Its been a while! A combination of work, summer events among other things have taken its toll on the development of Arena Warriors. Fear not though, we are extremely close to the initial release at this point and we are still on course to release the game sometime this summer. 

What is done:

• Pathfinding/aggression radius for AI is done
• Molten Beast AI is done
• Most of the basic menu stuff

What needs to be done:

• Some UI polish/finalization
• Small balance/testing changes
• Mountain Wormdrake
• Integration Kongregate API

Once we are looking to release the first version i come with some more updates.

Hey, Markus here. We have been quiet for a while so i wanted to give a small update.

We are currently working on making the enemy interactions more interesting and creating a more fluid combat system. One of the first things we are currently exploring is adjusting knockback the player experience from monster attacks. 

What we hope this accomplish.

1. Less enemy clumping around the player.
2. Larger feeling of impact on certain special moves.

At the same time we are also continuing our work on the enemy AI creating the different patterns as well as giving the system an overhaul as a whole.

• The Spiritmancer, Crystalos and Molten Beast are more or less all done, some work still remain on the Mountain Wormdrake.
• We have added a delay between the enemy attacks leaving them open for a counter attack from the player and allowing the player to evade and punish the monsters if they play well. Special moves, especially those with an area of effect damage has a larger delay after they have been used.

We will be bringing more specific details on this as we keep working on it. For now we hope you enjoyed this small update and hope to bring you more details in the time to come. Have a good weekend!

Over the past week Niklas has been working on the Spritimancer AI more or less completing it. Some fine tuning is probably required, but its getting there. This leaves the Mountain Wormdrake as and Molten Beast as the last planned enemies before we polish and get ready to create a teaser video for the game. 

After having all our enemies and classes ready the most important thing is to nail the combat feeling as well as balancing the wave spawns. Once the gameplay feels right the most crucial component still remaining is the interface. As long as it is intuitive and simple to use chances are we can publish the first version on Kongregate to test the waters. More additonal monsters and other potential content is something that comes later depending on how it goes.

To be honest creating logos is not my strongest suit, but i have spent some time this weekend trying to put something together so we have something clear to market our game with. This is how it looks right now.(There are some alternative versions as well)

Today i completed the final animations for the Molten Beast including the Tail attack as well as the fire effect the attack spawns.

Thats it for us this weeks update, we be back next friday! Have a good weekend!

Finally! Its been a while since we had something to share.  The past couple of weeks have been rather hectic for both of us, so things have been moving rather slowly. 

As discussed last week we want to spend some ekstra time on enemy design and AI patterns to add more depth to the fighting system, it is after THE core part of our game. For starters that involves creating the movement and attack patterns for the Spiritmancer and the Mountain Wormdrake. We have started the work on it, but it is still something that needs a lot more polish, so for now we dont have much that can be shown graphically. For a basic introduction on our plans for the two mentioned monsters read our previous dev blog. Link

Although the programing and design of the game is lagging behind the art at this point it still needs to be done. So with that in mind i continued making Pixel Art when i had time starting with the Molten Beast creature that we showed concept art of our pre easter dev blog update.

Basic facts about the Molten Beast.

• S Class Monster
• High HP
• Weak basic attacks, Powerfull but slow pattern based attacks

One of the slower, but heavy attacks is a head smash where he crushes the stone on his head into the ground.

The other attack the Molten Beast will possess is a move where he sticks his tail in the ground behind him with fires erupting in 3 directions from the tail. The animation for that one is not yet ready, but should be shortly.

Thats it for this week, we will be back next week with more updates!

Its been a couple of weeks since last time, but since easter break is over its time to get back into the weekly dev blog!

First of lets go through where we currently stand.

1. All of the 4 classes are more or less playable in game. The exception being the Warrior of Light who still needs to get all of his abilities in working order.
2. We have a rather broad selection of enemies.
3. Base arena, interface and mechanics are in place.

What we lack at the moment(Outside of Kongregate functionality which has not been added yet, but will be ported from Stay Alive), are more enemies with advanced attack patterns. What do i mean by this? Well simply put, its enemies with more varied interactions besides moving and attacking the player. The fighting system is something we want to prioritize in this game as its a very important part of the core gameplay. This does not only count for the player, their character and their abilities, but also in how the enemies approach and interact with the player. For an example of what we are working on, lets go throught he Mountain Wormdrake enemy i did concept art for a few weeks back.

