a few hours of work today - so in the end, my goal today was to restore some of the lost progress and finish putting roofs on the town's houses.



Mission accomplished!

[h2]August 21[/h2]

Today's goal was to decorate the town's building walls.

I made a bunch of new tiles, improved some of the old ones, and remade windows:



I think the problem with the old windows is that they were too big and felt disproportional when added to the town's buildings.

Old windows:



Anyway, after decorating the walls, I started placing assets - the town is starting to look good!

The work on the town culminated with an inn building:



Inn's name - Inn the East - reflects the fact that half of Trilith town is on the other side of the world.

(Eastern Trilith and Western Trilith towns have been founded near the talkstone triliths: Going through eastern trilith will take you to western trilith and vice versa - so there is almost no distance between the towns and often they are considered one town)

Western Trilith will have an inn called "Inn the West" =]

The last thing I did this day was implementing a few new combat sound effects.

[h2]August 22[/h2]

Roofs are done, walls are done, time for interiors!

Pretty much the same story as yesterday: Placed a lot of tiles, added new assets, improved some of the old ones.





I'm hoping that this furnace in the above GIF will be a cooking station in the future.

I couldn't finish filling interiors today, so it will be a job for the other day.

[h2]August 24[/h2]

I have finished filling the town interiors today!



Barracks.

Shelves hold equipment: Silver helmets, magic orb, crystalized aura allowing soldiers to use aura-powered abilities, arrows, disinfection fluid for wounds.



Legate's office.

The document on the wall is Triliths' "Faction declaration", it's a bit like an independence declaration.

Anyway, here's what I still need to do to finish the town:

- Minor building details: Dents and protrusions.
- Place shadow marker tiles so buildings would start dropping shadows.
- NPCs: Guards, merchants, workers, etc.
- Town assets: Noticeboard, signs.
- Town matter kilns: Set kiln recipes.
- When steppe assets are made: Add them to the town.

Tomorrow I'll be making steppe assets - I've already made probably the most difficult assets already: The steppe grasses.



I still need to make steppe clay rocks, silver ore rocks, steppe pits, various tiles... A lot of work.

Not happy that it's the end of Eastern Trilith development week two and it's still not done. I wanted to finish it in two weeks.

I suppose I would assemble an area like that during two weeks if all assets were ready and my estimation was without assets + I lost a lot of time, so maybe it's not that bad.

It is pretty bad, though.
As it often happens, I expanded too much with the Eastern Trilith area - the town alone ate most of those weeks, and it's only 1/3rd of the area.

Luckily it's the most complicated third, and in the end Eastern Trilith will be an incredible area, easily the best chunk of content I ever made: A dangerous path through old battlefield filled with traps, a demon-infested fortification, and a cozy town.

But I have to be careful when designing the future areas to prevent them from becoming too cool for me to build in a reasonable amount of time.

That's all for this entry, hope it was an enjoyable one =]

Until next time!

LOTLW Devblog is back! I decided to start writing entries again because I came up with an idea to write it like a diary - a bit every day.

I've also decided to not post entries in certain less active sites, so I can use as many images as I want and not worry about getting them to work everywhere.

So, here it goes:

[h2]August 8[/h2]



Doors are now animated. It's a simple one frame animation: If a distance to the nearest character is below 16 pixels, the door changes to the "Open" frame.

In total there are 3 frames for every door: "Close", "Open", and "Open while a player is in a building":

While the player is in a building, the dark part of the sprite is no longer necessary to conceal the inside of the building and looks weird, so I made a 3rd frame to fix it:





Animated doors are the first of many new assets that I want to add before beginning work on Eastern Trilith area.

[h2]August 10[/h2]

Started work by trying to find a way for the game's music to stop desyncing. A lot of anxious staring at this:



Apparently, that's something I can't fix with GameMaker Studio 2 engine that I'm using.
Though the desync is only 10th-100th of a second, so maybe it's not noticeable.

After a few failed attempts to fix the desyncing issue, I started making new town assets.



Signs, benches, and other "street furniture".



The new Locul:



Making world assets for LOTLW is extremely enjoyable for me, so I'm ending the workday very satisfied.

[h2]August 11[/h2]

Started the workday with making more assets for Locul.
Animated the "clothe lines", added potted plants, wardrobes, etc.



But enough messing around, it's time to start making something truly new.
Here begins the development of the Eastern Trilith area!

I've started with tile sprites and choose a ground color for steppe biome.



Steppe gravel brown. Ain't it beautiful? =]

There will be 4 main biomes in LOTLW:

- Desert: Moonrise Desert, Two Suns Desert, Berelem, Salt Road.
- Steppe: The Fallen Kingdom, Triliths, Kingdom's End Battlefield.
- Meadow: Eir Meadows, Crossroads, Kingdom's End, Atan's Enclave, Luma, Eir.
- Field: Rannah's Domain, Lockfall, Silver Fields, New Grawas, Old Grawas, Korrev.



Every area will have bits from different biomes, plus unique assets. Then there are cities, with their own architecture and assets, so areas should be very varied and pleasant to explore.

Anyway, after choosing the ground color and making steppe stone road tiles, I've begun planning the layout of the area.



I already knew what I wanted Eastern Trilith to be like, all I needed to do is to transfer that knowledge correctly to the level editor.

So I made an 8960x8960 image and added it to the GameMaker's room editor's asset layer. This is a trick I'll be using a lot to help me create areas - I'll make various assets to highlight custom zones, add custom grids, etc. Custom grids are especially useful for placing objects correctly.

(To create a custom grid, create an image of, for example, a square with only borders and use background layer to tile the image)



To clarify, three things are called "Eastern Trilith":

- The town of Eastern Trilith.
- The in-game area, called after the town's name.
- The trilith itself. More about triliths can be found in entries #10 and #14.

The "Eastern Trilith" game area has 3 regions in it:

The town - blue.
The no man's land - yellow.
The bastion - magenta.





The area is shaped by a siege that was happening during the final years of the War.
Both triliths could have granted the Kingdom victory if rebel city forces did not keep the triliths under the constant pressure.

The vastness of the conflict will be seen in no man's land: A devastated zone full of traps, craters, and other remnants of the War. The road to Eastern Trilith will lead through it.

The bastion was abandoned after the War and has been infested by demons. The bastion will be a challenging maze-like structure containing challenging fights and treasure for experienced players.

After marking the zones, I decided to add the talkstone trilith that gives the area its name and with that, end the workday.



[h2]August 12[/h2]

I decided to do something that was bugging me since the last demo version was released: Enemies the players face at the start of the game are just too tough.

