Blogs - SquareNite

Hello everyone and welcome to our 7th Darfall update. It's me Lukas and we are going to look at what we have been up to since our last devlog and what are our future plans.

We also hope you enjoyed the last World Map Update, where we showed you some details about our continent of Aganor and how the survival mode plays on this map.

What We Have Been Up To?
Over the past few weeks, we've dedicated most of our efforts to preparing the demo for release by addressing bugs and enhancing the player experience with quality-of-life improvements. So if you haven't downloaded Darfall demo yet, don't hesitate and play it now yourself.

In addition to development work, we've also been actively engaging in marketing efforts by participating in events like Steam Next Fest and Builder Fest. While these activities can be time-consuming, we recognize their importance in building awareness and excitement for the game.

We're thrilled to have recently launched the public Steam Demo, which allows players to experience Darfall for themselves for up to six days (or even up to eight days for more experienced players). We hope that this demo will give players a taste of the exciting city-building and strategy gameplay that Darfall has to offer.

If you would like to support us, add us to your WISHLIST on Steam and get to play the game before Early Access with additional features you can play beforehand, like these:

(You can see the score of one of our Discord players, Pattat, quite impressive, right?)


You can compare your own score on our Discord as well!

We're happy with the positive feedback the demo has received from players. We're collecting and using valuable feedback via our in-game system to improve the game for our upcoming Early Access release later this year.

We've decided to keep the demo available to give players more time to try it out and provide additional feedback. We're excited to continue working on Darfall with the help of our community.

h the help of our community.

Backpacks - More, more and more items!
We've recently introduced a new feature to the game that allows players to craft backpacks at their Tailor building. These backpacks can be equipped on your hero, boosting their carrying capacity and reducing the need to return to base after a successful loot run.



With this new addition, players can now explore the game world more efficiently, collecting more resources and items without worrying about running out of inventory space.

We hope this feature will improve the overall gameplay experience and encourage players to venture further into the game's world.

Fishing
Fishing has been a highly requested feature, and we're excited to announce that it will be available in the next update. With the Fishing Hut building, players can catch fish for an alternate source of food, particularly useful on maps with reduced farm production.



Simply locate fishing schools in bodies of water, and employ a worker as a fisherman by building a Fishing Hut nearby. We can't wait to see how this new feature enhances gameplay.

Biomes - Desert and Swamp
The work is slowly starting on our 2 new biomes, Desert and Swamps, which will provide a refreshing change from the grassland biome. Our goal is to make each biome feel unique, with different strategies required to gather food, resources and fend off enemies.

For example, on desert maps, food will be scarce, so players will need to collect special fruits or catch fish in rare oases to feed their units. However, stone and iron will be abundant, making it easier to mine, build, and craft.



We're excited to see how players will adapt to these new challenges and are looking forward to sharing more details about these biomes in the future.

More Technical Details
For developers and Unity3D enthusiasts, I'd like to share some technical details about our project. We've been working hard to rewrite and improve many background systems to increase performance and make the architecture more robust for the future.

Terrain Generation
One of the changes we've made is to our terrain generation system, where we're generating chunks and meshes for the game. Part of the code is run through Unity's new job system, which has helped to improve performance. However, we've been revisiting this code as we believe that stuttering may have been caused by this system, particularly when corrupted tiles change into grass and the terrain needs to regenerate.



Overall, we're committed to delivering a high-quality gaming experience, and we'll continue to optimize our systems and code to ensure that players can enjoy the game without any issues.

User Interface Refactor
In addition to the technical updates, we've also made some improvements to the user interface. Previously, all of our UI was in a single scene, which was difficult to navigate due to the large number of objects. It was also a mess, which made it challenging to manage.

(As you can see, all of the UI is in a single scene, bunched together)



To address this issue, I have refactored our UI and separated all of the UI parts into separate "widget" prefabs, such as the inventory, minimap, build section or top bar. This has significantly reduced the complexity of adding or changing UI elements, and has made the scene much faster to load.

(example of ability book widget)



Project Structure
We've also made some changes to the naming convention of the asset files we're using in the game. To improve organization and ease of use, we followed the guidelines outlined in the Unity Style Guide found here.



By using this guide, we were able to create clear asset prefixes and group similar assets together. For example, we now use "SM_" for static mesh and "T_" for texture. As a result, our assets are now much easier to find and access.

For instance, we've grouped all of the assets related to the Knight unit, such as its mesh, icon, blueprint, and prefab, into a single folder, making it more convenient for our team to locate them.



These changes may seem small, but they have greatly improved our development process, and we believe they will enhance the overall quality of the game.

Prologue
We also have a Prologue Steam Page up you can check out!



Add to your WISHLIST on Steam, as a prologue version will be released before Early Access with additional features you can play beforehand.

See you in the next blog post!
Martin and Lukas from beyond the darkness of Darfall.

