Welcome to the final development post thread!!!!!

I have spent alot of time recently getting down to the nitty gritty with my project, and now its time to confirm your hopes! The next news to await will be... Rathmors final summer release

There hasnt been any Rathmor news for a while, but trust me this post will more than make it up to the die hard KF and SOM fans. There is even a video of my latest achievements with SOM.

So without further ado...


1.0 Attack functionality

Attack versatility video

SOM had a restrictive attack functionality before, so after alot of thought and planning, I devised a simple yet effective way of allowing players to change attacks whenever they like. If you are like me when you play KF or SOM you tend to like a certain weapon's design, or its ability. Well now you dont need to go spending a ton of game currency on a stabbing weapon when you have a sword - just change its attack type to stabbing.

This also means that you can cater to your own play style and customise it. If you prefer to go for high adrenaline, quick attacks with a medium sword or dagger, you can fight this way - having their stabbing ability as a last resort. Or maximise your damage output with a slow, hard attacking great sword, or if thats not enough, a heavy great axe. Maybe you prefer to attack from a distance with a spear? Or do you prefer to have a spear that cuts and jabs? Rathmor caters for all situations.

Not having a long ranged weapon attack can leave you in difficult situations, for example being assaulted by a spear. Thats where you can choose versatility in combat.

Each type of attack has its own damage output, so if your dagger cant slash that tough monster hide, change to stab for better effect.

Ive also improved the sound effects ‎ 

2.0 Magic

I can confirm magic will be in Rathmor.

3.0 Levelling focus

Something bold and new for this genre of gaming - the level focus. I have juggled with alot of levelling up ideas, and this one seemed the best. I wanted to create as much character customisation as I could, so this is ideal. There are three basic levelling choices - Fighter, Balanced, and Defender. Each yields different bonuses to stats upon levelling up, with hidden classes granting even greater abilities.

The best thing is that you can change class at any time in the training area. Want to develop alot of points into strength, to use that greatsword? Go fighter. Prefer to have a few extra hitpoints for when you get surrounded? Choose defender. If you prefer to keep things even, incase something unknown comes your way, then balanced is essential.

4.0 Improved A.I

One of my biggest discoveries in SOM recently is being able to control how a monster reacts to the player, along with changing their behaviour when idle. Sick of seeing enemies walking into walls? I was, so I came up with some breakthrough ideas that stops this from happening. Enemies now have alot more character too - cowardly enemies will often get scared and leave their guard open. But aggressive enemies will end up charging towards you more, meaning you will need to change that attack type on your weapon to counter them.

5.0 Environments

Map sets

This is something I have really REALLY worked hard at and put tons of time and effort into. There were times I was going for up to 10-12 hours a day to finish some sets off. Since my last post, I have created 200 individual and unique map parts. This includes flawless collision data.

All sets have the capability to merge into one another, meaning when I release sets to the public you can mix and match.

I have also created three new tree parts, and new grass. All are memory friendly - meaning your game wont grind to a slow pace when exploring.

Revised HUD

You'l see the new HUD in the screenshots.

Please ignore the doors, as they will be changed. They are just dummies.

These screenshots have no graphical tweaks whatsoever, and no graphic extensions are in use.

Tavern

Tavern interior

Your first bed...

Taverns "arse end"

Tavern roof and distant house

Scalmane

More of Scalmane

Home...

Bridge

Scalmane villa

Villa again

Villa interior


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(These below images are more development screenshots and are not a true reflection of Rathmor's final graphics output.)
Jail

Outdoor mine entry

Bura by campfire


Objects







While objects havent had as much attention there are still loads of newly created objects since the last news thread, including windows and doors, furniture etc.

The arena

You will get the chance to go head to head with some pro and some not so pro fighters in the arena. This will probably be one of the biggest challenges in the game to beat, and your opponents will use skill and cunning to catch you off guard. There is no killing in the arena - if you get beaten, you lose consciousness, same for if you beat your opponent - they will be knocked out.

Your own home

You will be able to buy a house in the main town or simply pay for accomodation at a tavern. The house comes with a letterbox for NPCs to pop important notes in. You will be able to customise some parts of your house such as the decorations.

Free roaming

While I know that having a guided path is important in a game, you will have the chance to revisit most visited areas and explore some new areas at your own pace. There will also be some nice free roaming when you have finished the game...

6.0 Currency
The amount of currency you can find in the 'field' as such is limited, but the amount of items you can amass varies - this includes valuables that sell for a good sum. Enemies will not drop gold like in SOM and KF - some enemies will drop valuables, and rare enemies will drop gold as a lump sum rather than the auto gold feature.

7.0 Sounds

There will be alot of ambient sounds in Rathmor - that includes wind, water drops, metal anvils, swords clashing etc.

Night and day

Yup, there will be night and day in Rathmor! You'l be able to do different things at night / get attacked more at night.

8.0 Revised story
The story is now revised and more engaging, while being more minimal on dialogue. It has taken a while to find the right balance!