There were multiple solutions to fixing that problem:

- Making the players stronger/making the enemies weaker by changing their stats.
- Making an "Easy mode" that changes enemy/player stats.
- Allowing the player to choose one of several "Starter gifts": One of them would strengthen the player significantly.
- Creating a tier of very weak weapons and giving them to the enemies.

I went with the last one, which is probably hardest to implement, but the most immersive.

So I've spent several hours making "Timeworn" weapons:

- Blunt iron sword.
- Dented iron claymore.
- Blunt iron axe.
- Loose iron hammer.
- Deformed iron mace.
- Glyphless staff.
- Deformed iron beacon.
- Bent iron bow.
- Loose iron arc.



These timeworn weapons deal very little damage making the first few fights not as scary for the new players.



Appearance-wise, they are slightly modified iron weapons:



Rogue wielding a loose iron arc.

It's pretty hard to differentiate timeworn weapons from normal iron ones, but I'm not going to fix this problem now because I want to get back to building the new area.

The current goal for the new area is to make the clay brick architecture tileset.



Fancy non-flat wooden roofs, 9 out of 10 Locul residents are jealous!

Now that basic buildings are made, I need to add more details to them, make windows, floors, etc., then I'll chop them up into tiles, put them in a tileset image, load the image into the project, and I can start building the town!

But that's for the other day.

[h2]August 14[/h2]



Here's the detailed house!

Most of August 14th was spent trying to turn the detailed house into a tileset. The difficult part was making the roof tiles. Here are the process screenshots:



Creating wide plank tiles.



Creating roof edge tiles.



Creating thin plank tiles.



Creating tiles for the transition between thin and wide plank tiles.



Almost there...



And done!

After making the roof tiles, I quickly made the rest of the house tiles.

Especially happy with windows:



After the tilesets were ready, I began to actually build the houses!

Here's a sketch I'll be using to build the town:



MS Paintastic!

(Side note: While the sketch was made with MS Paint, I use Aseprite to make LOTLW graphics)

I still need to think more about what the town should have, so the sketch will become busier.

Anyway, the tileset turned out to be flawed and lacking like a dozen tiles, so I'll continue working on that tomorrow. I did manage to build this house before the end of the workday:



So, that is all for this entry. Do tell me if you like this new format =]

Until next time!

This massive update adds two new classes, new items, new abilities, new weapon types, improved combat, new introduction quest, improved animations, improved enemy AI, new rogue NPCs, and dozens of smaller changes.

As always, feedback is very important: If you got any thoughts, share them in the comments, my Twitter, or Discord.

Plans for the next demo update:

New area: Eastern Trilith, silver equipment, demons, player character creation, visual combat improvements.

Until next time!

Hey all,

This might be the last entry I write because it just takes too much time. For example previous entry - "LOTLW Devblog #14: Geography of the Locked World" - took me almost a day to write and publish.

So instead I'll just make quick development updates on Twitter and Discord.

Twitter >>
Discord >>

You can also see how is the development going on LOTLW Trello board:

Trello >>

Anyway, since the previous entry I have:

• Reworked "Follow the Signs" quest: Now it's called "When Luck Runs Out" and is better in every way.
  
• Moved NPCs and changed some numbers making the demo very similar to what the game will feel like when it's finished.
  
• Done an animation rework which fixed many small problems, improved animations, and made them easier to assemble.
  
• Started working on combat expansion: Two new combat classes, new items, mechanics, and abilities!
  

The demo is still not representative of the final version and severely lacks content, but it will take a few more months to fix that, and I don't want to have large gaps between demo updates.

The big changes in this update are:

Crafting:
Use the new Alchemist and Materialist roles to craft items.

Mining:
Use the new Gatherer role to mine rocks for ore, that is used in crafting.

Save system:
Progress is now saved! Press the "Save" button on the pause menu.

Item storage:
Find a talkstone chest in Locul and use it to deposit items.

Logs UI:
Achievements + map + notes + quest log 2.0 + statistics + reputation page shortcut.
This UI will be very important in the future.

This demo also is the start of the LOTLW beta testing program!

I am going to start adding content soon and most of it won't be available in the demo.
I don't want players to get bored of the game before it is completed.
However, I still need help from the players, so I will make the full version available to the beta testers.

As a reward, beta testers will get a copy of the finished game.

More info >>

At the moment the full version is no different from the demo, but this should change soon.

Anyway, now that demo is released, I am going to:

- Build the entire game world out of placeholder assets.
- Do an animation rework.
- Implement all planned weapon types: Two-handed melee weapons, bows, and staves.
- Add character avatar appearance customization.
...

That is all for now, until next time!

[previewyoutube=4e3CaMEes7Y;full][/previewyoutube]

This is a follow-up to "LOTLW Devblog #10: History of the Locked World", this time it's more about the locations and less about the events.

The world's name is Kayos. Its title of the Locked World has two meanings: It is teleportation-locked, meaning that standard teleportation spells do not function in Kayos, and it's also tidally locked.
Tidally locked worlds do not spin around their axes, so one of the sides always faces the star. In Kayos' case, it's tidally locked between two stars.

The side that always faces the yellow giant - Dragon's Eye - is called Rezelot, and the side that always faces the purple dwarf - Erquam - is called Erquaria.

Astronomy of the Locked World?

Anyway, as I mentioned before, the game takes place in Rezelot, Erquaria will be inaccessible.

Rezelot is the land surrounding Abyssal Waters.



(The map size is 1600x1600 try viewing it in a separate tab)

Abyssal Waters
Abyssal Waters is an extremely deep body of water.
Abyssal Waters captures and redistributes the heat, giving the surrounding areas a gentle climate.
It's also special because crystals called abysts grow on the bottom of it.
If not abysts, Rezelot would have never been colonized.

Two Suns Desert
A desert east of Rezelot, that doesn't fully belong to Rezelot and Erquaria.
The middle of it is a permanent sunset zone of both Dragon's Eye and Erquam.
This where the light of both stars meets, it's the hottest region in the Kayos.

O'ool
A frozen wasteland west of Rezelot.
Like Two Suns Desert, it is between Rezelot and Erquaria.
The sky above O'ool is always covered by clouds of smoke from a chain of volcanoes in Erquaria, it's dark and cold here.
O'ool gives western Rezelot a cool climate.

Pole Wastes
Rezelot, Erquaria, Two Suns Desert, and O'ool converge in the world's pole wastes, which are lifeless gravel fields.
There are two points of interest in Rezelot that are close to the Pole Wastes - Azu'urunn and the Listening Tower.

Pinewoods
Impassable forests of tangled kayian pines that occupy a large part of Rezelot land between Northern Pole Waste and Abyssal Waters
These pines are the only trees that grow in Kayos.

