Thursday, December 31, 2015

Good bye 2015 and hail 2016 goals! Happy New Year!

Yikes the end of another year in 30mins!

Wet Fire Games:

 The Rig I have been developing on has been upgraded to reduce some development time and testing. Intel Core i7-5930K and a fancy new Intel 400GB SSD NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 drive (4 times faster than the 1TB SSD being used currently).

Networking:  Taste the cloud!

 Since last months announcement, the project has been tested and operating smoothly so far within the Photon cloud solution. So far... the cloud is delicious. Added in networked components for game mechanics, read next section!

Game Mechanics:

 Functionality added and tested across the network: Looting, NPC's, NPC Interaction, Building, Spells, Attacking, enemy npcs, player & enemy damage/health, mount, resource harvesting, crafting, equiping, currency, shops, and more that we will talk about in greater detail as they evolve.

Concept Art: New Character!

 Check out the Warrior Concept! The thought behind the Warrior character was kept simple with basic information about the character, i.e. Male, Warrior, Medieval fantasy, Nordic Influences (Viking age), Young, newly battle worn in appearance and muscular. From this information the Warrior took shape into our newly rendered character concept shown below.


Website:

 You can visit AssaultOnIsegran.com but please keep in mind that it is still in development. Random project status updates and other AOI media can be found living there.

As always you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to keep up to date with our latest developments. If you prefer visiting the website, please continue using www.WetFireGames.com until our new site, www.AssaultOnIsegran.com, launches in the coming months!

Monday, November 30, 2015

I'm back! And were going into the cloud!

I'm back and pumped to start working on Assault On Isegran (AOI) once again!

Wet Fire Games: Were a real company now!

 I'm excited to announce that we are now Wet Fire Games, LLC. This really doesn't change much of anything for the time alloted to the project, its mostly for tax purposes down the road.

Networking:  Into the Cloud!

 Huge News, the project is moving into the Photon Unity Networing cloud of goodness! There are so many benefits to doing this as a small indie that it was not hard to compare and contrast against our current Raknet implementation (Unity discontinued updates). Essentially with Photon we don't have to manage the backend server anymore to get users connected with each other. Multiple market solutions were considered but I found they were lacking an active community, not fully flushed out, too complicated, or too time consuming.

Thankfully Photon has been continually updating and providing support to the community for Unity and many successful indie games have been released, you can check them out here. Over time many photon networking examples have poped up and with quite a large community the transition should be realtively painless for AOI.

Previously in our June 2015 post, I wrote about Unity's networking solution UNET. This was the logical next-step for AOI. However as I tested implementation of UNET and watched the community attempt to embrace it, I found UNET still early in development and not quite the ready-to-go solution at this time for AOI.

Concept Art: New Character!

 Check out the Archer Concept! The thought behind the Archer character was kept simple with basic information about the character, i.e. Female, Archer, Medieval fantasy, Nordic Influences (Viking age), Tough Personality, Slender in appearance but muscular. From this information the Archer took shape into our newly rendered character concept shown below.


Website: Finally Up!

 You can visit AssaultOnIsegran.com but please keep in mind that it is still in development. Random project status updates and other AOI media can be found living there.

As always you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to keep up to date with our latest developments. If you prefer visiting the website, please continue using www.WetFireGames.com until our new site, www.AssaultOnIsegran.com, launches in the coming months!

Monday, August 31, 2015

Break in August

This past month gave in to a job change for myself that reduced the time available to work on the project. Development should continue again in September! ...

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Break in July

This past month gave in to a job change for myself that reduced the time available to work on the project. This will most likely bleed into the remainder of the August time frame while I spin up at the new job. However a little more time may be put aside for the project development. As you may already know from our 'about us' section on WetFireGames.com The project is largely considered a hobby due to the time restrictions myself and the others on the project can put in each month. But all that aside lets get into it...

Concept Art

Check out the Mage Concept! The thought behind the Mage character was kept simple with basic information about the character, i.e. Male, Mage, Medieval fantasy, Nordic Influences (Viking age), Bold & Wise. From this information the Mage took shape into our newly rendered character concept shown below.


Website

Still working towards our website goals. The website at AssaultOnIsegran.com will host most of the project status updates and related imagery. Where previously we anticipated the website completion June or early July the goal now is to finish and release this month of August.

As always you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to keep up to date with our latest developments. If you prefer visiting the website, please continue using www.WetFireGames.com until our new site, www.AssaultOnIsegran.com, launches in the coming months!

