Good day!

Today we will talk about the following things: readability, inventory, movement and loss of loot, automatic fortress's level generator

Readability

Once, launching our build, I found that when all our elements are painted separately, they are done well, but as soon as I see them together - they do not look good enough, everything is dark and so on and so on. Excited, I turned to a pair of game artists for advice and a request to help solve this problem. One of them, the artist of the game Stoneshard, Hope42morrow, immediately indicated that we do not have readability and the whole image is "merges." He quickly translated the image into the black and white and showed it all clearly:

And now look at the details:

On the first small screen, a plumphelmet mushroom, but it is difficult to recognize it;

on the second, our dwarf, he has incomprehensible armor and weapons;

and on the third small screen, there is moss on the floor, but you can't tell right away :)

In general, the awareness of our worthlessness quickly struck us and we spent the whole evening thinking, arguing and discussing development options. The solution was found - this is a simplification of the form and number of colors, plus playing with tone and adding a stroke.

We have so far decided to leave the caves for revision because additional gameplay problems have appeared with them. And the result of processing for better readability, you can admire here:

All dwarves, clothing / armor for them, weapons, surroundings, floor loot and enemies were completely redrawn. As you can see, on this screen you can clearly distinguish what the dwarves and their enemies are wearing and what they are armed with, the edges of the walls, the exit and the floor of the location are clearly visible.

Inventory, movement and loss of loot

Designing the interface is another problem. It is necessary that all elements are combined, understandable, convenient and accessible.

That is why we forgot about all these things and went to look for examples on the Internet.

All variants are still test ones and may contain elements familiar to everyone:

We have come to the conclusion that for the time being, we like models 4 and 5 more and will refine them further.

And here's a gif with loot dropping (prototype):

Fortress Level Generator

That month, after solving problems with readability, we work hard with the level of an abandoned fortress. We initially went on a difficult path, adding 2 types of walls: internal and external. After all, it was so aesthetically beautiful (maybe this will still be additional problems later).

A couple of examples of the work of the automatic underground generator:

The option is certainly not final, because we have a group of heroes that can consist of one to four dwarves, so we need extensive rooms and wide corridors to fight with the population of the fortress.

There are the horrors that our programmer had to face when coding a generator:

Other

These cool traps drawed by Avedak:

If you have not seen a small scene in the fortress, then keep it:

This month was really difficult and intense, a lot of disputes and alterations significantly demotivates to do something further and come up with something new, but when you sit down and start reworking (and your eyes may hurt), and then you look at the final result, you realize that all this is done for the better and not in vain. Sooner or later I will allocate a place in the devblog and will compare some elements of what has been/has become. I think it will be fun.

I want to express my deep gratitude to our team, which, even having difficulty with having personal time, continues to offer solutions for various problems, advises various options, sometimes gritting his teeth with tinkering with some elements. Thank you guys, you are the best!

And of course, thanks to our patrons and viewers for your support, comments and suggestions!

We will be happy for your comments, just do not forget to show a page with our game to your friends!

P.S .: All new patrons get access to the closed chatroom in the discord, where you can see different things before everyone else and discuss them with us