When Hammlet’s wife Prascilla goes missing, Reynard immediately grabs his high-tech gauntlet and goes on an adventure. In order to rescue Prascilla from becoming “Goulash” and his home island Foen from an invasion, he has to defeat many vicious creatures and villains.
Gameplay
Reynard is a mixture of procedurally generated action RPG and a Tower Defense genre with roguelike elements. It has been influenced by classics such as Legend of Zelda and an indie classic – Binding of Isaac. It contains features such as:Countlessproceduraly generated dungeons, TD maps and runes!
More than 200 different items!
Fast paced action against challenging enemies and bosses!
Progression through perk and blueprint system!
Simple yet cool crafting system!
Lovely story and companions!
Minimum Requirements
Gamepad is extremely recommended, but keyboard also works.
In previous post, we’ve showcased the weapons and the runes… And now, after couple of weeks I’m able to show you the inventory which brings the ability
to swap those runes!
Slimes and Health bars
You can also see that we’ve replaced the Slime’s sprites… When these slimes get attacked and if they get hurt, they’ll display a health bar. The health bar’s color is dependent on the health type of the monster. The purple slime has “water” type health, which gives it a “blue” color. Because it’s health is water based it can’t get hurt by fire attacks… which also means that it can’t catch fire and spread it all over the place.
Additionally if we kill these slimes… they can drop loot… Ok… In the game you’ll probably never see a slime dropping 5 swords like in the video, but we wanted to show you the point 😀
HUD improvements
I’ve also replaced the HUD’s graphics. I think that it looks way better now than a classical black and white window. HUD now has the ability to show you if the weapon is on cooldown. You can see the cooldown in action in the video below.
The “stamina” bar’s color is now also changed to more greenish color – because we all know that blue usually stands for mana.
Inventory
The biggest thing in this devlog is inventory which is split on 3 parts:
Left part is for consumables, runes, usables etc…
Middle part is strictly reserved for the equipment and it’s rune slots
Right part is dedicated for the item’s descriptions, stats etc.
I can say that inventory is already functional but I’m sure that I will update it as soon as I’ll add more different items, such as consumables etc. Besides the inventory I’m planning on adding “Stats” tab, where player will be able to see all of the Reynard’s “important” stats… Such as on weapon swing damage etc.. I tried to add all this info in the item’s description but I wasn’t able to fit everything in such a small window… That’s the reason why I’m thinking of implementing “Stats” tab.
This time in video I’ve decided that I’ll rather talk… I don’t feel comfortable talking 😀 but it’s really easier to say things while playing the game than editing text pieces with video fragments. I think that I’ve also improved the video’s quality… The pixels look better now!
This was one of the first inventory concepts in the game.
Some more inventory experiments…
PS:
If you have any recommendations or opinions please express the in the comments down below!
For couple of weeks I’ve been working on how different systems interact with each other. The reason I’ve spent so much time on this task is because I really wanted to make it as modular as possible. Modularity of the systems will significantly increase the speed of how fast we can create weapons, enemies, items and other stuff (even in other upcoming games).
One of the game’s core design is that Reynard can carry only 3 weapons at the same time. And these weapons have to be different by type such as:
Melee (swords, axes, hammers…).
Ranged (shurikens, arrows, boomerangs…).
Special (bombs, magic cloaks, summon rings…).
To keep things interesting and to increase the game’s replayability we’ve decided to add a rune system. For example: Weapons can have “Weapon runes”, armors can have “Armor runes” and so on. Primarily these past weeks I’ve focused on Weapon runes which can:
Deal different or random amount of damage.
Deal different types of damage (normal, blunt, electric, fire, holy, ice, pierce, poison…).
Add stamina penalty (if you have runes that are powerful, you’ll be draining Reynard’s stamina faster with each attack).
Have a chance of missing or knocking an enemy.
Have different effects (Damage over time, slow over time)… These effects can:
Be stackable (same effect applied multiple times to same enemy).
Be spreadable (fire, ice) etc.
Have different power and duration.
To make everything work as intended I also had to implemented weakness tables and so on. Did I mention that we’ve added BOOOOOMBS? Enough with the words here comes the video:
PS: I can’t wait to show you our next creations next week! Stay tuned!
Reynard Devlog #7 – Dialogue System Reynard Can Talk!
Hello again. As I mentioned in last week devlog my next mission was dialogue system.
Dialogue system
I tinkered a bit with Nodecanvas and their system, which has a lot of possibilities, but in the end I made my own. It’s really basic for now but Reynard can talk to you without problems. I will extend it in next days to do more things. For now our system reads text files in which it searches for new line (when you press return/enter). Then in the next step loads them into box. You will also have possibility to skip dialogue lines by simply pressing right button or you can just wait and text will automatically write on screen.
Box is made with help of unity’s UI canvas and TextMesh Pro. We use TextMesh Pro because is simply better than default Text from unity. With TextMesh Pro you have much more customization and much clearer fonts if you zoom camera really close. You can get it for free from unity asset store.
