next »

[Londorith]

IndieDB | Web | Devlog

Greetings everyone! Londorith, the Empire of Daggers is a tactical turn-based RPG I've been working on for some time.
The game chronicles your journey as a band of mercenaries who endeavor to survive through a calamitous succession crisis.

As for the gameplay, think of a more challenging version of the traditional Fire Emblem games; progression is strictly story driven and grinding is not an option. There is no permadeath; however, losing a named unit in combat means game over: recklessness is usually punished.

Combat rewards good positioning; breaking up the enemy forces or annihilating reinforcements is a must. Units don't explicitly have equipment slots: there are 8 stats and different kinds of units use a different set of stats for the calculation of hit chance, damage dealt and damage mitigated. For example, strictly physical units like knaves and fighters use Agility to hit, Might to damage and Grit to mitigate. A wizard may use Wisdom to hit, Wits to damage and Will to mitigate. Dealing a killing blow to an enemy automatically results in a level up; upon leveling up, units gain stats according to their stat growths. This growth is linear and deterministic so that it is impossible for the later chapters to be impossible due to chance. Most likely there will also be perks you can buy for individual heroes to increase their stats or range.


Right now, the essential gameplay elements are all implemented. All the levels for the first half of the game are done and playable in the game as well. The second half will be a bit more involved but I don't think there is much that will impede my progress; most likely the game will be complete by the end of this month (August), though I've found out that publishing games is a bit harder than I've initially thought so the release might come a bit later.

I'm not a great artist, so I'll be using the awesome 16-Bit Fantasy Sprite Set by Oryx.

Please let me know what you think!

[bombjack]

Hi,

I didn't play Tactical RPG for a while (the last was Final Fantasy Tactics)
But I really like them so I'm eager to se more on this 

[Londorith]

@bombjack: Thanks a lot! I'll try to have very frequent updates since I have set a very limiting deadline for myself!
7th of August Progress Report:

Today’s update brings most of the remaining vital features into the game.

Patch List:

• Added 1-button gameplay support for a possible mobile or browser port
• Added the pre-battle character selection screen
• Implemented 4 more chapters: Heritage of Men, Twisting Bridges, Culling Pass, Marketplace
• Updated the IndieDB page and created the website
• Added hidden units, reinforcement triggers and other similar things
• Changed the loss function used by the AI; this may lead to increased coordination between enemies
• Implemented a simple Dijkstra’s algorithm method that will be faster with the new loss function
• Implemented noncorporeal and flying units
• Updated the pathfinding system to accomodate for such units
• Created terrain modifiers like rain, desert and swamp
• 6 of the party members are in the game (probably there will be a total of 12)
• Started to think about the world map; more on that tomorrow!
• Decided to play with the art style and lighting as shown below:

Old:

New:

What do you think about this new style? I prefer it and people seem to like it.

[bombjack]

Hi, it's me again 
The shading/lighting of the new version is great but why go for this pink/purple tint?

[Londorith]

@bombjack: Glad you like it; basically, purple is one of the several colors that look nice with the units' graphics and I'm not using a single tint color. Different areas will have slightly different color schemes!

[Londorith]

13th of August Progress Report:

I've been busy tweaking the gameplay and various minute details. Going from a playable, working prototype to a polished product is a much harder process than I've suspected. Still, I believe I will be able to complete the game by the end of the month. Dialogues, text snippets and various other writing work are all that remain.  

Patch List:

• Added units that can automatically counterattack when attacked.
• Added .midi music for the various parts of the game; right now I intend to use public domain music and suggestions are welcome.
• Added the Options Menu, though this is still in development.
• Added quicksaves and quickloads during combat
• Enemies now have static stats; they used to have a slight randomization that sometimes complicated the early game battles
• World map is still incomplete but it looks great! A preview will arrive soon.
• Some of the more important characters in the game can now be upgraded; I don't think this will be an option for all the possible party members since they take time to implement and balance.
• I've decided to change the visual style again; some of the scenes I've not shown yet didn't look as well as they should with the previous idea. The scene I've presented earlier now looks like this:

New:

Finally, I've been adding particle effects for various items and weather conditions. These will be for the higher end PC's since I'm not taking time to optimize them, however I think they look nice. A scene with the latest rain effect can be found here. In game, this looks better as it runs on 60 FPS; I think I've made a mistake during the .gif creation process and the movement is slower than it should be.

[cascaid]

Love the weather effects, really adds atmosphere to the game.