The Kristala Year-End Dev Blog - Issue #8
Welcome back to the Kristala dev blog! We're so happy you're here, because this week we're servin' up an extra-special, year-end dev blog celebration packed with a ton of content and development updates.
At the beginning of 2019, development for Kristala was still in its infancy, and we never could've imagined how much the project would grow and transform in the coming year. We look fondly back on the past 12 months...a year of celebration, creation, and imagination.
Not only did we present a special convention build for Kristala at Play NYC (our first con!), we also revamped and refined our entire art style, level design, and overall storyline. It's certainly been an exciting journey, and honestly...we couldn't have done it without you.
So, in honor of your continued dedication and support for our team and this incredible project, we're ringing in 2020 with a super-juicy, jam-packed dev blog as we count down to the official release of our demo, which will be available to you soon on itch.io and Steam.
As always, we invite you to join the conversation and let us know what you think about our year-end development updates.
Programming
Things have been a bit quiet on the programming front while we wait to get our new main character fully rigged up, animated, and brought into our game build, but Will has still been busy on the backend making some important updates.
Most recently, Will took the components of our updated main character's model and used them to build the character in-game. This allowed him to then set up the programming to properly build out the character’s body as equipment when starting the game.
Next step is for Will to integrate the equipment and inventory menus into the normal pause menu to add an emote, along with some slight improvements. This allows the player character's body parts to be equipped to her upon start of game, and to be auto-equipped when necessary.
Additionally, the damage system is now finalized so that all enemies properly inflict damage and the combat is functioning as it should be.
In celebration of the New Year, we thought we'd take a look back at this log Will recorded when implementing our Sarulu enemy, formerly known as the Lacodon, which you'll hear it described as in this walkthrough:
Character Design
Although Kieran finished up his revisions on a few of the armor sets you’ll find in the demo, we never really got a chance to show you an accurate, in-depth look at the finished products.
Here’s a peek into the modeling process for the updated Ancient Angler armor set, plus some close-up shots of the Nisargan starting armor set too.
This week, Nick worked on giving the Nisargan great sword a bit of a facelift. Not only did he retexture it to make it match the aesthetic of the rest of our updated weapons, but he also reapplied the updated Nisargan clan crest below the hilt of the sword.
You can get a better look at the updated clan crest further along in this dev blog issue, but for now, check out the sword's updates and let us know what you think of the changes.
In addition to the updates to our great sword, Nick has also been hard at work behind the scenes creating us some custom assets to add detail to our levels. We haven't shared them with you yet, so we figured we'd give you a little taste of some of them now.
We're so pumped to be able to utilize these in-game; they'll really help us set the exact tone and mood that we're going for in our demo level. Check it out!
Last week, we showed you the model for our spider enemy that Bianca's been working on. This week, she started texturing and coloring the model, and will continue to move forward with that over the coming weeks.
Bianca's next project will be to create all the custom icons we'll be using in our UI menu system, with the help of our marketing guru, Sarah. We'll have updates on those very soon, but for now, check out the progress made on our eight-legged fiend.
What do you think of his progress so far? Let us know in the comments below.
Environmental Design
Cass continues to model out a few stone buildings that will be used throughout the entirety of Kristala. We shared the model and textures for the first stone house last week, but he's made a few more updates since then.
Cass wanted to make the house match better with our boggy, swamp environment, so this week he added a bunch of mossy texturing to the stonework and roofing.
With the first house completed, Cass now moves forward on modeling and texturing a second stone building. Here's a look at the start of the second building, and stay tuned for shots of its completed model in our next dev blog issue.
Level Design
This week, Tiffany finished detailing out the second water village featured in the Kristala Dalamase demo level. She also added some additional detailing to the Blight Shield Village and created some landscape details that will be used throughout the entirety of the game, like the beautiful mountainscape pictured below.
As we round out everything needed for the demo, Tiff will now shift her focus to mapping out the next few levels we'll be tackling. Stay tuned!
While Tiff focused on landscapes and atmosphere, Joe was finishing up all the detailing in the Dalamase sub levels, decorating the in-between pathways and backgrounds with some of Nick's custom assets.
Joe has also now officially finished adding detail to the village area for our demo boss, as well as the mortuary house and graveyard areas.
Here’s a closer look at some of Joe’s work from this week.
Animation / Rigging
This week, Allie brought our new character model into the game build and wired her with our existing animations. Upon further inspection, however, it appeared our old animations weren't working properly with the new model, so now Allie has been working tirelessly to create a bunch of new animations for our demo.
In addition to the new moves, Allie has been applying some facial animations that allow our character to properly emote and blink.
Here's a look at some of Allie's updates. Let us know what you think!
Sound Design
We haven't shared much Soundtrack information with you yet, so we figured our first post of 2020 was a good time to introduce you to what our Sound Designer, Lateo, has been up to.
This week, he finished up the mini-boss theme for our Masarusa mushroom boss, titled "Mycotic Menace". Check it out and let us know what you think.
You can hear the rest of Lateo's music that will be featured in Kristala by checking out our Soundcloud page. Be sure to follow us so you can hear the revamped swamp theme Lateo's currently finishing up.
Concept Design
In addition to giving our Nisargan clan crest a a bit of an overhaul, l_aciel has been working on some concepts for one of our very important NPC’s.
We’re keeping this character's identity and purpose in-game a secret for now, but here’s a peek into l_aciel's process for concepting out new designs for our 3D modelers.
In addition to l_aciel's incredible talent, we also recently added a second concept artist, Michael (hailing all the way from Russia!), to our team.
Michael's main focus thus far has been focusing on our Kotakayan characters.
His first task was to create the concept for a sweet little Kotakayan NPC named Gustav Gondasa, who is much more of a friend than a foe. Gustav is actually pretty famous outside the world of Kristala as his overall concept is based on this real-life Instagram mouster (also named Gustav)!
The best part about Michael’s addition to our team is that he brings a wide-ranging talent with him. It's clear that he can handle cute and cuddly (see Gustav for proof), but he’s also now trying his hand at rugged and scary as he concepts out some Kotakayan warrior enemies for our character modelers to work from.
The rat warriors are still a work in progress, but we figured we’d give you a sneak peek at where Michael's at in progress.
We hope you enjoyed this content-caked New Year's edition of the Kristala dev blog. What a year it's been! We're so thankful and blessed to be able to do what we love on a daily basis, and we truly couldn't do it without your support.
As we move into 2020, we look forward to finally bringing the world of Kristala to life in our demo, which will be available to you very soon.
Be sure to follow us on our socials to stay in-the-know about all our exciting updates coming down the line. You can also join our Discord community for even more juicy dev deets.
Until next time, we'll leave you with a little blooper featuring our new main character equipped with our old running animation. If you ever wondered what an Anagativa looked like riding an imaginary horse...we've got you covered. ;)
HAPPY NEW YEAR, FRIENDS!
