next »

[Hopebringers]

Hi guys, I'm gonna be updating the devlogs for this game in this thread instead of having each devlog on its own, and this thread will be updated with all new information and devlogs.

Hello guys and welcome to the first devlog of our game: Hopebringers!


Hopebringers is a tabletop tactics RPG game, in which you manage a group of adventurers as if they were sculpture-like characters as they explore different dungeons.

Hopebringers will bring the Dungeon and Dragons action and tabletop feeling but removing the majority of the percentages and random numbers making it more fast and direct.

[Hopebringers]

Devlog 2 - Tile Based Movement 

Hello everyone, we are back with another devlog! For this first real devlog, we`ll be explaining the most important mechanic in our game: tile based movement.

All levels are divided on square tiles, and every turn the player has two actions: moving and attacking. On this devlog we’ll focus on the movement and rotation.

Every turn, the player will be able to choose the tile he moves a character on, and the direction he faces, which is important for the attack action, which we’ll cover on a later devlog.

As you can see in the gif, we already have some models for different characters and enemies, but everything you see here, specially the UI, is still work in progress and subject to change.

We are using the tile based approach to movement that so many other games use, coupled with a rotation system which will give you advantages or disadvantages which affect, for example, extra damage for backstabbing.

[Hopebringers]

Devlog 3 - Character Skills 


Hello guys! We are focusing this week's devlogs on player characters!


Every character in our game has a skill tree with two branches, each with different skills divided in nodes, which can be small (health and damage buff), medium (buffing or debuffing abilities, either actives or passives) and big (upgrade of a main ability).




_{The Berserker, a mad barbarian using a hat with badass horns!}


The active skill system works in a way in which when you pick either one of the branches, the other one becomes locked, and its nodes are transformed into smaller, optional nodes for the selected branch. These skills are leveled with XP gained from completing levels and killing monsters.

Eventually, you will have a maximum of 4 possible abilities combinations and a ultimate ability for each one of the characters.

Additionally, each character has a passive ability. For example, our berserker friend gains a non stacking, 3 turn long attack buff of 1 attack point each time he receives damage.

Hope you enjoyed this devlog, and if you have any doubt please ask us!

Next devlog we`ll be talking about enemies, and the special interactions we have.

Thanks for reading!

[Hopebringers]

Devlog 4 - The Mage

New devlog about another character, the Mage!

The Mage is a wizard, a ranged fighter with a pointy hat. Apart from his basic attack, which has a range of 5 tiles, the Mage has an active ability and a passive one.

With its passive ability, every time he moves the mage summons a decoy image of himself in the tile he was originally in, which diverts enemy attacks.

His active ability is a ranged attack creating an energy explosion, which the player will be able to upgrade as the character gains experience and levels, as explained in the last entry.

The final set of abilities is not yet complete, but some ideas we have involve turning this explosion into an area attack or a lightning chain. In turn, each one of this updates can be improved with smaller buffs of different nature, depending on what skill branch you specialize on.

If you are interested in the game and want more updates, make sure to follow us on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/HopebringersRPG

[Hopebringers]

Devlog 5 - The Ninja

Hello guys and welcome to another character devlog, this time focused on the Ninja!

The ninja is our assassin character, a hooded figure carrying two knifes. He is a squishy, melee fighter with an active ability and a passive one.

With his passive ability, each time he kills an enemy he gets a damage buff to his next attack.

His active ability consists in a jump over his targeted enemy every time he goes for an attack and if there is an empty tile behind the targeted enemy. This jumps places the ninja behind the enemy and attacks him. Additionally, this attack ignores the rotation mechanic we explained in our first devlog. This means he doesnt need to be facing the enemy to be able to attack him.

His ultimate ability allows the ninja to place traps around the map. This ultimate could be buffed with one of the skill branches, allowing for more and deadlier traps, while the other branch would buff his passive damage stacking and overall damage ouput to make him more of a glass cannon.

Hope you enjoyed this devlog, and if you have any questions don't be afraid to ask us, either here or on our twitter page:
https://twitter.com/HopebringersRPG

[Hopebringers]

Devlog 6 - The Knight

New week, new devlog, finishing up our starting roster of playable characters. Behold,  the Knight!

The Knight is our first tank character, carrying a big shield which blocks all incoming damage from the direction he is facing. With each attack he lands on an enemy, he knocks that enemy away by one tile. His ultimate ability is still WiP, but we are thinking about making it be an area attack or an area push, pushing every enemy near him away.

For this character, we have some attack animations to show you. As the characters are based on tabletop RPG figurines, we don't have combat animations of the characters per se but rather for the figurines, and we also cut on a lot of animation work, which is hard for us. We are instead going to be focusing on particle effects for attack feedback, we'll keep you posted on that as we work on it.