How we start Conversation
We can trigger system in two ways. One is by proximity. If Reynard comes close enough to Phoenix as you can see in video, dialogue will start automatically. There is also possibility to run dialogue only once. You will have to pay close attention in the game as you never know when is the last time when some NPC will speak to you.
The second way is that you need to press a button to start dialogue. You can see that in this week video when Reynard comes close to the house and you can see exclamation mark above it. If you press right button dialogue will start or you can turn away and never know what secrets you just missed. Also we can select if player is allowed to move once the dialogue has stared or hid movement is frozen
There are also some basic sound effects when text scrolls and don’t worry they will be improved as we decided to put them in few hours before this devlog was released.
This is all for this week devlog. Come back next week for new info about Reynard.
In previous devlog I showed you some progress on dungeons and today I can show you the basic minimap and some other cool stuff!
Feature update
Because we’re not that hardcore that we would leave our Reynard to wander around the dungeons without a minimap, we have decided to add it. Current version of the minimap is basic and it shows the locations of various rooms (locked, treasure and boss rooms). It also colors the room where the player is located with an orange color. We’re still discussing if the minimap should be an obtainable item, a perk or included by default. My personal opinion is that it would be cool if player had to put some effort to unlock it. What is your opinion?
I’ve updated the HUD which now displays melee and ranged weapons. If you check out the video, you can see that there is a third slot, which is reserved for special items. In the future we’ll be adding bombs and other items. Health and stamina bars have also been updated. They were improved with “normal” colors and numbers. Numbers will help the player to accurately plan his next moves.
We were thinking about how we could inform the player if he can interact with something. In the end we decided to go with a classic bulb bubble.
While play testing the game I really got tired of shurikens… that’s what drove me to create a boomerang. I still can’t believe how such a simple item can boost developers motivation to keep on developing the game. It is quite basic, but fun.
Next thing we added were flammable objects! Flammable objects loose health over time and the fire can spread easily between them.
Under the hood, I was working on resolution and canvas scalers and some other “black box” systems.
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In previous Reynard devlog, Boštjan revealed that we’re planning to add a world map and in this post I want to write about the dungeons.
Challenges
Before the development of the game, we’ve set some ground rules. One of those rules was that we want to increase the replayability of the game. That’s the reason we included randomly generated dungeons.
Writing a dungeon generator is fun, but it can be time consuming.
For an example. When I was designing a basic prototype of a dungeon generator questions kept popping up.
Couple of examples are:
What roles can a room have (locked, treasure room, starting room…).
Which dimensions of a room can appear.
How many types of specific rooms can appear.
When a room can appear? At the beginning, middle or the edge of the dungeon?
How the monsters will spawn in the room.
How will transition between rooms work.
And many many many more…
The problem was that we had an idea where we want to go with the whole dungeon generation, but not the most “detailed” idea. That is probably the main reason I’ve spent so much time on creating a generator. Figuring out what we want the player to experience and how to keep him challenged was one of those details. Another thing that kept me busy was designing a generator which is designer friendly.
Check out the video to have a glimpse of early dungeon prototypes and other added features.
PS:
When I was making a dungeon generator more “user / designer friendly” I used Odin Inspector and Serializer plugin. It saved me many hours of work on inspector customization and serialization. So if you’re developing in Unity3D check it out, I think that you will find it very useful.
If you’re interested in dungeon generation and procedural level design, I’d recommend you to listen this cool GDC talk from the creator of Eldritch.
Hello, my name is Boštjan and i think it’s my first time writing here about Reynard.
Unity and 2D tiles
So lets talk a little bit about Unity and 2D tiles. When we started developing reynard we decided to use Super Tilemap Editor, because we figured out that it is simply better than tools that came with Unity. After deciding what tools to use and searching for tilesets there was annoying problem with Unity. Anybody that uses unity for making 2D games with tiles has faced that – random rendering vertical or horizontal lines when playing the game between tiles. I admit it we made few mistakes while figuring out how to fix it. If you use same tile editor as us is really simple to fix this. You must just extrude 1px with tile atlas editor. Other solution is that you add 1px to you tile. I was doing that with program called Pyxel. You just resize tile to desired size and center it. In our case new tile size was 18×18 because we use 16×16 tiles and then you just copy the edge pixel in all directions around tile. After that you just set size of your boxes in unity sprite editor to 16×6 and your problem should be fixed.
Pyxel Edit
Reynard World map
Now to our world map. I wont tell you how much islands or areas there will be, but you can see in video that for now we have prototyped 4 islands in 3 different biomes. Using Super Tilemap Editor for doing that is really easy and it’s just like painting in Microsoft Paint. I have a quicklapse of doing that so if anybody is interested in that video let me know in comments bellow. When Reynard comes into the vicinity of selected buildings you will see big exclamation mark. This indicated that there you can do something. For now I only log to Unity console some strings if you press attack button but in next week there should be dialogue system instead of me just logging stuff. For Reynard i use sprites that Filip drawed and showed to you in previous Devlog.
