Hello again, Dark Lords! It has been some time since we last came to you with news of your dark realm! Therefore, we have elected to once again rise from the depths and update you on the various goings on behind the scenes at Lords of Nether! We may have been quiet for some time again, the reasons for which we will outline at the end of this post, but we have never-the less kept busy with some important changes and developments which we are excited to share with your dark majesties! So sit back and enjoy, my Lords!
- Steam Delay
Last time we mentioned that we are now part of the Steamworks Program. We have since then gone through the many things necessary to set up a Store Page for our demo, however we encountered one snag that has made us consider putting the finishing touches off for a little while longer. To clarify, in order to be put on Steam, even simply to have a store page, a build must be submitted to Steamworks. However in order to function on Steam, this build needs to have Steam Integration, which is apparently a fair bit of work and may prove to be somewhat invasive. We currently feel like there are too many things that we would like to fix in order to not work off of a broken base and have to repeat the integration process at a later time, so we would like to work a bit more on the current state of the game and bring it up to snuff so that we can submit the build, which will initially be used for testing, in an acceptable condition.
- Tester Program Initiated
To that end, we have also opted to begin the first forays into external testing, having begun a very small and limited tester program through our Discord Server! This has already yielded massive benefits, helping us find bugs and flaws that we may have otherwise missed, and simply highlights the value of testing as early as possible. This program will eventually expand as the game makes more progress and specifically after we make our store page live, so keep an eye out on our social media and Discord server!
If you would like to join our Discord, you can do so here!
Art
- Mordred Tease
Along with the rest of the 2.0 redesigns, we have needed to bring perhaps the most prominent entity in the dungeon up to snuff with the updated art quality and direction, as well as preparing him for the Tier mechanic as well – Netherlord Mordred! We are hard at work on this redesign, which due to the nature and importance of the character is proving to be the single most time-consuming and complicated redesign yet! However, we are very happy with the results and look forward to showing them to you as soon as they are ready! In the meantime, we will only leak this teaser for you, but we are excited to showcase it fully soon!
- Goblin Nearing Completion
Work on the Goblin 2.0 Model is nearly complete! The last of his equipment has been prepared for the various tiers and he has been fully UV’d! Now he only awaits the baking process for the various texture maps we need, before he can proceed to texturing and be ready for full implementation into the game! We will be able to refactor our current goblin animations to this new model, so he will be our first animated and functioning 2.0 character ingame! We will share the visuals of this in the next update where we hope to have him done and textured!
- In-Game UI Visuals
We have made significant changes to how the visual elements of various player actions are presented. In order to keep things clearer, we have introduced more visible bounding boxes to both object placement and various terrain tagging options.
- Warlock Animations
We have continued working on the various missing Warlock animations and we are now happy to say we have the full set of what we needed fully complete! This includes animations such as resting and eating!
- Magica Cloth
While dabbling with the Warlock, it became even more frustrating to see how our current solution for cloth in-game was woefully lacking and causing a great number of issues. To that end, we have moved to an alternative solution, that upon testing seems to be much more stable and far easier to work with, resulting in greatly decreased implementation times in future assets. This tool comes with some small drawbacks in terms of realism and options, however much of it is something we will not miss, given the RTS nature of our game and the already obvious level of stylisation in our art direction, in fact this looks to be much more suited to our needs than our previous solution.
- VO Recording
We continue to fill out the list for sounds we need at least placeholders for in the demo! One development on that front is that I, your Loyal Overseer have also decided to lend my hand.. or rather.. .voice, to the effort as we continue to experiment and find the right sounds for our units! No examples of this quite yet, but we are due some soon!
Programming
- Improvements to Building
As mentioned, as well as partially showcased above, we have made significant changes to the visuals of this mechanic, but we have also worked under the hood quite heavily in order to make the process more refined and intuitive! We have modified how the grid system works, how exactly the visual feedback is generated and relayed, what constitutes blockages, where you can or cannot place things, etc. Units can now dynamically present blockages on the grid as well!
- Dig Mode
As a method to keep a more clear separation between unit command and dungeon building, the two aspects that are the main pillars of our game yet previously stepped on each other’s toes in some areas, especially regarding control, we have moved Dig tagging commands to a separate “control state” that can be seamlessly activated either with a hotkey or with the in-game HUD. The default control mode will remain the unit control, as it is far more likely to be necessary at a split second than the excavation. This will take a little getting used to even for us, as we’ve been so used to our previous method of doing things, but we feel it’s much more effective and efficient this way! Not only that, but we have switched the method of tagging tiles back to the rectangular drag-selection, after some consideration, feeling like this is indeed the better way to handle this aspect of the mechanic.
