• Download [0.8.0-A]
• Full Changelog

Hello there~ Dungeon development is coming along well.

I had plans to construct a prototype dungeon by hand first, so I could get an idea of the aesthetic and have something to demo early on, but I've now decided that's not entirely necessary -- or rather, priority should be the dungeon generation itself.

I've opted to take a tile based approach to dungeon generation. You could think of each room and corridor as a tile, and the whole dungeon itself as a series of interconnected tiles. To keep generation interesting I'm not only allowing tiles to be of differing shapes and sizes, but they can branch out across multiple elevations as well. A dungeon that can sprawl in all directions may be a little intimidating to navigate, but it's certainly more interesting than a flat grid.

The image above may look a little insane, but I can assure you it is all connected.

My aim is to give dungeons a naturalistic structure. At present, I'm doing this by defining which tiles can link to one another, and using weights to determine the probability of a given tile being selected. This process is great because it allows rooms to be grouped together in a logical way. For example, I could say that kitchens can only branch from dining halls, or that en suits and walk-in wardrobes can only generate as offshoots from bedrooms. We can avoid hypothetical absurd room layouts, (like bedrooms opening into kitchens), by defining a simple set of rules.

If we were to consider the grand structure, this weighted tile approach can also allow rooms and hallways to spawn in clusters. It’s low cost, feels organic enough, and could theoretically be done on the fly, say we wanted the dungeon to keep generating endlessly in all directions. I might have to use a bit of that when it comes to creating Dungeon City.

To improve generation further. I will probably introduce a pass which generates small corridors and hidden passages between rooms which are close together as the crow flies, but far away in terms of actual walking distance.

Let's circle back to why aesthetic is now less of a priority. I no longer see dungeons having a fixed aesthetic across the board. As you progress deeper into a dungeon, I'd like there to be different biomes you can encounter, which may not only carry some visual changes but call for tiles and challenges unique to that biome as well. My current approach to dungeon generation demands the creation of a lot of prefabricated tiles. Simple block out rooms should really be used first and foremost so I can figure out how everything should link and get a good sense of the scale/structure before dedicating time to art. In order to reduce the number of tiles we need while ensuring a good level of variety, individual tiles themselves may generate different obstacles, traps, loot, clutter, enemies, etc. each time they are placed. There will be a little bit of procedural sub-generation going on just to keep things interesting and less repetitive.

One of the later things I want to focus on is progression through the dungeon. It's all well and good to hack and slash your way through mobs while collecting loot, but we can do a little better. We can have mini bosses guard keys between levels, and puzzles which may remove obstacles or open shortcuts to deeper levels.

At the moment, tiles branch out in all directions freely from the start point. For the next iteration, I want to run a random meander following a single path for a number of tiles, before allowing the goal state to spawn. Then branch out from that initial path, to tiles which contain keys or puzzles needed to reach the end goal. I could probably zone sections off as well (i.e. add gated choke points you need to somehow get past (e.g. puzzles, keys, blast locks, magical nonsense), so the route to the main goal is made clearer and you get a better sense of progression. 

As for what this “goal” entails. Lower tier dungeons might have a simple boss at their end guarding a pile of loot, but higher tier dungeons should have multiple “levels”, the goal may be a staircase, portal or elevator which takes you deeper into the dungeon and into a whole new zone.

What is going on in my world?

I am currently juggling the building of dungeon tiles alongside the dungeon generation code so it's going to take at least a few more weeks before I have something you can begin running around in.

In the meantime, we do have another update. More bugs fixed and functionality added behind a number of traits, and we have the new interaction log. The log just tells you what you've picked up and how much you've picked up. This is great for chests, shops and whatever random items NPCs will hand you.

Would you be interested in Eggyokel receiving lewd laying scenes? Are there any features or bits of content that you’re excited / hoping to see in the not too distant future? Let me know in the comments~

More to come. Until next time!

- Added: Added interaction log for pickups
- Added: Trait functionality for [Manletus Maximus]
- Added: Trait functionality for [Washboard Whiplash]
- Added: Trait functionality for [Scrambled] - Base items. Awaiting bodily appearance changes.
- Added: Trait functionality for [Clutch] - Base items. Awaiting bodily appearance changes.
- Added: Pickup item to inventory SFX
- Added: Drop item from inventory SFX
- Added: You may now back out of menus by pressing the ESC key.
- Fix: Fixed issue where player scale was not being set in sandbox mode
- Fix: Fixed tooltip offset when hovering over items in sandbox mode.
- Fix: Issue where mashing roll + shoot results in silly movement.
- Fix: Sword attacks are no longer allowed during roll or mantling
- Fix: Issue where dequipping and equipping gun would result in the weapon being positioned on the floor beneath the player
- Fix: It is no longer possible to draw your sword while the rolling or mantling animations are playing. (Resolves potential clipping bugs)
- Fix: It is no longer possible to dash while the mantling animation is playing. (Resolves clipping bugs)
- Fix: It is no longer possible to dash or dodge while rolling (Resolves potential clipping bugs)
- Fix: Resolved issue where jump and dash were being triggered at the same time. It is no longer possible to jump while aiming. 
- Change: Updated credits 