So what is next for world map. Working dialogue system, maybe some random spawning enemies, more diverse tilesets, some shaders for the water part and particle effects for islands, because as for now there is only snowing particle system and you can see clouds on grass island. We want to make game looking more interesting and not just bland few colors on ground. Shaders and Particle system will help with that.
So this is all from me for now. Stay tunned for new update next friday.
It’s Friday and I have a new progress report on Reynard! In this devlog, I’ve merged a couple of videos and thoughts from my archive.
Feature update
Because Reynard can move in multiple directions and we’re using only 4 directions to visually show where he’s going, it was really hard to aim with his ranged attack. That’s the reason why I’ve created an “aim assistance system”. I know… it sounds way cooler than a “pointing arrow”.
I’ve spent some time working on a weapon system… Weapons will be able to slow down, stun or knock back enemies. Each weapon will have different stats and will consume different amount of stamina.
Because there are no great RPGs without loot dropping pots, I’ve added loot drops. Now these “normal” pots can drop hearts that can heal Reynard.
Remember that in previous post I’ve mentioned that I was working on a stamina and health system? Well… they are now connected with UI and working. Currently they are displayed as pink and green bars. We still didn’t decide if we want to leave them like that. Maybe in the end we’ll use numbers instead.
I was working on treasure chests… Reynard can interact with them and swap weapons. The idea is that Reynard will only be able to carry a single melee and a single ranged weapon.
I’ve spent decent amount of time working on AI. You won’t see a huge progress in this video, but let’s say that we have a simple slime (bluegreenish) that randomly roams around the level. A slime (red) that can follow the player but if player hides behind an obstacle it just keeps on moving… and a slime (green) with pathfinding system.
Art update
I’ve gathered the courage to work on Reynard’s looks. So here he is… our first version of Reynard the fox:
I’m kind of satisfied with his side profile, but there’s something that bothers me on his front side. I’m always surprised how much time and effort has to go into pixel art… Specially in animations… Pixel art is something that I really want to get better at and this definitely isn’t the final version of him, so don’t be scared! Video time:
If you have any suggestions, comments or thoughts… Please let me know in the comments section down below.
In previous blog post I was writing about our Pariah progress and why we decided to work on another game instead. From now on there will only be progress reports for Reynard project.
I’m gonna try to keep these progress reports short and simple 😀
Reynard’s Story
Reynard is a human-like fox who works as a ranger. One day all the children from the “animal” town went missing and because of his personal reasons he decides to travel the world to find them. And that’s all I’ll ever probably write about the story before the release 😀
Art update
For now we’re using some sprites that we could find / buy on opengameart or itch.io. Even though we already had a dummy art for the main character I decided to replace him with a “bigger” one. The reason lies behind the fact, that we’ll have to draw our own main character which will be larger than our previous “blonde dude”, and I needed something to visualize how his size will fit in with an art.
Feature update
Our character can now:
Attack with a sword,
Cast a “spell” or throw something,
Dash
Besides that I was working on different systems which still aren’t visible in video below, but are working as intended. Some of those systems are:
Health system,
Stamina system,
Weapon system,
Perception system
Enough with the words… It’s video time 😀
Next week I’ll probably work on a simple AI system or maybe on interactable items like treasure chests, locked doors or something similar.
Another thing that always surprises me is pixel perfection in Unity3D. Setting up a camera that satisfies my “pixly” eyes is not so easy in an engine that was originally made for 3d games. So I have no doubt that eventually I’ll tackle this problem sooner or later.
If you have any questions or opinions please feel free to express them in the comments down below.
If you’ve been following our blog, you’ve read that we are working on a game called Pariah: Anton. Well… the development did not come to an end, but it reached the point where we took a pause.
Here are couple of reasons for the pause:
I have to finish couple of systems (AI is one of them).
Žiga still has to finish environment and UI art.
Patrick has some song and SFX writing to do.
I can tell that my motivation dropped because I’ve been working on a codebase for a long time. And the biggest reason for the motivation drop is a lack of vision of a finished game. I’ve reached a point where I couldn’t visualize the end game and that made me very frustrated.
The team had a meeting where we discussed the future of the game and how we’ll implement some stuff to finally finish it. A couple of days before that meeting I’ve shown guys a prototype I’ve been working on… And because prototype seemed cool… On a meeting, we decided to start and finish that prototype before finishing Pariah.
The prototype – Reynard
Sometimes when I have no willpower to work on certain projects, I start prototyping and designing other stuff. Which certainly isn’t a pattern that many other developers face. As a fan of Hyper Light Drifter, Final Fantasy and Zelda games, I knew that sooner or later I’ll open Unity3D and start working on my own version of a top-down game.
It actually happened… and unlike other times when I keep prototypes for myself, I showed it to my friends in hyper fox studios.
It is a very basic prototype of a top-down game, but it directed us on a new path. To keep me motivated to the end of the project, I’ve decided to post an update on a Reynard game every Friday! Follow us on social media to stay tuned!
