next »

[Pixelcomet]

The game

Land of fire at it's heart is a 2D action online rpg that takes heavy inspiration from classics such as  the Legend of Zelda and  a little bit of sword of mana. This is all mixed together from influences of our favorite childhood anime, namely Naruto and samurai champloo.


The world
Land of fire is set in a fictional world inspired by Japanese lore and culture. The  world is on the verge of ruin and most of humanity have  built massive walls around their settlements in hopes of staving off the threat of demons that roam the land freely. The people of this world have grown accustomed to the sheltered life and most can't even begin to comprehend what lies beyond the walls.

The malevolent demons known as yokai grow stronger with each moon and even begin to threaten the larger settlements. Totsukawa, a thriving colony is one of the largest settlements still left standing is where the majority of the story is centered. To the north are the black peaks, the home to  the highly spiritual samurai whose sole purpose is believed to be to cleanse the land of the living of the demons.

Gameplay

Land of fire's gameplay is a mixture between hack n slash styled gameplay combined with attack chaining mechanics to create a fast paced and dynamic style of combat that rewards quick reflexes and skill.

 explore a vast and beautiful world on the verge of ruin and umravel the secrets of Rien. Transverse bottomless carverns to  lush grasslands. All  meticulously crafted pixel by pixel.

 Solve intricate puzzles with friends to uncover secret areas and lore. Some puzzles require special items or classes to be completed. This means that cooperation between the community is required to complete some puzzles.

 Customize your character with a wide variety of clothing, weaponry and even fighting style with our unique combat system.

 Fight otherworldly entities that want nothing more than to consume you. Each enemy is treated as an actual part of the world. We want to create beleivable ecosystems that breeds dynamic encounters not just mobs placed on a map to be slaughtered.

 Survive The world of Rien is a harsh one. Nocturnal predators own the night and venturing beyond the walls come dusk is always a dangerous endeavour. Land of fire features a semi-perma death system. This means that upon death players lose all non essential items they're carrying upon death. To avoid this players are encourage to return to designated areas(Town, camps etc) to store their belongings. This is especially important when the sun begins to set.

Devlog #29
Devlog #28
Devlog #27
Devlog #26
Devlog #25
Devlog #24
Devlog #23
Devlog #22
Devlog #21
Devlog #20
Devlog #19
Devlog #18
Devlog #17
Devlog #16
Devlog #15
Devlog #14

[pixelgriffin]

Following & hyped! What game engine are you using?

[Cranktrain]

Yes, it looks rather good, and the online features seem particularly impressive. The running of the player characters seems a bit slow, in comparison to the exaggerated running animation, speeding that up is the only suggestion I would have at this stage.

[TNBNeno]

this is amazing! props to the artist !

[Pixelcomet]

Hi guys. We really appreciate the kind words. With this being our first 'real' project I'm sure every indie dev can relate to how  nerve racking it can be putting your baby out there for the world to see. More updates soon to come!

[Pixelologist]

Have you considered changing the art style? Looks a bit too much like Naruto, I think. Which is fine if you don't plan to sell the game and release it as free fan made content.

[Pixelcomet]

Uhh we're in a little bit too deep to change the game's art style.

[maruki]

Whoa! This looks like a very solid project! Following

[Pixelcomet]

Thank you!  Right now we're working on the climax scene for the tutorial/prologue of the game.

[RuinousA]

This looks awesome. Love your art style, gameplay looks solid too!

[Pixelcomet]

update

Thanks man! we're getting closer to the atmosphere we want to create.




I also made progress on  the climax scene for our tutorial..


Too much blue? feedback would be appreciated

[wizered67]

Wow, this looks really nice! Will keep an eye on this!

[pixelgriffin]

That scene is really shaping up, love the titans! I like your color pallet so far, but perhaps some more red or pink to accentuate certain areas would help the scene pop more.

Still hyped!

[Pixelcomet]

Thanks! Glad the scene is heading in the right direction!

We just put up a new devlog on indieDB, check it out!

http://www.indiedb.com/games/land-of-fire/news/land-of-fire-devlog-17

[Pixelcomet]

We started working on some fire based skills a couple of days ago. We had to choose between drawing and animating each sprite by hand or generating fire through the use of particle effects. For the sake of seeing how using particles would pan out and if we could acheive the style we had in mind, we decided to give it a shot.After a few minutes of creating some particles this is the first somewhat interesting iteration we made.

After more tweaking we were  conflicted if we wanted to have a smoke trail linger behind the actual fireball or not..



