Eternaliths: Reclamation of Almyrigo - Saddle up!

Time for another status update...well, actually, a double status update. Because it's a status update that's also an update about status effects!

Aside from polishing up a bit of the shop system, most of the past week or so has been dedicated to working on systems related to status effects and consumable items. Now that some of the basics of them are implemented, I won't need to fill up every single dungeon in the game with a bunch of conveniently-placed healing stations. Not only that, but it'll give the player something to actually spend all of the money they'll obtain on besides the occasional weapon or armor piece.
 
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Now that most...or, well, at least SOME of the game world's underlying systems are complete, I'm finally free to start working on things that could be accurately described as content. Among the many kinds of landmarks that you'll find dotted around the world are "microdungeons" of sorts, such as this tower that you'll pass on your way from the previously-showcased inn to the game's first town:
(shown at a very small scale and with interactive objects invisible)
buz's tower.png
In the top of this tower is a unique Wormfen Chopper named Buz. He's much stronger than the normal enemy that he's based on, and he also possesses a special unblockable heavy attack and even a dodge roll of his own. On top of all of that, he has an ability which allows him to quickly follow up on a successful attack with another swing. Beating him with starting gear is reasonably challenging but very possible, and although you don't actually need to fight him to advance the East Elmerra storyline, he drops a pretty useful early-game Legendary item.
 
Love the style of this so far. But my only issue is that the characters just seem to blend/disappear into the background too easily when I'm looking at the screenshots. Whether it's just the colour palette being used, but I just struggle to make out the details of the characters against the detailed backgrounds.

Overall though, looks like it is going to be one to keep an eye on for me.
 
Love the style of this so far. But my only issue is that the characters just seem to blend/disappear into the background too easily when I'm looking at the screenshots. Whether it's just the colour palette being used, but I just struggle to make out the details of the characters against the detailed backgrounds.
Hmm, not sure what to say about that. It's not a problem that I've really noticed myself during playtesting, and nobody else has complained about it. Maybe it's some kind of really specific colorblindness sort of thing? I might consider working in some sort of adjustable shader effects that'd help create more contrast between the foreground and background, if it turns out to be too much of a problem.
 

JacobV

Member
Actually I do have to agree with BaBiA. The contrast on the characters could really use some improvement. While they are well-designed and drawn, they're practically impossible to make out against the backdrops. The screenshot of that inn you posted above is a great example; you can barely tell where a character starts and ends against the wall. I'd suggest you look up some video tutorials on creating contrast, it'll massively improve the readability of your game. Maybe consider using fewer colors, or making your backgrounds darker or lighter.
 

JacobV

Member
It's a bit better. If I were you I'd just continue tweaking and messing with it. Constrast is, for me at least, one of the absolute hardest parts of pixelart.
 
Enough progress has been made that another screenshot dump seems warranted. This time, it's a look at the game's first real town area, Helmmar. In order to help make populating town areas a bit easier, I implemented a system for putting together basic humanoid NPCs from parts; similar to the player animation system, but far simpler and with fewer actions. There isn't a whole lot to it, and a lot of NPCs will obviously still need to be put together and animated manually, but for "flavor" characters who just walk around, spout random bits of dialogue when interracted with, and generally exist to make towns feel lived in, it suffices.
 
Most of the progress that I've made over the past week or so has simply been implementing a new set of weapons that's a bit more balanced than the ones in the Dungeon Demo, along with two new clothing/armor sets and some other miscellaneous gear. Nothing terribly exciting, save for the fact that it's another step towards preparing for things that ARE a bit more exciting.


In other news, the way that the encumbrance and strength stats work has been retooled to make more sense. Encumberance now increases the stamina cost of dodging and decreases move speed and stamina regen by a noticeable chunk for every point. Strength, rather than being a complicated system of multipliers that effects those penalties, instead simply increases the amount of equipment weight that you can pile on your character before encumbrance points actually start accumulating. So instead of a strength of 40 reducing the effects of an encumbrance of 20 to 8 because it's actually multiplying an additional stamina penalty which would cause you to expend 2x stamina if you had a strength stat of 0 by 0.4, a strength of 15 would now simply reduce an encumbrance of 20 to 5, and the encumbrance itself would display as 5 on the GUI instead of the reduction being invisible.
 

