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[Chris Polus]

Thank you very much Pastywhite. Yep, it is. But I think the way we're organized now, the fact we have a Kickstarter crowd we have to satisfy and answer to, and that we've been on it for over 2 years and had plenty of opportunity of turning back makes things solid for us. We have a goal and this project stopped being a project on the side a long time ago. Of course it's easy to say. But I think we're on a good track.
Thanks for keeping the fingers crossed. We appreciate it very much!

[Chris Polus]

This has been a long week! Or at least it feels like it! Julian is back for this week's dev diary and he gets a little bit more personal by sharing his experience at Devmania and what he has been working on to improve the way feedback can be provided for Son of Nor.

• Bernd, Julian, Daniel and Tobi assisted at Devmania 2013. It was awesome! And they took pictures to show you guys. There was also a game jam in which the stillalive team participated in.
• Phoenix is the game we created at Devmania! It's kind of a tower defense game where you are a phoenix that has to protect its egg. We'll wrap up some things and then post the link in one of the next dev diaries. Stay tuned!
• Julian has finally implemented the magic charges mechanic to be able to store various magic abilities at the same time. The crystals that hold the charges are still to be implemented, but yay! We can now wreak more havoc without being interrupted!
• Comfort features: A small little detail Julian implemented is a mechanic that allows the game to be smoother and less bothersome.
• Feedback feedback feedback. This is super important! Being able to provide it easily is as important. The last tool we used was too complicated and had too many features we actually didn't need. Now do check the new feedback tool Julian worked on the whole weekend to make everyone's lifes easier. Ours and yours as soon as you lay your hands on our new builds!
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

Jam-packed episode about cluttering, Sarahul mages, scorpions, new player characters and work we do outside the game. Ricardo shows you around.

• 2 episodes ago we had our 50th dev diary, which was a cool round number. This time it's #52. Since we do this every week, it's been 52 weeks, meaning a full year of dev diaries! Turns out we started earlier. Whatever, it's episode 52, we're happy and take every chance to celebrate.
• Beautifying a level (i.e. adding plants and stuff) is a long process. We haven't got enough manpower in that area. Ricardo is learning the ropes of Unity to help out.
• Ricardo shows the current state of the Bible of Nor. A combined art book / lore book that's going to be available digitally and as physical copy for backers of the collector's editions.
• The map of Noshrac is another asset Ricardo shows off. The map of the world of Son of Nor that's going to be printed as poster.
• Programming of the Sarahul mage is progressing. An enemy type that doesn't fight with sword or bow but can use magic.
• Ricardo shows an early stage of the scorpion enemy. An enemy we're working on for a long time now but have had multiple problems implementing.
• Ruben worked on a new player character we call the "Weathered Man"
• The new temples we're working on are progressing. What we could only show as a rough blockout in the past dev diaries is taking shape. Alex and Daniel are working on it.
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

We reached a milestone with the Son of Nor project this week and everybody and their brother committed to SVN what they've been working on.

• It's time to say hello in Gaeilge, aka Irish.
• There's a new variation of the Fire Temple Camp level. You know the one at night, now there's one at dawn. It's in line with the story for when you get OUT of the Fire Temple after having unraveled its secrets.
• A Sarahul army moves through the camp after you get out. They look like Morlocks of the movie Time Machine
• The camp has been extended. New content above the scaffold that we showed some dev diaries ago.
• New content: a new canyon sidearm that leads up to the actual Fire Temple was created.
• New machinery has been placed into the Fire Temple. Blockout assets are slowly being replaced by more polished models as work on those models progresses.
• There's a new enemy type in the Fire Temple, uuuh.
• Simultaneously, we're working on a completely NEW area that comes after the Fire Temple. It's in a veeery rough shape still.
• Good news for Fire Temple Camp backers: the build of the pre-alpha level for the add-on backers is almost done!
• Good news for Sandbox backers: An updated build is coming your way for in the Humble Store! We've updated it with an Essence Magic source, all the relevant spell combinations and we're going to place an enemy spawner for you so you can try smashing some enemies for yourself! Watch out for an email stating the updated build being ready for download And don't forget to send in feedback with our built-in F5 menu!
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

New content was added to the Fire Temple Camp, the Fire Temple and Lur's Temple this week. We also show a picture of a new playable character.