You can also see the grid system and UI (both WiP) we have. As we explained before, you can see the move and attack actions on top of the character, as well as the rotation arrows on the floor. To be able to attack an enemy you have to be facing him (except for the Ninja), but this  is specially important for the Knight, as he is able to block damage from that direction.

So with this we are done with the playable characters. As we get more work done and more features implemented, we'll show it to you guys, specially UI, which is definitely in need of some love.

If you want to stay tuned for more developments, follow us on twitter: https://twitter.com/HopebringersRPG

[Hopebringers]

Devlog 7 - UI

So, we've been working on our UI.

As you can see, we have different areas on our UI. Up left we have the player health, move and attack actions, and the character icon. When you have more than one charater in game, the rest of their icons will show to the left side under the first one.

On the right side we have a scrollable column with the enemy icon. It only shows the enemy icon because the player already played his turn, but it shows every character turn, allied or enemy. If you press on one of the icons there, it takes you to where that particular character is on the map.

On the lower left side you can see a panel which will convey information on the selected unit, and an undo button, which will let the player undo his action, but we are not yet sure where to place it on our overall HUD. If any of you have any suggestions, we are open to ideas.

That's it for this devlog, not very long but showing the work we have on the UI. Still lots to do, tho.

As always, if you want to stay updated with the game, follow us on twitter: https://twitter.com/HopebringersRPG

[Hopebringers]

 

Devlog 8 - Attacks!

So, simple devlog here, I just want to show you guys our progress on the characters, specially the mage and the ninja. We have implemented the active and passive abilities for each one of them so withouth further ado, here they are!

First, the Ninja! Using his active ability, the Ninja jumps over an enemy and places himself in the tile behind said enemy.

If you remember, with his passive ability the Ninja can attack enemies he isn't facing, being the only character who can do that, which makes him quite unique and comes in handy in many situations.

Next, the Mage! As we explained, with his passive ability the mage leaves a decoy when moving, which stays in his previous tile and can be used to distract enemies.

His attack is a simple ranged one which deals damage from a distance on a straight line from the direction he is facing.

Finally, we have the Mage's upgraded attack, an old-fashioned chain lightning!

We'll keep you updated as we work on our game, and if you are interested and want to stay updated, follow us on Twitter!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HopebringersRPG

[Hopebringers]

Devlog 9 - Backbround

Hello again guys, we are going to show and explain to you the background of our game. As eom of you may have noticed, our levels are dioramas, as part of the D&D tabletop game feeling we are striving to achieve. So, naturally we need a table and a room where the players would stand. The setting we have chosen is a small cellar, with some barrels and caskets, some books and small stands and some lightning. In short, a comfortable place to play some good old D6D. If you have any ideas for other backgrounds you think we should heart about, let us know!

As alwyas, ff you want to stay tuned for more developments, follow us on twitter: https://twitter.com/HopebringersRPG

[Hopebringers]

Devlog 10 - Goblins and Giants

Hello again, today we are going to show you two of our enemies and how they work. So as you already know, our game is based on a tile and rotation system. This tile system is very important in our enemies behaviour, as they all begin each level asleep . While they are asleep, they do nothing. You will know they are asleep because they have some yawn-inducing ZZZ steaming out of their heads.

Each enemy as a set of tiles that awaken them, as soon as a player steps on it.

As soon as a player steps on one of these tiles, the enemy unit will awaken and will charter a path to attack the nearest player character.

So with that in mind, I'm going to show you the basic enemies of our game: the goblins , and the giants . The goblins are the weakest enemy in their game, with only 2hp and 1 damage, but what they lack in strength, they make up in numbers. The more numerous enemy you will find in any level, they can move 4 tiles and can attack only one objective at a time.

The Giants play on another different league. As their name implies, they are big and mean. They have 4 hp and a damage of 2, doubling the strength of the smaller goblins. Due to being heavier, it is harder for them to move, and as such move only 1 tile. However, their attack hits the selected tile and the adjacent lateral tiles to it, so they have a splash damage attack, making them dangerous in situations where you have two or more characters nearby.

So that's all for today, we'll keep you updated on the rest of the enemies as soon as we have them up and running. All numbers shown here are, of course, subject to change, so if you have any suggestion, let us know!

[Hopebringers]

Devlog 11 - Dioramas

We're back with another devlog, and we want to show how our diorama levels have evolved from the beginning
up to now. So, in the beginning our levels were very simple, built to check if everything worked as it was supposed to work, like the character and enemy movements, and different height levels.