"Though Entenfel - 'Autumn's Footfall' in the old Elmerran language - may look like any other part of East Elmerra for much of the year, the cold season always sets in on these sylvan northern meadows first. Months before the frigid winds from the Norlands push through the warm coastal air to the south, a chill settles in Entenfel and transforms it into a beautiful but foreboding warning of what is to come."

So yeah, I got bored and started working on some tiles, decorations, and lighting overlays for a sub-region of East Elmerra. Originally, the entire region was more or less just going to be open prairie in the northern half and dense forest in the southern half, but hey, variety is the spice of life, right? I won't be going too overboard, but expect there to be around four little subregions like this in the north and two or maybe three in the south. Each will, of course, come with slight differences in level design style, difficulty, and the types of things you'll encounter on the road.
 
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I've begun work on the game's first "real" dungeon, Balding Mound Barrows. Located atop Balding Mound, a hill that's lost most of its grass and foliage over the years, this ancient burial complex dates back to well before the seventh era's beginning. It was still used up until about a decade ago, but is now another of the Wormfen Clan's many strongholds.

Also shown off here is a third resource in addition to health and stamina: satiety. No, no, don't worry, this isn't turning into a wilderness survival game; satiety doesn't drain on its own, and you won't die if it reaches 0. Instead, it acts as a sort of secondary health reserve that you can draw from to heal yourself by resting outside of combat. In addition, you can now rest anywhere, no cooking pot or firepit needed, by simply pressing the C key. The only requirement is that there are no monsters nearby; you can even rest when your health is full or your satiety is empty, simply to make the in-game clock advance faster.
 
I recently implemented the game's save/load feature. As integral as that is, though, it's also not very exciting, and it doesn't provide me with any pretty pictures to show off. So, instead, let's talk about the next system on the chopping block: Skills.

Pictured here: Icons for 4 early-game blade skills: Blade Whirl, Grievous Wound, Charging Stab, Plunging Stab.

A big thing that I'm going for with TbD:RoA is a progression system that's based less on raising your numbers to fight enemies with bigger numbers and more on giving you more resources and options to solve increasingly demanding combat scenarios. So, instead of buffing your stats, you'll be spending most of your experience points to unlock new skills. From new moves for each of the game's 5 main weapon categories, to useful passive effects, to unique racial abilities, all will give you new ways to survive the perilous roads and oppressive dungeons of Almyrigo.
 
The next item on the agenda is character creation. Perhaps more than anything else previously discussed, this is going to be one of the most important aspects of the game, as, with my limited time and resources, creating a very replayable game is a far more reasonable and realistic goal than creating a very long game. Without going into too much detail, there's going to be a lot more to it than what you saw in the Dungeon Demo. Stat reallocation, character backgrounds (classes, basically) that give you passive bonuses and exclusive active skills, and a Project Zomboid-style attribute system will all be there, on top of the stuff that's already present, to make every playthrough unique.

Also, since my policy is "don't post if you have nothing to show," here are some race portraits for the Human species. They're not perfect, but they're better than just showing the corresponding race's in-game male and female sprites awkwardly standing next to each other in their underwear.
 
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Well lookie here, this time I actually have something to show off in-game instead of just saying "oh hey, this is a thing I plan on getting around to." And not only that, but it's a video, too?! Ye gods!


As time goes on, I'm learning to temper my ambitions and expectations a bit. And, in sticking with the previously-mentioned ideas of replayability and game scale, I've decided that manually designing the many, many, MANY paths that will exist between all of the interconnected points of interest might be just...just a LITTLE bit impractical for one person to do. So, I threw together a bit of a randomized terrain generator.

This will actually solve a few other problems, such as getting rid of the need to set up some sort of mechanism for making forageable items respawn, as well as technically eliminating backtracking from the game since regardless of how many times you walk back and forth between two points of interest, you'll always be taking a slightly different way. And, if I ever absolutely NEED to manually design a certain path, the engine is still set up to handle that easily.

Now, of course, the problem will be working in interesting things that you can find while out and about, but I have a few ideas regarding that.
 
