Blogs - RenderedWorld

Its been over two months since the perilous journey into the development of Dungeons of Daggerhelm.

We've come a long way from that point. In about a week, I myself had just achieved a scrolling array of randomly generated tiles of various colors that looked absolutely nothing like the game we have now. Through patience and restless nights of wrestling with code, we created the prototype you see today, and I'm proud of it.

The prototype is buggy as hell, we know this. And yet we strived to achieve playability for the game; and we did. Before, enemies were obliterating the player with ease, and although the difficulty and frustration was/is akin to Dark Souls, we wanted players to get through what we've made. We substantiated a fire rate and decreased the damage the player takes from the arrows. The game is still difficult to stay alive for long, which increases the challenge, but it is still playable and even I had a fun time playing it for the first time.

Where are we going from here?

With the release of the open-testing prototype stage, we hope that the feedback we get from people will give us more direction; however, here's what we are planning on doing to work toward alpha stages of the game:

- A crowd-funding campaign
- Switchable classes
- Class mechanics and abilities
- More areas to explore
- Complete randomization of levels
- Interactable NPCs
- Inventory
- Items
- Game saves
- Possibly a rough version of multiplayer

That's basically where we're headed. Hopefully with more feedback, this list will grow.

Jacob Giambalvo, lead designer

The good kind, don't worry.

Rendered World Games is still just a name; we don't have a studio, or a location, or a business of operations. It is simply just a couple guys talking back and forth on Skype, laughing all the while, while sorting through Git pushes and misplaced code that somehow errs the moment we get something right.

A lot has changed since I last updated here. We've made incredible strides with the game: NPCs, particles, map updates, enemies, damage, blood splatter (yes, you heard me correctly), text boxes, and dozens of concepts out the wazoo.

We're still here and updating regularly, so don't hesitate to check out Dungeons of Daggerhelm, a rapidly-developing dynamic world fit for discovery and adventure with friends. This is just as a reminder that we're still here, churning out updates and news like we've never done before.

We are currently working out a massive bug that just surfaced yesterday when attempting to code universal animations that can be used for multiple mobs. We ended up totally redesigning our code logic for animation because our previous version was clunky. Nothing looks any different, but the way we're coding now makes it so that monsters and beasts in the future will be able to use the same animation logic as our character.

Hello friends!

I have been busy with this game lately, primarily with graphics and optimization. Currently I am working on rendering character sprites more efficiently than the game is right now. I am writing a universal code for mob sprite rendering so I won't have to write direction code for every mob I create.

The IndieDB popularity chart has graced Dungeons of Daggerhelm with 614 popularity out of 15,000! That is a good achievement given that this game has only just been put on IndieDB three days ago.

Please follow our game development and share this milestone with us!

Dear IndieDB community,

I have improved the quality of our game today by adding a unique dynamic to the way our arrows and magical projectiles crash into objects: particles. I have written about this before, but now we're on the right track. The game's particles are now spawning properly and I am in 100% control over them (I think).

Speaking of the game, I decided to create a name for it. It drifted from names such as Realm Ripper, Pixel Adventures, and that includes the original name "That Dungeon Crawler!" However, these names did not stick. I have settled on a name that harkens back to one of my writing projects from a long time ago: Dungeons of Daggerhelm. Daggerhelm is the world in which our game is set: it is filled with magic, heroism, evil, and death.

Let us know what you think of the game name. If you don't like it, please let us know why and we will do our best to match your expectations.

Jacob Giambalvo, Founder

Dear IndieDB community,

This is Jacob Giambalvo, founder of Rendered World Games.

Whew! Now that the formal introductions are over, lets get started with this new blog post.

Coding is hard, especially when there are major bugs. For example, my little character sprite recently began clipping the x axis and now my collision code is all out of whack. For the life of me, I can't figure out why my little guy is getting stuck on the walls. (EDIT: This has been dealt with and fixed on 3/6/14)

It all started when I began coding projectiles. The character in the images you currently see is the current character model for my Ranger class (will most-likely be changed to a 16x16 sprite instead of a 32x32). Ever since I got my code to shoot a little pixelated arrow in the direction I wanted, my character got stuck. And wouldn't get loose! Fortunately, I believe I have found the issue and I am working diligently to solve the problem. (EDIT: This has been dealt with and fixed on 3/6/14)

Another bug I'm running into is particle systems, or with the particle generator. I want a small explosion of particles to emanate from the origin of impact when my Ranger's arrow hits a wall, to give it a little more flare. However, this does not occur. Obviously there is a problem with my code, and I am working very hard trying to find the source of this issue. (EDIT: This has been dealt with and fixed on 3/6/14)

Comment on your coding experience. What troubles have you encountered?

Hello IndieDB!

As you may have known from Rendered World's profile, we are a young organization (hardly even yet a company). We are excited to start this grand adventure of finally making our first game. Hopefully, as you are reading this, you will understand our position as young indie game developers trying to carve out our own niche in this world.

That being said, making this first small game has been a daunting task. We have already run into bugs and errors that exist when creating your own custom engine in Java. We're slowly piecing this little gem together so that, hopefully, in the future, gamers of any age will be able to enjoy what we believe makes a good game a good game.

I, founder of Rendered World Games, strongly believe in customer service and fan interaction. We don't have any fans as of right now (literally, 0), but hopefully that will change. With more fans comes more exposure, and exposure is what we're looking for. But I am urged, primarily by my conscience, to let you all know that under no circumstances will I purposefully ignore anyone, with any problem.

With that out of the way, I would like to bring something else to the table. When I mention Rendered World as a "we" collective, I really am only referring to myself, our code-breaker and my music designer. That's it; that's what our "studio" currently looks like: two fully grown men, one a music designer, another a Java code troubleshooter, the other (me) a Java coder, sprite artist, map designer, and game play designer. As you can see, we are a (very) small organization. But trust me when I say that our products are 100% for the enjoyment of the consumer, and never for the money.

Thank you for reading this and putting time into Rendered World Games.

Jacob Giambalvo, Founder