Moonrise Desert
A desert in the north-eastern part of the Rezelot.
Under a thin layer of the desert's sand, there are deposits of iron-rich rocks.
This is where the iron to build an artificial moon was mined from, leaving pits that followed the rock deposits.
The moon was later launched into the orbit, giving desert its name.

Moonrise Site
A field in Moonrise Desert where Demon Moon was launched.

Interference Point
Interference is a disruption of the World Gates, which brings people from other worlds to Kayos.
Interference takes people to a spot in Moonrise Desert, south of the Locul town and that spot is called Interference Point.

Locul
Town in Moonrise Desert.
It used to be a miner town, now it's a small outpost of civilization in the middle of nowhere.
It has a tavern, an emporium, a lab, a small mine, two matter kilns, an immigration office, and Locul Mining Company headquarters.

Eastern Trilith
Eastern Trilith is on the edge between Moonrise Desert and Eir Meadows, it's the closest town to Locul.
The other and bigger half of this town is on the other side of Rezelot.
Those halves are joined together by talkstone triliths.
Eastern Trilith is a town not bigger than Locul and is mostly inhabited by soldiers who guard it.

Eir Meadows
West from Eastern Trilith is Eir Meadows, a land of fertile soil covered in grass.

Canals
Irrigation canals that take water from Abyssal Waters to the edge of Moonrise Desert, extending the Eir Meadows.

Eir
A small but busy farmer town. Meadows around Eir is has been turned into farmland, which feeds the city of Luma.

Luma
The largest and most influential city in Kayos often called the capital of the world.
If it isn't that, then it's is the capital of Rezelot.
Like all coastal cities in Kayos, Luma is an abyst city.
It means that the main function is the city to lift crystals with magic amplifying properties from the bottom of the Abyssal Waters.
This difficult work is done in the mining docks, that extend far into the Abyssal Waters.
The dirty and noisy port area is surrounded by tall, beautiful houses, mansions, and towers - Luma is a densely populated and rich city.

Smuggler's Hat
An island that looks vaguely like a sailor's hat when viewed from one of its sides.

Kingdom's End
North of Luma is a battlefield in which Luma's and Berelem's armies defeated armies of the Kingdom, ending the coastal city rebellion against the Azu'urunn monarch tyranny.
It's a land ravaged by magic, covered in remains of war equipment, and haunted by possessed armor, the Kingdom's artificial, demonic soldiers.

Atan's Enclave
A small territory northwest of Luma, controlled by Atan, lord of the Kingdom who survived the War.

Atan's Fortress
A name for both a fortification and a small town in its shadow.
A base for monarchist movement, also inhabited by rogues and other criminals, which are welcomed here by Lord Atan.

Iron Stronghold
A fortification north of Luma, a defense line between pinewoods, between the Kingdom and Luma.
If not its iron walls, Luma could have been taken over by the Kingdom, putting an end to the rebellion.
It was under siege almost all seven of the War's years, but with support from all of the rebel cities, it did not fell.

Rogue Wall
Rogue Wall is a line of barricades built by rogues of Moonrise Desert to funnel travelers into a passage for easy ambushes.

Talkstone Mine
A place where the talkstone is mined. This material is used to circumvent the magic that blocks teleportation.

Salt Road
A trade route for goods - mostly salt - from Erquarian Station, though most of the goods reach the rest of Rezelot via boats from Berelem.
Salt is nowhere to be found in Rezelot, so it has to be imported from Erquaria.

Edario's Island
An island created by Edario, a powerful mage of Berelem.
Bridges to the island were destroyed by Edario to trap the Kingdom's army who marched through the Island to attack Berelem.

Erquarian Station
Erquarian trade, diplomatic, and military outpost.
The only place in Kayos where you will meet erquarians, the non-human people from the land under the purple sun.

Bereland
A land around Berelem, protected by wooden walls, built after the War when Rezelot became full of deserted soldiers and possessed armor.

Berelem
It's a city of alchemy and architecture that imitates the erquarian style.

Karaem
Largest gold mine in Rezelot, part of the reason why Berelem is so rich.

Western Trilith
Western Trilith is bigger and busier than the Eastern and it's full of soldiers - Western Trilith is far in the Fallen Kingdom.
Soldiers fight every day to keep demons and the possessed armor away from Trilith and the road that connects west with the east.

Thousand Towers
An industrial city south of Western Trilith.
Its name comes from hundreds of abyst towers - contraptions that are used in the creation of amalgam - light, strong, and spell amplifying metal made by fusing abyst dust, silver, and gold.
Thousand Towers and Rannah's Domain is ruled by Rannah, inventor of amalgam, the only person who knows what is happening inside the abyst towers while amalgam is being created.

Rannah's Domain
A land recognized as a property of Rannah, a neutral zone that does not belong to any of the abyst cities.

Cooling Lake
A lake that provides water to cool abyst towers.

Depleted Vein
Abandoned silver mine.

Forest Way
A road that goes through pinewoods.

Glowing Village
The abysts have a dangerous property - if there are a lot of them in one place, they start glowing and emitting magical waves that damage the minds of people in the vicinity.
They never stop glowing, this village is one of the places in Rezelot that were abandoned because of this effect.

Spirit Pastures
A grassland north from Korrev, on the coast of Abyssal Waters.
It's roamed by spirits that for some reason flock to this place.

Korrev
A glowing city. It's not known what lead to the accident that turned Korrev into it.

Lockfall
A cold wasteland where worldlocks fall. Worldlocks are giant crosses made out of the tainted lead, a material that disrupts teleportation spells and portals.
Worldlocks are sent to Kayos every 50 years and this is where they end up.

Grey Glacier
A glacier of strange, unmelting ice.

Silver Field
A large field between O'ool in the west, Abyssal Waters in the east, Grey Glacier in the north, and Demon Forests in the south.
It's most famous for silver ore veins.

Siw
Small silver miner town next to one of the largest silver mines in Rezelot.

Old Grawas
Ruins of a rebel city destroyed during the War. Infested by demons that destroyed it.

New Grawas
An island-city built by the survivors of the original Grawas destruction.
It's small, new, rich from abyst mining, and still mourning the fall of Old Grawas.

Demon Forests
Pinewoods infested by demons that fled here during the Demon War and after the destruction of Grawas.

Branna's Hill
A demon banisher town. Has world's only banisher academy, people come here to learn and train by going on hunts into the forests and fields infested by demons.
The Hill's banishers also ensure the demon population is controlled so they wouldn't spread north.
Found during the Demon War by Queen Branna.

Demon Pastures
Fields roamed by demons.

Velt
Abandoned fishing village, where ships take mages to and back from the Listening Tower.