Well, it's been quite a while since I've actively asked for suggestions on anything, and it's also been quite a while since anybody other than me has posted on this topic (probably not a good omen,) so now's as good a time as any, I suppose. I'm starting to feel like "Trial by Darkbloods" isn't a very good name. It just sounds kind of...off, I guess. It's a bit weird and awkward to say. It doesn't have that ring to it. So, here are some other titles I've been thinking of. Tell me which you think sounds the best.

Tales from Terth
Ryorog
Shadows of Zymalgo
The Remnant Wars
Redblood Remnants
Eternaliths (to give a bit of context without spoiling too much, there are two mountains that play very, very important roles in the world's lore)
 
Well, since the curse of no replies has not been lifted by the game development gods, I've decided on a new working title myself. That doesn't really solve the problem of everyone apparently losing interest in the project suddenly and without warning, but I don't know what would, so...oh hey look, more pictures!

And that's the last of the racial portraits, at least for now.


Real talk, though, I realize that a lot of what I've been showing off over the past few months isn't exactly the kind of stuff that gets people salivating over a new game, regardless of how into slow-paced, methodical, stat-heavy ARPGs they are. Once character creation is more or less done, I'll try to get out a video of some sort showing off a bit of actual extended gameplay, maybe up to the end of the first dungeon.
 
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A look at another biome/zone/whatever you want to call it. The procedurally-generated overworld segments are finally starting to come together and look a bit like something in an actual game. There're monsters that spawn during the day and night, resources that you can harvest to sell in town, use to repair weapons, or craft into basic equipment like arrows and bandages, and even a few prefabricated setpieces like enemy camps and watchtowers.

 
The idea of a day/night system that effects gameplay has always been something interesting to me. I like the way this is going!
If that's the kind of thing that interests you, then I have a feeling you'll like this game. Even though it's ostensibly an adventure game, I'm also trying to selectively work in a few elements more commonly associated with survival games but which don't slow the game down too much or pin the player down in one location. After all, making it to your destination alive is pretty essential to any sort of adventure, and I feel like most open world adventure games are severely lacking when it comes to having game worlds that actually challenge the player outside of dungeons and optional combat scenarios.
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
If that's the kind of thing that interests you, then I have a feeling you'll like this game. Even though it's ostensibly an adventure game, I'm also trying to selectively work in a few elements more commonly associated with survival games but which don't slow the game down too much or pin the player down in one location. After all, making it to your destination alive is pretty essential to any sort of adventure, and I feel like most open world adventure games are severely lacking when it comes to having game worlds that actually challenge the player outside of dungeons and optional combat scenarios.
I really like changing enemy AI to be more stealthy and aggressive when Its night time and the player doesn't have a means to protect themselves from the darkness
 

Evanski

Raccoon Lord
Forum Staff
Moderator
I played your demo! I think the game is going along amazingly! It looks very nice, I love the sound effects and music! and Im not sure if its just me playing but I did notice this:
Playing as a Savlar
  • the Camera is stiff and Jitters when going down slopes
  • hard to interact with first NPC
  • The player ui face blocks the textbox
Other then that I really enjoyed it and cant wait until its finished keep up the good work!
 
I played your demo! I think the game is going along amazingly! It looks very nice, I love the sound effects and music! and Im not sure if its just me playing but I did notice this:
Playing as a Savlar
  • the Camera is stiff and Jitters when going down slopes
  • hard to interact with first NPC
  • The player ui face blocks the textbox
Other then that I really enjoyed it and cant wait until its finished keep up the good work!
The camera, as far as I can tell, is just kind of wonky due to the fact that the game uses 1x1 pixel assets, but upscales to 2x2 in-game. I even set it so that its position is rounded in order to prevent it from getting stuck "between" pixel positions. If I can think of a way to fix it, I'll try, but for now I'm not really sure what to do, since 1x1 pixels looks bad and resizing the assets and view size x2 would increase the file size unnecessarily as well as break...well, pretty much everything, really. It's also possible that the jitteriness is a result of the character and not the camera; I've noticed that characters with certain specific move speeds can jitter a bit when walking or sprinting, which is another thing that I'm going to try and fix.