- Planned Changes to Summoning
While not yet implemented, we have been working heavily on generating ideas for a more interesting summoning system. Our previous traditional RTS approach did not sit quite well with us, feeling like it made a big element of the living aspect of your dungeon become trivialized. In addition we found that it is often something that can be neglected and forgotten with how much the player has to do in the dungeon. We are instead looking to move it towards a system much more similar to that of Dungeon Keeper, however with several overlaying systems that will help determine how things spawn as well as still give you some level of control as to what enters your dungeon. We will discuss more details on this when we begin implementing these changes!
- Return to Movement System
With the temporary focus switch to fixing various issues of the game prior to the Steam build, we have had to delay our plans for improving the movement system and therefore it’s lead-up to the game’s AI. However, with much of that now finished, we are finally returning to this aspect in force and we can begin vastly improving this aspect of the game and finally preparing for said AI, which is likely to be one of the biggest challenges we face. We have outlined what we want to achieve and are hard at work on making it happen!
- Bug and Issue Fixes
With our tester program taking some of the slack off of our in-house testing, we have indeed also located a number of issues and bugs, honing in on them and trying to rapidly squash as many of them as possible. We are now in the gradual but concerted effort of cleaning up the game as much as possible before we continue building in major features and making major changes, as we do not want technical debt to accrue, as it can massively slow down development.
With all that said, things are starting to look quite good once again, as we are again picking up momentum and making significant progress. A great number of long-standing obstacles have either been removed or are in the process of being removed, leaving us with a much clearer and less stressful path ahead and we are looking excitedly forward. We will keep you posted on how things progress, hopefully with greater frequency from now on! We also hope to be able to showcase some more gameplay online very soon, so keep your eyes peeled, Lords!
Now, my dear friends, I would like to step away from the role for a moment and talk to you all openly. You have likely noticed the slowdown in our news posts and the lack of online presence. I would like to explain this to you all personally.
In the past several months, give or take half a year or so, we’ve all been going through some major life events. Some of us have been moving house, others starting new jobs and I myself, the lead behind Lords of Nether, have been fighting a long, final battle to finish my bachelor’s in Game Design. This was finally won at the tail end of April 2021, having come off the back of many, far too many years of extreme stress and anxiety that gradually permeated my life and were driving me to such a low point that I decided to finally start getting things in order. I had decided to withdraw from my study in order to focus on Lords of Nether, but as is often the case, I underestimated the sheer scope and size and the amount of time things would take.
This whole mess is why I decided to refocus for a time and fix my life before continuing on with Lords of Nether, in order to prevent myself from falling into terrible situations in the future and to therefore better secure my ability to work on LoN, BlackHeart and their futures. This resulted, regrettably, in about half a year of my partial absence from the project, being able to provide only basic direction and not contribute much to production myself.
However, with that enormous load of stress off of my shoulders, I am now free to return to Lords of Nether in full force, in a way I have not been able to before now, as my focus has always been fairly split and the stress and anxiety caused by my study are now gradually melting away.
This is fantastic news, as despite the slowdown, now things are gradually begging to pick back up for all of us and I am extremely excited for what the future holds for Lords of Nether and BlackHeart Games! I am also extremely happy to be sharing that future with the amazing Lords of Nether team who have supported me every step of the way and of-course with all of you, our fantastic and dedicated fans! An exciting new chapter is before us and I am personally itching to dive in head-first!
This whole thing means a number of things, but to start with, I will focus primarily on re-establishing our online presence. I will not make any promises here as I have often underestimated things in the past, but what I will say is that I will now make a gradual and concerted effort into not only keeping you all in the loop more frequently, but will also rebuild and maybe even expand our interaction with social media over time! In the more immediate future, this will likely result in more frequent, perhaps less lengthy newsposts, which should make them a bit more digestible than one massive post!
This is by no means to say that we have not all been busy with work on the project, we have made some important changes and developments and there are some massive milsetones that we are finally starting to reach!
I thank you all for understanding and sticking by us through these times and I am extremely excited to go into this new chapter with all of you!
On behalf of all the Lords of Nether Team, we love you and thank you for all your passion and support!
And until next time, Netherlords, don’t let the light shine through!
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