• We added terraforming and physics challenges to Cinder Valley, which btw is the official name for the level we called the "Fire Temple Camp".
• More work went into Cinder Valley to give it more verticality. We also added post-image effects to tune in on the atmosphere we'd like the level to convey.
• Ricardo shows scenes from within the Fire Temple with all the work that went into it this week. New rooms, textures, some polishing, mechanisms.
• The big empty area (early blockout) Chris showed last week (code name Lur's Temple, official name Yant’shaza) got a pretty big update. It's a Sarahul temple complex and you can see plenty of buildings now.
• Since Yant’shaza is a pretty big map, it needs to be loaded in parts. Julian worked on a transition / gate mechanism to unload parts of the level and load in new areas. WIP.
• Wind gusts push you around and make it hard to stay undetected while hiding on rooftops.
• Ruben almost finished modeling and texturing a new playable character for you to choose from. The weathered man. You can see portrait pic of him in the video.
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

Here's our update for the week.

• More work on the game's menu. Before polishing it and making it pretty, the tech behind it needs to be solid. Especially translation of menu text is in the focus of this week's dev efforts.
• Menu in English and German are working. We're working on implementing the cyrillic script.
• Storing multiple elements worked already in the game, now we added a rudimentary visual representation to show the stored elements and the number of charges left. It looks ugly, don't look at it for too long.
• Physics based pressure plates were implemented that react to the weight placed on them. Example: A pressure plate reacting to 150kg of weight cannot be triggered with a 120kg rock. But if the player steps on the plate, too, bringing the weight over 150kg, the plate will work.
• We were at Devmania 2013 a month ago and participated in a 12 hour game jam (=an entire game was made from idea to implementation in only 12 hours). The resulting game was "Phoenix". A tower defense type game with no towers, but a giant burning bird and an egg you need to defend. We released here: http://stillalive-studios.com/projects/phoenix

How many waves do you survive?

• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

Cushion falls with the wind push or do double jumps! Happy news for our Fire Temple Camp Alpha and Sandbox backers!

• Using wind push close to the ground when falling long distances will cushion your fall and reduce damage or even avoid death.
• Do double jumps by jumping and using wind push to push you higher in the air (unsure if this will stay in the game, we're experimenting with it)
• Experimentation with visual indicators for visibility. As sneaking can be a part of Son of Nor depending on the individual play style, one has to have an idea if one is visible to the enemy or not. The code is implemented but the art is still "coder art", so close your eyes and forgive us
• Sarahul can be really dangerous even in small groups! They're not the cannon fodder they once were.
• Some work was going on in Lur's Temple, or Yant'shaza (official name)
• The Fire Temple Camp level is ready and was submitted to the Humble Store for all the Fire Temple Camp Alpha add-on backers! Watch your inboxes as you'll get links and codes to download it soon!
• Sandbox backers! We've heavily updated the sandbox! We added new magic combinations, essence magic, wind push jumps, absorbing multiple elements and switching between them, a new loading screen to initiate multiplayer and single player games, and ENEMIES! If you want to join this ride, you can get the Sandbox for 5 bucks in our shop http://sonofnor.com/shop
• We're going to Spain! To Bilbao to be more exact. We've been nominated in 3 categories in the HóPLAY contest! Keep your fingers crossed for us, thanks!
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

Once again a week has passed. Ricardo gives you an insight into how the game plays as more and more features are coming together in this week's build.

• Sini and Caspar worked on props that will decorate upcoming levels like plaques and columns, crates, bags, kegs, training dummies.
• Adrian spent time on different townspeople's clothes to create multiple characters in various outfits.
• Daniel drafted the 4th playable character code named sarcastic girl.
• This week, Ricardo put some "hardmud" into levels. It's got no texture yet but it works. Mud slows you down and can be dried with fire to trap enemies.
• We show off how to use different powers together in Yant'shaza. It gives another sneak peek at the variety of gameplay.
• Shoot fire on a sand floor and get glass and throw it at enemies.
• Julian's head is integrated in the game. Somehow. Very creepy...
• You can blast certain doors open using the wind power.
• Alex started work on the Wind Temple (formerly known as the sand temple).
• Music by our own Mike Skalandunas (original soundtrack) and shallow & profound (for the trancy tunes)
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

Hey, fellow indie devs. I know you're probably in the market for an IOTY Award yourself. But if you'd like to help us, we're running for the Indie of the Year Award on IndieDB ourselves, and you can vote here with just one click

