A Few New AVWW WIP Screenshots: Rhinos, Crafting, And Early Dungeon Maps

[x4000]

Original: http://christophermpark.blogspot.com/2011/07/few-new-avww-wip-screenshots-rhinos.html

So, last week we briefly showed screenshots of the new world map and character select screens.  We're still a few weeks away from being able to do our next large gameplay videos and huge diary entries (we really want to show off a ton of things in those all at once), but here's a few new things that we're ready to share:

Screenshot 1: More World Map Refinements

The screenshot above shows yet more refinement on the world map.  The numbers aren't shown all over the place on it (unless you hold the Shift key, as with planet names in AI War), and the color for a previously-visited region is now green instead of white, making it much easier to see.  The positioning of the numbers and icons is also now better, and hostile regions now show up with red numbers (not pictured).

Screenshot 1: Macro-Game Icons
Phil has also done some great new "macro-game icons" for regions for us.  The one you can see above is the settlement icon, denoting that region contains a settlement.  Most of these macro-game locations aren't visible until either you've found them yourself or an NPC explorer has found them.  But things like possible wind shelter sites, evil out posts, and overlord keeps all now have icons.

Screenshot 2: In-Game HUD

This next screenshot is the first time we've actually shown the in-game screens in over a month.  As you can see, visually a lot has changed with the HUD.  There's a few new indicators relating to the new mouse-based controls, but I'll talk about those another time.  The game now has full mouse+keyboard, keyboard-only, and gamepad support -- all with re-mappable keys -- if I haven't mentioned that before.

The biggest change to the HUD, of course, is the minimap.  It's now shown in a different style, and at the top of the screen instead of the bottom.  Via your settings screen, you can actually scale it up and down now; since I'm playing at 1080p, I've got it scaled to about 2x normal, but for smaller screens it can be equivalently smaller.  There's tons more information in the minimap now, and you can also smoothly scale it up to fill most of your screen for detailed looking-at by hitting the M key.  Simply tap M again to scale the chunk map back down into minimap size.

Note that there are still some color tweaks I need to make to the unexplored color and so on on the minimap.  The brown is not quite the best color now that the background map-styling has been removed, but I just haven't gotten around to changing that color yet.

Screenshot 2: Rhinos!
Two other things you might notice in that screenshot are... the rhinos!  These are a new form of enemy that run really fast along surface areas, goring you if you get in the way.  There are also green spell scrolls that you can craft that let you summon your own friendly rhinos, which is pretty cool -- they go bashing through all the enemies they encounter.

Screenshot 2:Wooden Platforms
You'll also notice that my character is standing on a floating wooden platform.  That is a "medium" sized platform, and there are also small and large versions.  These can be crafted out of any form of gem dust plus some cedar logs, with the help of an architect workbench.  I believe that you get 50 platforms per each log plus dust.  The default is the medium platforms, but you can get the large or small versions by adding easy-to-find secondary ingredients if you like.

The purpose of wooden platforms is mainly to help you get around underground -- you can place these with ease with the mouse in particular, and then use them for jumping-on.  They are only solid to land on, so you can jump straight up through the bottom of them, which is handy; and enemies don't hit them at all.  Neither do spells, same as with trees and other background objects.  But, as with trees and background objects, if you want to destroy them, you can use something like the Fire Touch spell to do so.

As you progress through the game you'll get access to spells like Ride The Lightning, which was shown in the last video.  But early on in, you need to rely on platforms and the like when you go spelunking.  In this case I've actually placed the platform above ground, and it's keeping me safe from the rhinos while I use a Restore Magic scroll (that's the blue lines showing on top of the platform, as I took the screenshot right as that started).

Each new character also starts with a healthy dose of wooden platforms, as they are something you don't want to get caught without.  But even if you run out while exploring underground, if you can find a boss area and then use the "teleport tunnels" (temporary name for that fast-travel feature), you can get back to the first surface chunk of the region and go visit an architect bench.  More on all that later, but that's a bit of info anyway.

Screenshot 3: Crest Crafting Interface

I can only partially show this particular interface at the moment because it's early in that particular world and I don't have the needed research done to actually build crests.  But this is a general view of the crafting interface, which uses large descriptive "cards" to show you what you're building, and which has either a row of gems, dust, or commodities at the top of the screen.

Down at the very bottom you can see what you've combined thus far.  At the moment, the combinations are always either gem or dust, and then other stuff.  For crests it's one, two, or three gems.  That is, a Base Gem,  plus optionally a Mix Gem, and then optionally a Catalyst Gem (but only  if you have a Mix already).