As for the other two problems, they're already fixed. In the dungeon demo, I had it so that you interact with the NPC by standing within her hitbox and pressing "e," but in the current version of the game you just put the cursor near an NPC and press "e" to talk like you would in most games. The active ability system was also changed drastically since then, and currently it and most other UI elements will turn invisible when you're talking to an NPC.
 
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With a bit more finished in terms of the overworld and navigation system, I'm starting to get back to work on the character creator. The main things that I have to get done asset-wise are the portraits for the previously-touched-on Backgrounds. For all intents and purposes, they're the game's "classes;" although they don't restrict you to certain types of weapons and armor pieces, they're essentially bundles of passive bonuses and active abilities contextualized as what your character did before they set out on their adventure. There are going to be more than six, but these are the ones that I have done so far and six seems like a good number to show off.

As for the kinds of things that backgrounds will give your character, well, here are some examples. From top left to bottom right:

The Warrior - Definitely the background for you if you want to crank up the combat's pace a bit. Most of his passives and actives serve to maintain his stamina and tempo as he fearlessly battles his way through hordes of monsters without so much as stopping for a breath.

The Hunter - Basically the opposite of the warrior, but still an offense-oriented class. Aside from being more effective with ranged weapons and less effective at melee range, she boasts a wide array of abilities used for luring, immobilizing, or debuffing single targets. A Jafanak or Nagifranak with the Hunter background will also restore more satiety from eating fallen monsters.

The Explorer - Definitely the class for you if you want to crank up the pace of everything other than the combat. With a passive stamina and move speed bonus as well as the ability to reveal new points of interest on the travel screen over a 50% wider radius, the Explorer background makes getting around easy. Certain rare setpieces will also spawn more frequently within the randomly generated overworld segments, and his list of active abilities includes a grappling hook as well as some other fun toys.

The Guard - Although his damage output leaves a bit to be desired in comparison to the Warrior or the Hunter, the Guard is a master at defense. He makes shields more effective across the board, and his melee attacks have increased knockback and stun time. Most of his abilities are used for debuffing the aggression and attack power of his enemies.

The Doctor - An expert in the fields of medicine and biology, the doctor is able to craft numerous types of healing and buffing items from common resources, as well as bottle grenades that cause negative effects to enemies that they're thrown on. Her passive "Healthy Lifestyle" ability causes positive status effects on her to count down 25% slower and negative status effects to count down 25% faster.

The Lorekeeper - One of the more interesting and unique backgrounds, and one designed to reward the players who will write my game's wiki - I mean, who want to go out of their way discover as much as they can. Although she has a base penalty on most physical stats, she gains EXP 1.5x faster. Discovering a new monster rewards her with money and experience, and also boosts her damage output and critical hit rate against any monsters that share its family. Probably the most interesting part, though, is that Lorekeepers have a special affinity for equipment with a rarity of Epic or Legendary, increasing their effectiveness and often uncovering bonus attributes and abilities that other classes won't have access to.
 
It's been a while (which is probably one of my most used phrases on these forums by now,) so here's a look at some screenshots of the new character creation screen. As you can see, the whole system is presented a lot more professionally than in the Dungeon Demo, and perhaps more importantly, there's already a lot more that you can do with it. Namely, an attribute point system, and a whooooole bunch of new stats that you can tweak (or ignore) to customize your character's playstyle a bit beyond just choosing a race. Backgrounds and traits will be on the third page of the process, and there's still a lot of spriting left to do in order to make icons for all of the different racial bonuses on the second page, but what I have so far has come together nicely.
 
Another update on the character creation screen. Most of the large, time-consuming assets related to it are finished, and all that's left to do now is icons for class-specific perks and skills. Programming in said perks will still take some time, as will working the newer stats into the gameplay and the save/load process, and making each class's starting outfit, but when it comes to the creator interface itself, everything's more or less finished! Here're a few screenshots of some characters on the class screen, just to give you something to look at. (Please note that the flavor text is not final.)
 