• IndieDB has its yearly IOTY Award (Indie of the Year Award) and you can vote for us here with just one click: http://www.indiedb.com/games/son-of-nor
• Julian is back from Bilbao and he made some new friends at the HóPLAY Contest.
• Creatures do not longer walk through each other. We implemented yet another creature collision detection and we think it's working pretty good this time.
• We still can't get rid of headbanging when enabling dynamic looking direction (Sarahul's head should follow the player dynamically). It's pretty annoying. Anybody know of a solution?
• New damage indicator for enemies. The more damaged the enemy the more it turns into sand.
• New damage indicator for players. Players also turn into sand and the vision gets clouded the fewer hitpoints are left.
• Players can pull objects out of the sand. This was not possible before. One first needed to use terraforming to completely reveal an object before picking it up with telekinesis. Now it can be pulled out. This also lays the foundation for the Noshrac Farm Simulator 2014 where you can plant and harvest carrots in a hostile environment. We think this could be a viable next project for us given the tremendous success such simulators have on the market. But instead of using tractors and trucks you would use telekinesis in a desert. This would be a truly novel gaming experience and genre mix. Fantasy farm simulation.
• Releasing a fire blast on water creates steam. The steam clouds the vision of enemies, making it possible for the player to buy some time to prepare another attack or run away.
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

• We'd be happy about your support for us on IndieDB, should you not run for Indie of the Year yourself, of course Vote for us on IndieDB: http://www.indiedb.com/games/son-of-nor
• It's always nice being recognized in the market. It seems we have been in the UK. develop magazine, a UK game dev magazine, chose stillalive studios to be among the top 100 European game start-ups. Pretty cool given that we're such a small team from around the world.
• Brain Hackers is a group of talented youngsters in New Mexico who experiments with the Emotiv EPOC brain computer interface and play Son of Nor with it!
• We show some footage of the first BOSS FIGHT in Son of Nor.
• Chris introduces the "Chris' Sound Cooking Show".
• Chris shows how the Scarab Bugs and Scarab Queen sounds were made.
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

New visual FX, enemy AI improvements and Fire Temple beautification.

• Thanks everybody, we made it into the top 100 on IndieDB! Thank you! Now you can determine if we're worthy of the 1st place Vote for us here once again to bring us to the top.
• Adrian is puzzling together different townsfolk.
• Sini made decorated pillars for Yant'shaza with cool lizards.
• Jason added FX to our hardmud obstacle.
• An he also added an effect to the wind magic active area that indicates you can combine other types of magic with wind.
• The coder team improved enemy AI: Sarahul previously didn't see you when you switched to fire magic and had happily glowing hands of fire, which was strange. So now, even if you're hidden in the dark, when you activate fire magic, enemies will see you.
• We integrated new assets into the Fire Temple like doors installed by the Sarahul, guardian turrets that shoot moving things, force fields that hold metal pieces from the assembly line together, buttons, and the obelisk we showed months ago and looked totally different!
• Alex has started totally re-working the first level, The Edge. It's far away still but there has been some slight progress.
• We're experimenting with uSequencer for cutscenes.
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

Live footage of our virtual Christmas party.

• Thank you everybody for a tremendous year. Several of us met live in Innsbruck, Austria, for the first time in real life. We planned our Kickstarter campaign and didn't have a clue how it would go. We played some Minecraft and League of Legends, had a great time. We restructured our team to cope with the workload and it did work out. We had a successful Kickstarter campaign! We were greenlit on Steam. We reached several milestones and are well under way with the game. This is more than we could ever hope in the beginning of 2013! This was all made possible by you and for that we're sending out our sincere thanks to all of you: our fans, backers, followers of our project, constructive critics who give us new impulses and ideas! We will have new and exciting things to show again in 2014! Stay tuned!
• We did some progress this week and we did complete a sprint but we had our hands full celebrating our virtual Christmas party.
• We're giving away 10 Fire Temple Camp demos! Watch our video.
• Next dev diary will be released after our holiday break, Sunday January 12th! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[ananasblau]

You're mentioned in this list: http://theindiemine.com/most-anticipated-games-of-2014/

[Chris Polus]

Haha, cool! Thanks for letting me know ananasblau! I wouldn't have had this on my radar otherwise. We're currently coming back from a Christmas holiday break. Aaah that was really necessary. Today is the first daily meeting again, I'll show it to the team, they'll be happy. Thanks again!

[Chris Polus]

Son of Nor goes eye-tracking. Row your boats with wind magic. And another boss fight!