Tuesday, June 30, 2015


Logo & Concept Art

Check out the new logo! After some thought we decided to light the clean version of our game logo on fire... I know a little extreme right? ...nah.

Unity 5

The remaining bugs have been worked out from last month and we are holding off on upgrading to the new networking features of UNET until Unity has matured it a bit more.

Game Profiles

This month we integrated a new player profile system that holds players characters levels, achievements, steamID, email address, special items or accesses and provides us the ability to manage each user profile down to the items the character has on them. Right now the system is only functional in a demo scene for testing but everything works and we are now ready to hook it up to our main prototype. This will be included in all our future Development Builds and will require users to authenticate with their account before playing the game. This way we know how many of you are interested in the project!

Development Builds

It's taking longer than anticipated but we are making progress on our website. All of the latest prototype builds will be made available at AssaultOnIsegran.com when the website is revealed either late June or early July.

As always you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to keep up to date with our latest developments. If you prefer visiting the website, please continue using www.WetFireGames.com until our new site, www.AssaultOnIsegran.com, launches in the coming months!

Tuesday, June 2, 2015




Logo & Concept Art

The 3rd and 4th character concepts are now complete and also the Assault on Isegran game logo inspired by Old Norse mythology!

3D Modeling

Bringing the concept art to life has begun! After much deliberation on which character would first be introduced into the game, it was eventually determined that the Mage would be our first custom model. The Mage will meet the grounds of our testing land and rigors of combat, we can't wait to start throwing fireballs and casting some really neat particle system effects onto those that try to assault Isegran. The 3D modeling process is no process to be taken lightly as we will be using some next-gen technology, 4k textures & polygon limits up to 100k.

Unity 5

An attempt to update the project in Unity5 is on-going. Some of the bugs from our last attempt have been resolved and there are several more we are working on. The migration is largely influenced by new information released by Unity about new Networking features that Unity is slowly releasing called UNET. We are quite excited to use some of the updated & stabilized networking API. This will add Cloud scale-ability, we have been worried about 1,000+ concurrent users logged into our matchmaking system but this new feature will eliminate our concerns. The system will also allow for real-time global illumination, physically-based shading, new fancy audio capability, 64-bit editor (...drool), and the list goes on. You can head over to unity3D.com to see these new features & improvements in action.

Development Builds

We continue to make progress and we'll ensure the prototype game is available to test so you can see our progress first hand. All of the latest prototype builds will be made available at AssaultOnIsegran.com when the website is revealed either late June or early July.

As always you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to keep up to date with our latest developments. If you prefer visiting the website, please continue using www.WetFireGames.com until our new site,www.AssaultOnIsegran.com, launches in the coming months!

Thursday, April 30, 2015

GUI

We have made progress in some smaller, but important areas. The in-game GUI has been properly integrated into the latest prototype build. This includes character inventory, skills & talents, as well as the interaction menu planned for use with the various NPCs. Each menu screen has also been bound to a hot-key, allowing each window to open and close. Now when a window is opened the GUI behaves as expected, preventing player movement and locking the characters camera in place. The GUI also allows skill icons/weapons to be dragged between window slots. There are still a number of adjustments to make on other various windows and menus in the game, which will be implemented as time progresses.

As of right now icons and weapons don't do anything, however there is a skill cool-down timer on each skill icon as a test. Now that this system is in place, we can begin full implementation which will ultimately prevent recasting or use of the same spell or skill for the duration of the cool-down.

Concept Art

The 2nd of the character concepts is now complete. We are really excited to see the characters come to life and eagerly await the other two concepts by the end of May.

AI

In an effort to speed production time up, we've hired an assistant programmer on an as needed basis. The first system our new programmer has helped to build is basic AI, and over the coming weeks and months will expand to include three different AI systems:


  • Wildlife
  • Non Playable Characters
  • Enemies


Currently the AI for the Wildlife is operational within a standalone offline testing scene. We hope to start the integration and test the networking portion in May.

Development Builds

As we continue to make progress and implement more systems, we'll ensure stand alone executables are available to test so you can see our progress first hand. All of the latest prototype builds will be made available at AssaultOnIsegran.com, with the newest becoming available either late May or early June.

Thursday, April 9, 2015

March Update

As time has passed, mechanics tweaked and ideas changed, the project has evolved a bit from our initial vision. The overall art direction has shifted, the lore has been tweaked and the game world a different place from where it began. As such, The Romtha Project has been renamed to "Assault on Isegran". Isegran is an island in Norway that is still home to a historic fortification. We found its history utterly fascinating and the idea of Isegran took hold in our minds. Using Isegran, with its rich history as the foundation for inspiration, we look forward to crafting our own world and lore around it. We hope you will as well.


