Greetings, Malevolent Netherlords! Time does indeed pass by and even in this wretched heat we continue to toil in the depths! Many exciting things have happened these last two months and we are eager to bring you up to speed on it all!
Trailer! – To start off with a bang, we have created an Early Announcement Trailer for Lords of Nether! Much love and effort has gone into this and we are incredibly excited to bring you a first proper look into what we are making!
Discord! – Keeping on with rather large developments, we have finally chosen to open our Discord to the public! Please, join us and the many other prospecting Netherlords (or future competition if you will)! We are very happy to start engaging with out community more directly. It has been great fun so far and we expect it will only get more so!
Follow this link to enter the discord! – https://discord.io/lordsofnether
On a final pre-amble note, we encountered a bit of an issue recently when your loyal Overseer accidentally broke the site performing some maintenance. Rest assured however, this has been rectified with only minimal loss of life! We have taken the opportunity to update some pages and make things a little more accessible. We have unfortunately for the time being lost the animated background, but we will return that in time! The Newsletter Subscription feature is currently broken as well, but we will be repairing that shortly. Make sure to visit the updated Home, Game, Screenshots and Concept Art pages!
Also for the time being we are going to remove all user accounts and the ability to make them. We have decided there is little point to presenting the security risk when we have a much more involved way to interact with the community in the form of Discord now. This feature will eventually return, along with Forums, but for the time being they are deemed unnecessary and will be shut down.
With all that out of the way, let us begin!
Art
- Barracks 2.0 – Beginning on the bulk of actual game development updates, we have finally updated our Barracks tileset to 2.0! We believe that there is no finer place to hone your combat skills, other than the gory battlefield itself, and we are sure you will agree!
And on the trend of 2.0 Art Updates, last update we showed you the redesigns of two of our early game creatures – the Goblin and Troll. Three more have been finished since then!
- The Hag – A foul and wicked creature, Hags are petty, vengeful and revel in the misery of others. While they do not do much to slay enemies outright, their skills are far more useful as support, cursing and weakening enemies, but more importantly, having the ability to Heal your own creatures using their Mandrake Draughts! Hags are also of great use in the Library as researchers and in the Kitchen as… “excellent” cooks. Beware a bored Hag, however, for they have the tendency to curse your creatures for their own entertainment. Needless to say, most do not appreciate this, but that is kind of the point to a Hag.
- The Grindylow – This finned little fella may be familiar to many of you, his design having now been refined to a piercing point. Tribal and fairly primitive, Grindylows are aquatic creatures that hail from the swamps and bogs of Antioch. They will often choose to make Lairs near water if you have made the space available and this will keep them happier. In combat they will spit globs of venomous mucus at enemies, as well as slow the advance of enemies. They do not suffer penalties for moving through water, making them excellent at outpacing enemies should the terrain favor you.
- The Kobold – Aaah yes, the humble Kobold. Small, grumpy and absolutely dedicated to your cause, Kobolds can be summoned with a simple spell to your service, so that they may perform the many tasks that your dungeon requires to function. They may be small, but kobolds are the backbone of your dark domain and without them, things will soon start falling apart, so never underestimate these little blighters!
- The Warlock – And last but absolutely not least, the Warlock! These ornery dark magicians have long since abandoned their humanity in the pursuit of knowledge and ever-greater power. They are the best researchers that your dungeon can attract and their spells are devastating on the field, focusing largely on powers that will incinerate your foes where they stand, hurling fire and other foul magic across the battlefield. Beware, however, for Warlocks are an arrogant lot and are easily upset by various factors.
Before we continue, we have to make a brief pause to explain the current situation of the Lords of Nether team. As of the beginning of August 2020, Blutonium is no longer part of BlackHeart Games and the development of Lords of Nether. This decision was very hard for us to make, as we have worked together for a long time now, but certain key disagreements and differences in expectations have been causing us to drift further apart and causing a great deal of friction in the team, which have not been much fun for anyone. As a result we all mutually decided to stop working together effective immediately. We are sad to have to do this, but in the end it is best for everyone. We will make sure to compensate Blutonium for the time he has spent with us and the work he has contributed thus far for the project.
