Artworks: A lot of art has been added to the game and all placeholders have been removed!! There are some issues with the walls at the moment but we are looking into them :)

Presentation: A lot of work went here as well during the last week as the game needed a good way to let players know how much movement they have, what kind of attack and defense rolls they get, whos turn is it and various things like that 

All in all that was an awesome update that took the game from a prototype to an actual game !!

Dungeon Tileset: The first dungeon tileset is almost complete and should be able to show it over the next week or so :)

Design: The scripting system has been rewritten once again to allow more flexibility and power adventures can have more unique elements. New tables for searching, traps and loot have been added and old systems removed. 

Searching overall has been reworked and now you need to click visible objects to search, where before everything was invisible and players had to search tiles one by one hoping for treasure …. 

XNA & UNITY: As of late last night the game now runs fully on an xna client i wrote and once everything is bug free i will move over to unity which should be a days work(place your bets!).

Having an xna client has the advantage of testing this on an xbox and also debug all the code as unity is not the best enviroment to debug c# code :)

Thats all for now!!

I just got in my hands the first version of the barbarian hero graphics!!! (its not the first one actually but you really don’t want to see the other ones! )

Words are not enough to express how much I LOVE THIS, only question is the color style, i was looking for something more smooth and little more vibrant in a way. Perhaps another version of it may help 

Multiplayer Lobby: Chat and Matchmaker have been implemented, players can now select their character and how many players to play with and search for a game!

Multiplayer Game: First match has been played finally!!!!

Campaign: Has been put on hold until the online system works flawlessly

Editor: Improved scripting system, added first version of publish system that publishes a map to the database and players can find it via lobby/games.

Photo of the matchmaker

Looks like game design is far from complete… certain mechanics had to be reworked after i got some feedback from a few players :)

I am also in the proccess of changing more mechanics now to make the game more fun.

The next things i am looking to add are Online Multiplayer, new skill system and finally artwork, as all this time the game was using placeholder artwork…

Should be able to post some screenshot soon :)

I am pretty much done with the game design and all systems are operational, i am quite pleased with the game and i can’t wait to show it to people and get some feedback.

I am going to hire a graphics artist next and start working on the demo. Hopefully i will get some time to test a console version to see how fun the game can be with a controller

I have been doing lots of changes lately to the game and most importantly to the metagame as it needs a strong social interaction and some sort of purpose that will tie everything together.

Each adventure will have a score and a leadboard behind that allows you to see how well you completed this adventure and also try to beat other peoples scores.

The other important thing is the element of persistence where now you can do any adventure any time, as many times you want. As you accumulate items and coins you can store them in your storage in the village and also send some of those items as gifts to your friends!

One other important aspect is the RPG factor… there are no rpgs left today, just stats and perhaps a story. The true essence of an RPG relies in the actual words which propably nobody sees anymore after the extended use of its acronym. RPG stands for ROLE PLAYING. You are no longer you, you assume the role of a character and you are that character. I took many steps to make this is alive as possible and i hope it does show!

Finally one big addition i made was the mana system. Mind now directly gives equal mana points which allow you to cast as many spells as mana you have on the adventure. You cannot restore mana while adventuring so you have to choose what and where to cast very carefull or you will not make it!!

Thats it!!!

Hurray!

Finally after months of spare time work the new website is up and running. One thing i like a lot in this updated version is that there is some real information and a communication channel!

I am looking into adding a forum now and possibly a blog reply feature, maybe if i don’t sleep tonight i can finish it! o wait, i already didn’t sleep so i can finish this update!! duh

Its been a few weeks since i posted anything mostly because i was busy as hell. I found a partner who will help me build my new game and that allowed me to quit my day job and focus on more important things.

At the same time i have been rethinking about which platform to choose for the RPG game and although i was orginally leaning towards xbox, steam it might be best to release on facebook only and add some persistent elements to it as well. 

However the single most important aspect of facebook is the social factor which is very imortant for this game as all D&D games require a bunch of people to get together and if there is one place that is easy to meet right now its facebook.

This means the game will also be free to play with microtransaction support, which means i have to carefully select where to ask the player to pay as i want to make sure everyone has loads of fun and is able to complete the game however the players who spend more money should get even more unique and amazing experiences.

Thats the plan so far, i have also been working on the website a bit lately to try and make it a little more interactive and lively so there should be an updated version up sometime soon!

Photo of the interface plus some bits and pieces, you can also see in the character sheet and the new dice system which makes things more d&d and also more fun!

Screenshot from visual studio while developing the RPG prototype :)

I have been desinging and implementing the new spell casting system in my new rpg game which i been working on the side, although i am not ready to go into detail about the game itself i am kind fond of its spell system where the designer will be able to write the spell in XML and the game will understand what you want to do.

Its essentially a script system but its quite simple and is something that you do on the XML itself making it quite easy to edit or create a new spell.

Here is an example of the wizards firebolt spell:

 <Skill Id=”Firebolt” Type=”Ability” Icon=”../Content/Icons/Law and Order.jpg” Description=”Instantly kills an enemy unit however the victim is allowed to roll a save vs death.”>

      <Script Id=”Event” EventId=”Casted” >

        <Script Id=”Check” Value=”LineofSight” />

        <Script Id=”Check” Value=”Range” Min=”1” Max=”6” />

        <Script Id=”Projectile” Receiver=”Enemy” >

          <Script Id=”Event” EventId=”OnImpact”>

            <Script Id=”Damage” DamangeType=”Magical” Value=”1” MultiplierId=”HeroLevel” MultiplierValue=”+1”  Receiver=”Enemy”  />

          </Script>

        </Script>

      </Script>

    </Skill>

some unreleased screenshots from masters of belial while still in development

masters of belial for the pc, screenshots from the lobby/matchmaker 

monster development in 3dsmax from masters of belial

masters of belial editor shot, funny thing is i made the editor after i completed the 2 maps in 3dsmax that shipped with the game… :P

a facebook rpg i made for facebook using silverlight, it was similar to mafia wars and castle age. one thing i liked a lot about this game was that you could summon daemons and use them to do your bidding by helping allies and cursing enemies, i loved it

some screenshots from ancient greece, a city building game i was making for facebook

I am back from holidays and dived straight into the code!! yah!!

The clouds, skydome, sun, moon, alpha leafs are now functional in the game, its nice to see a proper enviroment finally! It still needs more work to reach shipable quality but it is a good step forward. Some quick fix optimization for the infinite world loader went in as it turned out on some tests to be slowing down the game by almost 20 ms each frame. not good

All in all the game is closer and closer to be put online and start testing!!!