See you in the next dev blog post!

Check out our Discord -Instagram - Twitter - YouTube - Steam - Official Website.

Hello everyone and welcome to our 6th Darfall update.

It's me Lukas and today I’m going to show you the world map for the game.

We hope you enjoyed the last Legendary Items Update, where we explained how the various legendary powers can be obtained within the Darfall.

We're excited to share with you a more detailed look at the development of the survival world map for our game, which takes place on a part of the continent known as Aganor. The survival map is an integral part of our game, allowing players to test their skills and endurance as they fight against waves of enemy attacks.

To begin, we prototyped various ideas for how a survival mode in our game might look. Our first idea was to have a series of tiles, each representing a different biome and level of difficulty, that would unlock as players survived through previous tiles.



But we wanted to incorporate more lore and world-building into Darfall, so we decided to go with a full continent map where players would have to fight their way through increasingly difficult parts of the map.

Initially, we thought about creating a 2D map in the style of classical maps you might find in other games.



However, we quickly realized that a 2D map wouldn't allow us to include the kind of effects, animations, and depth we wanted to achieve. So, we decided to go with a full 3D map instead.

(Me drawing a rough shape and outline of the map and its locations)


Using Magica Voxel, a 3D modeling software, and Adobe Fresco, we drew a rough outline of the landmass and its various biomes, including forests, mountains, and deserts. We also gave each location and place a unique name to help immerse players in the game world.



Martin then created the first version of the world using these designs. After several iterations, we brought the map into the editor and added locations, models, and particles like clouds to add to the overall atmosphere.



This is how the map looks currently before the demo release. It's still a work in progress, but it's shaping up nicely. As you can see, the survival map only covers a part of the continent. The rest of the continent, including the capital, will be part of the campaign mode.



In the game, players start in Grimwick, located on the northwest point of the map. This is the first map players are tasked with attacking, rebuilding, and purging of undead corruption. As players progress through the map and complete each area, new biomes and locations will unlock, each with their own level of difficulty. Each biome - grassland, desert, and swamp - has three maps, representing three levels of difficulty (normal, hard, and very hard).

Creating the survival map was a challenging but rewarding process. We hope that players enjoy exploring the various biomes and locations on the map and testing their skills against the undead.

Thanks for reading, and we can't wait to see you in the game!
If you have any thoughts to share, please don't hesitate to share them in our Discord.

See you in the next blog post!
Martin and Lukas from beyond the darkness of Darfall.

See you in the next dev blog post!

Check out our Discord -Instagram - Twitter - YouTube - Steam - Official Website.

Hello everyone and welcome to our 5th Darfall update about Legendary items.

We hope you enjoyed the last AI Update, where we explained the workings behind our unit "brains".

Since our last update, we have been hard at work on fixing bugs and adding quality of life improvements, as well as some new features.

One of those features are legendary item powers. Legendary items drop very, very rarely and thus have a huge glow you just cannot miss. This was heavily inspired by Diablo, those of you who played know this :)

You can see the huge orange legendary glow compared to other item types: epic (purple), rare (green) and common (white).



Finding a legendary item boosts your hero power significantly and can decide whether you survive the next night or not.

Moon Robe
One of these legendary items is the Moon Robe of Defence. It’s used primarily by caster heroes (such as our Archmage) and also gives a huge boost to healing and ability damage.



As the description states, it has a chance to activate a protective barrier around your hero that absorbs all incoming damage for several seconds.



Phantom Mask
Next one is another legendary with an interesting power, a Phantom Mask, which has a chance to fear an enemy, making him unable to move or attack.



As you can see, the enemy skeleton archer has a fear icon over its head, as it was feared by the hero's Phantom Mask



Other Legendaries
Here are some other examples of legendary power items you may come across when defeating powerful enemies.









How to Get Them?
All of the legendary items have a very low chance to drop, but they only drop from the most powerful foes you can find roaming the map, such as Orc Warchief from the orc camps, or the Undead Warlord protecting its graveyard.

(Angry Orc Warchief)


(Undead Warlord)


It will not be easy to defeat these enemies, but once you do, the rewards can be great, giving you a huge help surviving more nights.

We hope you liked this dev blog and are eager to find these items on your own and use their powers to your full advantage.

If you have any thoughts to share, please don't hesitate to share them in our Discord.

See you in the next blog post!
Martin and Lukas from beyond the darkness of Darfall.

See you in the next dev blog post!

Check out our Discord -Instagram - Twitter - YouTube - Steam - Official Website.

Hello everyone and welcome back :)

It's me Lukas and today I will talk about how the AI (Artificial Intelligence) works in Darfall and what we use in the background to drive it.

At the very early stages of the development, the AI for our units was quite simple, like moving to a position, or attacking a target. I wrote this behavior in pure code with my own implementation, but it turned out to be super messy and unreadable quite fast. Even such a simple AI behaviors takes A LOT of code to write.

