Blogs - BaronVengeous

Well, what an interesting week it's been!

Rees (UniformSierra) and Matt (Langutan) have joined us here on IndieDB, and Rees and i have been discussing the storyline of Rathguarde(which looks fantastic at the moment), which he should be doing a post on in the not-too-distant future

The success of Rathguarde thus far has astounded me, at one point Ratghuarde hit 107th place, and Flashfire Games hit 88th Place! Considering that we've only been on IndieDB for about 9 days, quite frankly, I'm impressed.

With such success, people have been giving us some positive feedback on the game, and how they're keen to see how it unfolds, as well as some people offering their services to us!

For Alpha 3, we've got some interesting things up our sleeves (8 sleeves together tend to have quite a few things up them), and the current task I'm working on is the addition of trees (and their various byproducts). For these trees, we decided not to go with generic green trees, but with more interesting concepts. These concepts were fueled by the decision to make the "fuel source" for the game Amber - a new thing that will work in a similar way to Coal in minecraft -. This will be a yellow gem-like stone, which will be quite common underground, but mainly will be used as a light-source. But what about the poor elves? They will be reluctant to go underground in search of Amber, so instead we decided to bring the Amber to them. So we decided Amber will also grow on trees. How will that work you ask? Well, the art will be inspired by the Magic: The Gathering card Grove of the Burnwillows:

This will hopefully turn out to be just as spectacular a sight in the game, and should help "spice up" the look of the game a bit.

Also, after a bit of an argument with Shaun, i finally gave in, i will be adding a Sand block to the game. Here's pretty much how the argument went:

Shaun: add a sand block
Me: Why?
Shaun: It's a desert planet right?
Me: Yeah?
Shaun: So add sand.
Me: A desert doesn't have to have sand.
Shaun: Yeah, it kinda does.
Me: [points @ screen] That looks like a desert doesn't it?
Shaun: No, that looks orange.
Me: .....................fair enough.

So yeah, Sand is confirmed. +1 to Shaun.

Meanwhile, I've also been doing some "surveillance" and "espionage" over the last week, checking out our competition. And to be honest, there is some absolutely spectacular looking games around at the moment! My 2 favourite new games right now are Steam Marines and A Nation of Wind, excellent work by those guys!

Also, my thoughts have once again drifted towards the impending apocalypse. I find this to be both an interesting issue, and a controversial one. I at least, believe it is a very possible outcome, and despite what others may think, is a perfectly valid event to take into account when making decisions. But also, I'm not planning stuff around it, it's more just an interesting thought to keep in the back of my mind. So what do you guys think? I may post a poll or something, to see what other peoples opinions are on the subject.

- Watchin' You

Leon (Foxtrot070) has joined us here, and has been added to the Flashfire Crew.

Also, I went ahead and designed a logo for Flashfire Games, which you can find over on the Flashfire page, and have a closer look at under the images section.

To make it, i got a free-use commercial font pack named Silkscreen, which i found on www.fontsquirrel.com,, by Jason Kottke - so thanks Jason!

You can find the link here, share around his great work!
Link: Fontsquirrel.com

Now due to the fact that this is a cute wee pixel art font, this fits Rathguarde quite well, so we'll be using this in the game as our main font.

Anyway, I posted up the first alpha of Rathguarde about an hour ago (still awaiting authorization), but i have already begun work on the next patch, beginning with the main part: The Inventory System

This is very important, as it is one of the main aspects of the game, however that' not quite as interesting as the "hotbar" being made. This is an interesting little piece of GUI (Graphical user interface) as instead of the usual bar of objects along the bottom or top of the screen, it will be not dis-similar to a palette type interface, in the bottom left corner. By palette I mean a disc sort of thing, with the various items put on it orbiting the disc, with the current selection in the middle of the disc.

If you still don't follow, I'll hopefully post up some spoilers tomorrow, so you can check it out!