There are three kinds of  crafting that use the Base+Mix+Catalyst pattern (crest, spellshaper,  enchant) and three that use the Gem/Dust+Commodity+Commodity pattern (spellgem,  spellscroll, architect).  For those other kinds of crafting, you use one gem OR one dust, plus 0-2 commodities.  It's really straightforward and quick to use, and doesn't require memorization or an external wiki. 

You can easily check your inventory of commodities/gems/dust at any time, by the way, and there will also be some other in-game shortcuts to make looking at the various dimensions of this data as simple as possible.

Screenshot 3: Research
So, in the paragraphs above I did mention research -- so I'll expand on that a little bit.  Basically, when you start out in a new world there is very little that crafters actually know how to make.  They also don't have access to very many or very good raw materials.  As you explore around, of course you'll find more and better raw materials, but you'll also find "books of magic" that you can use to research new spells, crests, scrolls, traps, mechanical devices, buildings, and so on.

We'll get into the mechanics of how you turn in books of magic, and what the research works like, in the next video.

Screenshot 4: Crafting Moon Lamps

The card graphics here are showing the crest image, which is a temporary thing, so please ignore that.  However, what you can see here is that I've used some white opal dust that I have (see at the bottom where my base is selected), and now the provisional thing that I will craft is 20 moon lamps (see the card on the right).

Up at the top of the screen, I can either add in some cedar logs to my white opal dust to get wood platforms, or I can choose "none" to just finish and get my 20 moon lamps in exchange for one unit of white opal dust.

We'll show crafting in greater detail the next full diary that we do, including video of it in action, but I figured it was a good time to at least show you some of the interface.  It is a rather central part of the game, after all!

Screenshot 5: Underground Dungeon Map

So I'll warn you right up front with this last screenshot that there's a lot of partially-complete stuff you're looking at there.  First of all, there's a bug that is causing the darkness to be too dark in the compiled versions of the game, but which isn't causing that when I run the game in the unity editor.  That is... bizarre, to say the least, and it's something I need to look into more.  But that's why the darkness was so incredibly thick in the last video Erik did, and why I haven't shown more screenshots since.

At any rate, though, you can see an example of a partly-explored chunk map of an underground section in the top left.  But ALSO, you can see a very early working example of a dungeon map in the bottom right.  The graphics and styling on the dungeon map are very placeholder, but the green node is where I'm currently located, and all the white nodes are the other chunks in that same dungeon.

The cross-connections aren't shown yet, and that's one of many things we're still working on with the dungeon and region maps.  But what's really exciting is that you can easily pop open the dungeon or region map with period or comma respectively, and you can close them just as quickly.  But if you're running at a large screen and for some reason want to have their overlay up while you play, then you can turn them on, and even scroll them around so they are wherever you want on the screen.  That's pretty handy!

Until Next Time!
We're working toward the point where we have enough things completed on all the various fronts to show you some longer gameplay videos that will really capture how the early game goes.  And we'll have more to show on interiors, dungeons, bosses, scouting/exploration, settlements, crafting... a whole long list of stuff.

But since that's really requiring completion of so many different parts of the game, that's what the delay is in our showing the next video.  Similarly, if we're going to be hitting beta in August it's going to be very late August at this stage.  It might be September.  The project is still roughly on schedule for a October/November launch from the look of things, but we keep realizing that "oh, we can't leave that out of our first beta release or people will be disappointed," and so that's made it so that the first published will be a lot closer to the 1.0 "finished" version than we'd been originally planning.

Of course, I put finished in quotes, because as with AI War this game is intended to grow and evolve immensely during the beta period and post-1.0.  We've just got to have a nearly-complete foundation for all of the basic components of the game before we start letting people play it; first impressions being rather important and all that.  Anyway, stay tuned!  We'll have more for you in 2-3 weeks, hopefully with a video that time!

[Zhaine]

Cool, looks promising. . . The bits that are complete and not placeholders look fairly slick.

Have you considered replacing the "Health", "Magic" and "Civ Level" texts with icons (e.g. a heart, some kind of magic missile type thing and maybe the wind shelter icon from the world map)? And maybe making them vertical not horizontal bars? And perhaps different colours more in keeping with other bits of the interface? Just throwing ideas out there as I'm not dead keen on how those bars look at the mo, but I'm sure they can be tweaked at any time (and perhaps aren't meant to be final right now)!