Miss me? I've spent the last month or so working on stuff like systems and tables for randomized chest loot, augments that grant weapons special properties, class skills and perks, racial attributes, further reworks to the map system, further optimizations that make adding new content more efficient, and other things like that. With all of that mostly out of the way and with me not quite sure how I want to format the next major gameplay video, I've started working on the game world a bit more again. The biggest thing that I have to show off is a WIP overhaul of the game's starting town, Helmmar.

There's still a lot left to do, but I feel like this iteration has a bit more charm and atmosphere to it than the borderline "generic RPG town" look that the original was rocking. It's a bit more open and natural, a bit more crude but inviting, and a bit more vibrant but mellow. In other words, I actually took the culture I came up with for the Elmerran people into account rather than just designing an attractive row of tightly-packed buildings and calling it a day.
 
Speaking of giving facelifts to old features, here's a look at a significantly more refined UI that fits more information into fewer pixels.

More importantly, though, I've been working on the levelling system a bit over the past few weeks. The basics (XP bar, XP-awarding algorithms, HP and damage scaling for players and enemies) are all in place, but stat speccing hasn't been implemented yet, and skill trees will be an even heftier job. I might even end up cutting some classes that I can't think of a satisfying and balanced progression for.
 
Well, here's...the visuals for some skill trees, at least. I've decided that what I'm going to do is cut the number of classes down to four (Warrior, Guard, Hunter, and Scout,) but give each class at least two paths to invest in. You'll have more than enough points to fully unlock at least one tree by max level, but beyond that, you'll need to strategize and pick your perks wisely.

The three skill trees pictured here are for the Warrior class. The blue one, Discipline, is focused mainly on damage avoidance, increasing all-around proficiency with specific weapon types, and reducing skill cooldowns. Heroism, the yellow tree, is filled with options that help you take advantage of buffs, mitigate debuffs, and sustain your HP and stamina. The red path of Might features separate enhancements for both light and heavy attacks, and gives you skills which increase your overall DPS and let you apply debuffs and DOTs to monsters.
 
Considering my ongoing mantra about how I want experimentation and character builds to be one of the core components of my game, I decided to yet again rework how character and skill progression are going to play out.

Instead of having a class that you pick during character creation, you have four "dreams" that you can access by sleeping and spend Skill Points to unlock abilities from. The four are: the Fighter, the Ranger, the Defender, and the Shadow. They're not so much proper, self-contained RPG class archetypes as they are themed skillsets which you can mix and match abilities from in order to achieve your perfect character fantasy. Or discover a combination of skills that I didn't properly account for and completely break the game's balance. Or both.
 
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A lot of stuff that I've been showing off lately has just been about game mechanics and systems, so here's a peak at something a little bit different: the game's first mandatory/story dungeon, the Wizard's Tower.

At one point in time, this tower belonged to a diligent scholar with a skeptical mind and a desire to live and do his research far away from the noise and commotion of civilization. One night while out in the field, though, he discovered something that, along with his combined interests in science, history, and ancient civilizations, began leading him down a strange and unexpected path.
 
Pixel art of a few more new enemies. The one in the middle has most of its animations and AI complete, but the ones to the left and right are first-time test assemblies of a single idle frame.

 
Alright, THIS will be the last major gameplay mechanic I introduce before I start working on more actual content. Pinky promise this time.

Random augments on weapons have actually been a thing in the game for a fair amount of time now, but I decided to expand on the concept a bit. Using the smelting menu, accessible from most blacksmith NPCs, you can sacrifice an item to transfer one of its augments into another. Every weapon can hold up to three at a time, and if the same type of augment is put into multiple slots, its effects will stack if applicable.
 
Well, it's been a long time coming, but here's a look at some genuine, uncut (but rather short) footage of the basic gameplay loop in its natural habitat. I could have made it longer and shown our Jocat friend exploring the map a bit more, running through a few other biomes and looting a few more dungeons and forts, but those are the sorts of things that could be covered better in a more heavily-edited showcase video.
 
wow. amazing pixel art! I need to improve my skills >.<
I'm glad you like it, although compared to a lot of other games being developed on these forums, mine honestly has pretty middling-tier graphics. I mean, RichHopelessComposer uploaded a gif of a torch, and that kept the replies flowing into his thread for a week. I'm definitely not quite there yet ;)
 
Another gameplay video, and in less than 5 months?! No, your eyes aren't deceiving you, I actually managed to get something fairly major done fairly quickly!
I've recently been working to expand the game's aggro system so that NPCs can get into fights with each other, rather than just the player. Although the initial idea was more preemptive than anything (As in, get it done now before I have 50 different monsters to rework in case I decide I want to do it later,) but as a test, I created the game's first companion character, Honey the wylren.