• Happy New Year! And welcome to 2014 A great year for game development!
• We were approached by SteelSeries, a leading maker of gaming gear, and Tobii, a company specialized in assistive devices and eye-tracking. We agreed to a partnership to support their upcoming consumer eye-tracking device in Son of Nor. We'll report back as soon as we have the dev kits and know more about how this device works.
• According to The Indie Mine, Son of Nor is one of the "Most Anticipated Games Of 2014": http://theindiemine.com/most-anticipated-games-of-2014/
• We found a way to cushion a player's fall with wind magic without making the player able to fly.
• We're experimenting with yet another method of aiming with telekinesis objects. It's hard to get this right and make it feel right / natural.
• We implemented a mechanic to move vehicles or boats using wind push. It's a sail mechanic that can also be used for later puzzles to drive mechanisms or machines.
• We implemented another boss fight. Enemy behaviour for the Sarahul Arch Mage was programmed. Animations don't always follow the Sarahul's actions well yet.
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

This week's dev diary shows quite some updates, but most importantly we introduced a new mechanic that can basically turn you into Darth Vader.

• Harness the elemental power of coffee with this very special and ancient relic. You can do spell combos with it too!
• Chris finally found a way to go over his problems with Mavericks+Unity and he's back on track with the sounds! this week, Fire Temple Sounds.
• Jason has been working on revamping some effects, the fire looks more fiery and hot, also there's a new enhancing objects with fire effect, and the tar pit is taking more shape.
• The Wind Temple is coming together with new assets being implemented. Daniel and Sini have been working hard on making this place look awesome. All temples are similar, but with each new asset, they look a bit different in a way. After all, they possess different elements inside.
• Adrian has been non-stop working on one of the playable characters, The Weathered Man. He has a big beard which means he is super cool.
• This week we introduce to you a new game mechanic, we don't want to spoil much, watch the video, you'll maybe see the dark side.
• Finally just for the funs, we show a small blooper of Ricardo messing around with the wind sailing mechanics, again, reference galore.
• Get into the discussion and join our forum: http://forum.sonofnor.com

[Chris Polus]

We made lots of little gameplay adjustments this week. So much in fact that Julian doesn't even know what week it is. Many were taken from feedback we get where we finally came around to try, test and implement it. Others were on our list for a long time.

• We were working on an unobtrusive tutorial system to show first time players how controls work.
• Roast enemies over a camp fire.
• Julian addresses concerns that grabbing an enemy with telekinesis might be too powerful. He explains.
• Sarahul scout AI was improved. A hit now also slows you down a bit. AI is very complicated to work on. Creatures tend to do unexpected things and debugging is not that easy.
• The feeling of lifting objects with telekinesis was overhauled. Light items should feel light and heavy items should feel heavier. It takes a lot of try and error to get the feeling about right.
• We have a button that teleports objects.
• As a side note: Julian just declared this dev diary #63 (because it's cool in binary %111111). But don't worry, it's #64, you're in the right place.
• Get into the discussion and leave your comments here, on YouTube, or join our forum at http://forum.sonofnor.com so we can discuss YOUR opinion in our daily team meetings!

[Chris Polus]

We implemented a great sound system this week that safes resources and makes sounds audible that were previously silent.

• This week, we show the following progress: Sand Dragonling enemy, in-game menu, invisibility effect, sound level of detail system and new sounds for the Fire Temple.
• We also started an ask my anything on ask.fm with our producer Alex. We'd like to see if our Kickstarter backers are interested in the team http://ask.fm/AlexanderGrenus
• We're interested in your opinion regarding the invisibility effect. What do you think of it? Does it work? Do you have complementary ideas?
• What do you think of the new sounds? Any feedback you would like to pass on to me?
• Get into the discussion and leave comments here, on YouTube, or join our forum at http://forum.sonofnor.com so we can discuss the opinions in our daily team meetings!

[Chris Polus]

Programmers have been kicking it this week, creating more internal tools.

• This week: new team member, our own cutscene editor, more concept art turned into 3D, some peeks at The Edge level, dialog system and NPCs talking, music in the Fire Temple.
• We're especially interested in what you think of the Fire Temple music, as this is the most important and concrete addition this week.
• Get into the discussion and leave your comments here, on YouTube, or join our forum at http://forum.sonofnor.com so we can discuss your opinion in our daily team meeting on Monday!

[Chris Polus]

We unbox our Tobii Eye-Tracking Dev Kit!

• This week: Tobii eye-tracking dev kit, we're at EXPO GAMES in Bozen (South Tyrol) with a huge Son of Nor banner, in-game tutorial system is taking shape, new animation for grabbed Sarahul and new for running Sarahul, entrance to the Wind Temple, new sounds in the Wind Temple.
• We're especially interested in what you think of the improved animations, if they're going in the right direction, and the Wind Temple sounds.
• Get into the discussion and leave your comments here, on YouTube, or join our forum at http://forum.sonofnor.com so we can discuss your opinion in our daily team meetings!