As we began iterating and really designing levels, we started adding assets, props, and visuals to the levels. They started looking good, but we lost the tile segmented levels, and decided that the tiles would be shown as UI when clicking on any character.

So, after deciding that, we started decorating the levels and the background, trying to give them a D6D tabletop feeling. With this goal in mind, we decided to have the level be a diorama on a table inside a room, as if there were actual people playing on it.

Having had this setting decided upon, we neded to expand on it. Make the level clearer for the player to see everything going on on it with nothing to block his view, but also decorated enough to give a good feel to each level. Also, we expanded the background, added more props and better illumination, to add to the tabletop diorama feeling we want to achieve.

So that's the process we took to design the levels. We can you show this entire process from this level as it is the earliest one we have made, but we are also going to leave you a gif on how another one of our levels has evolved, specially regarding its lighting and illumination. Hope you enjoy it! As always, if you are interested in our game, follow us on twitter at  https://twitter.com/HopebringersRPG

[Hopebringers]

Devlog 12 - Stump and Charger  

Hey guys, today we are going to show our other two enemies which also are the two ranged ones, the Stump and the Charger, on a brief devlog.

The Stump is the proper ranged enemy in our game. It moves laterally, one tile at a time, and has a rangeless attack on a straight line which activates on one turn, and fires on the next one, after having a character in that line of sight.

The Charger is a different kind of ranged enemy. It doesn't move on its own after being awakened, as the rest of enemies do, but instead it charges a character, rushing to him and attacking him as he pushes him away for 1 tile.

[Hopebringers]

Devlog 13 - New UI

Hi guys, on this new devlog we are going to show our upgraded UI. We've been working on it since the last time we showed you, and we have made significant progress.

As you can see in this image, we have upgraded the right panel which shows enemies and players and their action order, now it is more visually appealing and it also shows which enemies are asleep and which ones are awake and ready to act.

We have also changed the character panel, instead of being top left they now are centered on the bottom edge of the screen, showing the health and actions availables.

As you can see in this gif, each character icon lights up when its character is selected, and it works the other way around too, selecting the character if its icon is pressed. We have also included the redo button on the left side of this panel, making it easier to access in case of a missclick, and we are working on a confirm button for this redo button. We still don't know if we want to have an unlimited amount of undo actions or if we want to limit to any number, so any suggestion any of you guys might have will be well received.

So that's all for this devlog, hope you guys enjoyed it and if you want to stay updated follow us on twitter!

[Hopebringers]

Devlog 14 - New Characters!

Hey there! This past two weeks, we've been working hard on more playable characters!So today, we are going to show you how progress on our two new japanese-syled characters is going.

So, first up is the Samurai. The samurai is a bruiser all or nothing kind of character, with high risk and high reward. His active is a basic attack focused on a single enemy, which has synergy with his passive, which gives the Samurai a bonus attack damage for each frontal attack against an enemy, but he cannot attack enemies from behind.

Next up is the Monk, a support character focused on healing the rest of the party. His active is a simple basic attack, with his passive being a mark he applies to his enemies, which heals every ally that hits that marked enemy.

So that's all for now, we are still working on these characters and the ability trees for the current ones, as well as a new set of viking oriented characters, to give more diversity to the possible roster a player can use. We hope you enjoyed this devlog and are hyped up for more characters. Also, you have a snippet of the fire particles behind our daring adventurers, which we think are really cool.

[Hopebringers]

Devlog 15 - Special Tiles

Hey guys! Apart from new characters, we've been thinking about something to give more tactical meaning to the gameplay, and we've come up with something very simple but which can be very important in how a game develops. We are talking about special tiles.

As it is still on development, we don't yet have anything visual to show you, but we'll use the early development idea of these tiles to ask you guys what you think about them, and if you have any idea about improving them or adding some new us, let us know!

So we have thought about 5 of them. First up would be damage tiles, which damage the character who steps on it for 1 (one) damage. It would be a damage limited to the character that steps on it, or a damaging explosion around the tile damaging anyone. We are still deciding on it.

Second would be a death tile. Very special and rare tile that kills the one who steps on it. Pretty straightforward.

Third would be healing tile. Same as the damaging tile, but with the opposite effect.

Next would be a stun tile. It stuns the character that steps on it, for 1 turn. Also very simple idea.

Last but not least, we have a smoke bomb tile. This one is a little bit special, as it is triggered by the Ninja whenever he attacks. This is a more recent addition to the Ninja so you won't see it in our Ninja devlog if you go back to it. This smoke bomb effect will be an upgraded ability effect, and it will only smoke that one tile, making the Ninja immune to enemy focus when he is inside. It lasts one turn, but both the smoke tile radius and the duration can be upgraded as the Ninja levels up.

