Blogs - grimmquest

Well, the final version has finally been released!
The next release should be a full commercial title and I hope to change lots of things before releasing that. It feels like it's all just starting now and I have some fresh inspiration for where I want to go with the title. I am really interested in adding a second gamestyle to the game, where the current style could be labelled 'Arcade', the other style would be a half/fledged RPG kind of thing. I have some ideas leaning to working with experience points based on combat style and I really, really, really, really want to adjust the weaponry so that it learns and adapts to the player's style. I think this is something new that has never been done in a game and can add a real fresh feeling to the game, as well as replay value.

What I'm thinking about is this, if the player is a button smasher (e.g. likes to repeatedly smash the attack button) then the Scythe will go into the 'quick attack' speciality where you can excel in button smashing. But if players use more controlled moves than new combos can be achieved that require greater and greater control, giving more and more experience points. The idea is just 'on the surface' now but I'm letting it roll in my head the following weeks to see where I can take it.

Behind the Scenes?
I've been thinking about doing a behind the scenes sort of thing for Grimm, going into some of the development, my working style etc... I'd be interested to know if there is interest in such a thing. I could start with either a blog type thing right here, or perhaps a real youtube 'Making Of' video. What do you guys and gals think?

Music
While working on Grimm I always try to get inspired by playing the right music. Besides the tracks that Justin made for Grimm which I listen to each time I work on Grimm there was one album that's helped me in particular to focus while working. It's an album called 'Hello' from a band called StereoTopics. If you like good music to work to, with few lyrics and lots of relaxed instrumentals I definitely advice you to check it out here: Itunes.apple.com

With that I will leave you with a promise of posting a bit more blogs from here on in, and in turn hope that you will like to read them. If there are any particular aspects of Grimm that you would like me to dig into, for example 'Could you elaborate on the new clutter system that you created for Grimm' then let me know and I will make sure to post a blog about it.

With that I leave you until next time!
Bastian

Best to hop over directly to the latest news!

Cliiicck > Moddb.com

Old news:
Last things! Added some batch files for easy configuration of the graphics options.
Been tweaking things here and there and am about to decide to keep the DarkWarrior enemies out of this release as I am simply unhappy with just about everything about them except for the model. Luckily there's only about 6 of those guys in the entire release so it's an easy last minute fix.

I'm taking a bit of a gamble in terms of the freshly added blood and gore.
I'm not sure how performance on lower end systems might end up so I have a quick patch ready to release if anything goes sour on that end that tones down the blood effects at the expense of visual quality. I'm not counting on any complaints in that regards but it's nice to be prepared and have a quick fix ready.

I also just edited the tutorials a bit and am in the first steps of re-creating them in the form of small video-tutorials and example walkthrough videos explaining some of the more advanced fighting and platforming techniques that you can use in Grimm.

Other than that I'm about to invest a nightly 6 hour session running through the game in all three difficulty modes as a final test so I have a small to-do list in the morning. Then it's time to package things up, finish writing up the readme file and twiddle thumbs while waiting for the release to go live.

So I'm off!

Grimm has gone gold: Moddb.com

Happy cause I fixed all the bugs, added the Challenge arena (of which a lot more will follow very soon as they are actually very little work to create).

I've packaged everything up and am ready for release day tomorrow.

Not much stuff worked on today.

Been fixing up some of the latter parts of Ramata, I feel details are missing on the walls but I'm not sure what to do to make it more interesting. I'm leaning toward extra detail layers, but meh... som extra static meshes might make it more lively as well.

I've laid out the groundwork for a new weapon, called a 'gunblade' which is basically a big sword with a gun attachment. This weapon will run on the same principle as most of the other weapons: Damage is dealt according to the timing by the player. The better the timing, the more damage is done.

More tomorrow!

Been working on implementing a new system today where 'stuff' gets to set 'stuff' on fire. The biggest ordeal I have is my principle of no SDK/source work, for the moment. And I should really start importing my base into a clean structure before I have too many Doom3 assets used in the mod.

The system is very simple, but pretty neat. I merely set a global if something is using a 'burning' attack. If so, it burns that something. Most of the 'somethings' in my maps that can burn are breakables, like barrels or wooden structures. I've been struggling with not breaking the continuity of the game by giving wood that burns a different look than other wood, but it starts feeling console-ish so I dished that.

The result of today's work can be found at the videos section.