The Listening Tower
Mages come here to invent new spells and listen to the True Ocean, the source of magic.
It was built here because it's far from civilized lands, where the Ocean is being constantly disturbed by spells.

The Fallen Kingdom
A territory that is south of Northern Pole Waste, north of Pinewoods, west of Two Suns Desert, and east from O'ool.
During the War, this territory was controlled by the Kingdom. Before the War, the Kingdom controller the entire Rezelot.
It was ravaged by an apocalyptic spell cast by Talyaan the Fourth, the Last King.

Firstwater
First bodies of water found by the human colonists.

Vaults of the Glow
It was a test site for the Glow.
The experiments that determined what causes the Glow made the site a place with the largest concentration of glowing abysts in Kayos.

King's Mine
A massive mine complex that provided the Kingdom with iron and gold, especially during the War.

Azu'urunn
A city from which the monarchs ruled the Kingdom
The first human city in Kayos.
A city around the World Gate that brought the humans the world and that became inactive after Kayos became the Locked World.
Now ruins burning with eternal fires created by the Last King's Spell.

Mirinit
A ruined city south of Azu'urunn.

Dendrayon
A ruined industrial city south of Mirinit, where equipment for Kingdom's armies was made.

If I haven't missed anything, that should be all of the places on the map.

I hope it was an interesting read, and I'm cutting this entry right here, as I already spend a lot of writing it.

Until next time =]

This is a follow-up to "LOTLW Devblog #9: The new development plan".

This is how the plan looks now:

Done:
A huge chunk of features has been completed.

• Amount input system.
  
• Bartering.
  
• Inventory system fixes.
  
• Shadow system fixes.
  
• Debug tools.
  
• Character and UI improvements.
  
• Gatherer role.
  
• Materialist role.
  
• Alchemist role.
  
• Crafting.
  
• Key remapping.
  
• Map.
  
• Quest log 2.0
  
• Achievements.
  
• Statistics.
  
• Notes.
  
• Item storage.

• Save system.
  
• Graphical improvements.
  
• Animation improvements.
  
• Player avatar appearance customization.
  
• The content and polishing phase begins here.
  
• UI improvements.
  
• Demo update.
  
• Create the game world out of placeholders.
  
• Pathfinding rework.
  
• Combat improvements.
  
• Combat expansion: Mage and Archer roles, tier 2 equipment.
  
• Introduction.
  
• Tutorial.
  
• Help text.
  
• Demo update.

• Create the game world out of placeholders.

• Combat expansion.

• Introduction.

A week ago I've been worried about the game.
While I love it unconditionally and developing it is incredibly fulfilling, I was unsure how to explain to others why is the game worthy of attention.

I would go over the features that LOTLW will have, and would not find any exceptional ones.
But it was a wrong approach. It's the little things that together make a game I am confident in.

I have discovered that when I have started writing down all of the ideas I want to try with LOTLW.
Later that list has turned into a new feature list for the game.

Here it is:

(Keep in mind it's about the finished game and it's just a plan for it, not a promise)

• Role-based progression system build on and improved upon from the similar systems found in RuneScape, Skyrim, Ultima Online
  

• An uncommon setting
  

• Slowly unfolding story
  

• Authentic non-player characters
  

• Faction reputation system
  

• Persistence
  

• Asymmetry
  

• Metroidvania elements
  

• Large cities
  

• A bouquet of classic features
  

• Local multiplayer mode
  

I have started working on crafting!

The current plan is to have two crafting roles: Materialist and Alchemist.

Materialists will craft items using machines known as matter kilns, which is a fancy name for a crafting station.

The process is simple: You bring materials to matter kiln, click on desired item crafting recipe and an item is made, granting XP for Materialist role.
Higher Materialist level allows crafting higher level and value items.




I was thinking about incorporating a timing minigame in the crafting process, but...

I want players to be constantly on the move, exploring new locations, completing quests, conquering challenges, and stopping only for a moment to turn collected resources into new equipment. I felt like crafting has to be as fast as possible to not waste exploration time.

So that's why I decided to make it this simple.

But not mundane - I plan to have many matter kilns, each with a unique set of recipes.
Some items will have more than one recipe, which will allow invested players to search the world for interesting kilns and make decisions.
"Kiln with recipe A uses more resources, but kiln with recipe B is in infested ruins and I'm running out of arrows. Hmm..."

Kilns also come with lore attached to them.

What goes inside them was a well-guarded secret of the Azu'urunn Kingdom, only a few dozen people had access to that knowledge, and all of it was gone when the Kingdom was destroyed.
New kilns are no longer made, and old ones are becoming faulty with time - eventually, they will all stop functioning.
You fill find broken kilns and ones that are barely functional, with recipes that turn expensive materials into useless items because a part of the mysterious machine has stopped working properly.
Your destiny as a Materialist is to gather enough understanding to be able to repair, reprogram, and maybe even reverse-engineer kilns, preventing the technology from being lost.

The Alchemist role is a bit different.

Aside from finding the kilns with efficient recipes, there's little discovery in the Materialist role, kiln recipes are not concealed in any way.
Meanwhile, Alchemists will have to discover recipes for items - materials and elixirs - by combining alchemical materials.

For example, in the upcoming version of the game, your character will be able to create disinfection fluid by combining alchemical silver and salt.
Disinfection fluid is a key component for crafting healing kits.

The goal is to have a small number of alchemical components, with every combination producing a useful material.
I imagine it will be very exciting to find new alchemical materials when each of them will be used to produce dozens of items.

Alchemy's signature creations are elixirs.
These are like potions in many other RPGs, except that their effects don't run out.
For example, if your character drinks an elixir that increases damage, the damage boost effect will remain active until your character drinks an elixir with a different effect.
And some very special elixirs will permanently increase your character's stats.

Alchemy lore is tied to Erquaria lore. Many of the alchemical materials you will experiment with are imported from that strange land under the violet sun, land in which the art of alchemy originated.
If you work hard, you may get a chance to learn from the true masters of alchemy - members of the Erquarian Alchemist Guild.

So that's the crafting!

I'm having a really good time turning all of this into reality and I hope it sounds exciting.

Until next time!

As promised, this entry is about the game's lore.

Now, the full lore is a dozen pages long, so for this entry, I'll only share the timeline of the Locked World's history.

The world's map is at the end of the post.

So, here it is:

[h3]Year 0:[/h3]
Council of Worlds order to build the World Gate that connects Kayos, now known as the Locked World, to the World Network.

- There are a lot of terms included the timeline, I'll try to briefly explain most of them.
- The Council controls the World Gates, which connects a few dozen worlds to the Network.
- The Council's main functions are to maintain peace between worlds and to expand the Network by building new gates.

