DevBlog of Awesome (Episode 01)

Okay! So we're finally up to date on the devBlogs. Well, thats a relief to be honest. What now?

Now I start my latest devBlog series, devBlog of Awesome. This will be dedicated to Hero Rising Development, and all that fun stuff.

So what progress has been made?

Well, I've been pretty bad and havent updated in a while, so I have made a LOT of progress. Lets have a look;

#1, Updated main menu aesthetic -

To be honest, it really needed to happen. Hero Rising has a toony, vibrant aesthetic. And the old menu was black. Didn't work :P But, I feel that this one is a lot more open!

#2 As you can see from the pic above, I have also worked on the game logo a fair bit! I wanted to keep the toony feel, but I liked the earthiness of the brown, yellows and reds. So, yeh, that happened.

#3. You might have noticed that the blurred image in the back looks like the game area! Welllll, thats because it is. Major rehaul of main area aesthetic, and function. Here!

So, here we can see, some updated models, tags on the buildings so we know what they are... just real stuff that makes a game feel a bit better.

Notice we still have the bottom menu. That's not staying. All the buttons on that will be turned into buildings, signposts, etc until the UI is entirely diagetic (ingame).

#4 Bit of work on the Character UI screen. Not much on the aesthetic side, but its now a lot more factual. Trying to make it a bit more friendly with weapons and armour icons, etc, but thats only done for weapons atm.

Note that the "Giant Club" is a sword :P Kidding, thats just the symbol for 2H weapons at the moment. Hoping to make individual icons for each weapon and armour eventually!

There is a big space to the left I kind of want to put a character model in, so we'll see what happens there.

#5 You may have noticed, but the old UI looked a fair bit different. Thats because the old UI was purely diagetic, or existing in the game world. Which meant I had big cubes with writing on them. Now, its all done using standard Unity UI systems, which both looks, and acts better

#6 Bit more done on the work. Mostly scaling and aesthetic. It's harder now, so you get more of a challenge, which was needed to push the player into flow state. I have some cauldrons, thinking about either making them more flat shaded, or switching them out, we'll see. Oh, and im going to fill them with lava! The white boxes will become wooden beams, the ball becomes an ingot and I think I'll make the background a workship like scene...

#7 Train hasnt had much done on it, but my plans include making a character dodge things as you press keys. Could make it a bit more immersive and fun...

#8 Explore has had a massive overhaul, with more still to come. Looking at the picture below, you can see the player now has their own model in the game. You can't see here, but that dude's animated nicely and bounces in resting stance. Im going to add a walk anim to the next tile very soon. Otherwise, tiles are now pretty much indistinguishable, and there is a counter for the players Combat Power on the bottom.

Oh. and theres narrative.... :D

That panel to the left changes every time you move. When you first spawn its full of helpful instructions, etc. Then, when you move to a tile, its detects whether the tile has an enemy, and whether the player won the combat. It then chooses a narrative based from this, and inserts enemy and player names into it. I like this one, especially for its potential. I'm going to be making different sets of narrative for each area, which will go into immersing the player into the game world. Yay narrative!

Im also going to add some trees, etc, make it look nice.

#9 The feedback panel has also had a lot of work. Just for background, this pops up when you finish any of the minigames. It gives you your stats for the minigame, and your current stats for the whole game. I also added in more commercialization in the form of a small ad button. Clicking it brings up a 5 second non-skip ad, that increases the gold earned in the minigame by 150%. Feedback from my peers says make it a bit more noticeable, which is funny because I was trying to make it non-obtrusive. Fine lines :P

#10 Lucky last, I've done some work on the armour and weapons. You still purchase them in tiers, but I am revising how they affect your gameplay etc. Eg, a dagger may give you a slight chance to defeat an enemy above your health, using a sword and board set may give a chance to erase the energy cost of the explore action for that turn.

I also did some stuff making it so you knew what you could afford, etc, at the stores.

Well, thats it. Long read, should i do a TL;DR? Yeh I will. But for thee who read the entire thing, thanks heaps! Love the support :)

TL;DR -
I did a lot of updates, on a lot of areas. Things are going well and I have well set plans for the future.