Unity Pro

The latest Unity engine update 5 was released during March, and we couldn’t wait to upgrade Assualt on Isegran to take advantage of the newest features. In fully embracing this, we bought a full license for this version in lieu of continuing to pay monthly. While the new features of Unity 5 are exciting, there were some teething issues we had to work through when upgrading from Unity 4 to Unity 5. Ultimately we rolled back to version 4 for the time being, due to concerns with assets and mechanics we use which are not quite ready for the transition. We hope to change over to the new engine as we tweak the code and come to grips with this new architecture.

Art & Website

We hired a new artist to work up some alternate character concepts that we look forward to tweaking and bringing into the game. Currently 1 of the 4 character concepts are complete, and we anticipate the others should be done nearer to the end of this month. Once those are finished we, barring unforeseen circumstances, plan to release them on the new website AssaultOnIsegran.com (currently still under development). The website will contain a forum and special content for registered members such as the character concept art. We've also been looking into an artist to work up a custom tailored website using a medieval themed artistic flare to match the tone of the game. We hope to have that integrated when the new site launches in the coming months.

Game Mechanics & GUI

Due to the above, less time was spent on in-game mechanics than in months past. However we have more basic mechanics in place, including tracking player health which, upon being depleted, will kill the player. This is currently not anticipated or planned to be used for the player-character, but is a mechanic we will use for the multiplayer aspects of the game such as moving objects across the network and passing damage values for towers and enemies. We've also implemented a character health regeneration rate which is also successfully synchronized across the network. Concerning the GUI, values for damage received and health regenerated were also tested against the use of health and mana globes.

Please follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to keep up to date with our latest developments. If you prefer visiting the website, please continue using www.WetFireGames.com until our new site,www.AssaultOnIsegran.com, launches in the coming months!

Saturday, February 28, 2015

Hurrah, Dedicated Server no Longer Needed!

Given the type of game play we envision, it became clear a Dedicated Server was overkill. Dedicated servers tend to work best for games that expect to manage much higher concurrent player counts. We are using games like Dungeon Defenders, Sanctum and Orcs Must Die as inspiration. Given that these games are more focused on cooperative game experiences we too will keep player connections between 1 and 4 per game. This last month a lot of code was moved away from the original dedicated server model. This change simplifies hosting a multiplayer game as it no longer requires players to setup both a dedicated server and a separate game instance. To reflect these changes, we will be updating the current GUI elements - for example, instead of "Setup a Server" it will become "Create a Game", and will include options which allow public or private game instances.

Character Inventory / Skills / and Miscellany

In efforts to reach the goals set forth in January, the very first skill was introduced: the always classic fireball spell. As of right now, it swirls and it emits flame particles as it travels a certain distance before expiring or hitting the terrain. Only the Paladin character has this ability for now ( only added to him for general testing). We have also implemented teams. There are two to choose from and each spawns from a different location. Additionally the host/server is now be shown in the 'Tab' menu as a player.

At this point we are working to configure the skills (currently the fireball) to hit each other and deal damage. Since we have no intention to include PvP in the game, at least at this time, this is more to test attacks against future enemy AI than anything else. The character inventory/skill/menus have not been linked to this new ability or February's prototype build, but the plan is to have this (and hopefully more) integrated by next month.

The latest prototype build is available for download from our website. Head on over and check it out and as always, you can bookmark this page to read update posts, or simply follow WetFireGames on twitter, Facebook or Google+ to keep tabs on our development. See you guys next month!

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Happy New Year and Happy Holidays -

No update for December? Here is the latest about the Romtha project! The new GUI has been implemented for the server browsing interfaces and 'tab' menu. However the other GUI development tasks took a back seat to an issue discovered while testing client side game hosting. The issue prevented folks from joining other player hosted games. This resulted in players only being able to connect to our Wet Fire Games (WFG) hosted servers. After lots of eggnog and falling asleep in the strangest of positions, I can proudly say that the issue has been resolved.

As mentioned in the November update, we're still moving along. Due to the bug delay, a new release will be available on the website for download in a couple of hours from now. This release will have the implemented GUI elements mentioned above. The build will be released as a Prototype and all naming conventions on the site will also be changed to reflect the games status as a 'prototype' since technically this is the state of our project.

Our February post will include updates about our Character inventory, skills, and other menu screens that are in our closed testing build. The features work but are going through some bug testing and beautification! The goal is to have those features released in the next prototype build for February's post.