[h3]Year 3:[/h3]
Council of Worlds order to sink a collection of confiscated magical weapons in Abyssal Waters.

- Abyssal Waters is a large and very deep body of water.
- Only 20% of the world's surface is covered by water, and Abyssal Waters does most of it.

[h3]Year 84:[/h3]
Abysts are discovered by mages who were sent by the Council to check on the sunken weapons. Abyst Rush begins.
Gate City begins to grow near the World Gate.

- Abysts are unique crystals that form at the bottom of Abyssal Waters.
- These crystals amplify magic, they are extremely useful for hundreds of applications.

[h3]Year 95-106:[/h3]
Demon Moon is being built.

[h3]Year 106:[/h3]
Demon Moon was risen, the demon population shrinks rapidly from this point as they are banished to the Moon.

- Kayos is infested by demons.
- These strange, aggressive, and mindless beings are unkillable, the only way to get rid of them is to banish them where they can't do harm.

[h3]Year 130:[/h3]
The Glow phenomenon is discovered: If a large number of abysts are in one place, they start glowing and it makes all sentient beings in the vicinity lose sanity.
Council of Worlds bans the use of abysts and orders to lock Kayos.
A year is given for evacuation, most of the colonists and abyst miners leave.

[h3]Year 130:[/h3]
Celeraths - a corrupt family of nobles flees to Kayos.
They use their wealth to acquire several abyst mining docks and quickly become influential.

[h3]Year 131:[/h3]
Worldlocks are sent to Kayos. Teleportation spells, demon banishment spell, and the World Gate stop working.
Abyst Rush ends.

- Worldlocks disrupt teleportation spells.

[h3]Year 131:[/h3]
Celeraths form an army of mercenaries.
They take over the Gate City and rename it to Azu'urunn.

- Azu'urunn was the name of the city Celeraths used to control.

[h3]Year 132:[/h3]
The eldest son of the family, Talyann, is crowned as a king of the Kingdom of Azu'urunn.
Soon Celerath army takes over the rest of Rezelot.

- Kayos is also a tidally locked world.
- Rezelot is the side of the World that is under the Golden Sun, inhabited by human races. It's where the game takes place.
- The other side of the world is called Erquaria - it is under the Violet Sun. The game might be expanded to include it.

[h3]Year 132-279:[/h3]
World develops.
The magic dampening effect of talkstone is discovered and talkstone-based teleportation spells were invented during this period.

- Talkstone nullifies all magic, including the teleportation-disrupting aura of worldlocks.
- Talkstone is used in various ways to activate and deactivate magic, creating short moments when the teleportation can be performed.

[h3]Year 131-251:[/h3]
Demon population grows because they are no longer getting banished.

[h3]Year 168:[/h3]
Talyann the First dies.
His son is crowned as the Talyann the Second.

[h3]Year 227:[/h3]
Talyann the Second dies.
His daughter Branna becomes the queen.

[h3]Year 251:[/h3]
Talkstone is sent to Demon Moon and a new banishment spell is created.
Demon War begins.

[h3]Year 251-255:[/h3]
Demon War. Demons are being hunted down and banished.
They gather into massive swarms to defend themselves and often retaliate, attacking human settlements.

[h3]Year 255:[/h3]
The demon population is reduced to a minimum.

[h3]Year 273:[/h3]
Rannah builds first abyst towers.

- Rannah is a mage and alchemist that invented a way to fuse gold and silver into a new metal called amalgam.
- The most powerful craftable equipment will be made from this material.

[h3]Year 276:[/h3]
Queen Branna dies.
Her son is crowned as the Talyaan the Third.
Talyaan the Third proves to be a bad king and pushes the Abyst Cities to rebellion.

[h3]Year 279:[/h3]
Abyst Cities - Eiralta, Grawas, Berelem, and Korrev - start a rebellion against the Kingdom, it turns into a war that spreads to all of Rezelot.
During the first year of the War, the Kingdom achieves many victories against the unprepared rebels.

[h3]Year 280:[/h3]
The Kingdom's forces begin the siege of Grawas city.
Talyaan the Third is taken as a prisoner when Grawas retaliates.
He is executed shortly.
His son is immediately crowned as Talyaan the Fourth.
Talyaan the Fourth - now known as Talyaan the Last - orders to summon demons.
Demons are unleashed upon Grawas and the city is destroyed.
The Kingdom becomes aggressive and reckless.

- After the War, the survivors of Grawas' destruction builds a new city, now known as New Grawas.

[h3]Year 281:[/h3]
The Kingdom attempts to attack the city of Berelem.
The King's Army is ambushed in Edario's Island.
The Great Mage Edario traps the King's Army in the Island and starts a desperate battle of one against thousands.
He's not defeated for hours, his spells slay hundreds of king's soldiers. After he is killed, the army is in such poor shape that it has to retreat.

[h3]Year 282:[/h3]
The Kingdom begins the siege of Iron Stronghold.

[h3]Year 283:[/h3]
The Kingdom builds talkstone triliths.
Triliths allow the King's Army to move quickly around Rezelot and for a short time this advantage grants them a few victories.
The Kingdom takes over the city of Korrev.

[h3]Year 284:[/h3]
Army of Eiralta frees the city of Korrev.
King's Army tries again to take over Berelem.
The Army is ambushed on the border of Bereland and is defeated.
Berelem's army pushes the Kingdom's forces out of Moonrise Desert.
The Kingdom's army dwindles.
To replace the soldiers, the Kingdom's mages invent possessed armor.
It's speculated that if not this invention, the Kingdom would have been defeated in 184.

- Many rogues the players will fight are deserters from the King's army.
- Possessed armor created when a demon is summoned into a suit of armor.

[h3]Year 285:[/h3]
The Kingdom is weakened, the king becomes more desperate.
The power of the rebel cities grow, the Kingdom shrinks rapidly.
The king orders to build a new road around the Iron Stronghold, as the siege of Iron Stronghold is not giving any results.

[h3]Year 286:[/h3]
The War Road is finished, the Kingdom launches the final attack against Eiralta.
The War ends as the Kingdom's army is defeated.
The City of Azu'urunn is surrounded, and lords of the Free Cities send a delegation of mages to bring Talyaan to them.
Mages attack Talyaan trying to defeat him, but he unleashes an unknown spell of vast destructive power.
The magic lashes the Kingdom and kills everyone in it, including every member of the Celerath family and the City Lords.

[h3]Year 286:[/h3]
Lord Atan, a noble of the now-gone Kingdom takes over territory north-west from Eiralta.

- Now it's called Atan's Enclave and is a center of influence for monarchist movement.