Also, maybe rounding the edges of regions on the world map would look nice (and the edges of what's visible where it boarders on blackness as well).

All in all though looking good, thanks for the screens.

[x4000]

I'm pretty happy with the bars in terms of colors, etc, to be honest, but we'll see.  Icons would be more efficient, so there is that.  But doing vertical bars I don't think would be a favor to anyone as that screen real estate is needed on smaller screens in particular.

In terms of other minor visual tweaks... I'd mostly appreciate it if people would hold off with those, to be honest.  They aren't helpful at this point, because they just get me chasing little polish things before the game is actually fully functionally playable.  Rounding the edges of the regions on the world map could look nice, and it's been discussed before, but it's not high on my list of priorities.

Anyway, glad you like the screens.

[Hunam]

Looking good! Really like the screenshot of the underground. You have mentioned a few times about how you can find a "teleporter" near a boss area to get back to the surface. Are these bosses you are referring to the "evil overlords" or a category of sub bosses. The way you mention it makes it seem like some of these bosses more common than I had expected.

Also love the rhinos! when I read the title I thought you were talking about a enemy type called a "rhino" and was surprised to see actual rhinos in the picture. I mean evil rhino infested villages definitely takes the game up a notch  . Looking forward to Beta!

[x4000]

Glad oyu like it!

In terms of the bosses, they will indeed be pretty common -- many of them will not be all that notable, but they are one of the key ways of gaining EXP.  The difference being that you can't farm these bosses like you could regular enemies, because to farm bosses you have to keep exploring.  And that's just "playing the game," not farming.

In terms of bosses, there are evil overlords in their keeps, their lieutenants or similar in evil outposts, and then hordes and hordes of what might be best termed "minibosses."  Most of these will have randomized stats, so if you see a Giant Rhino that was a boss or something for instance, it wouldn't be identical to other Giant Rhinos.  Whereas, for instance, a regular bog-standard rhino has stats equal to all other rhinos of its same level.

So there's a couple of different ways we're handling this, anyhow.  Perhaps the boss label is a bit too loaded with prior expectations, but what I really mean is "named unique monster of uncommon difficulty."

[Zhaine]

In terms of other minor visual tweaks... I'd mostly appreciate it if people would hold off with those, to be honest.  They aren't helpful at this point, because they just get me chasing little polish things before the game is actually fully functionally playable.  Rounding the edges of the regions on the world map could look nice, and it's been discussed before, but it's not high on my list of priorities.

Cool, I was kinda thinking that might be best, but then I'd already typed my post, and thought I might as well throw my ideas out there in case they were in any way useful

Anyways the main thrust of what I was saying is that the finished bits look nicely slick for the most part.

[x4000]

No worries -- and thanks!

[Deekay]

Gonna start by saying hi to everyone as this is my first post on the forums so, hi! ^_^
Iv'e had AI war for a while and love it, and i have been following this game for a while too. Don't know why i haven't posted on the forums before :\

Anyways, i like the look of this game more and more every time i see more, looks like its going to be a lot of fun
I like the world map imporvements, looks a lot cleaner with less numbers on screen. The HUD looks nice too, apart from the brown on the minimap looking
a little out of place as you mentioned.
Also like what i can see of the crafting interface, i also like the idea of the research. I never like to be able to craft everything from the get go, i like to work
for things (you probably already know about the "Y" missing from commodity on the bottom boxes )

Oh and rhinos are just ftw ^_^

Really looking forward to the next dev diary and video. Keep up the good work!

[x4000]

Thanks!  And welcome to the forums.


Also new today: the ability to transmogrify your character into a bat.   Then you can fly around, keep casting spells like normal, but you take twice as much damage from enemy spells and physical attacks.  For people who are inclined, they can actually play the entire game as a bat (or other animal), if they prefer that style of gameplay.  You can talk to NPCs as a bat, do crafting, and so forth.

This might be the last I mention about transmogrification pre-beta, though, because it's one of those things that we want to be a happy surprise for most players.  There's a number of things like that, actually.

[Nice Save]

 There are also green spell scrolls that you can craft that let you summon your own friendly rhinos, which is pretty cool -- they go bashing through all the enemies they encounter.

If there isn't an exploding sheep version of this I shall be quite vexed.

But seriously, this sounds awesome, as do all the other shiny things.

