Hey everyone, welcome to the first Developer Update for 2018!
We're going to be talking about a few things today, including our recent post about scope, a new addition to the team, updates to the combat, and more.
There are lots of screenshots and gifs for you today, so let's get right into it!
Post about Scope
We recently made a post talking about the scope of the project, which we highly recommend that you check out here.
In short, it talks about how we're lowering scope in terms of how many Kingdoms we'll be releasing.
New Programmer
We finally have a new programmer- please welcome Hock to the team! He'll be helping us with Gameplay and AI, and we're super stoked to have him on board creating Blades!
New Additions to Combat
We're close to the release of the Combat Module. We're currently implementing the final mechanics and features. Recently we added in hit reactions, buffs like Fiery, and environment clashing.
Physical Materials
This is a minor addition that will help us develop many other features. We've set up physical materials in the engine, which will help us set up which parts of the map are made of stone, wood, metal, etc.
Physical Materials will allow us to have different footstep sounds, environment clash sounds, and much more depending on the surface material.
New Main Menu
Our past Main Menu was a little boring, so we spiced it up with an all-new environment created specifically for the start screen.
What could be lurking in this dungeon?
Chatbox
We finally got a chat box in the Combat Demo, so feel free to talk with your friends (or enemies) in-game.
That's it for this month's devblog, thank you for all the continued support! Next month will be even more exciting!
As a fellow developer I understand and support the tightening of the project's scope.
However, I was wondering about the long term plan.
For me, the best thing about SAO was an co-op dungeon crawling experience focused on PVE.
Progression in the anime is based on equipment and earned skills.
Mix in some weird creature mobs and some terrifying non-human bosses and that is SAO to me.
Will the final game look anything like that?
The Labyrinth will definitely feel like a dungeon crawling experience in a sense, however, in the open-world it'll feel a little more like Skyrim/Dark Souls, where you can explore and complete quests, level up and gain more gear with the additions of some PvP, etc.
We still have a lot more to experiment with in the final game, so some things may change overtime!
Welcome Hock! Excited to see the progress of this.