Week 76 - Finished Logo, More gameplay

This week I finished the logo with all of bijan’s suggestions. I’m much happier with the way it looks now! Check it out!

Also here is a drawing process video for the whole thing!

Kiril is still working on polishing units, This involves giving them color changing keys, fixing their walk cycles, and generally making sure not a single pixel is out of place. Here are a few more combat GIF’s from this week!

In this fight, it was important to kite the enemies coming down with the lance man. After that I formed my army into a pyramid, this serves two functions. First stepping the knight into the middle separates the healer. Then letting the friars walk down a one more space on the side keeps them from giving the knights an attack buff.

This situation I actually didn’t handle very well, because I let my healer die at the end. I was able to break the knight wall with my knight and get Wallace in there for a side slam, but I failed to pay attention to my healer. I was late running over there with my knight so she died.

That’s all for this week! Check back next week Wednesday for more!

Week 75 - More Polished Units, Raven's Path Logo

Hello everyone! This week Kiril was able to polish up the rock thrower, the footman, the pig and the drummer boy! He has been carefully cleaning stray pixels and making sure everyone is walking correctly. I was working mostly on the logo this week along with some prep work for the trailer. Our composer Bijan is almost finished with the trailer music and we think it is sounding quite good! This logo I made is only half done, but I figured I would show it off for now. Once it is finished we will post a drawing process video for it too!

There is still a lot we want to do to this but the base design is there. We plan on making the letters a 3d gradient of red and blue, We also want to put a sword through the whole thing horizontally. I think we will also make the R and P much larger than they are now, however we are happy with this as a starting place. Next week it should be very different.

Ok so since a lot of things are in the works in the background again that aren’t ready to be shown, I thought it would be a good idea to walk you through the beginning of the game a bit with combat GIF’s. We got a comment this week about how some of the GIF’s we post make it look like an idle game. This is not the case however so I wanted to take some GIF’s of me actually playing instead of staging things to show off certain units or abilities.

Ok so here is an example of one of the first fights after the tutorial. You will get a hodgepodge of 4 units, however you will always get a knight and a healer so that you have something core to build around. At this stage of the game we are trying to teach the player to dislodge healers from the enemy units in order to kill them. If you do not form your army right the middle footman with the shield will be very hard to kill because he will be healed from both sides. This part of the game is still pretty easy as we are trying teach basic movement and healing.

As you get into act 2 your army gets bigger by 1 unit and you are now able to block the whole row. So during this act we are trying to teach the player to juggle mitigating damage while also blocking the bottom of the screen on all lanes. In the first act we don’t send 5 units at you at once. You can see here that if I hadn’t stepped my healer and the earl forward they would have been cleaved by that Axeman in the middle and my army would have taken a lot more damage total.

Here is the first real challenge. this is around level 6 I think. Basically here you are fighting a much bigger more powerful army than your own. You must use your movement and adaptability to overcome the force of the cpu army. There is a lot going on here, but there are two main strategies i’m using with this army. First off I’m bringing the lance man up front to to deal some damage before the front line clashes. He is also able to hit the soft archers over the units guarding them. The other important thing is again dislodging that healer in the middle as quickly as possible. After the healer and archers are killed its pretty much just clean up from there.

Alright that’s all for now, but Hopefully I should have the logo and a drawing video for it next week. I’ll also be sure to take more combat GIF’s of even later in the game and explain some more strategies! Check back next Wednesday for more!

Week 74 - Barracks, Unit fixes

Hello friends! This week we are showing off another prototype I am working on, and Kiril has worked on making sure some of the common units are more clean.

(Please ignore the pink background and alpha UI) The barracks is a building that allows you to teach units to have higher stats by using another unit as a teacher. The higher rarity your barracks is and the better quality stat your teacher has the more value you will get out of the training. You have a chance to fail the training and train the wrong stat this chance of failure also becomes less likely with a higher rarity barracks. Most units can only be trained once, but the conscript is special. Conscripts are fighters for hire and can come from all over the world. They have low starting stats, but they have a unique ability that allows them to be trained 3 times instead of once.