[Cyborg]

It looks like we have other boss fans..good! I hope we get to see some overlord or something like that in the next video.

[x4000]

I doubt we'll have the overlords done for the next video, but we should be able to show some minibosses at least hopefully.  In terms of the overlords... I really don't plan on doing video of them, as that's one of the things I'd rather have people find.

I will say that I'm not a huge fan of bosses in general, not in the way that a lot of games do them where it's trial and error and then extreme precision or memory.  But that said I am a fan of interesting fights in general, and so some of those elements are bound to creep in.  Most of the boss confrontations will likely center around one large central figure (the boss), plus a variety of helping figures that fight with him (not always, but often).

[Cyborg]

I will say that I'm not a huge fan of bosses in general, not in the way that a lot of games do them where it's trial and error and then extreme precision or memory.  But that said I am a fan of interesting fights in general, and so some of those elements are bound to creep in.  Most of the boss confrontations will likely center around one large central figure (the boss), plus a variety of helping figures that fight with him (not always, but often).

Okay. Out of curiosity, did you ever play Super Mario Brothers 3  and super Mario world? Both of those had very interesting sub-bosses, and the mechanics of those fights might be something worth noting. Some of them involved using the environment, all of them had personality and really set up the final boss. They were not complicated, but they were made of fun and fit well in a platform world.

As opposed to something like ganryu which had murderous bosses that required god-level platforming abilities even on level I. By far the hardest bosses I have ever gone against.

[x4000]

Okay. Out of curiosity, did you ever play Super Mario Brothers 3  and super Mario world? Both of those had very interesting sub-bosses, and the mechanics of those fights might be something worth noting. Some of them involved using the environment, all of them had personality and really set up the final boss. They were not complicated, but they were made of fun and fit well in a platform world.

Hahaha, yeah, I've played those... about as much as anyone, I'd expect.  And remade the former extensively, too.  Those are great examples of bosses that I really like, although it does become too repetitive in the Mario 3 fortresses.  I thought that the original Yoshi's Island (not the sequel) also had some interesting boss fights.  Lots of use of the environment is definitely my favorite way to go.  Metroid games (some of them, anyway) tend to also do a good job of that.  Definitely to my tastes.  I've played loads of Final Fantasy as well, but those bosses were always something I put up with, not the reason I came to the game.  Various other platformers or action/adventure games also fell into that category (Secret of Mana, for instance -- always loved the game, but the bosses were just kind of "meh.")

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Late on the blog post due to busy day.  But here you go.  http://kingisaaclinksr.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/thoughts-on-latest-avww-blog-a-few-new-avww-wip-screenshots-rhinos-crafting-and-early-dungeon-maps/  (wow, that is a long URL...)

Excerpts:

I just have to say this off the top of my head yet again, this game looks visually gorgeous from these Alpha views we get to see of it ... I fear I might stare more at the graphics than at the gameplay itself! ... Maybe its just the depth of the graphics, the colorizings, I don’t know.  It just…sucks me in.

The mini-map is, again, interesting, but with what little was displayed on it and lack of being able to try it out, makes it difficult to have any thoughts on it.  Though the brown color is something less-than desired . Though I’m glad we can play around with it and scale it as desired and that its not just stuck on the screen in one certain way.

Rhinos o_O, I did not see Rhinos coming, but not a bad idea.    Should be interesting fighting a herd of those . 

Its really about time we saw platforms and what you talked about seems to be adequate enough. If I had to say anything, its perhaps making them a little more visible?

As for crafting, I have a few things to say.  I am glad we won’t need a wiki to craft stuff.  I’ve never been too big a fan of games with overly complicated crafting systems when it can be done in a few simple steps.  Having to look up a wiki every time you need to make something just drags the game down, though I can’t quite remember the last game I played with a bad crafting system, probably because I’ve been avoiding them like the plague .  One concern is whether the system you have setup with be able to handle this giant (and progressive) world your trying to create.  Another is whether this will keep crafting interesting enough or just eventually devolve into busy work we have to do every once in a while. Otherwise, the UI seems good enough.

I am intrigued by your idea of the dungeon map, but that placeholder gives me nothing to work off of for now.

I think another reason I’m excited for this game is because it is reminding me so much of the Metroid games (not including the 3D ones).  True, I’m not some geared-up heroine in a space suit killing lots of aliens, but something about this game reminds me of the appeal that those games once had and could possibly have again =).

Thanks for your visibility on this game, it just gets me more and more excited about this game.

King