What you wont be able to do in Rathmor...
- Have bows or crossbows. SOM limitation.
- Jump. Yup - my environment ideas and map sets wernt built with jumping in mind.
- Have a full, scientific 'human immersion experience' well in my opinion playing games isnt about simulating real life. There are similarities to make it more enjoyable, but it doesnt have to be so serious. I want players to have fun.
- Breaky break your sword on teh wallzors (durability). This is one of the magical benefits of SOM. Nice sharp weapons and polished armours!
- Get married. Do it mentally if you must!!
- Climb trees.
- Remake my game and change it to how you want it to be, then re release it without my consent. Just get rid of that idea right now if you have it.

Those are the more obvious ones at least.


Thanks alot for reading and supporting me, if you did.

It would save me alot of time if I could simply redo the game map icons. Does anyone know how to do this? I would make a 'sketched' appearance to make the in game map useable...

BTW I found the map_icon ...

Hey Tom,

Just relinked to your DoM page from the main page and noticed your pages on K-F.com are littered with ads now and were not before. ‎  If Martin's host has changed and you would like to migrate DoM to the SOM.com backend just let me know. ‎  I intend to keep this domain ad free etc.

Because there is no dash ability :sick[1]: You cant rush sideways, backwards or forwards. It seems that the monsters have perfect timing to hit you when you try to walk backwards. Especially those nasty canyon birds. You can occasionally dodge slower attacks, though. Am I missing something? Do I need a certain amount of points into a certain stat to dash?

I need people to make strange noises for my creatures! Ill post what creature noise is needed and just let your imagination run wild. Dont worry about doing anything seriously

If you decide to do a recording, please save it as a WAV file :)

Goblin
A cowardly goblin who revels in attacking humans.

I need...
An attack noise, a pained noise, and a very pained noise.

Big jaw monster
A strange creature that has an enormous mouth and lives in caves.

I need...
An attack noise, a pained noise, and a very pained noise.

A noble warrior
A noble warrior who is seeking a duel.

I need...
An attack noise, a pained noise, victory cry and a defeated cry.

A vile worm
A caterpillar-like creature with oily brown skin, attacks with its spikey tail.

I need...
An attack noise, a pained noise, and a very pained noise.

Its that time of year again, after Christmas when I go to visit my in-laws out of state for a week :) ‎  I have made a tradition over the past 5 years to pick a game I can put on one of my portable systems and go through it while I am there, and this year I have decided to make that game Shadow Tower. ‎  I swear that I will actually make it through the game this time, so I am loading it up tonight on my psp, familiarizing myself with the info on kings-field.neocities.org and getting psyched up to complete it...wish me luck!

Anyone else have odd holiday video game traditions?

Dunno if anyone else entered this, but I think you'd be able to use SoM!

If anyone isn't aware of what it is, it's a 48 hour challenge, where you have to create a game to the theme they supply!

You can find out more here: https://www.ludumdare.com/compo/

The theme this year was 'You only get one'. I entered, but I didn't use SoM, since it would be difficult to make a game in that theme with SoM... I dunno, you only get one earth herb? :P

You can check out what I did here: https://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-da...&uid=31753

I found this website today, it has some nice cartoons and possibly ‎  a rare render of TSOM

https://diasbagil.tumblr.com/

When making low-poly creature models for a game, it's easy to end up with a lot of blocky looking straight edges. This info is about how to make a fur-tuft texture that can hide some of those blocky straight lines and make a low poly model seem more detailed without gobbling up resources by going hi-poly.

This is from the user Verdite:

In GIMP there is a brush shaped like an 'x' so if you are using Paint Shop etc, maybe you can make an X shaped brush. Set a cubed selection with a black background in your texture, then set your opacity to about 10-20% and your pressure to 100% use only a white colour for this. This texture will use multiple layers, so paint the first layer using your x brush without letting go of the LMB, to create a frayed effect - I would suggest shaping your fur-tuft as a half oval shape. When you are happy let go of the LMB, and move to the next layer and make another row of fur just beneath your first row. Repeat procedure to the bottom, stepping down the rows as you go.

It should have made a nice layered effect. But it looks too symmetrical, so now you want to change your brush to a simple dot and ‎  increase the opacity. Paint lines to add variant hair strands. Going from one layer of hair to another is ok with a light opacity brush, but you should finish off with a higher opacity brush (35-40%) to get that harsh, wirey texture, and to merge the layers better.

For the final step, you need to select the hair and colorize it with whichever colour you want. I suggest a low saturation, low lightness colour at say hue:32, saturation:18, lightness:-40 Then use a medium lightness palette colour to add variance.

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Just an fyi, limited time steam sale for dark souls prepare to die edition (includes the oolacile expansion) on PC for $5.99 sale ends in like 15 hours.

https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/211420/

If anyone gets it let me know, I am always looking for friends to play with on PC or PS3 heh.