Basic facts

• S tier enemy
• Medium HP
• Some strong, some medium damage attacks
• Has 3 states: Flying, On ground, Burrowed

Basicly the Wormdrake has 3 basic states that all have their own telegraphed attacks, strenght and weaknesses. 
​

• Flying

In the flying state the Wormdrake will soar above the player leaving only a shadow below him. By looking at the shadow you can spot incoming attacks. In this state the player and Wormdrake does not interact with each other. In this state the Wormdrake can transition into both on ground mode or burrowed.

• On ground

When it is on the ground the player has the ability to attack the Wormdrake dealing damage. At the same time the Wormdrake can charge the player dealing damage if it hits. Again it is possible for the wormdrake to transition between both flying and burrowed states depending on the moves it make.

• Burrowed

In the burrowed state the Wormdrake moves under ground. Again the player can not harm the Wormdrake, but the Wormdrake will be able to hurt the player if the player gets to close. 

By having different phases the player must go through alternating between being agressive and defensive we are hoping to create more interesting gameplay then what you normal braindead enemy will provide. Off course this does not only apply to the Wormdrake, this is something we are hoping to do with more enemies along the way to create variation in our gameplay. Outside of the Wormdrake we also have the Storm Giant that spawns tornados, and we are hoping to create some dynamic gameplay with the Spiritmancer as well, alternating between homing fires and calling on the undead for help.

​Due to the complexity of these new interactions implementing the new enemies might take a bit more time than what has previously been the case. Regardless, after the Spiritmancer and Wormdrake are working as we want them too we plan on releasing a teaser video to showcase the game as well as a demo for those that want it. How we are planning on releasing the latter is still in the works.

We hope you enjoyed this weeks update and may you have a nice weekend! See you in a week!

Its friday once again, lets get the spring break update rolling!

After doing a bunch of concept art and designing different type of enemies last week we decided on the Spiritmancer as the first enemy to be implemented into the game.(A personal favorite of mine)

Some Spiritmancer facts(In its current iteration)

Spiritmancers are ghost of powerful mages that wield dark magic to vanquish all who disturbs them. 

• A tier monster
• Low HP
• High Damage ranged attack
• Can fly freely and teleport

• Time limited homing attack

When attacking the Spiritmancer calls upon the flames of its lantern that will seek the player for a limited amount of time.

The Spiritmancer defends itself by calling up on the undead. Undead facts:

• High HP
• Low Damage
• Slow movement

After today we will be having a week off. This does however not neccesarily mean that there wont be any progress on the game. On the contrary because we dont have other obligations like work etc, we might actually be able to get a decent amount done this week. There wont be update coming next friday though, just a heads up.

With that out of the way. We hope you have a good weekend and a nice easter! 

Its finally friday again! After another busy week we are back with a new blog post! This week i spent most of my time thinking up new enemy concepts and after creating and trashing several ideas these are remainders that probably will make it into the game.

The first concept is one i begun on last week. The molten beast prowles ash filled wastelands and volcano summit for preys. It has a large rock like formation at the top of its head it uses to bludgeon foes to death.

• S Class
• High HP
• Strong Attack, but slow and predictable.
• Normal attack with claws, special attack where it smashes it heads shaking a large area around it.

Currently the Shadow Stalker and Hunter are playable in-game which leaves the Warrior of Light and Mage remaning. One of them should be done by the end of this weekend, both if we are lucky. With Niklas in a full time job its hard for the coding to keep up with the rest of the game, something we both hope you understand. 

As we progress we can hopefully show some more gameplay than some simple gifs. Until then we hope these blogs give you sufficent insight as to what we are working on and our current situation. Until next week!

The past week has been a hectic one for the two of us at Twin Creation Games. From wedensday to saturday me(Markus)was covering the Intel Extreme Master Katowice Starcraft 2 tournament in Norwegian, something that ended up taking 10-12 hours each day! Because of this the update is late and rather small this week.

The monster concept for our game Arena Warriors have been taken from our mobile game Bestiary Exam for Android. Unfortunatly the game in its current state do have a rather small selection of large very powerful monsters leading to a lack of S tier monsters or boss ideas for our game. Because of this i have started making some new monster concepts that can be used not only in this title, but for upcomming game ideas as well.(We have some stuff planned) Here is a sneakpeek.

On the programming side of things the time have mostly gone this week to fixing bugs in enemy pathing or handling of wave spawning that were making it harder to test the game than desireable. 

Thats it for this weeks update! Next week we should have some more stuff to show off!