As we don't yet have any visuals for the tiles, here you have an image on early development of one of our new levels!

[Hopebringers]

Devlog 16 - Last Two Characters

Hey guys, so this devlog will link up with the one before the last, in which we showed you the rest of our japanese characters, the Samurai and the Monk. So to wrap up all the new characters, we are going to show the other two (and last characters) we've been working on.

First up, the Druid. This character is akin to the Monk, a support class, but much more healing focused at its core. Its passive ability allows the Druid to ignore the special tiles we talked about last devlog, which is why we talked about tiles before we could show you the Druid. Its active ability allows the Druid to either use her attack to drain HP from the enemy she attacks, or give up her health to heal an ally.

As you can see, the Druid is our more closely related character to the old-school healer.

Next up is the last character on our list. The Valkyrie is a tankier warrior class, with some support perks. Its passive ability allows her to be more mobile, specifically on different altitude levels. With its active abitily, the Valkyrie attacks with a range of 2 tiles away instead of the normal one tile, and swaps places with the enemy she tags.

So, that's all for today. Next time we'll show you the abilities we've been designing for the different characters, so stay tuned!

[Hopebringers]

Devlog 17 - Victory and Defeat conditions

Hello, welcome to a new devlog. This one will be focusing on victory and defeat conditions for every mission.

So initially, we were thinking on making it simple, you kill all the monsters in the instance, you win and get to unlock the next level. However, that idea was maybe too simple, and we started thinking on upgrading it. We realized many tactical turn-based RPG games used a turn limit, like XCOM 2, to prevent the player from taking a lot of time to minimize risks and that gameplay ends up making the game boring.

For example, when I play Battle Brothers, I barely move my soldiers and wait for the enemy to come to me so I hold formation and don't get my men tired, which usually means skipping all the characters actions for the first three or four turns, which turns very boring very quickly, but because there's no time or turn limit and I don't have encouragement to move, I just play safe.

So to prevent this, we've added a turn limit to prevent players from camping and playing ultra safe, which eventually becomes boring. Apart from that, we've added different victory conditions, such as eliminating specific objectives (either enemies, or objects), surviving a number of turns, or getting all the characters to specific tiles on the map.

As for defeat conditions, they are simple. If all your characters die, or if you reach the turn limit, you lose. There will be some missions where you will have to keep a particular character alive, and if he dies, you lose.

So that's all for all, we are still thinking about adding more conditions into the game, both victory and defeat, so if any of you have any idea or feedback, it would be much appreciated  

[Hopebringers]

Devlog 18 - Ultimates  

Hey guys, we're back with another short devlog. This one will be short, as we just wanted to inform any of you interested in our game that we've decided, upon careful consideration, that we won't be including ultimate abilities on the final game. We've been working on them, but due to time frames and the difficulty of implementing another combat mechanic you could only use once a battle, we have decided it.

We're sorry for anyone who was hyped up for them, but we'll try to make it up by designing some interesting abilities for each character.

Meanwhile, here you have a screenshot of one of our levels.

If you want to stay updated, follow us on Twitter! We usually try to post new tidbits, images and gifs from development, so make sure to hit that follow button --> https://twitter.com/HopebringersRPG

[Hopebringers]

Devlog 19 - XP and Ability Trees

Hey guys, we've been working and designing our level and XP systems, which we mentioned in some earlier devlog, and have expanded upon them, and we're ready to explain to you how it works.

Firstly, you gain XP by completing levels. This XP gain will vary depending on how many enemies your character has defeated, among other things, and it is used to unlock different nodes on your ability trees.

Each player has two abilities trees, each one focusing on upgrading either the passive or active ability a character has. Each of these trees has a number of nodes. These nodes are divided in three different categories:

        -Small node: Small nodes are used to upgrade basic stats, like health and damage.   

        -Medium node: Medium nodes are a mixed ground between small and big nodes. They don't upgrade basic stats, but also aren't related to the tree's specialization.

        -Big node: Big nodes allow the player to upgrade one of the two abilities a character has.

In each tree, there will be branches to allow for a specific path of upgrades for a ability, blocking the other available branches as a result.

The XP price of any node depends on the character current level. Eveytime you buy an upgrade, your character levels up and so does the XP cost for the rest of abilities.

This is how a ability tree looks like as of now. If you have any doubts, or any suggestions, feel free to ask!

[McMutton]

Looks neat!

The art style is pretty cool- the environments especially. I've always enjoyed the solid vertex-color-esque kind of stuff. In regards to that, though, I think the rim lighting on the characters is way too bright and harsh when compared to the soft lighting in the environments.

Also, I see that Barbarian. Thanks for putting me in your game!