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Hello everyone.  I've been looking for a good place to just talk about my game from a programming and design point of view and I was directed to this thread.  I like making stuff and creating new things.  My current game is called Skullforge: The Hunt.  It's an action RPG that's done in the old top down isometric style.  There is something about that type of game that brings me back to the early days of gaming.

The official site for my game is at http://skullforge.omc-games.com.

After reading a lot of posts here, it's hard to believe that I didn't know this place even existed.  I guess it shows how far out of the loop I am.  Still, its good to see so many projects out there.  Gives me that warm feeling.

So I plan to use this space to keep go into some design issues and ideas I've been thinking about.  The overall design docs have been laid out, but I find that while I'm developing the game sometimes an idea I had doesn't quite work out as well as I thought it would.  I guess that's why I like game development.

Everything is still pretty early, and I wish I was an artist so I could make the game look pretty, but alas.  All things considered, I think it's turned out well enough.  I apologize for that, but it's the best I can do with what I have.

Anyway, thanks for listening.  I hope you guys have a great evening.

EDIT: Adding the original video for Skullforge: The Hunt.  It's a bit old, but perhaps you can get a good idea of what we're trying to do with the game. Not sure how to embed the video, but at least here's a link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF-S5JmaQa0

Vote for us on Steam Greenlight:  http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=250832280
Also, interested in helping out?  Feel free to donate at: http://skullforge.omc-games.com/?page_id=207

I find that putting time in when programming is fairly easy these days.  I have a day job that can be demanding, so I generally program when I have free time.  Which means, these days, I'm either programming or working my other job with a rare trip to Kamakura (I'm in Japan) or some place in between.

I thought I'd take some time off and play some games, but I've been having this nagging feeling to do something about the text that pops up when the player blocks an attack.  Seems like a simple thing, but it's something I felt like needed a change, because as of now it simply displays a 0 for damage.  I know it should display something, but the real question is how it should be displayed.  Right now, I'm thinking something along the lines of:

damage taken (damage blocked)
0 (35 blocked)

I just wonder if that is too long.

Messing around with this lead to me fiddling with attack timing.  That's going to something I think I can fiddle with forever.  At the moment, I feel like combat is too easy.  The more skills I add, the more powerful the character seems.  Perhaps this will change as NPCs get more moves and damage is tuned a bit.  Anyway, that's a topic for another day.

It's been a couple of days and I've managed to find a little time to relax.  Ended up playing The Amazing Spider-man 2.  It does web-swinging quite well.

Today, I figured I'd take a moment to talk about the graphics in the game.  It should be pointed out that I'm no artist.  The great thing about working with Unity is the asset store. Say what you want about it, but there's a ton of stuff listed.  Some of it good.  Some of it not so good.  Still, without it, I doubt my game would have gotten off the ground.  I made the decision early on to use the Asset Store and I haven't had any regrets as of yet.

I think the assets I've picked up so far have been quite nice, and the best part is that the developers of these assets have generally been nice and have been good enough to make some modifications for me for free.  I owe those guys a lot.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Skullforge_9.png)

So far I'm pretty happy with the look of the game.  The only thing I'm not happy with is the main character.  This is a big sticking point for me since what you see is a generic character I got off of the Asset Store.  It's not a bad looking character, but it's not an elf and it's not unique to the game.  However, I'm not an artist, so it's the best I can do at the moment.

To fix this problem, I went to Kickstarter to try to get funds to get more custom art for the game.  I have a job and my funds are limited...as I assume is the case for many people here.  I really want the game to look the best it can and good graphics don't come cheap.  I wish I could say that this avenue met some success, but that's not the case.

This is one of those times when I wish I knew how to model in 3D, but alas, I'm just a programmer.  So odds are I'll be using this model until the game goes live, and I guess I'm okay with that.  There's still a lot of time before the game is released and anything can happen before then.

At the end of the day, I'm still happy with how the game looks and I have quite a few assets that can be used to craft some nice looking zones.

Here's the Kickstarter page for anyone interested: 
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/649312251/skullforge-the-hunt (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/649312251/skullforge-the-hunt)

I woke up this morning with the idea that I was going to tackle something mechanical in the game.  This lead me to working on the small target windows that pop up on the left side of the screen.  The idea behind this was to give you a list of enemies without having to tab target through them.  At least you can figure out which ones are around and choose the correct one accordingly.  In all videos and up until this point, only one window pops up.  The goal is for up to six to be on the screen at one time.  As an enemy dies, it's window will disappear and any other enemies who aren't listed will take it's place.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Skullforge_Dev_1.png)

This should give you an idea of what it looks like in the game.  I'm thinking about trimming the number of windows down to 5, because this might be a tad too much clutter on the main screen.  We'll see how it goes with testing.  The number of windows can be easily adjusted in code.

That about wraps it up for today.  Thanks for reading.

Hello everyone.  It's been a crazy week as I had a few days vacation due to Golden Week here in Japan.  I took a bit of time to just relax and get my bearings.  There's a ton of work to do and with the way everything is going, I have to say I was losing faith.

I'm sure people on this forum understand the sheer amount of work that goes into making a game.  Up until this point, I have put in a lot of time into the game.  I work a normal job and I come home and work on Skullforge for a few hours.  On my days off, I may put in a good 8 to 10 hours working on various systems and testing.  Perhaps this is the situation for a lot of us.

With the sheer amount of work going into this game, one does have to wonder why we do it and what we have to gain at the end of the day?

I guess for me, it's been a dream of mine to make a game. It's something I started many years ago when I got my first computer (Atari 800XL).  I'm sure not many people remember the old days of typing in code from old magazines.  My favorite was Antic and as slow and tedious as it was to type all that code in, I got a trill just watching everything come together.  It's those moments that drove me to get into making games.

So why make this one?  It's something I had to think about recently.  The question is who do we make games for?  The public or ourselves?  In all creative industries, that's one of the big questions.  Who do you do it for?  I'll be honest and say that I always get ideas that I think are pretty cool.  I always have to feel good about what I'm working on.  If I can't feel good about it, then I don't want to do it.  Unfortunately, what jives for us doesn't necessarily jive for everyone else.

I'm a firm believer that it is our duty as developers to convince people to support us or buy our goods.  This goes for the small guys as well as the big ones.  So I look at my own project and wonder if it's worth going forward.  Reception is basically lackluster at best, and while comments have been good overall, there's a certain "meh" surrounding the whole thing.  I wonder what goes through the mind of professional developers when something they've poured their heart into is met with a less than stellar reception.  Do you cut and run?  Make adjustments?  Honestly, I don't know.

I was just about to call it day.  I discussed it with my wife and thought about the consequences of dropping this and working on something else...or nothing at all.  But this morning, I read a story about a project on Steam that was having a bit of trouble.  I don't know the whole story, but it seemed that either something was mismanaged or they got in over their heads.  Either way it was a tough situation for them.  Reading comments and thinking it over, I realized that if I simply gave up and cut my losses, then I'd be another one of those guys who dropped out when things got tough.  Another indie developer who couldn't get anything done.

At that moment, I figured that I did enjoy working on my game.  Not many people get a chance to create something and watch it all come together.  The first time I got my character running around in Unity I danced around the house.  Such a simple thing, but it was my first time really jumping into an engine and I didn't know anything about C# or Unity for that matter.  It was then that I knew I could get my game working and since then I've made some pretty nice strides.  The whole experience has been great.  Should I give all that up?  Maybe not.  I'm still having fun working on it.

So what does this mean for Skullforge?  It won't be another "dead" project.  I'll just continue on and hope that by the time I'm finished other people will enjoy what I've created.  If you can't really enjoy what you're working on, then what's the point?

Thanks for reading.

It's a short little update since I had a few minutes before bed.  I have been a bit bummed out recently, so I figured I'd work on something that didn't have anything to do with programming.  Working on interiors is one of the things that I enjoy doing when I just want to do something involving the game, but don't want to program.  I admit that I'm not all that good at it, but it's cool putting all the little pieces together to craft the inside of a building.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Skullforge_21-394p.png)

I'm still learning how to do lighting, so if everything looks a little uneven, then I apologize for that.  We'll be able to narrow it all down before the game is released.  In the pic above, I was messing around with ambient lighting.  In all previous indoor shots, I usually have the ambient lighting turned down so that the individual lights in the scene provide the illumination.  I got the idea after reading some information on lighting a few months ago.  Recently, I've gone back to re-evaluate this as I think the scenes are too dark.

After looking at the above picture, I decided to make some changes which lead to the picture below.  More lights, but I'm not sure how I feel about it.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Skullforge_20-394p.png)

It's bright.  I like it.

I haven't added any flavor to the building yet (bottles, barrels, chairs, etc.).  I'll be working on it over the next couple of days.

Wow, looking good -- and this is looking quite far along. Watched the trailer -- DAT DRAGON SHADOW.

This is quite an ambitious project to solo. I'm looking forward to it. I commiserate on getting sick of programming. I've been doing nothing but programming UI for days. I'm going for a very gorgeous Persona style user interface, and it's just murdering me. It's nice to switch off to animations or particle FX every once in a while just to stay sane.

Thanks, Matt.  I had a look at your project and it's looking quite nice.  The art is beautiful.  Best of luck on it.

I know what you mean about changing things up.  I have been working on mechanical things for a while and it was starting to drive me crazy.  Being able to switch up helps keep things fresh.  Designing a good, functioning UI is challenging, so I hope you get it looking and working like you want it.

Welp, back to work.  I'll probably have another update in the next couple of days. About to jump into saving and loading...fun stuff.

Just wanted to chime in and let you know I totally get where you're coming from. Developing games is very hard work, and it can certainly be frusterating at times. That doesn't stop people like us though :) We love what we do and we'll keep doing it for as long as we can.

That being said, I may be able to provide some advice.. What has worked well for me is I specialized in an area of game development: programming. Ok, so that's still a very broad field, but even if your day job isn't game development, solid general software engineering principles apply to game development with a little patience and math. If programming is not your thing, maybe focus on 3D art. Or if not that, then level design. Just be really good at what you do. Join up local game developer meetups if you can, and just share your ideas. If it's good, people will come :)

Good luck, and I'll be following your project!

Thanks for the advice, Dajyareo.  I've pretty much specialized in programming, but I've tried to expand my horizons.  Mainly because I feel like I should understand how other parts of game development works in order to be better at programming.  It's just my own quirky little thing.

I do wish there were some meetups here in Japan, but I haven't found anything like that yet.  Perhaps once we move back to The States, we'll be able to mingle with folks.

Anyway, today was a hard day at my day job, so I didn't get much done.  Gonna try to do a little something before bed, but I don't have much hope since I'm so tired.  Too much stuff to do and so little time.  Tomorrow should be a bit better.

Had an issue with SmartSVN, but got that worked out.  Whew.

It's been a couple of weeks since I've updated this blog, but to be honest, I haven't worked on much since my last post.  My real job has been fairly busy, which has made working on the game a lot harder to do.  Things are getting back to normal, so I feel like I can get back to work and so I've been working on a couple of things that had been bothering me.

The first problem I had was dealing with how HP bars were presented for NPCs and enemies when they attacked.  In a previous post, I mentioned that I was going to put them all on the left hand side.  However, after looking at it, I felt it was a bit cluttered.  Now, all NPCs have their own HP bar that pops up over their head.  It makes dealing with multiple enemies easier to manage since you can see each individual NPC's HP attached to them.  Originally, I didn't want to make it seem like a dungeon crawler kind of game, but providing the player with easy to discern information is the most important thing.

The other thing was to work on saving and loading a game.  It's kind of strange to think that I haven't handled this already.  I'll be honest, I hate working on two things...database stuff and save data management.  Just the thought of it makes me want to procrastinate. Unfortunately, I can't put it off any longer. The good part is that I do have a solution in mind for saving a game and how it's going to work. The problem is actually taking the time to get working. If all goes well, I should have the basic framework for it working tomorrow.  That's the plan, anyway.

Other good points over the last couple of weeks have been... we're going to try to be at Tokyo Game Show. With Sony helping out indies by paying the fees, I think I can take the time off to present Skullforge: The Hunt to the world in a more direct way. It will give people a change to play the game as well. Now it's just a matter of getting accepted by the TGS group.  Fingers crossed.

Finally, we got approved for Wii U development by Nintendo.  Maybe that doesn't seem like much, but it's a big deal for me.  Took a lot of time to get it done, but it happened.  Working on a console game has always been a dream of mine.  Here's to the future!

That's it for today.  You guys have a good one.

Grats! :)
You planning on any tablet-controller specific features?

When I started my game, I had planned to do something with Miiverse.  Like having a way for players to ask questions when they're stuck. 

The Wiipad is a different beast, but to be honest, I wanted to do Wii U development in order to push the remote and nunchuck.  Sounds crazy, I know, but that's gotta be my favorite controller ever.  We do have some Wiipad things planned. Of course, we'll also have off-TV play as well.  The biggest issue is time, but I want to do something unique for Wii U players.

Working on the game a bit more these days.  Lots of things that need to worked out and as I mentioned before, lighting is one of those things that I'm still working out.  Either way, I went ahead and changed a few of the areas we used in the trailers to better looking places. Looks better, in my opinion.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Skullforge_22-394p.png)

Hello, everyone.  It's been a while since I've posted here, mainly because I haven't had anything to write about recently.  Most of the work going into the game right now has to do with things under the hood and are rather boring to talk about.  I doubt people have much interest in how the options system is working out.  That said, I am making quite a bit of progress in that area and I'm quite happy about that.

One of the things I've been struggling with has to do with complete controller control vs. keyboard and mouse functionality. I won't lie and say I'm not much of a PC gamer.  The conventions used in most PC games are things that I'm not familiar with and so Skullforge is built with the idea of using either the keyboard as the main input tool with the mouse as a secondary input device used for attacking and dodging, but skill use and the like are activated via keyboard.  This is because I've avoided using "buttons" for almost all the UI design.  This means there aren't many clickable options in the game.  Perhaps some folks won't be too happy about that, but it helps me deal with balancing controller use, mouse/keyboard, and Wii remote.  It probably sounds worse than it actually is, but it's a decision I've had to make recently and I'm happy with how it works in game.

Outside of that, the art for Desi is coming along nicely and I hope to have a pic sometime soon.  Heh, I think she is looking pretty cool.

Hey folks.  Just making a post letting everyone know we're still alive and working on the game.  I feel like I haven't had much to share since much of what we're working on is in transition.  I've been looking for people to help get a couple of custom models done and someone to do some world layout based on my maps.  Heh, I've tried to do this myself, but I'm terrible at it.  Of course, if I can't find someone to help on this front, then you guys will have to suffer through my crappy terrains.  For that, I apologize.

Had a person work on Desi's design and it worked out quite well.  I'm real happy with how it turned out.  The next point is to get her custom model setup based on his design.  My goal is to get this started sometime in the next couple of weeks.  If you're interested in the character check it out below.

http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/desi_wallpaper.jpg

Working on finalizing the total list of places to visit in the game.  This includes inns, taverns, churches, shops, dungeons, etc.  Up until now, I've pretty much added places as they've been needed, but my list is getting a little cluttered and I feel like there's a bit of overlap in areas.  It's time consuming and costly to add a new zone for every little thing, so I want to reuse places so that they have dual purposes.  That doesn't mean I won't add new places if it is required.  I just want to save us a bit of time by not having to create so many buildings and places if they're not really necessary.

I wanted to have a couple of screens this weekend to show, but time wasn't on my side due to work.  Plus, I wasn't happy with how the zone I was working on was progressing, so I decided to hold off until some other time.  No point in showing off some ugly looking zone just so I could have something to show.

Also, in the next month or so, I will be putting together a little video blog to show off some things we're working on in the game.  They won't be very long...4 or 5 minutes, but it should give people some idea on how the game is progressing and how various systems work in the game.  I'm kind of looking forward to this and I hope everyone else is, too.

Okay, that's it for today.  Have a good one.

It's been a while since I've posted some screens for the game, but I wanted to give you guys a little look at how things have changed in recent weeks.  What you're looking in the picture below is the original look of Kellum's Inn.  It's dark, and I feel like it doesn't look much like you would expect of an inn.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Skullforge_23_old-394p.png)

In the picture below you can see how it's changed.  This is the same place, but we have a better asset pack for crafting the inside of buildings and I think it shows.  We went ahead and improved the lighting a bit and added a little flavor to the room.  There are a few places to work on, so it's taken a bit more time than to get them looking the way we want them.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Skullforge_23-394p.png)

Hopefully in the next couple of days we'll have a couple new screens from one of the actual dungeons in the game.  Thanks for reading.

I wish I could update more often, but after my first real reveal and the Kickstarter afterwards, I've been a little wary showing off the game in it's current form.  It's still early and there are lots of things that need to be worked on and updated.  The initial response of "it's crap" or "looks bad" is pretty scathing considering how early it is in development.  Not that this is a complaint against that sort of criticism, but even stating that a lot of what people have seen is early development stuff, it's still taken as if it's what the game will look like in it's final form.

I'm one of those guys who likes to delve into how and why of game development.  Posting screens of what things look like in the beginning and the little crazy things we deal with I find quite interesting.  I believe that there shouldn't be anything wrong with seeing things in their raw state.  It's raw and the game is still being made.  If someone isn't happy with that, that's fine.  I've just come to accept that this is my way and how I like to do things.  Of course, that means I'm opening myself up to that level of criticism as well.  I guess I'm fine with that too.  What's the point of all of this if we can't show off the jank so we can appreciate the strides we make?

Anyway, sorry for my little rant.

Today, I just wanted to say that I decided to change the way the enemy's HP is displayed.  I had messed around with adding windows that showed the enemy's HP on the left side of the screen, but after playing around with it, I found it was better to just put the HP bar over their head.  It's kind of a bummer since I wanted something "flashy" instead of the traditional "bar over the head" style.  However, there's a reason it's the tried and true way in 3D games.  Once there are too many enemies on the screen managing who to target should be about speed as it's a matter of life and death.  Having gotten destroyed by them a few times in testing, I figured it was better to just have the HP bar connected to the mob.  Heh, that's why we test, right?

Also, I have added a musician to our little band of merry men.  He's a great guy and I'm happy that he was able to join the crew.  His first track is pretty awesome and he's given me some ideas on how to handle sound in the game.  This will end up being better for the game and ultimately great for the player experience.  Once we nail down the track, I'll post a sample.  It shows the direction we're going with the audio layer of the game and how it'll be different than what you'd expect from a fantasy action RPG.  I hope that's a good thing.

That's it for today.  Take it easy.

It's been a while, but seems time for a couple of screens.  This comes from one of the warehouses in the game and one that is in the middle of being populated with stuff.  I liked the way it turned out, so I figured I'd share this with everyone since I haven't posted new screens in a long while.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Skullforge_25-394p.jpg)

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Skullforge_24-394p.jpg)

Hello again. Been going back and making adjustments to the world of Skullforge: The Hunt and one of the places I revisited is Kellum's Inn.  It's one of the inns you'll be visiting in the game and when I first showed it I wasn't happy with the layout, but it was the best I could do with what I had to work with.  However, I was finally able to convince someone that there was a need for a good interior pack and he did just that.  This made the new Kellum's a much better looking place and I hope everyone will enjoy hanging out there.  Below is what it looked like originally.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Skullforge_6-394p.png)

You can see how things have changed in the new screens.  It's like night and day, in my opinion.  Always feels good to see changes like this.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Skullforge_27-394p.png)

Well, work continues.  Hope you guys have a great day.

Oh I remember seeing the game over on NeoGAF, it's definitely looking better than the last time I saw it and I like how clean it is. Do you have any higher resolution shots here because most of you latest show are quite small?

How's the greenlight going though, it probably wasn't there the last time I remember seeing you post on GAF, so I'm going to have to go vote for it now :)

Heh, I haven't posted anything in NeoGAF in a long time. I should check up on everyone to see how they're doing.  The game has come a long way since then, but it's still a long way from being finished. 

Here are a couple high res shots (720p). I try not to use them here as I feel like they can bog down the page when there are too many screens. 

http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Skullforge_27.png
http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Skullforge_26.jpg

Perhaps I'll try to include the link to the higher resolution screens in the future.

As for the Steam Greenlight, it's coming along.  Slow, but every now and again I get an e-mail or comment from people who have discovered the game.  I'm going to need to update the screenshots there with newer ones.  If anyone hasn't voted for us on Steam Greenlight, please head over there and throw us a vote.  The link is below.  :D

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=250832280

Another week and another screenshot.  This one shows off Blackquill's tavern.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Skullforge_28-394p.jpg)

Hey, this looks pretty cool. I'm impressed how far one developer can get with a little help by the Unity asset store. I would have easily believed for this project to have 10 people involved just from looking at the screenshots.

I would recommend for you to update the first post and put the youtube video in there. Make sure to not just drop the link since that's easy to overlook, but create a screenshot that looks like a youtube video and link it to the actual video on youtube. This will help people to get a better understanding of the game without having to read up the different posts.

Cheers

This devlog is very impressive, especially for a one man dev team using Unity, are you using Unity pro?

Thanks for the compliments.  I feel like getting good art is the thing that holds many people back.  I was lucky that one of the asset creators is a good guy and put together some great assets for people to use. Of course, being a programmer does make getting things functional a lot easier.  Let's just hope that it all comes together in a great package at the end of the day.

I hadn't thought of adding the video to this blog, but it's a good idea.  I'll go ahead and add it after I finish this post.  It's kinda old at this point, but I suppose it can't hurt to have it there until I can get a better one out.



Thanks.  Yeah, I'm using Unity Pro.  The lighting features are definitely worth it.  Luckily, Wii U development comes with Unity Pro as well.

It's another week and another screenshot. Enjoy!

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Skullforge_29-394p.jpg)

Been working hard this week on UI things and I have to say it's the part I hate most.  Trying to get everything to look right and actually function is rage inducing sometimes.  The sad thing is after I worked on a few things I came to the conclusion that the UI needed to be redone.  I like how clean the current UI is but it's...missing something.  I'll admit that I don't really have an eye for creating something like this.  Which is why the current UI is a little clunky looking.  In any case, it does what I want it to do.  This is why in recent screenshots, I've turned off the UI. It's just not good and it kinda ruins the feel of the screenshots.  I'll be focusing more on the UI in the next month because I have to get quest and info UI looking decent.  Still a ways off on getting that functioning the way I want it.

Also, I picked up Chat Mapper and I'll be using that for quests and dialog. Keeping track of the crazy dialog trees in the Unity Editor makes my head hurt. Just the few dialogs I used for the Skullforge: The Hunt trailers was difficult to keep track of and I kept messing it up because I would get who said what mixed up. Something definitely needed to be done about that. It would have been nice if Chat Mapper had a Mac version so that I could work on code and dialogs on the same machine...but alas.  Luckily, the ole Windows PC is around and probably pretty happy he's getting some work outside of playing Mass Effect 3 and testing Skullforge PC builds. Gotta admit that the software is a little daunting in the beginning.  Sooooo many options to mess with.  In any case, here's to the future!

I'll end today's blog post with a new screen.  This is the updated warehouse.  You should notice that there is a lot more going on this time.  Woot!

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Skullforge_30-394p.jpg)

Hello folks.  It's been a while, but we're still out there chuggin' away at the game.  I don't have much to say this week, so enjoy this week's screen.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Skullforge_32-394.jpg)

There isn't any furniture in the Mercenaries Guild yet, but the movers are coming....

Hello, everyone.  It's been a while, but work continues.  Today, I figured I'd throw up a couple screens for you to check out.  I hope to have a more interesting blog post in the coming weeks as I'll have more free time due to the holidays.  Something I'm definitely looking forward to.  Anyway, hope you enjoy the screens.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Skullforge_31-394.jpg)

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Skullforge_35-394p.jpg)

Hey folks.  It's been a while since I last posted.  A lot has happened since then, the most important thing is that I made the move from Japan to the U.S.  Considering that the U.S. is where I'm from, it's strange being back.  Perhaps living in a foreign country really does change how you view the world you grew up in.

All that aside, we're still working on the game and have made some really nice progress.  I'm getting to be rather pleased with combat, even though it's still not exactly where I want it to be.  At the moment, it's about timing to get combos to work and less about button mashing.  I want the game to be relatively fast paced, but this isn't Diablo, so there should be a certain amount of strategy, especially when facing big targets or multiple enemies.  This week I'm going to make a little "Danger Room" so I can test out the combat with multitudes of enemies.  Something my wife suggested the other day.  The one thing people may not like is that there isn't any sort of "lock on" system.  I decided to avoid it since the pacing requires a bit of tactical know-how and providing a "lock" would make things a little too focused.  Of course, this could change once my "Danger Room" is up and running.  One thing I'm fairly certain about is more than 4 mobs and it gets a little hairy to survive.  Mobs don't just stand around and watch you beat up on their friends.  They'll try to flank you and are constantly attacking, which means the player can get surrounded and destroyed pretty easily.  There are multiple ways to handle this, but I almost always go with a divide and conquer tactic.  With more abilities at a player's disposal, I imagine players will find a way that suits them best.  Which is what I'm counting on.

I stated a long time ago that there would be a Wii U version of the game.  This hasn't changed.  As a matter of fact, I should have my dev kit this week and HOPEFULLY have some screenshots of the Wii U build next week.  It'll be nice to actually have the game running on the Wii U.  So far, I've tested the game on PCs and Macs.  It seems to run fine in both cases, with some issues with buttons and such that need to be resolved.  I haven't tested Linux yet, but that will be in the next month or so once I can get a dedicated Linux machine built.  I imagine it will run fine.  The only version I'm worried about at the moment is the Wii U.  Just not sure how well it will perform and there's a bit of trepidation that my vision of how this will work for that system will be shattered due to performance issues.  One thing I've been doing recently is trying to get the game to look as good as it can without too many crazy effects and a small memory footprint.  I suppose the next couple of weeks will hammer all of that out.  Don't worry about Wii U support. I'll get it working one way or another.  I'm determined.  I'll probably take a moment next week and talk about the Wii U in my next official blog post.

I already covered this in my official blog (http://skullforge.omc-games.com (http://skullforge.omc-games.com)), but I'll touch on it a little bit here.  Been working on character art and NPCs for a while, but finding a good batch of them has been hard.  As you know, most of what has been done in the game as far as art goes has been from the asset store.  If it isn't on the asset store, then it won't be in the game.  At least at the moment.  Perhaps this will change so that I can add a bit of uniqueness to the game, but that's a matter of money which I don't have much of.  If you've wondered why there aren't many NPCs in any of the screenshots, it's because of two reasons.  The first is just a simple case of having not gotten to that point yet.  Most characters in the game are enemies used for testing the combat.  The second reason is that I haven't found a good batch of NPCs to use.  As a matter of fact, I'm still messing around with the test model for the main character of the game.  Don't get me wrong, there are a few NPC model packs on the Asset Store.  However, I feel like the "look" may not match the game.  I guess I haven't really decided on a "look" yet, which makes choosing a set of NPCs more difficult.

With some important trade shows coming up, I need to figure it all out before then.  At least a temporary solution.  I really want to change the model for the main character.  I like that particular model since it has a more practical feel to it, but I think it's about time for that to be fixed.  The trick is getting the final design finalized and then getting the 3D model made.  Still working on the design and the model...we'll get to that at some point.  I included this in my blog, but I'll post it again here for those who don't want to do a lot of clicking.  The design is coming around, but still in flux.  You'd think after a year we'd have this nailed down, but alas.  Heh, heh.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/DesiSketch_1.jpg)

Well, probably enough crap for today.  I'll leave you guys with a few new screenshots that I haven't posted here.  Here's to the future.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Skullforge_42-394p.jpg)

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Skullforge_40-394p.jpg)

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Skullforge_39-394p.jpg)

I had a few minutes to kill so I figured I'd talk a little bit about combat and my thoughts on it. I said a long time ago that the game isn't like Diablo.  It's easy to get that impression from just looking at some of the media we've put out.  On top of that, RPGs with this camera angle tend to be like Diablo.  I chose this view because one of my all time favorite RPGs is a game called Soul Blazer for the SNES.  There was something about that game that really connected with me.  When I was planning Skullforge: The Hunt, I thought about what would be a good way to do it that is unique and relatively easy to do that isn't 2D.  I settled on what you see now.

So when working on combat, I wanted it to not be something where massive amounts of mobs come at you from all directions like Diablo.  It's just mass killing and I suppose that's video games in a nutshell, but I wanted something a little less spammy and more about strategy.  I played with a number of options and decided to go with something that limits button mashing.  However, it's not "dial-a-combo", either. Right now, it's kind of like PSO (the original).  There's a timing aspect to it.  Button mashing won't produce results, which means the player will have to be more careful with how they do things.  No lock on makes it even more important to make those attacks count.

What this really means is that combat requires a lot of moving around and waiting for the right moment to strike.  Enemies don't wait to attack you like in games such as Assassin's Creed.  When they see an opening, they attack, which means it's easy to get mobbed.  Too many enemies and you're dead.  I did this to keep players on their toes.  So many games people just run in and destroy everything.  It makes the game fairly easy.  I don't want that to happen in this game.  However, I do want it to be fun, so finding that balance is something we'll be working on and as we do more tests, we'll make adjustments.

Of course, this isn't to say there won't be some huge battles, but they won't be often.  Fights against 3 or 4 enemies at a time should be fairly common.  Using skills and good tactics should ultimately win the day, but I imagine that people will die fairly often when fighting multiple mobs at the same or higher level.  Lower level mobs will be much easier to dispatch such is the advantage of leveling up and getting better gear.

It'll be interesting to see how people handle the fights and what strategies they come up with.  In all honesty, it's one of the things I love most about designing things.  Have a good day.

Hello folks.  It's been one crazy week.  We worked on a number of cosmetic things for the game and I think it looks much better than it did.  It's amazing what a little color and some coordination will do for a game. We're not ready to reveal any of that yet, however.

The other thing we started working on was how to get grass working in the game.  One thing you should have noticed about all previous shots is that they've been mainly indoor zones. This is mainly because we've always been at odds with nature. This past week we decided to really look at grass, trees, and the like to see what works for the game.  Many many options later and we finally found something that works.  I really like how it looks in the game.  The angle we're at really makes grass look pretty terrible.  However, this current grass we're using works much better.  It's actually a combination of different models that don't look so good alone, but combined they look pretty good.  Below are some shots that show off what I'm talking about.  So now we can work on outdoor zones and feel confident we can make them look good.

Well, at the very least, I'm pleased with the results.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Skullforge_45-394p.jpg)

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Skullforge_44-394p.jpg)

You guys have a great day.

We're back again.  This time I figured I'd talk a little about quests. I've spent quite a bit of time messing around with them in the past few days and I think they'll be the same yet different that what you'd expect.  What I mean is, some quests will be your standard RPG stuff.  Kill 5 dogs.  Collect these flowers.  That kind of stuff.  Others will be a bit more complicated.  If you ever played Ultima back in the day, then you'll recognize the element of typing in keywords to open up more dialogue options.  On top of that, there will be the choices you can make which show up on a list.  You can see what I mean in the pic below:

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Skullforge_Dev_14-394p.jpg)

As you chat with other NPCs in the world and do some tasks, then other options open up in the dialogue tree.  My goal here was to make things that you do connected so that helping or hurting someone can lead to consequences later on down the line.  Quest turn ins are usually not automatic, though there are a couple of cases where someone tells the player to visit another area and when the player does, the quest ends.  Usually these are breadcrumb quests or quests to direct the player to some area for future exploration.

Another aspect of the system is that some quests will have multiple endings depending on how you handle them. I know many game say that, but in this case this will be true.  In the quest I'm writing for the demo, there will be multiple angles to solve the main quest.  In the final game this will be true, too.  I wish every quest in the game could be this way, but there's only me designing quests and I can only do so much.  However, I do want to have quite a few options for players so don't worry.  The main story quest threads will definitely be more robust.  Some of the side quests will be, too.  I just want to avoid a lot of "filler" quests where the player is fetching stuff, killing simple bandits, or collecting 10 wolf ears.

Finally, I'll leave a couple of new screens for those who don't follow us on Twitter.  They're of a new area I'm working on in the game.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Skullforge_47-394p.jpg)

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Skullforge_46-394p.jpg)

Welcome to another edition of the Skullforge development blog.  I'm going to continue with grass since after some conversations with other developers it was brought to my attention that grass should move or something.  I agreed with that, but the 3D grass I was using didn't really work when moved and also killed the framerate.  Of course people with super awesome machines would be able to run the game fine, but my goal has always been for someone using a 2010 Mac Mini to run the game well enough at 30FPS.  Perhaps that's asking for too much, but I'd like for as many people to be able to play the game on as many machines as possible.

That lead me to start experimenting with 2D grass a bit more.  I think I found a good solution and the grass actually waves with the wind.  It's really nice looking.  I think people will appreciate this when they play the game for the first time.  There are some screens below, which you can compare to the old ones.  Hope you guys enjoy.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Skullforge_Dev_Comp2-394p.jpg)

I'll try to get some video in the next week or so.  Got a lot to do these days, so finding time is hard.

Here's another screen before we go (for those who didn't check the Screenshot Saturday thread)....

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Skullforge_49-394p.jpg)

Have a good day!

Looks really good. Very professional especially for just one developer, and making an RPG is no easy task.

Thanks.  It means a lot to hear people say that.  You know, the best part is watching it all come together.  By the way, your site is pretty awesome.  I have been checking it out more these days and I think what you've put together is great for the community.

Looking really great once again after not checking up on the progress for a while. I really like the skill, character and map UI elements; they look really great and professional. I'm not a huge fan of the font as I really like more clean and modern fonts (Sans-Serif usually), but I guess it fits the theme quite well. Any video updates coming soon?

I understand what you mean about the font, but I tried a simpler font and it just looked strange to me, so I went back to the one I've been using from the beginning.  I might try to change it again in the future if I find something that might work better.  I do want something that says "fantasy", so that's a point I have to deal with.

As for video updates, I hope to have one sometime in the near future.  The first couple of "playable" zones are almost ready, so I plan to do a little walkthrough video to show them off.  There will also be a playable demo for people to run around in sometime in June.  I'm hoping before E3, but we still have a ways to go, so I'm not holding my breath.  June definitely, though.

Here's a screen of the new dungeon we're working on that will be in the demo.  It's still in the very early stages, but I like the way it's turning out.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Skullforge_52-394p.jpg)

It's one of the dragons in my test zone.  I thought the shadow was cool as I was walking up to it.  Sorry it's large, I never made a small version of it.
(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Skullforge_51.jpg)

Hello, folks.  It's been a little while, but we have been hard at work on the game and I haven't had much time to really sit down and do blog entries like I've wanted.  We're trying to get a trailer ready for E3 and also a little demo to show how the game works and something that will hopefully give players an idea of what to expect in the full game.  There's only two of us working on the game so we may not make it until after E3, but we'll get it done one way or another.

In any case, here are a couple of screens to show off some progress we've made recently.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Skullforge_62-394p.jpg)

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Skullforge_59-394p.jpg)

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Skullforge_56-394p.jpg)

On a final note, making trailers is hard and I'm not sure I really enjoy doing it.  I guess I'll never be a movie director....

It's looking amazing. Working on such a small team is never easy. When we attempted this initially we didn't make it. Our game was too big and there was just too much to handle with our days jobs getting in the way.

You are making good progress! I hope you keep at it. The game has great visuals. My word of advice would be to not make the game open world. Try to break it down and make it as modular as possible. That way you are able to build a complete product out of smaller finished pieces rather than have one giant piece that is either finished or not. It helps to have flexibility.

Seems like you've got good momentum though. I'm rooting for you!  :beer: looking forward to more updates!

Thanks for the advice.  We were originally gonna go with an open world approach, but that seemed so daunting.  We finally decided to go with "zones" as it would make building the world much easier.  I was worried about exactly what you described, and based on your story, I'm glad we didn't go that way.  Open world would be awesome, but I think managing it is hard.

Still, thanks for the support.  Makes it easy to carry on.

Here are a couple of screens this week:

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Skullforge_66-394p.jpg)

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Skullforge_65-394p.jpg)

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Skullforge_64-394p.jpg)

The technical side of development is something that I've spent a lot of time learning in recent months.  How many polygons should be on the screen, what effects work and don't, etc.  It's a relatively daunting task and one that can create a lot of limitations in how the game is crafted.  I guess I can understand why so many game studios and developers want to have more and more powerful hardware so that those limitations won't be limitations anymore.  Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about that.  Sure, it's great to have lots of power to do whatever we want, but I in my own experience, I feel like it just makes me a lazy  developer.  Don't worry, I'm not talking about you (the reader) as everyone has their own  way of doing things.  However, for me, I feel like it just makes me lazy and I start throwing things in willie nilly without a thought about how it's going to work for people with less robust systems.

I bring this up because one of the problems I have with game development these days is getting things like "water" working properly.  People don't realize that good looking water is real expensive as far as system resources go.  Finding a good solution that looks great, yet doesn't impact the framerate severely is a difficult task.  Looking on the Unity Asset Store provides a plethora of options, but so many of them just don't work well for what I'm trying to accomplish.  Now, if I had no concern about performance, then there are some decent choices.  That just isn't the case for me now and that's what is really frustrating.  Sometimes I wish Unity would have simply included a good solution for us to use, but I'm not really happy with Water4 as I feel like it was thrown in just to have something there and that if we wanted something "better" we'd have to hit the Asset Store to find what we're looking for.

Of course, it doesn't help that my game is "top-down".  Getting water to look good from this angle is pretty difficult.  I've tried many solutions with varying levels of success.  At this point, it's getting to be too expensive to keep looking for that one asset that fits my game the way I'd like it to.  So that means my current solution is to us this one water asset that is more of a performance hog, but that can't be the final option as it doesn't run well on lower spec'd hardware.  I just wish there were better options.   :'(

Here are a couple of screens of the water we're using now....

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Skullforge_75-394p.jpg)

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Skullforge_74-394p.jpg)

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Skullforge_73-394p.jpg)

What are you building this in? I adore those dark interior shots with the blue lighting!

We're working in Unity.  Thanks for the comment.  We wanted something moody for that dungeon and I think it turned out quite well.

Hello again, folks.  I was under the impression that I had updated this last month, but checking it seems that didn't happen.  Going forward, I'm going to try to update at least twice a month even if I only post screenshots.

The good part is that I'm working on putting together a monthly video series of the game to show some things off and to provide a better look of the game in motion.  Screens are cool, but it's always great to see the world in action.

As for progress, we've made some decent progress, but mostly we've been building certain sections of the city.  I gave up messing with the water in the meantime and I'm open for a better solution later on down the line.  We'll just have to see how that works out.