Hi everyone! Just a quick patch. This update aims to resolve various prominent issues found in last week's build. Thank you for all your feedback so far! More to come~
• Download [0.7.1-A]
• Full Changelog

Changes:

- Fixed: Issue where terrain was clipping with rocks on the far corner of the second island.
- Fixed: Issue where the player peen was not anchored to character body in sandbox mode.
- Fixed: Issue where the player stomach continued ticking after death. This would result in health regenerating after death.
- Fixed: Issue where a player who poisoned themselves to death could spam Q to drop their last hovered inventory item (i.e. poison) while dead.
- Fixed: Issue where the Ragdoll button was still active after death, which would allow the player to rise from the dead and move around.
- Fixed: Issue where the On Death screens "The End" text not displaying correctly.
- Fixed: Mantling/Climbing is now no longer allowed while dashing. This should resolve the various dash clip bugs.
- Fixed: Second island pink tree collision issues resolved. Updated to complex collision.
- Fixed: Second island cliff collision issues resolved. Updated to complex collision.
- Fixed: Character Creator issue where condition tagging was broken.
- Fixed: Character Creator typo in Kitsukana description.
- Change/Fixed: Sandbox underground staircase door direction. This door has been flipped around to stop the door from swinging towards the staircase. This should prevents mesh clipping and help avoid a rare soft lock case.
- Change/Fixed: Patched cave entrances on the side of the first island.

Greetings one and all! The time has finally come!
• Download [0.7.0-A]
• Full Changelog

As of version 0.7.0-A, the sandbox will now be accessible to all. Run around, play with slimes and fiddle with items. With this, we have officially entered a new stage in development. I’d love to hear all your feedback, criticism and critiques, so that I may bring Arkavite to you in the best possible form.

On top of opening up the sandbox, this new patch gives players a voice. While the player character is unlikely to get voiced lines, they still make grunts, groans and other such sounds. At character creation, you may now pick between several character voice options and adjust voice pitch.

I’ve also brought back the fabled intro sequence. If you love to overanalyse and decode titbits of lore, I’m sure you’ll like it. Otherwise, it should still be pretty good at amping you up right out the gate. If it’s all too much, there is an option to disable the intro sequence in settings.

Under Extras, we now have a CYOA section. Arkavite has a CYOA manager / editor in its backend which I use to drive the character creator, and spell book. In all likelihood, it will be used to build more game systems in the future. This CYOA manager has too much potential for it to be relegated solely to managing the character creator and spell book. As such, I’ve decided to open this system up to modders and CYOA creators. While the current iteration doesn’t let you edit Arkavite’s game files, it can be used by anyone who wants to make, share and play their own little interactive choice driven narratives. A standalone version is also available!

An idea I’ve toyed with in the past is making it so that these narratives people develop and share, can be collected in game. Books written by other players scattered throughout the world, or a little collectable interactive tale. That all may be far off, but there is a lot of potential for this system.

As it’s been requested quite a bit, when I have a spare moment, I would like to examine which features could be made moddable. Translations and language should be coming after just a little more combat work...

I would also like to present, the new Arkavite updater! This is a simple launcher for the game which checks for updates when you start it, and handles the download / installation process automatically. As builds have surpassed the 1GB threshold, having something like this in place will make moving from version to version a smoother experience.

On the topic of releases, I will be switching to a staggered release format moving forward, where backers get updates a set number of weeks ahead of everyone else. That tends to be the more typical way of running updates for these kinds of projects. Public releases for Arkavite have been rather disjointed up until this point due to the gap between character creator updates and playing catch-up with core and sandbox development. Save for a few special cases, I’m hoping to straighten out the release pipeline.

What’s Cookin?
Now the new release is live, I’m sure there will be the odd issue which needs fixing. Other than general fixes, I’m sure you’d like to know what’s on the development horizon, I am currently prototyping dungeon development, along with our next mob. I also expect to see more trait implementation in the coming weeks. As for smaller features, the interaction log may arrive soon, as well as some additional interaction mechanics, and save slots.

As always, If you like what I do, and want to see it grow, please consider subscribing today, or give the project a share. Every bit of support goes a long way in making all this possible!

Thank you all so much for following along. Now, I must return to the development dungeons. I wish you all the best. Until next time~

  • 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!