As a result we have been in need of a new 3D sculptor and we have found this in the wonderful Rebecca Underwood! We have given Rebecca her first task in evaluating her for the project – The Troll! In the time that she has spent working on this task she has impressed us thoroughly with her attention to shape and detail, her understanding of artistic direction and much more, and so we have unanimously accepted her as an official member of the Lords of Nether team! Bellow you can see some work in progress shots of her work on the glorious Troll sculpt!
Yes, Rebecca has already proven to be a fantastic sculptor and we are all very happy to have her on board and looking forward to the many beautiful assets we will build together on our road to Lords of Nether’s completion!
This will likely mean that none of Blut’s current work will make it to the final release as we will have to at some point redo the assets done so far to maintain a consistant level of quality, but the assets needed are largely environmental and not too many, so this should pose little challenge. Rest assured that no matter what, we hold our work to a very high standard and will make sure that the quality of our future assets is held to that exact same standard.
We will always see Blutonium as a dear friend and we wish him plenty of luck in his future ventures, whatever they may be!
Programming
- Object Placement – Finally, we have completed our system for object placement! All the various grids, states, props, shaders etc are where we want them at this stage, with only a minor bug that stops the cutting of holes in the grid at occupied locations. This system functions very well and is highly intuitive, making it much more satisfying to build your dark domain!
- Object Destructibility – We’ve been working up to this feature for some time now, as with it comes a cascade that leads to all basic mechanics being in the game and functioning correctly to have a fully playable level with Win/Loss conditions and you will understand why with the next item on the list. For this one, suffice to say, Furnishings that you place in the world now have health values and can be attacked and destroyed by enemies.
- Soulstone Destructibility – And here we have it. The Soulstone can now be destroyed and as it loses health it will appear more and more heavily damaged. The Soulstone is fairly integral to the Netherlord’s success, as it is capable of bringing them back should they be slain in combat. This is however, a rather finite ability of this arcane fulcrum and as such protecting it is of utmost importance.
- Lord Revival – The next jump in this cascade, the Lord can now be revived when slain! How does this work exactly? Well, when a Lord is slain in combat, their body is whisked away by the magical connection they have to the Soulstone, before the very crystal itself. There, the Soulstone begins pouring its own HP into the Lord, slowly reviving them over time. The Lord is fully protected from all harm while in this state, however the Soulstone is not. This process also damages the Soulstone and nothing can be done to repair it, therefore given the fact that the Soulstone only holds a set amount of HP directly proportionate to the Lord’s Health, all damage done to it is of significant concern. The fulcrum will grow in power as you do, becoming capable of bringing you back multiple times, but it will still eventually shatter should you be defeated too many times. A shattered Soulstone means that your next death is your final one, spelling Game Over. Protect your Soulstone well, Lord.
- Animation System Update – We have also been working on various updates to our animation systems, fixing issues that have arisen from previous updates to Unity or our own methods and also paving the way for how we intend to do things in the very near future. Nothing much exciting to show here, but highly important work never the less.
As we enter September 2020, the future of Lords of Nether is looking brighter and brighter! Kickstarter looms closer and closer on the horizon and we will start preparing the campaign itself based on our research any day now! Mechanic after key mechanic is being completed and quite ahead of schedule, hopefully leaving us with plenty of time to polish and optimize to prepare for the Demo! We will be establishing a Steam Page soon, as we will be making said Demo freely available on Steam! Our art style has finally settled on a level of quality and specific atmosphere, and our community is growing more and more and becoming more involved!
It is truly a pleasure to have you with us, my Lords, and we look forward to sharing these exciting developments with you!
~Your Loyal Overseer