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[NathanielA]

Let me start you off with what I actually want to show off today:


I’m completely rebuilding the combat engine. Mostly right now the difference that you’ll see between this and the stuff I posted 6 months ago is the sprite variety and particle effects. But under the hood, there’s a lot more going on: actions determined by character class; hit, crit, and damage calculations based on attributes, skills, elements, and equipment; defensive bonuses for holding position; one “default action” per round, whether it’s on your turn or the enemy’s turn; and spaces in the code to allow for reactions and missile attacks.

I’m hoping to have a new video up soon showing off all of the changes.

…And I just now realized how much more powerful the magical attacks are than the other attacks. The magic wand weapons that the mages have equipped actually have a much lower attack power than the swords. But everyone also has much lower magical defense. I think I’m going to have to try to balance that out better. My wish was for AoE attacks to do less damage per target than a melee attack, but to do more damage overall when there are four or more targets. It feels good to be at a stage in development where I’m thinking more about game balance than game features.

I realize that may all be a bit confusing as the first post in my dev log here at TIG Forums.  I previously announced my game here http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=48701.msg1151860, and you might want to look there for a little more background.

I'm setting my dev log completion bar to 80%, but that's just my estimate for completing my code.  I haven't even started building the main campaign.  I'm thinking I'll try to get a short demo out to the media in the coming months, do a Kickstarter, and immediately offer everyone the demo and the campaign builder while I get more assets made and start work on the campaign.

[NathanielA]

Combat gameplay showing off ranged attacks, rogues (who attack the weakest instead of the closest enemy), some new animations, and generally a more complete combat engine:



No, that's not really the video.  We can't embed YouTube here as far as I know.  To watch the video, go here:




Lots more detail on what I've been up to over at http://himekosutori.com/

[NathanielA]

A frequent piece of advice fans have given me is that the difference between the 2D and 3D assets is pretty jarring.  I've been trying to tie the look together with pixellated, cubed, saturated backgrounds:



Also, terrain height is working as intended, with the foundation laid for terrain height bonuses and flying units.  You can see a couple more screenshots here.

With me as the only developer, things are moving along slowly, but they are moving along.  I'm hoping to relaunch the Kickstarter early 2016.  If any of you are interested in getting a reminder email you can sign up here.  I promise not to spam you; I'll only send you an email when the Kickstarter starts, and one more reminder before the campaign ends.

[NathanielA]

Added goblins and slimes.  Building underground battlemaps now and trying to add some variety with terrain height and lighting.



More details at http://himekosutori.com/?p=441.  Getting the goblin sprite sheets imported correctly was much harder than necessary due to UDK compressing the files, and picking its own local palette for every 4-pixel-by-4-pixel section of picture file.  That probably works fine for most textures, but doesn't work when you need true color for every pixel in a sprite sheet.  I found a workaround.  It's not ideal, but it kept me moving along.  Details at http://himekosutori.com/?p=432.

I think I have everything I need to get started working on a demo.  Time to get moving on that.

[NathanielA]

The game is still under development, and we're making progress!

I have the squad formation menu pretty much done:


I also have melee combat working:


And ranged combat:


After that, I need to get character customization done (level-up, equipment, class change), and then I'm pretty much done with all of the major systems.  I'm hoping to have a demo and Kickstarter ready in early 2016.  I have a Kickstarter reminder opt-in over here. Also, a tip to you other gamedevs out there:  I've had to block some hackers recently.  If you haven't been hacked yet, check your logs, and you'll probably see that someone's trying to hack you right now.

[NathanielA]

The latest updates are...


Himeko Sutori will be coming to Steam!

Menus are almost done.  The most important stuff is working now.  This is how to change equipment and character class:



And this is the animation for how you will pick special abilities when your characters level-up:



More detail on my blog at http://himekosutori.com/.

[NathanielA]

Save/load game working.  Experience points and level-ups working.  New messages to show whose turn it is.  And a coat-of-arms for your army so you know whose squad is whose:





The game is very, very close to finished.  I'm implementing a leadership system where you have to choose a squad leader, and his/her leadership score will determine how many characters can be in the squad.  And I have a couple of bugs to work out.  But very, very soon I will finish the base engine and start building the actual game.

[NathanielA]

We made a lot of progress in the last few months, and we have a lot to show off.  First, here's our most recent trailer...





...that we made in preparation for our Kickstarter campaign, going on right now.  And the trailer at Kickstarter has an even better version of the song.

We're bringing the pixel art talent of Shane from Endymion Games.



And the musical talent of Kevin Won, one of the most exciting new arrivals in video game soundtracks.

We have released lots of information on the characters of Himeko Sutori.








We have new details about the game world.



And we have a lot more detail over at the Kickstarter.  We would love it if you took a look and pledged your support.

[NathanielA]

Hey everyone!  Himeko Sutori is still in development and we have lots of news.  Since our successful Kickstarter earlier this year, we've made a lot of progress.  Where should we start?

We have this masterpiece added to the soundtrack, composed by Kevin Won and recorded by AIR Studios:





And here's the latest development video update, showing off the random character generator (with an incomprehensibly huge number of possible characters), with combat, and lots of graphical improvements and new items with unique sprite sheets:





We've been doing more work than that and there's a new video update in the works, which I'll be uploading soon.

[NathanielA]

New video up, showing off manual squad placement and automatic equipment optimization.  Lots of changes under the hood to get all of that working.

[NathanielA]

Here is the update for December, showing off menu upgrades:  60 fps animations, sound effects, stats that appear when you mouseover equipment, and the new fully functional and customizable shopkeeper menus: