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[PlanetsFly]

Very nice. Looks like Pokemon lol

[Eldboll]

This week, we pushed out a new update for the beta! We introduce the bow, the boar enemy, a few small new areas and a lot of small fixes and minor polish.

We invited a new wave of beta testers aswell, to help us iron out any new bugs and keep handing us valuable feedback. If any of you guys here at TIG are signed up, check your inboxes over at Desura to see if you have received an invite.

Besides juicy beta news, production is moving forward. We’ve added the last layer of polish to the Evergrind South area, with flowing water and doses of wild life. Below is a before and after picture of the area.

Vilya has begun creating art assets for yet another new area that’s coming up after we finish up the dungeon. With Swedish viking blood running through our veins, we wouldn’t feel at home without a proper winter landscape to collect away in.

Since we finished school we have all spread out all around the place, Vilya even opted to leave Sweden in favor for the Netherlands.

We haven’t had any proper “office time” since we left, which has made a few things harder to design, the dungeon layouts being one of them.
Luckily, this week Fred will be heading out on a little business trip and stay at Teddy’s place to rap up as much “face to face”-needed design as possible. We'll keep you guys posted on this little epic adventure of ours with photos and maybe even some behind the scenes videos of the development!

The definition of handsomeness

beetleking22
Thanks dude. Ragnarok Online is a big inspiration so we take that as a huge compliment

crazyheckman
I've never played the game so I can't say that they are. Floaty ball things might not be the worlds most original design however

Wilds
Thanks man, we are all a bunch of polish freaks, spending a lot of time in that department (sometimes a bit too much perhaps).

PlanetsFly
Haha, thanks maaan!

[Eldboll]

This week, we’ve finally started working at full speed on the first temple! We’ve got a ton of stuff down, most notably in the enemy department. Three new enemies have been prototyped, and we’re mostly done with the fourth and final normal temple enemy. After that, we’ll start designing the layout of the temple itself!

Here’s a screenshot with the three enemies we’ve made so far:

The enemies in the screenshot are the following:

Pecko (the bird)

The Pecko is a giant bird that has made the temple grounds its home, and is quite merciless when it comes to defending its territory! It’s a tanky, quite mobile enemy with a large attack range thanks to its ability to stretch its neck.

Wisp (the ball)

The Wisp is a small, fast harass unit that fires homing projectiles at players. Trying to fight tougher enemies with Wisp projectiles chasing makes any fight twice as tough, so you’ll want to hunt these things down quickly.

Guardian (the crystal)

The Guardian is a support enemy, which disrupts the battlefield in the enemy’s favor. They can switch between three modes:



Green crystals fire deadly beams between each other, cutting off areas and limiting player maneuverability, purple crystals create gravity fields which slow players down and blue crystals shield other enemy units (except other blue crystals), making them immune to damage until the shield wears off or the blue crystal is destroyed.

To be as effective as possible while crunching out these enemies, Fred made a pilgrimage to Visby and has been crashing at Teddy’s place for the past week! They filmed some of their exploits with Teddy’s crappy mobile camera. As a boon to you guys, we’ve used the clips to create a short “documentary” of the week:

[beetleking22]

This week, we’ve finally started working at full speed on the first temple! We’ve got a ton of stuff down, most notably in the enemy department. Three new enemies have been prototyped, and we’re mostly done with the fourth and final normal temple enemy. After that, we’ll start designing the layout of the temple itself!

Here’s a screenshot with the three enemies we’ve made so far:

The enemies in the screenshot are the following:

Pecko (the bird)

The Pecko is a giant bird that has made the temple grounds its home, and is quite merciless when it comes to defending its territory! It’s a tanky, quite mobile enemy with a large attack range thanks to its ability to stretch its neck.

Wisp (the ball)

The Wisp is a small, fast harass unit that fires homing projectiles at players. Trying to fight tougher enemies with Wisp projectiles chasing makes any fight twice as tough, so you’ll want to hunt these things down quickly.

Guardian (the crystal)

The Guardian is a support enemy, which disrupts the battlefield in the enemy’s favor. They can switch between three modes:



Green crystals fire deadly beams between each other, cutting off areas and limiting player maneuverability, purple crystals create gravity fields which slow players down and blue crystals shield other enemy units (except other blue crystals), making them immune to damage until the shield wears off or the blue crystal is destroyed.

To be as effective as possible while crunching out these enemies, Fred made a pilgrimage to Visby and has been crashing at Teddy’s place for the past week! They filmed some of their exploits with Teddy’s crappy mobile camera. As a boon to you guys, we’ve used the clips to create a short “documentary” of the week:

xD Dat video was hilarious... Scandinavian rulez im from finland  

 Nice progress guys! I like new enemy Ai!! Dat bird remind me of some secret of mana boss and pokemon but i dont remember it xD

[jmcmorris]

Great stuff guys! Good to see you're enjoying yourselves. I love the "working as intended". Visible bugs are the best.