[h3]Year 286:[/h3]
City councils are formed, they begin to rule the devastated Rezelot.

[h3]Year 287-300:[/h3]
A massive wall is being built between the Fallen Kingdom and Eir Meadows to protect the civilized lands from the Kingdom's demons and possessed armor.

[h3]Year 291:[/h3]
The Glow occurs in the city of Korrev. The entire city is lost.

[h3]Year 286-309, Present:[/h3]
The world is recovering from the War.
The Fallen Kingdom burns in unnatural, inextinguishable flames, hordes of possessed armor and demons flee from it, Lord Atan grows in power, rogues roam in the uncivilized lands.
The Abyst Cities regaining power and are starting to suppress these actors of chaos.

- Demons, rogues, and monarchists will not be your main concern during the story campaign.

[h3]Year 309, Present:[/h3]
The World Gate malfunctions and brings you to Kayos.



I hope this was interesting, if there will be a demand for it, I'll make more lore-related entries.

Until next time!

In this entry, I'll reveal Light of the Locked World's brand new development plan!

Also, sorry for the scarce entries. I'll try to post more often from now on.

Anyway, the plan.

Short term:
These tasks are in order I am planning to do them.

• Amount input system.
  
• Trading part 2: Bartering.
  
• Inventory system fixes.
  
• Shadow system fixes.
  
• Debug tools.
  
• Crafting.
  
• Key remapping.
  
• Map.
  
• Quest log rework.
  
• Achievements.
  
• Statistics.
  
• Item storage.
  
• Save system.
  
• Graphical improvements.
  
• Animation improvements.
  
• Player appearance customization.
  
• Demo update.
  
• Final preparations for content development.
  
• Content development begins.
  
• Combat expansion: Mage and Archer roles, tier 2 equipment.
  
• Introduction.
  
• Tutorial.
  
• Help text.
  
• Demo update.
  
• Area: Eastern Trilith.
  
• First story quest.
  
• Transition area: Eir Meadows.
  
• Second story quest.
  

• Water graphics.
  
  
• 3rd story quest.
  
  
• Intel quest 1.
  
• Intel quest 2.
  
• Intel quest 3.
  
• Intel quest 4.
  
• Intel quest 5.
  
• Intel quest 6.
  
• Intel quest 7.
  
• Intel quest 8.
  
  
• 4th story quest.
  
• 5th story quest.
  
• 6th story quest.
  
  
• Final boss.
  
  
• 5th role.
  
• 6th role.
  
• 7th role.
  
• 8th role.
  
• 9th role.
  
• 10th role.
  
  
• Tier 3 warrior equipment.
  
• Tier 4 warrior equipment.
  
  
• Tier 3 mage equipment.
  
• Tier 4 mage equipment.
  
  
• Tier 3 archer equipment.
  
• Tier 4 archer equipment.
  
  
• City: Eiralta.
  
• City: Korrev.
  
• City: Berelem.
  
• City: Thousand Towers.
  
• City: New Grawas.
  
  
• Area: Silver Fields.
  
  
• Small area: Kingdom's End.
  
• Small area: Western Trilith.
  
  
• Transition area: Lockfall.
  
• Transition area: Two Suns Desert.
  
• Transition area: Salt Road.
  
  
• Enemy faction: Demons.
  
• Enemy faction: Possessed armor.
  
• Enemy faction: Spirits.
  
  
• Middle Kayos architecture: Wooden buildings.
  
• Western Kayos architecture: Brick buildings.
  
• Eastern Kayos architecture: Rock buildings.
  
  
• Traps: Spikes, fire obelisks, etc.
  
• Sigils: Arcane contraptions with a variety of effects.
  
• Unique items pack: Items to fill gaps between tiers.
  

• Legendary weapons pack 1.
  
• Legendary weapons pack 2.
  
  
• Mage specialization 2: "Fast caster"
  
• Warrior specialization 2: "Destroyer"
  
• Archer specialization 2: "Champion"
  
  
• Area: Atan's Enclave.
  
• Area: Old Grawas.
  
• Area: Spellscarred Plains.
  
• Area: Ruins of Azu'urunn.
  

This update adds abilities and trading system: Now it's possible to buy and sell items.

[h3]New combat[/h3]
Learn new abilities and unleash them upon your enemies!
For the combat testing purposes, iron swords and ability instructions can be found in the spawn point, so grab them, get right to the new combat, and tell me what you think!

[h3]Trading[/h3]
No longer rely on enemy drops to equip and heal!
Head to Locul emporium and see what the merchants there have to offer.

[h3]Other changes[/h3]

• Powers UI: A page to check learned abilities and cast learned spells.
  
• First non-combat spell: Resurrection Gate. It teleports to resurrection point.
  
• Value 2.0: Rebalanced item prices and gold rewards.
  
• Critical hits 2.0: Critical hits now always deal more damage than normal hits.
  
• Improved and expanded enemy AI.
  
• Improved HUD and health bars.
  
• Improved collision checks: Fixed many problems with interacting through solid objects.
  
• Improved engine overall: Many new systems and scripts that will help me further develop the game.
  
• Added new sound effects.

• Trading part 2: Bartering, player to player trading.
  
• Crafting.
  
• Key remapping.
  
• Map.
  
• Achievements and trackers.
  
• Save system.

This demo update contains over 4 months of changes.

[previewyoutube=GshSJHrOVe0;full][/previewyoutube]
Quests
The game now has two short quests with a bit of lore and adventure.

Roles
Gain XP and level up.

Town of Locul
Visit the first town of the game!

Improved mouse and keyboard controls
Now player 1 can use both keyboard and mouse for maximum comfort.

Improved graphics
Added shadows, improved assets.

Warning: Shadows may severely slow down or even crash the game - if that is the case turn off shadows in the options before starting the game.

New UI
New style, new tooltip system, new HUD, game log.

Expanded and improved the first area
New enemy NPCs, bags and crates with loot, more content.

Character improvements
Better NPC AI, NPC chatter system, character interaction system.

Faction reputation system
The first three factions have been implemented: Rogue, Neutral, and Locul. You can gain Locul reputation by completing one of the quests, and you lose reputation by stealing from and attacking Locul's citizens. If your reputation drops below -99, Locul's guards will start attacking you.

Current goal
Combat 4.0!
The previous demo had combat 2.0 - position based combat. Later I created combat 3.0, but it wasn't fun, so I had to remove it and leave combat as it is now.
Now I'm going to work on combat until I'm happy with it.

Feedback form
As always, I'm looking for feedback.
If you got any, you can fill this form:
Link >>

Have fun!

During October I worked a lot - I was participating in what is called Devtober.