Her AI is more or less just an expanded version of an enemy that already exists ingame, the Dire Wylren, but applied to a friendly character instead. Functionally, she's a general all-rounder who can deal DPS, draw aggro, and immobilize enemies. She also has both a passive heal rate and an ability to restore HP by eating small enemies after defeating them, making her fairly tanky when combined with her decent base HP of 100 and a 30% resistance to physical damage. All of that being said, her AI is still pretty rough, especially when it comes to calculating her pouncing arc in narrow corridors or on slopes, but it's a start.

Also featured in the second half of the video is a WIP dungeon with a very special property to it, but that's a topic for another day.
 
I've finally gotten around to making a Facebook page! If you want to help spread the word about this project, a hub to see other works related to the setting that aren't directly related to game development, or, heaven forbid, if you're for some reason interested in me as a person, please come in and have a look around. I won't lie; for as many things as I know how to do on my own, I'm absolutely helpless when it comes to marketing and garnering a following (in case the fact that almost every post in this thread is by me didn't make that obvious.) Every bit of help is greatly appreciated.

https://www.facebook.com/christian.piel.5245
 
A

afilionComposer

Guest
I'm sorry your goblin sound effects are too legendary! I can't :D
Nonetheless your game is coming along nicely :)
 
I'm sorry your goblin sound effects are too legendary! I can't :D
Nonetheless your game is coming along nicely :)
Since I have $175 total - not to spend on developing this game, that's literally much money I currently have total - 90% of the monster sound effects are just me yelling into my laptop's built-in mic and adding vibrato and pitch shift in Audacity. Improvise. Adapt. Survive.

Anyway, since it's been a while since I've announced anything major, now seems like a good time to say that I'm shifting my priorities with this game a bit again. While I originally planned on having the game span the entire continent that it takes place on, I've decided to scale back my ambitions a...little bit, and just focus on a few regions, but make them a bit bigger and a bit more content-dense than they originally would have been. Realistically, you won't really be missing out on much; lore-wise, the western half of Almyrigo is more developed, and it contains a good variety of biomes, most of which would be pretty similar to the ones in the eastern half anyway.

In place of all of the land that's going to be lost, I'm planning on implementing even more elements that are influenced either by RNG or, more importantly, player choice. Which segways nicely into the showcase of the week:
Yes, being the absolute madlad that I am, I decided that I'm just going to rework how player rendering and animation work mid-project so that I can include character customization. Aside from the fact that being able to create a unique player character is a pretty critical component for anything that even remotely wants to act like it's pretending to be any sort of WRPG, it'll also make NPCS a lot easier to put together and a lot more memory-efficient. It's not exactly the Oblivion character creator, but you can still make a good variety of reasonably attractive fantasy dudes and female dude equivalents.
 
A

afilionComposer

Guest
It was actually a compliment! I think they're really well done :) They sound very unique!
 
Making all of these character assets and putting together an intuitive customization UI is turning out to be quite the time sink. It's too late to turn back now, though, so here's a look at the second playable species, the hecking furri- I mean the Nagifranak.


Though lacking the technical finesse and magical potential of the humans, these large canine races boast the highest all-around physical stat totals of any playable options. Having come into existence long ago during a time when the world was more overrun with monsters than it ever has been before or since, the wylren-folk are swift, powerful, and hardy. Though fearsome and imposing on the outside, they possess warm, loyal hearts and a childish sort of impressionability.

Also, as a completely superfluous bonus thing, here's some concept art since I had a kind of hard time translating what these guys are "actually" supposed to look like into pixel art:
 
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- Makes joke about furries in his previous post.
- Suddenly realizes that every playable non-human species in his game is essentially a furry of some description.