Final iteration. we're pretty satisfied with this one

Using parts from this particle set we made,


Actual technique and attack functions are being worked on today.

[Pixelcomet]

DESIGN

Due to us shifting gears and putting more focus in the design aspects of the game and concentrating more on organizing our work, there isn't really much to share this week, but that should change as we continue to set our minds straight.

In an attempt to organize our workflow even further, Zane has began working on dozens of pages worth of design documents alone this week. This is incredibly essential to the project as it will enable us to work more proficiently.


ELEVATIONS

Spicing up the look of the maps with style, elevations are now completed on this scene. Programming work will be done onto it this week. Overall, I love the positive impact this has had on this map.



FIREBALL





The fireball explodes upon impact knocking enemies back, sending 3 smaller spread fireballs that leave flames on the ground which apply a burn status debuff on touch.

This week I spent some time optimizing how particles are handled in the game's engine and after 2 strenuous days of constant debugging I was able to get the CPU usage of the particles down as much as I possibly could. Check out this gif showcasing the many particles in action!

(this is an old gif before the technique underwent polishing)

Now we won't need to be shy with how wild techniques can be! And we can rest easy knowing players will be able to shoot this much fire power!




NEW CHARACTERS

I would like to end this devlog off by introducing two new character portraits made by SulLight. More will be revealed about these two later on, but have a look!



I look forward to sharing what we'll have in store for you guys next week! Don't forget to to share your feedback + ideas, we love hearing them!

[Cranktrain]

The new environments are looking really nice, and the particle effects are pleasantly over-the-top.

[Pixelcomet]

Thanks! the particle fx have  been a chore to do but it's finally shaping up.

[Pixelcomet]

Spent last night working on our 'fast travel' system which is basically a quickened method for travelling through specific areas. Because we're hand drawing maps we're likely to have unique "zones" that people move to and not the traditional, seamless map that most people here are accustomed to.

This was literally put together in a matter of two hours[art and all] just for us to test our design and have something tangible to play with as we continue to flesh out the system. We're aware of the 'floaty' leaps and we're currently trying to fix that.

[Pixelcomet]

20th devlog here, this marks 20 weeks of updates and I gotta say I am happy with the development pace! We've actually been developing the game for over 20 weeks and we're coming close to a year now, but I won't say when yet


FAST TRAVEL
For a while now, Zane has had his sights on adding features to the game that would enhance your play experience by more than just a great feeling combat system. One that has been brought up numerous times since nearly the beginning of development was a Fast Travel system. Fast Travel systems are essential in open world games, and with the route we originally had, our maps were going to be HUGE. With the new hand drawn maps, they still will be, and a Fast Travel system will need to couple it. After doing much research on how other MMOs handled their Fast Travel, I noticed a lot of them were incredibly simple and boring. Most just opened up a window with a menu and buttons and you just select where you wanna go and some divine light that you seem to have infinite access to just throws you in and it's just so UGH. We've decided to make it a little more lively and in control of the player while fitting to the shinobi theme. Certain points will send you to an area filled with trees where you can press a designated button that will speed you up in the process. Pressing nothing or getting the button presses incorrect will get you there at regular speed. In the meanwhile you can try your hand a multi tasking because you'll be able to shoot shurikens at obstacles and item pick ups.

Here's a gif of where Fast Travel is currently.


There's a lot that can come from a system like this such as races against others. Or if ever that corporate greed kicks in, Fast Travel Grinding System. I'm kidding about that last part. We'd love to hear your thoughts of the current Fast Travel system though.


NEW YOKAI
SulLight has a very important character Yokai in the works. You'll be seeing this Yokai in the tutorial, but I won't reveal too much about him this week.

Here's some design concepts in the work you can check out!






WEBSITE
We've started remaking our website last week, complete with all standard features. We're currently working on adding in our forums and uploading some clips and pictures of gameplay. The website should launch sometime next week or the following week.

There's a lot that will be changed from this picture before launch, but this is where it currently stands.

A personal Note from me -
I felt like sharing some thoughts as this is our 20th devlog.
April is closing in, and the completion of the game gets clearer with every devlog. Since our 1st devlog to now, we've gotten a tremendous amount done, and it makes me happy looking at how stable the progress of the game is. I have high hopes for the month of May, as we're going to be finishing up the tutorial with it's scenes, battles and features. I look forward to sharing the upcoming experience with you guys as we have since the beginning. And as always, we love hearing your feedback so POST IT! See you all next week!