Hey everyone! 

It’s a band new year, with plenty to do, so let’s get right into the news. Last time, I mentioned I’d be experimenting with a new camera perspective, and here is the first look. 

If you’ve been following along since the very beginning, you may think this perspective is somewhat reminiscent of the early 2D development, but as we are operating in three dimensions, we can do a little more. The camera can be rotated around the player, allowing you to see the world from a new angle. This may be used for improving navigability in complex environments, or be controlled by locational triggers in a similar manner to the cinematic dolly camera I showed off in a previous update.

To better suit the camera perspective, I decided it would be worthwhile to overhaul the player movement animations. Our locomotion system now features omnidirectional movement. This means that if you aim while moving, your character will face the point you are targeting, rather than the direction of travel. This new setup lets us handle strafing animations, and with some setup, it should also perform well in other third person camera positions (like over-the-shoulder).

There are other aspects of player animation framework which I've been working to fill in. We now have turn in place animations, run-to-stop animations, and as an extra little special detail, your character will tilt their head to look where you're aiming.

A directional dash/dodge system is also in the works. This closely relates to our blink spell which will allow the caster to quickly translocate several meters in any given direction.

For dodge/blinking I would like there to be a magical and non-magical variant. What we have at the moment is something somewhere in-between the two. Mechanically, the magical and non-magical variants will consume different resources and may differ in their progression, but should function similarly enough to one another. The non-magical variant would consume stamina, and would scale in speed and range based on physical attributes, while the magical variant would consume arka, have a high base speed, and a range which scales based on tier of casting.

Gun Sword

Also, in the news, I’ve been improving the gun and sword play. We now have gun animations which can be chained, and blend into our existing sword attacks. To make gun impacts feel better grounded in the environment, I've been busy at work, experimenting with material based impact effects. Walls are no longer ignoring us, and the impact VFX change to reflect the material which was impacted.

The current impact VFX are just for demonstration purposes. Some more stylization is definitely needed. As for our gun animations, I believe there is too much lead in. I will be testing how firing feels with a shorter windup in an effort to improve weapon responsiveness.

Most recently I’ve been working towards intractability, and figuring out more things I can do to make the players presence in the environment impactful. Since I’ve been messing around so much with guns lately, I’ve decided to begin by pursuing destruction.

Destructible pillars, statues and other environment props are always a joy. The thought of using this tech to hide secret passages behind destructible walls does come to mind, but before that, I yearn to have destructible crates, and barrels, for loot drops and item pickups. Perhaps I should also add in some explosive props which interact with the rest of these destructible elements? There is still a little more work to be done in this area before presenting the next experimental build, so until then, I will be sure to keep you posted with more updates.

What are your thoughts? Do you have any questions? Be sure to let me know down below!

  • Download [0.6.0-A]
  • Changelog 

Hi everyone!  Before the year comes to a close I have one last update for you all. This update is largely focused on polish, fix-ups, and some fancy new icons. 

So, a couple weeks back, I ran a little review of development to identify anything that could be holding the project back, and one of the biggest time eaters thus far has been developing choice portraits. I enjoy making them, but it's been such a great time expense that I’m worried it’s going to make it troublesome to add more boons, and banes in the future. I don’t want the game to be in a place where there are constant “no image found” gaps in the character creator, so the solution I’ve landed on is to replace blessing/curse/item portraits, with simplified icons in a similar vein to the current faith icons. Creating an icon, or just finding ones I can use without trouble is far quicker than whipping up a whole portrait. It took less than a week to create / assign icons for all our choices, and this solution also benefits another objective I've been thinking about, which is how we display traits to the player once they’re in game. My instinct has been to use trait icons. They’re easy to read at a glance, and can be shrunken down into a little panel. Portraits, just don’t work as well when shrunken down. All the details get lost... I believe using the icons between both the character creator, and main game would also create a better sense of consistency.

If you loved the old art, I’ve left it hidden behind a " Classic Choice Art " settings option. Finished or not, it's worth keeping the legacy system, on the off chance Arkavite becomes a glorious success, and I can wangle an artist into making art for me in my stead. Unfortunately, we’re not quite there yet, so I’ll keep doing my darndest in the meantime.

