Week 84 - Happy New Year!

Sorry we took a week off last week to celebrate the new year and see old friends and family. We have been doing a few things in the background during the holidays. I have been working on the trailer and there are some great segments coming together that we are very excited to show off at the end of the month. Kiril has been touching up units and well be showing some more of those next week. We are excited to get back to work this week. For now enjoy some combat.

You can combo units by staggering their attack times. You can see here at the beginning of the fight I lined up my two knights in the middle so that I could deal both their attack damages to the ballista. If the ballista is aloud to fire its arrow it will deal a lot of damage so its best to target it first.

That’s all for this week! Things should be back to normal next Wednesday so check back here to see more updates!

Week 83 - Ancient Healer Colors, Trailer Prep

This week Kiril fixed up the ancient healer. She now has a color key for her robe and hair.

I've been doing a lot of work on the trailer lately. Unfortunately all that will have to be shown of when we officially release our trailer, but for now we are going to try and show a little more of the backgrounds and units we haven’t shown as much.

This is an incredibly difficult late game fight. If you get to this part of the game without using any ranged units you may have to start using them here. The wulver is a wolf with a fishing line. He can wrap units in front of him in the fishing line stunning them for 2 seconds. It is important to hit him from at least 1 space away. However you can see that even with 3 spear/lance units I wasn’t able to kill the wulvers before they wrapped my front line. If I had a ranged unit shooting them as they come down this fight would be a lot easier.

That’s all for this week, but be sure to check back next Wednesday for more!

Week 82 - New Knight Design, New Health Bars

Hello everyone! We were getting some comments about our health bars being confusing, however we needed to keep them confined to a small amount of screen space so normal bars were not an option. This week we cast a vote to see if all of you thought it was a good idea to change the health bars to hearts, and with no objections the vote passed! So here we are!

We are quite happy with how they turned out! We also felt that the players health should always be red so we changed the color too! Due to the new shape we were also able to make them just a little bit bigger. We are very happy with this change so thank you to everyone who voted!

I also created a little death animation for the new health bar.

Kiril redesigned the knight this week. He made his armor more realistic, fixed up the tell for his attack animation, and reshaped/animated his cape. We are very happy with the way he turned out! You may also notice that most team colored units also have opposite secondary colors now. For the blue team this means their secondary color is yellow.

That’s all for this week but check back next Wednesday for more! Also if you are reading this and you haven’t joined our discord please jump in and say hi!
https://discord.gg/wpNg4xM

Week 81 - Building Construction

This week we are transitioning into a slightly different way of posting. I’m no longer going to take the time to create excess combat GIF’s for entertainment. From now on the dev log will only contain totally new content. This will give us a little extra time meaning we will be able to get the game done faster. It is also likely that soon we will switch to large monthly announcements instead of a weekly log.

However we will still have a lot to show off and we intend on being more in contact with community not less. We are close to some exciting announcements so we want to finish strong and really focus on work.

Check out the effects we made for building and destroying buildings this week!

What you decide to build here will greatly effect what resources you are able to use and the power of your items/units. Some buildings even unlock new game modes.

Check out the drawing process for the building construction VFX!

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

Week 80 - Item equip box Finished, Stat Change VFX

Hello everyone! This week I was able to make a few more VFX. I fixed up an old effect as well. Kiril is still polishing units and hes almost done with the core bunch that we need for the trailer.

Same Effect as last week but I’ve cleaned up the box a bit. I Gave some things proper boarders and lined a few objects up better.

I added a negative comparison number and effect. This allows you to see the difference between stats when removing items. It also allows you to see the difference between two items by dropping them on top of each other and replacing the previous item.

This is the effect that appears when you teach a unit a stat in the barracks. It used to be all white, and it didn’t show up well. We decided it would be a good idea to change the color, and add some lightning too it.

Check out the drawing process video for the stat comparison effects!

That’s all for this week! Be sure to check back next Wednesday for more!

Week 79 - Item equip UI, New Druid Design

This week I finally finished the comparison animation for the stats on items when they get equipped!

As you can see not only does this box tell you the stats of a unit before and after items, It also now briefly shows you the difference between the old total stats and the new stats of the item you just equipped. This is useful when you have a lot of other items equipped and you want to quickly see how effective one of them really is.

I also wanted to show that if you want to save time you don’t need to use the stat box. You can just throw weapons armor and rings on to units that have slots for them directly. This is very useful if you want to make a new army very quickly and try out a new strategy to see if it works. We really wanted to make sure you could build in both a very detailed way and also a very quick and easy way. Even when you build quickly you can still see from the images what type of item you are giving the unit and also what rarity it is.

We also have an exciting visual change this week! Kiril redesigned the druid unit to make it more clear and interesting. He gave him horns and hooves. He also no longer wears a shirt making him a little more natural. He also now has keyed hair which allows us to change is hair color. In this fight it was important for me to keep the enemy druids away from the enemy front line so they couldn’t do any healing.

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

Week 78 - More Color Keys

This week Kiril and I keyed a bunch of units together. This is giving every unit a far more unique appearance. I also have a bunch of UI stuff I’m working on that’s still not ready to show.

So first and foremost Kiril has keyed the blade maiden and animated her hair. We picked some color ranges that we think work for her hair and made sure that the shirt was always the opposite color of the hair. I also wanted to show off the fact that you can use an army of entirely the same unit if you want to. This is a tough army to play but its very effective. You can see that the maiden on the left with the red hair has a healing ring so she can heal the others. The maiden in the center has the most weapons equipped so she does the most damage. My Strategy here is to isolate and kill the axeman while blocking his healers from healing him with my tanky maidens. You might notice that you can actually dodge melee attacks if you have given yourself enough space.

Here are some more units we keyed this week. In this GIF I am using a friar to buff the attack of an axeman. This is particularly effective because the axeman can hit 3 units in a line so the extra attack carries through all those units he hits. I also kite the incoming army because if they reached my army at full health they would deal a lot of damage quickly.

That’s all for this week but be sure to check back next Wednesday for more!

Week 77 - Team Colors

This week we started implementing team colors for enemy armies. Kiril has been making sure all the units have color keys (a bright color that can be changed to another color like a green screen) We have enough of these cleaned up now that we can color them all to the same color. This gives the effect that you are fighting against a unified army. It also makes it easier to see who’s an enemy or ally.

You can see here the blue knights are members of the enemy army. Also notice that they kicked my ass because I was under geared and didn’t play very well.

Here you are fighting a different branch of the army. This is the royal guard so they are purple. Also notice that if I had moved my lance man one more to the left at the end I would have had 0 casualties. This shows how important split second decisions are in Raven’s Path.

Many units have secondary keys, For the blade maiden this is her hair. We are still working on getting proper color ranges for her hair but I’m starting to like the way her hair is rolling now. Some of the pink colors might be a bit aggressive still though.

I can’t show you what I have been working on quite yet, but its related to UI. We are almost done cleaning up the customizer so we can show off equipping units and fun RPG stuff like that. Anyway that’s all for this week check back next Wednesday for more!