Last week we had to drop the weekly blog due to personal reasons, but this week we are once again back at it with another update!

The past two weeks have mainly been spent on trying to get rest of the characters playable in game to get a sense of balance and how the classes feel compared to each other.(The wave system is up and running) 

First of we managed to implement the Hunter working into the game making 2 of the 4 classes currently playable.

Second i have gotten most of the art out of the way for the mage class. After struggling a bit with how i wanted to do him i decided to start out by making the spells/particle effects for the class. The mage is after all a very ability effect heavy class with abilities such as Inferno(Which also needs a burning status), Ice Cage, Healing Barrier and a ranged attack that needs to feel like its magic.

Overall i think they turned out rather well. The biggest challenge with these abilities(As of yet) is the burning status. Due to the difference in monster size having a one size fits all is basicly impossible. With this in mind the plan going forward is to scale it for each monster(Dynamicly if possible) so that it fits. We are also planning on having it slightly transparent so it dosent block any crucial information such as the monster animations etc.

After doing most of the particle effects i figured i would move on to actually creating the character. Compared to the ability effects it is a bit rushed, but he does finally have a proper spritesheet! Hopefully we can get him in the game with the other classes(As well as the Warrior of Light) so we can get a feel for the game and classes!

With our previous game release, Stay Alive we included local multiplayer as an option so that players could enjoy the game with a friend. During the playtest this was by far the most popular option in terms of game enjoyment(Both at spillexpo and outside of it), but despite this close to no one played multiplayer when we released the game on Kongregate. With this in mind it would seem that local multiplayer is not something that the players of Kongregate really care for. Because of this something we are considering at the moment is to only have online Kongregate based multiplayer or to drop it entirely. Considering the difficulty of implementing a proper control scheme for 2 players on keyboard(Especially with 4 abilities) this would save us a lot of hassle. At the same time though we really do like being able to enjoy games with your friends and thus would very much like to offer a multiplayer experience as well as a singleplayer one.

More updates and thoughts as well as the final decision on this matter is something we will have to come back on in the future. We just wanted air our thoughts at the current point in time.

Phew! That was quite the blog! That is going to be it for this weeks weekly update. We will be back with more next friday so make sure to pay this blogpage a visit then!

PS: We will come back to making a new demo for people to test, just need some more time!

As i struggle with the Mage design i decided to shift focus over the interface of the game. When we first showed of our demo on Spillexpo last year(November) we discovered a lot of people struggled with understanding the different abilities and attacks. Since then it has been on our to do list, but has taken the backseat from everything else until now. With hopefully a new demo up and running in the near future it is time to take another look at the games usability and  interface.

Whenever an enemy or the player takes damage one can see that the health bar goes downwards indiciating that they had less hp than before. At first glance one might think this is enough to keep the player updated while he is playing. This is something that has eventually been proven wrong and is why we as well as other games such as the Zelda games have a small red flash whenever someone takes damage for a clearer visual effect.

But what about when they gain health? In Arena Warriors each class have atleast 1 ability that restores their hp. But without knowing the game and its mechanics when you first play it some of these abilities can be confusing as to what they actually do if you dont pay a lot of attention to it. To solve this we have decided to add a healing particle effect that appears on the player whenever their hp is going upwards regardless of cause. It is also universal for all the characters adding consistency to the visual cues of the game. As for the color we decided to go with green as it is used mostly as a positive color in iconography and in games often have connection with the health of the player.(With red often being bad)

Some of the same ideas have been transfered to the ability icons as we ideally want a coherent interface as possible. A good example of this is in the Carve Meat icon for the Hunter Class. The Carve Meat ability deals damage to enemies in melee range healing the hunter in the process. As such we included the knife stabbing a piece of meat with green particles around it with a green arrow pointing upwards to hint that health increases/goes upward. 

Naturally the ability icons are just a part of the interface and overall usability of the game. As we move forward we are hoping to able to apply these principle accross the game ranging from the class abilities to other parts of the interface never having the player questioning how to play the game. One idea could be to add a larger health bar for the player relocating to the top left corner of the screen as a lot of other games do it. At the same time we want to keep the size of the interface as minimal as possible leaving us to balance the pros and cons before making a final decision. 

More ability icons designed this week(Not all of them are complete!)

Having a solid interface is one of the most important things one can do to make sure people stick with your game and as such it is something we will strive to improve as we work toward the final release. That is going to be it for this weeks update. Tune in next friday for more updates!