We've also been working on the final leg of the demo...off and on.  It's just a demo and we didn't get it ready in time for Pax Prime, so it's kind of on the back burner.  Getting the main game done is where I should be spending my time. I included a couple of screens below.  Enjoy.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Skullforge_82-394p.jpg)

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Skullforge_Dev_27-394p.jpg)

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Skullforge_81-394p.jpg)

And lastly a rare view of the game.  I don't usually post pics of the further out camera, but someone asked and I provide a screen to give an idea of how far out it is.  Some people say it's too far out, others say it's just right.  Good thing there are options.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Skullforge_83-394p.jpg)

Until next time.

Hello, everyone.  Not much to get into today, but I had a few minutes and I figured I'd get into the recent issues I've had.  Crafting a game is incredibly difficult.  I'm sure almost everyone who posts in this forum understands just how difficult it is.  One of the problems we tend to face has to deal with keeping backups so when we hit that critical failure, it's easy to go back and put things right.  Up until now I've been using Subversion and while I find it to be fairly easy to use, the software required can be fairly pricy.  In order to cut down costs, one of my game dev friends suggested that I try something different.  At first, I thought this would be more expensive than what I was currently using, but, turns out, it's a lot cheaper.  Shocking, eh?  Well, it took a bit of work and I'm finally able to move the project over to this new versioning system.

Unfortunately, I've been hesitating to move my project over as I worry about what's going to happen once the transfer happens.  It's a natural thing, however that doesn't make it any less worrying.  This has lead to a lot of procrastinating.  That all ends tonight when I finally copy Skullforge to it's how server home.

If you are working on a game, then I highly recommend you seriously look into a versioning program like Subversion, Git, or Perforce.  It provides a fair amount of peace of mind and makes it easy to recover from mistakes that would have lost many hours of work.

That's all for today, not much, but just something that was on my mind.

It's hard to believe how much time has passed since I last updated this blog.  Lot's going on in my life and after moving back to the States from Japan, I just kind of lost track of some things.  Of course, I'm still working on the game and everything is moving along fairly well.  Much of the last couple of months has been spent rewriting a lot of code and trying to add a true level of efficiency to my code since so much of it was written when I first started working with Unity.  It's always funny looking over old code and wondering what the hell I was thinking about when I wrote it.

Main things that have changed have been animation, A.I., and some models.  I've spent a lot of time trying to make the systems in the game easy to use so even if something happens to me, someone else can come in and pick up where I left off.  Some of the more complicated systems (like the animation state machine) I have diagrams for how to interact with that system.  Up until now, adding in spells was a pain in the ass.  And I only had two of them in the game.  Strange thing to admit, but there it is.  I knew this system needed to be reworked to be less clunky and more open for a variety of spells and abilities.  The new system I have in place is much more functional, but I just finished the core code so there's still a lot of iteration.  Still, in it's most basic form I already have more spells than I had originally and the system works with legacy animations as well as the new Unity animation system.

The real question is when I'll feel comfortable about showing the game in motion.  It's funny, before I did the Kickstarter I was totally confident in what we were doing and how we were going about it.  After that, I've been afraid to really show the game off.  I know it can't stay like that forever if we want to ever release it to the public.  Not sure why, really.  I think the game looks miles better than what it did back then, but I think it's hard to keep other people's expectations in check.  My little crew is only two people and we've done the best with what we had to work with and a meager budget.  Expecting the game to look like a game with hundreds or even 10 people is folly considering that neither of us is a traditional artist.  Still, it's a sticking point and I'm proud of what I have been able to accomplish with so few resources.  The real goal is for people to enjoy the game and I hope we accomplish that at the end of the day.  That's all that matters, really.

Well, I figured I'd step in and fill things out a little bit since it's been so many months.  We're not dead, folks...yet.  Heh, heh.  Here's a new screenshot, too.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Skullforge_96-394p.jpg)

Also, I did manage to put together a Made With Unity page.  I didn't have any new video to use, but I think it turned out okay.

http://madewith.unity.com/made-with-unity/games/skullforge-hunt (http://madewith.unity.com/made-with-unity/games/skullforge-hunt)

Until next time.  Everyone take care of yourselves.

Everything is going pretty well these days.  I had to redo our Title Screen code because after an update it became broken somehow.  The funny part is the first thing I worked on with Skullforge was the Title Screen.  It was my best to see if I could even get something working using C# and Unity 3D.  That was over two years ago and I hadn't messed with the code since then.  Going back to it, I realized I really didn't know what I was doing then.  Lots of poor choices in how to get things working and too many roundabout ways to do something simple.  So I set out to rewrite the Title Screen code and change it up as well.  I gotta admit that I think it turned out much better than it was and I have a lot more flexibility with the system now than I did.  I feel pretty good about it now.  Below is a little video I did of one of the new instances of the Title Screen.  This is one of the few times players will be able to see zones from this perspective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkr-RcDuH7I

Wow.  I can't believe that it's been so long since I've posted here.  I had been trying to post on a regular basis, but time just got away from me.  Ended up moving to a new city, had some financial problems, and then trouble with sections of code that had to be rewritten.  Good thing is, the game is still being worked on and we're still chugging along.  Sometimes it's hard to believe that we're still going, but here we are.

I have quite a bit of stuff to talk about, but I'm going to save it for another day when I'm not so tired and have less to do.  Going to redo the combo system in the game since I feel like the animations aren't firing the way they should as the code isn't as tight as I would like.  Best thing to do in this situation is to simply start over and work out the kinks in a systematic fashion.  If I get it sorted out, then I'll post a little video of the progress.

In the meantime, I have a couple of new shots from the game that you can check out below.  We're getting closer to being done, but I feel like we're still far away.

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Skullforge_99-394p.jpg)

(http://skullforge.omc-games.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Skullforge_106-394p.jpg)