Without going into details - because the entry would be way too long - here are the things I've done:

Interior system 1.0 and the town of Locul


12 buildings, 14 NPCs, over 50 tiles, and many other assets - that is the town of Locul!
Each building can be entered thanks to interior system 1.0, which was challenging to make and potentially tripled the amount of time city areas will take for me to make - but was totally worth it.

Faction reputation system 1.0


Attacking faction NPCs and stealing their supplies will decrease your reputation to that faction.
Lose too much reputation and combat system will mark you as the enemy of the faction - everything is authentic and dynamic.
The reputation system will continue being one of the most important systems - it will allow competing players in multiplayer to divide the world among themselves, it creates an entirely new way of playing the game - being criminal, there will be faction unique items, it should be great.

Character interaction and dialogue systems


You can't have an RPG without them!

Keyboard + mouse control preset


Interact and move using keyboard, attack and browse UI using the mouse - for maximum comfort.

Loot containers 1.0


I made it possible to loot containers - bags, crates, etc. - and that is simply wonderful.

What's next?
I am going take the game's demo to GameOn, Lithuania's gaming convention, so I need to prepare the game for it.
I think it's in good shape right now - I will be releasing a new demo soon.

The goal remains the same - create a miniature version of the game, then use it as an example to develop the rest of the game.

After GameOn I'll make first quests, the Mage role and the remaining 20% of the Moonrise Desert.

Until next time!

PS.: I've got a creator's page now - if you like what I do, consider following me:
Link >>

It's been a while since the last entry and the reason is that I was working on another game.

But I've been back to Light of the Locked World since September 21.

I have reworked combat - made spells activatable with different keys like in many other games and added 3 new spells.

After that, I have added roles and started working on Locul town.

So, what are roles?

In most RPGs you pick a class and then go do whatever is that RPG wants you to do - complete quests, kill monsters, save the world, the usual.
You get XP and level up, get attribute points, build your character, become more powerful.

Now imagine that instead of one XP bar, you get several, one for each of the classes and that you're no longer are locked to one class.
You can switch classes whenever you want and while you are using that class, it gains XP, levels up, you become better at using that class.

That's the role system!



Similar systems can be found in RuneScape, Skyrim, Ultima.

Currently, I have made 2 classes or roles, as they are called in-game: Survivor and Warrior.

You get Survivor XP by using Regenerate spell and restoring health.
Later you'll be able to get XP by using health-restoring consumables and maybe even surviving lethal strikes.
Leveling up Survivor increases your maximum health by 3 per level.

You get Warrior XP by dealing damage with Warrior role weapons, which are melee weapons.
Leveling up Warrior increases damage and accuracy - but it only applies while using Warrior weapons.



The next demo version will also have Mage and Archer roles, which will function in a similar way to Warrior, but it will be about flinging magic missiles and shooting arrows to kill enemies!

In total there will be 10 roles and it will be possible to level up roles up to level 50.
It should take over 10 hours to max out all of them,

In future leveling up roles will not only make you stronger, that will also be required to unlock new content.
For example, to equip silver equipment you will need to be level 10 Warrior.

The main goal for me right now is to make the first quest and finish the Moonrise Desert area.

This is what the first quest requires:

- Role system.
- Mage role and equipment: The quest's boss is a mage.
- The first town: NPC that starts the quest is in the town.
- NPC interaction and dialogue systems.
- Quest log.

Currently, I am building the town, that's how it looks right now:



When the town is finished, I'll be making the first non-aggressive NPCs and interaction systems.

So that's where the game is at, until next time =]

UI rework is coming to an end!

I'm very happy with how it looks now - buttons will move, features will be added and removed, but the style will stay the same.



Another thing that will make it to version 1.0 is the new tooltip system!



They are incredibly versatile and easy to customize - they will be crucial in building the rest of UI.



The next tasks are to convert the rest of UI to the new style - currently, only the Items page have been converted - and make a new HUD.

I'm hoping to do that next week and then start working on combat changes I've written about in the previous entry.

Until next time!

It's been two weeks since the last entry.

The first week I've been making shadows, the second - finished shadows and started making new UI.





I decided to work on the UI because it has been bothering me for a while and because I wanted to do something different after working so long on shadows.

First I played with colors and frames, hoping that would be enough.





None of the mockups felt right for the game. I want an immersive UI, and none of those felt like a part of the game's world.

I wanted something UI as cool as old RPGs had - with statues, stone arches, columns, gems, parchments, and other good stuff.

While thinking about all of this, an image flashed in my mind, it looked something like this:



I've spent an entire day trying to make it fit the art style of the game.

The last iteration of castle UI even had shelves in the inventory.



But I've run into problems.

I had two options: Make it noisy and tiring to the eyes to display all of the useful information, or hide the information to make it look better.

I really hate choosing between convenience and beauty, so I decided to drop the castle UI and try something else.

The next idea is to go for a medieval adventurer logbook/diary feel.



So instead of putting things on shelves in a castle, the adventurer would instead draw pictures of owned items on a piece of paper.

Currently, it's the best idea - this UI has the same looks as the rest of the game, it makes sense, and it's convenient.

Hoping to finish it next week.

Anyway, about the combat:

The feedback I received since the pre-alpha demo was released is clear - combat needs to be better.

Like castle UI, position-based combat seemed like a great idea at first.
It turned out that it's just more complicated than it needs to be and has no significant benefits.

I want to get rid of the position aspect of the system, and instead, allow to use attacks everywhere with different buttons as many other games do.

I also want players to be able to change their strategy during fights and have more options.

The weapons should offer 3 or more ways to defeat an enemy.

For example, ideas for the iron sword:

Attack A:
A quick attack that deals low damage, but makes the target bleed and increases movement speed temporarily.
The plan is to jump to the enemy, make it bleed and run away, repeat until the enemy dies.

Attack B:
A slow attack that in addition to dealing damage, binds both you and the enemy.
There is a short window for the enemy to escape.
The plan is to bind and outlast the enemy.

Attack C:
Creates an energy field that deals high to enemies that are performing attacks against you.
The energy field will also deal low damage to enemies around you.
The plan is to create the field and punish aggressive enemies, then finish them with area damage.

A is effective against C because you don't have to stay in the energy field. A is useful if you have low health and can't afford to take too much damage.

B is effective against A because bleed is only useful if it's possible to run away. B is a good option if you can take some damage or an ally is healing you.

C is effective against B because it requires the enemy to attack you. It's also a defensive option because it punishes enemies that are attacking you. Also effective against enemy groups.

This should give the player plenty of choices and make new things possible with AI.
NPCs could react to what you're doing, for example, try B when you're doing A.
Then you can switch to C for that retaliation damage or B - if you are confident that you can outlast the enemy.