[Wilds]

Is the beta still going on? Would love to test it! It looks so awesome.

[Eldboll]

Is the beta still going on? Would love to test it! It looks so awesome.

Beta is till going strong, you can sign up over at http://www.desura.com/games/secrets-of-grindea/forum/thread/register-here1 if you or anyone else are interested.

[Bandreus]

Is the beta still going on? Would love to test it! It looks so awesome.

Beta is till going strong, you can sign up over at http://www.desura.com/games/secrets-of-grindea/forum/thread/register-here1 if you or anyone else are interested.

Signed in for the beta before it started, still no invite 

[Eldboll]

Been a while! Mostly because I'm lazy when it comes to writing stuff, not because production been at a stand still!

Since last time, me and Teddy (mr programmer) have moved in together in a sweet apartment on a island a couple of miles outside the mainland of Sweden! This makes the overall work flow much more smooth and the production speed has steadily been climbing since we got the place up and running.

Here's our "office", accompanied by a picture of our living room featuring our pimped out coffee tables!  

As for the game itself, we've squeezed in some new content and are getting rather close on a pretty big beta update containing the complete first temple of the game!

We've added a few new skills and I can't wait to add more. Developing and testing them out is for sure one of the highlights when developing this type of game.

Chain Lightning
Kinda what you expect from a chain lightning spell these days. Jumps from enemy to enemy, dealing damage, level increases the number of jumps and damage (among other things). While it is pretty standard, the mechanic fits in with the rest of our spells really great.

Meteor Strike
A targeting spell which have a slight delay before it hits the target area, making it a bit trickier to aim but it really packs a punch and comes with a sweet AoE.

Plant Summon
Personal favorite, summons a plant in front of you that will aid you in battle for a short duration of time. You can do some really niffty setups with this spell to dish out some serious damage, but it takes some planning. It's going to be interesting to see what the beta dudes can do with this!

Ice Spikes
An old spell that has been tucked away for quite some time finally makes its return! Can freeze enemies and deals some good damage. The range is not great but the AoE makes up for it!


Besides skills, we've started working on a bunch of new areas! The Winterland, which dosen't have a proper name as of now, and also the lushes Mount Bloom.

We've tried to fill up the Winterland with as much intresting content as possible and so far we're really happy with the outcome. Helping Santa sort out trouble in the toy factory and helping season changing Faes is just the tip of the iceberg!

Mount Bloom is basically an indoors jungle, filled with mushrooms, poisonous spores, crystal miners and a ton of other weird stuff. We just got around working on it, but so far we've got a good feeling about it! We learn a ton of new stuff after ever area we work on so hopefully it will become our best one yet!


We keep throwing out weekly updates over at our devlog. Hopefully I'll keep up the posting over here at TIG, I love the community and you guys usually drop the most solid feedback. I'm just lazy. Oh well!

BYE FOR NOW DUUUDES!

[DAISHI]

I want to plaaaay!!!

[melos]

glad to see progress!

[eigenbom]

Looking awesome!

[Ashkin]

Excellent update.

[poe]

I want to play this more and more every update!

[Eldboll]

Hello again guys! We’re still fighting on with the dungeon, with Teddy implementing the last things before fine-tuning sessions and multiplayer edits.

Vilya has revisited some of the maps of the dungeon this week as well, improving its overall look and feel. As an example, here’s one of the outdoor maps before the improvements:

And here’s a couple of shots after:

It’s all in the details, and visual improvements will most likely keep being implemented all over the world of Grindea when there’s time.

When it comes to the animation department, I've started working on a Yeti-ish enemy for the Winterland. Below are some idle animations created during a streaming session from last night.

I'm gonna be doing streams a bit more often in the future since I have upgraded my 4 year old laptop to one of Teddy’s 4 year old desktops!

In other animation news, there’s also a level 3 version of the new Summon Plant spell! It has increased range compared to the lower levels, and of course it also deals more damage.

However, perhaps the most important feature is its increased cuteness:

Last but not least, we’re very excited to have received our very first fan art! This piece was made by Crispat87Crispat87 during the streaming session last night.

Thanks a lot man, we really appreciate it! :D

[Eldboll]

Hey dudes!

Haven't posted in this thread in a really long time, mainly because I just suck at it.

Figured I would give it a bump since we've reached a pretty mayor milestone in form of pre-orders opening up for the game.

It can all be accessed through our website over at www.secretsofgrindea.com

We've worked really hard for the last few years to get here, and we are looking forward to continue working hard to get this sucker fully completed! With the pre-orders, we're hoping to be able to focus full time on the game and not have to worry about stupid studies and jobs taking up all of the time.

Kinda feel like a dick bumping this thread only to ask you guys to hand us money, but I know there was a bunch of dudes that showed interested in the game in its early development who might still be interested in trying it out. If not, that's cool too!

I'll try to keep this thread more updated (which I know will most likely fail miserably) and, yeah. Have a good one dudes!