So from what you might have noticed from the title I decided to be more formal for this and future development dairies. Please give me your thoughts about this change.
I will also try to write a little better and not in such hurry as I usually do. With my regular developer mindset I usually write very hasty and very poorly, something you don't need to put up with.
Having clarified these points, lets proceed with the development diary!
During this past week we focused on three main tasks. I will mention them and then go into greater detail for each of them:
Adding Audio Support to the game.
Integrating new great GUI elements developed by Rost.
Upgrading the dungeon generation to enable a new type of dungeon generation: Open dungeons
Adding Audio Support to the game
Audio support includes three types of audio:
Music: The way music is supported lets us provide the game with different background music depending on the current game play situation. This enables us for example to change the music if you encounter a rare enemy or a secrete location. This is fairly common now a days in games, but not so much in the Roguelike genre.
Ambient Sounds: This lets us add random or constant sounds to decorations or really any type of element in the game. One thing to keep in in mind is that ambient sounds are spatially localized, so for example, if you are near a torchlight on a nearby wall you will hear the fire cracking near you but if you are far you won't hear a thing.
Sound effects: Not much to say, sound effects are a fundamental part of the game, give you a great deal of immersion!
All of the sound categories where added conveniently in three channels you will be able adjust to your liking:
Please forgive me the lack of aesthetics of the menu screen as the UI of this screen is not yet done.
As you can notice we also included right of the option to change the current track playing. We also hope to add more customization to this in the future.
I have to say integrating music and sounds to a soundless game makes it infinitely better!
Integrating new GUI elements
Something we are really excited is the integration of GUI Elements done by Rost during this week and last week. This is not nearly done but some areas of the user interface are polished enough to show it to you (Click on the images to enlarge them):
We hope you like what you see as much as we do. One of our goals is to make the interface as intuitive as possible too, hoping more people tryout the exciting roguelike genre!
Upgrading the dungeon generation
As development progresses, it is fundamental to add new variations of dungeons. This will give you exploring variations and different challenges (think how enemies are distributed in more open dungeons vs an enemies cornered in a room).
With this in mind, we added the open dungeon type:
The open dungeon generation can be as dense or open as needed.
We enhanced for the dungeon generation by adding a new theme (wilderness) and increased decoration support. Here you can see a beautiful wilderness screenshot:
Closing Thoughts
Our goal is to have the UI polished enough to show a partial game play video for the next development diary. Videos will let us show you so much more: Special Effects, Music, Sound and of course actual game play (but no way near balanced ;) )!
I know it's early in the development process, but please help us reach out and pass the word about the game.
If you can, support us! Be it some financial support or great ideas or suggestions we appreciate it a lot!
Thanks for reading!
I hope to see you next Week!