I have started working on demons!

I have mentioned demons many times before - they are aggressive and indestructible flesh beings powered by magic.

Magic in the game's universe is aura-based. Everything in this universe emits aurae - and they can be manipulated to alter reality.

Mages use physical and mental glyphs - mental images - to create the specific aurae required to produce desired results. This is what spells are - a sequence of actions and glyphs.

It's possible to cast a spell that will a cast spell itself and loop forever consuming aurae of the world.

Demons are the result of incredibly complex spell loops and it is why they are indestructible:
You can destroy the flesh form of a demon, but a spell loop will keep going and eventually recreate it.

So, yeah, I've known what they are for a long time. I only needed to figure out how they would look.



Eyeless demons.
The first concept of the demons. Demons with wrong eyes - wrong amount, color, size, etc. - are common, so the initial idea was to make demons without eyes.

I also made them look unlike animals so it would be easier to animate them.

But in the end, I decided that I can do better than that.



Antler demons.
Idea #1: Bony antlers. Usually, demons have horns - giving them antlers would be pretty unique.
Idea #2: Eyeless creatures look kind of boring. Give them two eyes to avoid wrong eye cliche.

Couldn't go with it because no matter what I did, eyes looked weird and antlers had contrast problems with high-value backgrounds.



Cyclopean demons.
Just wanted to see how it would look, didn't plan to do it because of how unoriginal the look is.



Masked demons.
These are fun! The winning idea.

These demons cover their faceless heads with masks. They assemble the masks themselves from stolen and scavenged materials.

The problem with other demon concepts was that they lacked personality and didn't blend well with other things in the game's world.

Masked demons don't have these problems and - again - it's just such a fun idea! I had to go with it.

After I figured out the look, it was time to start coding.

I'll have to make changes to pretty much every part of the character system to make non-humanoid characters work. For example, I want them to use a simpler animation system to make implementing a lot easier.

Only changed a few lines of code today, it took a while to figure the demon look.


Today I was coding demon systems.

For example, because demons don't use items like humanoid characters, I had to make a system that allows me to set custom stats for characters.

There's a lot of automation when it comes to setting stats, so I had to disable all that to keep initial demon stats intact.

The result:



It may look like a shovel, but it actually is a demon =]
As you can see it can attack and it has a custom set of abilities.

Demons look like that because at the moment the variables that control the appearance of characters are set to -1 for demons.


Today I have worked on demon graphics.
I have made animations, masks, implemented custom animation system I've mentioned earlier, etc, and demons are now done!



Suprizingly, implementing a new enemy type only took three days.


A rather boring day - I was fixing demon bugs and trying to implement interior shadows.


This day was full of interruptions but when I managed to get to LOTLW development, I managed to implement most of the NPCs - town guards, merchants, prop characters, and rogues outside the town.


Today I was fixing various bugs and continued implementing NPCs.



People!



New merchant's inventory - this merchant sells consumables that are supposed to restore aura. Something went wrong though. The game is very buggy at the moment - that always happens towards the end of developing a large chunk of content.

Going to have to start fixing things soon.

Important Eastern Trilith town NPCs:

- Legate. Sells faction items and a silver claymore to friends of Triliths faction.
- Armor merchant. Sells T1 and T2 body and leg armor, helmets.
- Aura merchant. Sells crystalized aura.
- Material merchant. Sells T1 and T2 materials.
- Banisher. Bring demon pearls to a banisher to get gold and Triliths reputation.

Demon pearls are the new items that will be dropped by demons. They aren't just a source of Triliths reputation - it will also be possible to equip them. They will be like magic orbs but will increase curse chance instead of critical chance.


I can't sleep, can't stop thinking about the game.
Let's see if writing them down will help me fall asleep. Might as well add more content to the entry.

Recently I've become dissatisfied with the game - defeating enemies instead of killing them just isn't satisfying and enables grinding.

I think I am going to remove the entire defeating idea and make NPCs fight players to death.
Once they will die, they won't respawn.

This means the world will start feeling pretty empty after the player goes through the area killing enemies, and I don't like that.

The solution is to add a few non-hostile NPCs in each combat zone who don't have to be killed.

Another problem is that there will be no way to farm enemies. Once they are dead, the items they own are gone from the game. Because NPCs can take items, and because players drop items on death, this makes deaths very punishing.

A small price to pay for a more rewarding experience. Might even make the game more engaging by raising the stakes. If what, I can implement a system that allows players to negotiate with the enemies and buy taken items back.

This also introduces a risk of breaking quests and other sequences if the player loses the required items on death.
I'll have to be very careful with quest items.

This 'experience rework' should help reinforce what the game is supposed to accomplish - satisfying exploration, immersive mechanics, and 99% grind-free gameplay.

Yes, this is what circulates in my head most nights.
Sometimes I want to improve my game so badly that I can't fall asleep, so I don't get enough rest, and can't work as much. Which increases the hunger for development further.

Vicious cycle!

Anyway, 25th September here I go!


I spent the day making a trailer for the upcoming update.

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fGLzDeCUiI
Today I was implementing new items.

The highlight of that is the iridescent hood:



This powerful item will be a reward for doing Spellscarred Desert - I'll write about it in future entries.

I have also implemented two new keys, which are needed for Spellscarred Desert, demon pearls, tier 2 consumables, raw silk grass material, and instructions for the new teleportation spells.

To finish the Eastern Trilith area I still need to:

- Implement banisher.
- Make a new asset: Door to Spellscarred Desert.
- Replace one group of enemies in the battlefield area with a powerful demon.
- Make demons drop pearls.
- Add raw silk grass gathering.
- Add drying racks that turn raw silk grass into dry silk grass.
- Add new teleportation spells and hide their instructions in the new area.

Once all of that is done, I will start fixing bugs and making small changes.

I will:

- Do an XP rework because currently there are problems with XP gaining.
- Do a loot rework because I am still not satisfied with what items the containers contain.
- Improve the NPC name generator.
- Fix the good old building depth bug.

After that, I will implement character creation, options for colorblind people, player data tracking, and add Spellscarred Desert.

Then it will be the time to release the 0.5.0 update.

So that's the plan =]

Thanks for reading and until next time!

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