Kiril also polished all of the units I am using here on the bottom. He gave them all proper keys so they could color change correctly, He also modified the way they all walk while they are attacking, and a thousand other minor fixes that only we would notice, but we feel that it is important to make things as clean as we can!

Check out the process of drawing the explosion effect for the stat change in the barracks.

Well that’s all for this week! Check back next Wednesday for more!

Week 73 - Mission Spinner

This week we are still in the middle of a bunch of larger pieces. I am finishing up a few things for the buildings so they still aren’t ready to show. Kiril has started working on this spinner that will determine what type of mission you will be doing. In the final game these missions could include buffs to certain unit types, Special Rewards, and new objectives. Essentially the spinner rolls and determines what you will get for the mission and what type of mission you will be doing. It is very unfinished still but we were pretty happy with how this animation is starting to come together check it out!

We don’t have a ton to show off lately because we are preparing for our press kit and kick starter. Soon we will have a lot more to show but it may be light for a few weeks. Anyway I’ll at least be taking new combat gifs to tide everyone over each week.

The hag can be really useful in emergency situations where you whole army is heavily damaged because she heals a large area with her healing wave.

The Wulver can create a breath of safety by wrapping the unit in front of him in a cocoon for a brief period of time. You will notice that the druid in the back is healing the Wulvers, but he also has a ring that enables him to attack the 3 units that are stunned from a safe distance.

That’s all for this week! We are trying to finish up a bunch of things so hopefully well have the pleasure of showing those off soon! Check back next Wednesday for more!

Week 72 - Knight Portrait & Unit Status Bar

This week kiril got another story portrait done! We are really happy with how these are coming along check it out!

This is just some testing dialog not part of the final story.

I created a little status bar at the top of the screen during game-play. It allows you to see all the stats of whatever unit you just clicked on be it enemy or ally.

We are still working internally on the cover banner artwork, and I am working on the UI for a couple of the buildings so we can show off what they actually do! So that stuff will come out soon, but for now it’s not ready. Please enjoy this combat gif in the meantime!

It is easy to do a lot more damage to enemies if you re-position your units at the right times. It’s also important to mitigate damage in the same way. You can see that I almost got my healer killed because I wasn’t being very careful with her positioning since I was focused on damage.

That’s all for this week everyone! Please check back next Wednesday for another update!

Week 71 - Earl Portrait

Hey everybody! This week was a bit slow because I had a fever all week. Kiril was able to get the earl portrait and animations for the story messages done. I’ve actually been working on the front cover for the game/social media banner but it isn’t done yet because its a time consuming drawing.

This is not final dialog just something we are playing around with to test out the text scrolling and the portrait.

I took a combat gif since I didn’t have anything ready to show this week. This army is very good at kiting units. The knight in the middle has a lance ring that allows him to hit the same range of units as the other lance units. The healers act as a wall once you run out of room for kiting.

Wish we had more to show off this week, but I’m feeling a lot better today so check back next Wednesday for another update! :D

Week 70 - Shop Screen Background

This week Kiril was able to touch up many small buttons in the game, including the shop button. I worked on finishing the shop background and lighting.

As you can see I added a lot more detail to the desk, the floor, the background, and even the animation of the shop keep. Kiril also updated the chests giving them better locks and drop shadows. He also made a new shop button and updated the other 3 home buttons.

Kiril also was able to update a couple projectiles including the rock throwers rock!

Check out the 9 hour process of drawing the shop keep and her shop!

That’s All for this week! Check back next Wednesday for another update!

Week 69 - Shop Keep & Pack Opening Chests

We have been working on this together in the background for a few weeks now. We still aren’t finished with it so its not detailed but this week kiril created the chests and I create a figure animation as well as some background detailing.

The following is a work in progress showing what opening packs in Raven’s path will be like.

This is the Small Chest it contains 3 units and 1 random item this can be gold or equipment.

This is the Medium Chest it has higher magic find and contains 5 units and 1 random item.

This is the Large Chest it has the highest magic find and contains 7 units and 1 random item

This screen still lacks a lot of details that will be coming in soon including a new flash effect when the chest opens, an animation for the cards shuffling by the screen when the chest opens, an Idle animation for the NPC that runs the shop, and generally more detail in the background.

Anyway that’s all for this week but check back next Wednesday for more!