I have no idea if this will work, but I think it's safe to say that the next version of the demo will be more interesting to test!

I'll be changing the combat when I'm done with UI and other graphical improvements, so in a week or two.

That's all for now, until next time!

Go to store page >>

The purpose of this demo is to show what the game will be like and gather early feedback.

Feedback form:

Link >>

To complete the demo content, obtain a full set of iron equipment, cape, sash, and amulet.

Note:

To do PVP, find and equip red cape.

This will change your faction alignment, allowing you to attack the other player.

Have fun!

EDIT: I posted this on Sector Six hub by accident. Sorry!

After releasing the alpha demo I've been working on improving the game's graphics.

I've started with small things - cloud shadows and sand particles.



Cloud shadows went through several changes:







Currently, cloud shadows are still not finished because I started working on non-cloud shadows, which currently look like this:



I've also made minor changes to attack animation, added idle animation, and changed the font.



Improving graphics is just one of the many things that I want to do before releasing the next demo version:

Add interior system and Locul town

• A system to allow you to go inside houses and then a bunch of houses!
  

• Current UI looks too bland.
  

• Pressing a key while you are near to a character will open a screen with options, such as talk to a character, trade with character, etc. This is system is necessary for making quests and trading.
  

• This is a big one: It requires a lot of coding, staff and bow attack animations, 6 new attack spells, and countless UI additions. The first 4 roles to be added are Warrior, Mage, Archer, and Survivor. Expect to get more information about roles in the future.

• Combining roles, new content, and character interaction system into your first big adventure in Caios!
  

The demo should be uploaded to Steam soon if it's possible, but meanwhile, you can already download it from:

GameJolt >>
Itch.io >>
GameDev.net >>
IndieDB >>

Send your feedback:

Link >>

Have fun!

This week I finally fixed area loading and now I'm building the first area - Moonrise Desert.

Here are a few screenshots:









About Moonrise Desert:

It's an arid land around Moonrise Site, the place where Demon Moon was built and risen.

Demon Moon is a giant iron sphere built to be a prison where demons are taken when they are banished with Ritual of Banishment.
Demons must be banished because they are completely indestructible.

Moonrise Desert is very rich with iron, the ore veins are close to the surface and are easy to mine.
That's the main reason why the Moon was built here.

Pits and ditches in the desert are left by mining to get all the iron required for the Moon.

Currently, the only humans in the Moonrise Desert are exiled criminals.



Anyway, I also want to share an epic track from LOTLW's OST!

Music for Light of the Locked World is composed by Bert Cole, a musical genius who has also made Sector Six OST.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1779042316 Capital of the World will play in Eiralta, world's most important city.

If you want to know more about Bert Cole, visit his website:
Link >>

That's all for this entry.

Until next time!

This week I've been working on UI.

I've done two things:

1) Finished the first version of Items page. Items page is inventory + equipment + stats.



2) Changed the way game handles UI, fixing a lot of problems and making the process of developing UI much faster.



UI still needs a bit of work, but most of it is ready for the pre-alpha demo.
Now the only big obstacle left is area loading - I'm still stuck on that.

Anyway, I was suggested to write about the combat, so let's get into it.

This is how combat works:

Holding attack key - can be any mouse button, controller button, or keyboard key! - will charge up attack.
Once it is charged, animation plays and attack is executed.

Where it gets interesting is attacks themselves.
The player always has 3 combat spells: Melee position spell, limited position spell, and open position spell.



To execute a melee position spell, your character must be in a melee range of an enemy character.
In pre-alpha demo melee spell simply deals weapon damage to the nearest enemy character.



To execute a limited position spell, your character must be near something that you can't move through - rocks, walls, cliffs, bodies of water, etc.
In pre-alpha demo limited spell restores 10% of health. Currently, it's the only way to restore health.



To execute an open position spell, your character must not be in limited and melee positions - away from enemies, edges, and obstacles.
In pre-alpha demo, open spell teleports your character to nearest enemy melee range and binds the enemy for 4 seconds. Bound characters are unable to move.

In future combat spells will be determined by the equipped weapon - this is where limitless design space comes from.
To make weapons and combat have good variety all I need to do is add about 50 combat spells, which is not too difficult.

Another important aspect of this system is that level design changes the combat.

I can make long, narrow passages where open position spells are impossible to execute, fields with no limited positions to retreat to, and trap-filled mazes where enemies don't let you get close for melee spells.

So to summarize, in the end, combat should become varied, highly customizable, easy to learn, skill demanding, and PVP viable.
A combat system to be the core of an RPG =]

That's all for this entry!

If there's something you want me to write in the next entry - let me know in the comments.

Welcome to the first LOTLW development blog entry!

Light of the Locked World is what happens when old school MMORPG is turned into small, but dense RPG with local splitscreen multiplayer.

I have started working on it in 2018 October and serious development began in 2019 March, when I released the last content update for my other game.

Here are other important moments:

January 2019

In January I have defined LOTLW's artstyle and implemented pathfinding.





February 2019

During this month I have added inventory systems and written the foundation for the game's story.



April 2019

This month was all about character graphics - I have implemented animation and equipment sprite systems, made walking and attack animations.
I have also added the wind system, which was a huge success - the game feels a lot more alive with plants, flags, and capes moving in the wind.







May 2019

May was epic! During it I was working on combat - now it finally resembles what it will be like at the end of development.
I also implemented basic faction systems. Factions will be very important to the game - player actions will determine how NPCs react to them.



The Present

My current goal is to release the pre-alpha demo in June.

There's still a lot to do - finish Moonrise Desert area, add HUD, rework interface and world chunking systems, make the game more player-friendly, add a way to customize keybindings, and so on.

So, yeah, I am not very optimistic about releasing the demo this month.

Whatever happens, I'll keep you all updated =]



If there's something specific you want me to write about in the next entry - Story? Combat? First area? Faction system? - let me know in the comments.

Until next time!

Light of the Locked World is now live on Steam!

If the game has sparked your interest, consider adding it to your wishlist - the wishlist count will help the game a lot during the release.

If you need more information about the game, go to Q&A thread in discussions - questions are usually answered within a day.

The next important event is pre-alpha demo release - it should become available by the end of June.

If you want to follow the game's development, here's where the news about the game will be shared:

Live updates:

LOTLW's Trello board

Frequent updates - GIF's and screenshots several times a week:

Twitter
Discord

Weekly updates - development blog entries roughly once a week:

Developer's official website
Facebook page
Subreddit

Blog entries will be shared on the Steam page as well - the first entry will be posted very soon.

Until then!