New version

The third official build (Version 0.3) is out. It's still only a preview version, since the main game content is not included yet (still only 4 regions to explore).

The new version supports saving the game.

I now start working on NPC's and quests among other things.

Preview version out!

Hello!

I am proud to announce the release of a first preview version of Valgards Fate for the Zune.

You find all information you need here:

Valgards Fate

Preview version almost done

I made great progress and the preview version could be available by this weekend!

The version will include most elements of gameplay and consists of 3 regions (areas).

The final version will be much, much bigger, but for a preview version I decided to release a very limited area to let the community take a look at overall gameplay.

Dirk

Long time no updates...

I am back from rehab for a while now and I did not post anything here because I did not feel like programming for a while.

But I am back on Valgards Fate since some weeks now and I must admit that there are big problems with the new Zune firmware 3.0 and XNA Game Studio 3.0 Beta update.

All my games just needed 2 line in the project files to be changed to run again. But not Valgards Fate. Somehow the new GS version restricted memory acces a bit more which is why Valgards Fate did not run on the Zune immediately.

I've been trying for some time to get around the problem and I think I am successful now. I needed to redo some parts and add some more parts to my level editor (which is now a tile editor, too) to get around the memory limitations.

Well, this was a lot of work without any visual effect to the game. After I found a solution for the problem I started to redo the user interface which looks like this now:



Hope you like it.

I am currently working on the promised Demo version again.

3 weeks away and new screens

Hi anybody,

before I leave the house, I wanted to post the latest screenshots here.
Below you can see some outdoor scenerys and also some screens from dungeon levels.
I put a lot of time in imroving graphics and all donations I currently got were used to buy additional assets for the games.

I decided to list the names of the donators in the credits screen to honor the people who support me.

I am in rehab now for three weeks and I don't think I have internet there, so this might be the last post for at least three weeks.

I am planning to work on the game in the evenings there and hopefully there will be a demo-version of Valgards Fate when I am back.

Have fun!
Dirk

Outdoor levels

One of the things in my concept was, that the game does not start in the labyrinth, but outdoors in the forest. The player has to search the entrance of the labyrinth as one of the first tasks to master. So I needed to make it possible to use different tilesets and after a bit of work I finally got it to work. The game (and the editor) now supports different tilesets, which allows different visual appearances of the levels. I will upload a video of the current progress soon. Stay tuned!

Dialogs, Dialogs, Dialogs

Ok, I got some things working, as there is:

- player has attributes now
- strength (strength add extra damage to your attacks)
- stamina (stamina raises maximum hitpoints)
- agility (agility raises the chance to parry attacks and avoid traps)
- intelligence (casting spells or using runes needs a certain level of intelligence, the more power the spells have, the more intelligence is needed to cast them)

- new loading screen
- dialogs, like character creation, looting monsters
- menu system with minimap
- 3 different monsters (rats, skeletons, goblins)
- particles, still particles, animated particles, textparticles
- explosive traps (other traps will follow)

Here is the video:

Proceeding soon

Long time no updates... I was very very busy with other projects (the ones that feed my family) the last weeks. But it seems that its getting a bit more stressless now... So hopefully I will continue with Valgards fate in the end of this week. I plan to add level transitions, more monsters, character stats and different weapons within the next days/weeks.

No more fog

Today I decided to rip the fog of war off the game. There were too many people complaining about it, so that it made no sense to me to let it in the game.

This decision will put away some of the "roguelike" idea behind the game, but I found that the very restricted view due to the screensize is enough constraint.

Instead of the fog I now added a bit of darken out to the edges of the screen, which gives a bit of an impression that there's a lightsource at the players position (like wearing a torch).

A very positive thing is that the fog of war slowed the game down a bit, which runs a bit smoother now.

The video

Here is the video that shows the monsters in action. The final game will have a good variety of monsters like rats, skeletons, goblins, gazers and some other.

I am currently working on the stair-functionality. The stairs are the connection between the levels. I think they will work correct tomorrow. I plan to hold all levels in the Zune memory, so that no loading times will disturb gameplay.

Monster

The monsters started populating the dungeon. I got the skeletons working. They wander around and if the player is nearby they attack.

I finished pathfinding (A*) but it caused terrible lags on the Zune. I guess its all too much for the little processor. So right now they seem to be a bit of dumb until I find a new way to make them a bit smarter. But anyway, I don't really think that they need to be smart. They are skeletons without brains, right?

Donate button

I decided to put up a donate button on this Blog.

Not to get rich, but because I already bought assets for Valgards fate and I am sure that the costs will grow with projects growth.

So if anybody really wants this game to be finished as fast as possible, don't hesitate to donate a few bucks. I will spend any incoming money only for Valgards fate game assets (3D models mostly).

Any help is highly appreciated.

Greetings

Working on editor & content

Currently I am working on the editor and game content (namely graphics).

The editor is already coming along nicely. Doing graphics is a very long process, but I already have some nice tiles and assets for the game.

Here is a screenshot of what I am able to do at the moment:

Todays progress

Ingame log is working properly now. There are always the last 4 lines of the log visible. The log will contain all important game events and combat logs.

The player gets experience for discovering the dungeon. For every revealed "fog of war"-tile he earns 1 experience point. I did this to motivate the player to explore all dungeon levels completely and not just descending levels.

I managed to add the ingame menuscreen today.

In addition to that you can already select the main items and show up the minimap which I finished today, too.

It looks quite good so far.

Zune community recognized me

Only a few hours after posting my first ingame video on Youtube, I got an invitation to join the zuneboard.com-community. After registering at the forums I immediatly recognized people writing about Valgards fate. I was very surprised and joined the conversation.

I got a lot of very positiv feedback which motivates me very much of course :)

Here is the video I posted last night:

Projectstart

Hello!

My new project is targetting the Microsoft Zune platform.
Basically the Zune is "just" a mobile MP3/Video player like the iPod, but Microsoft enabled Zune support in their latest XNA 3.0 CTP release.

Now that it's possible to develop games on that device, I wanted to do my own little role playing game on the Zune.

Stay tuned... Updates will follow soon!

Greetings,
Dirk