It has been a while since our last update but to compensate the team have made some considerable strides in the development of the game. During the last two weeks alone we have gone from our pre alpha to our (soon to be) finished alpha.
The last features that we need to implement in the game to show of all of our core mechanics will be implemented by the end of the week, after that has been included we will start showing you some actual game-play (videos!) instead of just screenshots!
Just to tease you these are the features left, that we are currently working on:
- Capture zones: Connect map; Cut off structures (think company of heroes, dawn of war).
- Mr.Snappy: Spawn; AI; Abilities (big boss).
- Minimap.
- Talent system (a bit like Heroes of the Storm).
- Commander GUI.
- Commander abilities; Vision; Control creeps (We put all the vision control on the commander).
- Generator/Farm.
- Map buffs.
This list is of course arbitrary and hard to put in context but that is what our programmers are slaving away at. We will of course explain these features in detail in a future post.
On the other end of the shop our graphical team has been at hard work constructing assets/models for the game. Those however is more attractive to show than the code so let's look what we got in store!
As you can see this is our big green monster, our boss minion.
Everyone on the design team knew we needed to create something that yielded great reward when killed for the team. Just like other MOBAS have, for example Nashor or Roshan. We could however for the life of us not figure out what we wanted to make.
A demon?
A monster?
There were many ideas but nothing that felt right, until our lead grafiphical artist had an idea; this was basically the pitch:
Henrik:
"Hey guys you know we could not deiced what we wanted to make for our boss? I have an suggestion, you see I was watching the discovery channel".
Team (everyone nods their heads):
"Interesting, really cool, what were you watching?"
Henrik:
"It was an documentary about alligator snap-jaw turtles".
Team (collectivly asked):
"What is an alligator snap-jaw turtle?"
Henrik:
"Check this out (shows video on YouTube)"
Team:
"That is awesome, let's put that into the game!"
Henrik:
"I know right!"
We had some issues to get him functional without tearing in the animation and other difficulties but I must say that it turned out great and this is only the first version of the model. The scale of it is insane, it is larger than the average tree and looks ridiculous large compared to the champions. I can't wait to see it in game fighting against champions!
This is a picture of a commander building above is the barracks displayed, there will be several included in he graphical slice each building has a different purpose and these are:
- 1.Barracks: Spawn minions.
- 2.Farm/Generator: Raises population cap and income/per min.
- 3.Tower: Locks down control points and attacks enemies within range.
- 4.Healing well: Heals friendly champions.
This is our first champion, we call him Copperman (although he was named Alexander "Copperman" Jaeger by the community) he is one of the greatest soldiers in the human empire, he is extremely charismatic and leads from the front line. His armor was designed to fight humanities greatest achievement but also their worst nightmare, the AI.
Copperman is the last remaining member of the elite unit tasked with testing the suit i real life combat although the suit proved successful in combat, the fatality rate rendered it useless in full scale production.
We also have the minions finished who will spawn from the barracks one ranged and one melee:
This is the melee minion she is an female warrior wielding a gigantic hammer driven by steam, fighting for the forces of mankind.
This is the ranged minion, using a steam powered Gauss rifle he supports the advance of he female warrior.
As you can see we are hard at work in the workshop and if we keep the pace we are going at now, we will have everything we want in the graphical slice in three weeks. There is still tons of work to do and not a whole lot of time to finish it but I believe we can do it!
Next update I believe we will have some videos to show you with game-play and we will start working on our trailer next week that will be exciting to see finished too!
/Lunaticman
Can't wait for the first gameplay video!
haha, me too! :D