Later on I tried to research what other tool I could use for our AI. I came across Behavior Designer, the most popular AI asset on the Unity asset store. In the Behavior Designer, you put nodes on a visual graph and depending on how you place and connect your nodes, it will create AI logic you desire.

Simple Tree
Here is a very simple node example, showing how the AI waits for some time, then picks a random position and walks towards it.



You could probably deduct what these nodes do even if I did not explain the logic behind them. This is why having a visual tree such as Behavior Designer helps immensely during the AI development and navigating its different parts.

Woodcutter AI
The following tree shows a small example part of the woodcutter AI. The nodes are evaluated from left to right, where left nodes have the highest priority and always try to execute first.



1. Do we have any resource to carry?
- If yes, carry it to storage
- If not, continue to the next node segment 2.

2. Have we found any resource to gather?
- If yes, move towards it and gather it
- If not, continue to the next segment 3.

3. Wander around aimlessly until the worker faints out from exhaustion :D

Player Unit AI
Here is another example, a full tree that represents the AI behind the player warrior units:



You can see how complex this can get very quickly even with a such visual tool :)
Now you can imagine how hard would it be to write all this AI logic in pure code, without any visual tree representation.

The AI is usually the most challenging feat to handle during any game development. I had to rewrite the entire AI in Darfall for several times already, using different approaches or plugins, such as NodeCanvas.

I'm happy how it turned out and that Behavior Designer trees were a good choice, reducing future bugs, or making it much easier to implement new AI logic like possible boss fighting mechanics.

See you in the next dev blog post!

Martin and Lukas from SquareNite and from beyond the darkness of Darfall.

Check out our Discord -Instagram - Twitter - YouTube - Steam - Official Website.

Hello everyone, our Steam DEMO is now LIVE and available for all to play!



You can play the Demo up to day 6, but the top 1% of skilled players may be able to reach day 7, after which a demon invasion will wipe out your city and end the demo.

• Join our Discord to compare your highest scores.
• Share this Demo with your friends and boast about your high scores.
• Explore the map to find secret "streamer trees" placed randomly throughout the map, and share your findings in Discord channel (trees are quite hard to find)
• Report any issues you encounter and share your suggestions throughout our in-game feedback panel.

Make sure to join our Discord channel, as we may be holding a Steam Key Giveaway contest once a week.


This Demo features

• The first playable map, "Grimwick", set in a grassland biome
• The option to play as the hero character, Archmage
• Survival mode, playable up to day 6, where players can compare their scores with others

Demo difficultyIn terms of difficulty, the Demo wave structure is as follows:

• Waves 1-3 are of normal difficulty
• Wave 4 is of hard difficulty
• Wave 5 is of very hard difficulty
• Wave 6 is of ultra hard difficulty, only 1% if players can get past this
• Wave 7 is impossible to survive, ending the demo

The Full Early Access version will not include ultra-hard difficulties, allowing players to fully experience Grimwick and other levels with all game features included.

We are excited for all of you to get a taste of Darfall and enjoy this "quick" preview. See you in the game!



Martin and Lukas from SquareNite and from beyond the darkness of Darfall.


Check out our Discord -Instagram - Twitter - YouTube - Steam - Official Website.

Hello all!

We are two indie developers, Lukas (me) and Martin, working on a Darfall game, where you build, defend, loot, explore and survive waves of undead invasions during the night.

This is the first dev blog, we hope one of many, where we introduce the game and ourselves to you.

I started this project several years back as a solo programmer. The original game was a player controlling this viking village, balancing its economy, all made using just 2D graphics.

The project later transformed into a 3D game, where you fought over a control of various islands inhabited by enemy factions :D

Later on, I removed the islands and just made one giant map where you built a city and defended against invasions. This was more or less the idea of the game we currently have. We then introduced some unique mechanics, like leveling and equipping a hero, crafting of items in your city, or a day & night cycle.



A year ago, my artist friend Martin joined me in this endeavor. Martin did a great work on marketing, steam page, game trailer and the UI art. We also do a game design together, so you can imagine how two different mindsets have to work together and try to connect ideas into a single one (while still trying to stay friends :D)

You can watch the announcement trailer Martin made here:

The project is done in a Unity engine, as this is the engine I've been working with for almost 10 years, both in hobby projects and professionally.



Above you can see the entire map generated from the Unity editor view.

And this is where all the work is done from my side on the project


And this is Martin's desk, you can see the creative notepad he uses for his sketches and ideas :D


We hope you liked this brief introduction about us and the project :) Next dev blog post will be about the Main Menu rework we focused in the past week.

See you in the next blog post!

Martin and Lukas from SquareNite.


Check out our Instagram - Twitter - YouTube - Steam - Official Website.