As for other roadblocks I’m hoping to remove, I believe the main camera perspective requires some rethought. My initial plans were to have a third person over the shoulder camera as well as a top down view the player could either toggle between manually, or would switch between dynamically based on location. While this plan is not impossible to execute, in practice I have found it does pose a number of additional challenges as compared to say, focusing on a single perspective. The issues really became apparent when working on combat, where animations, control scheme, and aiming end up tied to the camera view. Were we to then have a top down combat framework on top of this, it would only add to the complexity and warrant quite a lot more work. It is not so much a matter of practicality as it is time required to implement and polish everything to a degree I’d be pleased with.

How exactly I intend to get past this, is by flipping things on their head, and focusing on one perspective. But which one? I think we should use top down as the main perspective, while still allowing a manual toggle to over the shoulder cam. If the player initiates combat, we will simply force them into the main view. Ultimately, this depends on how the world is constructed. I believe top down combat does have simpler control/animation demands compared to over the shoulder, and it is more in line with my original vision for Arkavite.

This may also lead me to testing isometric views as I’m curious to see how a Transistor-esque type perspective would feel. I think something like that could also lend itself well to the tiled structure of dungeons. This is something I haven’t dedicated enough time to playing around with, so I think it’s at least worth a shot. If it doesn’t work, so be it, I’ll revert and try something else.

This has been quite a tumultuous year for me to say the least. I’m glad it’s finally over, and I’m excited for all the new things I’m going to try in the New Year. I’ll be pushing hard for the sandbox to come out in the first quarter of 2025. Probably on more of a ready or not basis. Should be exciting!

There are also a couple of extras I’ve sneakily been working on. The first of which might not be for everyone, but I believe it will benefit the project as a whole, and help us grow.

Thank you for joining me this year, and following me on this march. None of this would be possible without your support, so once again, thank you! I hope you are enjoying the jolly season, had a very merry Christmas, and I wish you all a Happy New Year!

See you next year. Take care!

- Added [Enable Classic Choice Art] option under "Settings>Gameplay>Character Creator".
 - Removed [Enable Compact Choices] option under "Settings>Gameplay>Character Creator".
 - Replaced Blessings, Curse, and Item art with choice icons.
 - Fixed: Issue where selecting the [Unstable] curse would result in crash. This was caused by a miss-input value id.
 - Fixed: [Curse of a Thousand Maidens] - this choice now requires the player select Female as their character sex.
 - Fixed: Issue where pupil Size slider was inverted.
 - Fixed: Issue where there appeared to be duplicate color options in the character creator. They options in question were using different pallets, however their default display colors were incredibly close to one another. The default display colors have now been changed.
 - Fixed: Issue where hair attachment buttons weren't highlighting on auto-selection of a new hairstyle, which would in turn prevent the user from selecting the last selected attachment option.
 - Fixed: Issue where switching to the male build would not highlight the correct hairstyle option on auto-selection.
 - Change: Refactor to the CYOA system backend. The key areas of change are point calculation, condition handling, free gains, and data loading.
 - Change: Refactor to the backend framework used by most Buttons has been reworked.
 - Change: Main menu textures upgraded to 2k resolution. The Arkavite planet texture has also been updated to match the surrounding aesthetic. Added more layering and blur to the background. Increased animation speed to lessen the amount of stutter. Updated panel grid texture and some of the UI colors.
 - Change: The loading screen transition has received some minor alterations to fix a seam issue visible at some display resolutions.
 - Change: Updated Credits Page with new names.
 - Change: Credits page supporters are now ordered by level of support within each tier bracket. The previous ordering was a little random, so I'm making this change to add some consistency and fairness to how names are listed.
 - Added Lulajze Jezuniu to the character creator playlist.
 - Added a couple Easter eggs. Try and find them!

 

A new dev log has dropped over on Arkavite! Today we'll be recapping all the recent sandbox changes. If you're subscribed, most of this may appear familiar to you, but worry not, as we'll also be touching on the general state of development.

If you haven't already, be sure to take a look~
• Dev Log:  https://arkavite.com/blog/2024/11/new-4u3/