Though smaller and weaker (but much cuter) than their larger relatives, the petite Jafanak excel in agility and energy. Dodging and attacking hardly put a dent in their massive and rapidly-refilling stamina pools, and sidestepping an attack with perfect timing will give them a burst of speed and power than can turn the tide of a losing battle instantly. That said, they're about as soft and squishy as they look, and heavy armor and shields over-encumber them easily.
 
One more down, one more to go! The Dargoda are the game's defacto races for minmax tanking, with low stamina, no passive magic regeneration, and below-average DPS, but a relative buttload of HP and a bunch of traits and attributes which exist to help maintain it. Lore-wise, they're the youngest sapient species, so there are only two variants, but as a little extra touch they both come with their own sets of "hair" parts instead of sharing them.

 
Well here they are, at long last; the fifth - and this time DEFINITELY FINAL - playable species. With that, there are a whopping 17 different playable races, each with their own slight variation in stats and perks (although most of the big bonuses are species-based rather than race-based.)

Though not as strong or fast as a lot of the other beast races, Kyleot are far more clever, squaring up a bit closer with humans in terms of magical and technical skill. Their main advantage, though, is their utility in stealth and platforming. With the ability to sprint while sneaking, perform consecutively higher jumps by jumping immediately after landing, and cling to walls, they are masters at hiding and escaping. Each of the three racial variants also has a different effect that procs whenever they land a successful stealth attack; the top row stuns its target, the middle row causes all nearby enemies to panic (assuming they aren't immune to the effect,) and the bottom row temporarily gains a speed boost and unlimited stamina.

 
In order to increase my content-to-filesize ratio further as well as to simply make designing new enemies with alternate weapons, more complex and varied movesets, and specialized mechanics easier, I've decided to start applying some of the playable character's procedural construction and animation principles to the game's various enemy species. This will in itself be quite a bit of work; although the player's basic animation parameters are fairly flexible on account of all the different sorts of creatures you can play as, certain sorts of monsters are going to require completely new "skeleton" procedures, and some are going to be outlandish and one-off enough that spriting them traditionally will be more efficient anyway. Still, I think it'll be worthwhile in the end. This is pretty much the only way I can think to guarantee that every important dungeon or area will have a handful of unique, mechanically-nuanced and visually-distinguishable enemies, at least without killing myself, or extending the compile time so much that I die of natural causes while waiting to playtest.

And since you already know my "no pics, no post" policy, here's a quick look at all of the parts I've put together for the zancronies. They're one of the most numerous types of monsters both lore-wise and gameplay-wise, so they seemed like a good place to start.
zancronieparts.png
 
Well, I won't lie. I've kind of just been being lazy over the past week or two, and haven't put much effort into anything at all. You COULD say that I've been studying examples of game design and lore, but...honestly, I've just been wasting a bunch of time watching people play and talk about video games on YouTube :rolleyes:

I at least managed to push through my torpor enough to get these icons relating to the magic system made, so...that's...something, I guess...


When it comes to how magic is actually going to work in this game, I want it to feel like something a bit more special than it is in most fantasy settings. Lore-wise, the basic idea of magic in Eternaliths is a bit like the force, but with the added wrinkle that the "sides" are actual beings, and that the practitioner taps into the supernatural energies emanating from their conflict by aligning his will with one or the other. The stronger the will, the keener the mind, and the closer the alignment, the more powerful the "wizard."

I want that idea to sort of carry over into the gameplay, and magic will ideally be a mechanic that not every player would necessarily even want to bother with on every playthrough. The basic idea I have is that, throughout the game world, you'll find shrines to Almegas (God, basically,) where you can buy new spells and perks at any time, though for a hefty price. In order to increase your proficiency and unlock higher tiers of magic, you'll have to sacrifice a level, and you can only do that once per shrine. So if you want to have a powerful magic-based build, you'll need to be a pilgrim of sorts, scouring dangerous and out-of-the-way places to prove your dedication to achieving hand lasers...I mean, oneness with creation. It's actually pretty much the same as how upgrading health and stamina works in Breath of the Wild, only attached to the magic system instead, now that I'm reading it back to myself.
 
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