Lair of the Leviathan

[Acrux]

Rusty can even make a prestigious monocled version of himself.

[Rand]

[Rand]

[Rand]

I'm not sure how many people remember the SSI Goldbox games? Those games had amazing battle sprite character customisation and as a spiritual successor of sorts we are determined to go to similar lengths in our game.

You will be able to edit your party members appearances at any times from a variety of options and more pieces will be unlocked as you find items and level up.

I think players will be able to really make each of their character feel different visually.

And to HAmorata, I have made a halberd option just for you.

[Rand]

[Rand]

**** off and die, Redditors!

[Tangerine]

**** off and die, Redditors!

Ask a Redditor to name 10 that play it straight and they'll get to three before going into subversive deconstructions.

[rusty_shackleford]

They'll get angry when you ask why the medieval fantasy game is full of interracial homosexual couples, stating it's obviously not meant to be medieval fantasy.

[DagothGeas5]

Hats off to Bob for his sacrifice
Those animations are beautiful, cannot wait for this game to be out (especially love there are drider abominations, that animation with what I assume is poison is so sick, I love it).

As for the Reddit idiots, I can't believe I used to browse that place with the thinking it was a place like this one where to get information, nothing but sifting through garbage to find a little smudge of biased nothings, so much so I almost forgot what normal discussion was like.

[Irenaeus]

These look so cool!

[Acrux]

The news about this game just keeps getting better and better. It turns out the Australian government denied them a grant. They are attribute that to the country not caring or understanding old skool games and only want to fund games with "a message". One more thing that makes me hopeful about this game.

We actually applied for some funding from the Australian Government ( who were handing out games grants last year ) and we were denied, despite our game having 19k wishlists and a proven trackrecord of games being sold in the past ( my S&S series ). In my opinion, our government is much more concerned with making artsy-fartsy games that don't sell. I think they just didn't understand our pitch at all.

So the $20k we asked for was going to be used for pixel art and extra music composition, but they turned us down. I actually planned to make another RPG early in 2024 before I met David, and was turned down by the government too - so I just think they don't like or understand RPGs, unless they're about koalas caring for trees or some such nonsense.

So, the one thing stopping us from really cool quest / lore illustrations is at this stage, simply just resources - ie, David. Since there's just two of us (I'm on coding , David on art and both of us on design/story) , David has to prioritise the best use of his time as far as art goes. Big pixel art illustrations are really time consuming , especially for scenes you only see once or twice - in the time it might take to create a cool quest image , you could get, say, 6 or 8 monsters created that can be used again and again.

The maddening thing is we would dearly love to have some big pixel art images in the game ( intro, endgame, key moments in the game ) if we can, and we want to try and do that a bit, but we thought we might be able to outsource a few of them to a talented pixel artist or two. We actually applied for some funding from the Australian Government ( who were handing out games grants last year ) and we were denied, despite our game having 19k wishlists and a proven trackrecord of games being sold in the past ( my S&S series ). In my opinion, our government is much more concerned with making artsy-fartsy games that don't sell. I think they just didn't understand our pitch at all.

So the $20k we asked for was going to be used for pixel art and extra music composition, but they turned us down. I actually planned to make another RPG early in 2024 before I met David, and was turned down by the government too - so I just think they don't like or understand RPGs, unless they're about koalas caring for trees or some such nonsense.

We will most likely use our own money to pay for this now of course - only fair as we believe in what we're doing, but it just sucks that we couldn't get a grant when we *know* this will be a more succesful game than the rubbish they like to fund.

Anyway, rant over . Can't wait to get started on the game when I can , still in holiday / kid duties mode!

[1998]

Should have just added a ****** for their grant pitch and drop it once the money is received.

[Acrux]

The conversation continues. I think this is the most non-woke game dev response I've seen outside of Cleve, mild as it is.

[Tweed]

I still really have my doubts about Godot's functionality.

EDIT: I wonder if these guys are using the base or the fork from the fallout.

[Rand]

[Rand]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... 8574830599

[Rand]

Confirmed that this game uses D&D 3e/Pathfinder derived system.
They're making a simpler, stripped-down version, but if you know either of those rules sets, you already understand the intricacies of the game rules and how to make characters.

[Roderick]

Added to the wishlist.

[Acrux]

New information about the inventory.

Hey @everyone, and welcome to new adventurers who have stumbled here from the *Swords and Sandals / Whiskeybarrel* Discord!

This is my first post in a while, its been school holidays with the kids the last 7 weeks ( long holiday break in Australia this year!) , but I've been able to keep some momentum going for *Lair of the Leviathan* by working on the inventory sytems in the game. I'd say things are about 80% complete in that regard. We can now create any item in the game from armour and weapons to potions, lockpicks and quest items, even books that can be read in-game.

These items can be assigned to players, NPCs and monsters as starting gear and / or lootable items.

What I'm working on right now is actually 'adding in' all these items into the database, as you can see in these pictures. I still haven't coded in the ability to equip/de-equip the items, and there will be a paperdoll to show you where each item resides on your hero too.

Once that system is done (not long away) , I'll add in all the various 'skills and powers' into the game, everything from walking to casting fireballs. This is all the precursor stuff to being able to get into the actual combat system proper, which should commence around March.

David has been doing a ton of portrait / figurine stuff so we now have dwarven portraits, female alternative pics, and a bunch of really cool new improved figurines. I have to add these into the game ( I've forgotten how I did it the first time haha!) but that's coming too.

As always, feel free to hit me up with any questions or suggestions for the game. The plan is to have a demo out before the end of this year, and we'll be working hard to make that happen!

Cheers, Oliver Joyce
Whiskeybarrel Studios

Yeah I'm going with a scrollable, sortable list. I played a bit of Moonring over the break and I found that to be a really clean, easy to navigate inventory system that I felt would work really well. Because the game also needs to be keyboard (and gamepad!) supported, I figured this was a good way to do things

[1998]

New update

[DagothGeas5]

New update

[Acrux]

Some new information on how the game's story will work. Basically, linear story but with options to get to each section.




Also, YSK that the guy asking the question is a libtard who was encouraging them to make sure there's a variety of non-Europeon faces for "BIPOC characters" and also says he is working on Mars Tactics (a not-very-good tactics game that is pro-communist).

[Rand]

the guy asking the question is a libtard who was encouraging them to make sure there's a variety of non-Europeon faces for "BIPOC characters"

These ******* gay race commie shits.

[DagothGeas5]

I have high hopes, but any interaction with the inclusivity people makes me worried. I hope everything will work out fine for this game

[Acrux]

They have never responded to anyone specifically about inclusivity. There are also a few vocal chuds in the server.

[Dorateen]

I'm curious about how the game will handle party creation. It's still a bit murky to me, a result of the design originally focused on developer premade characters. The last I heard, he said there are PreMades availble in the world that can be recruited, or the player can recruit and customize their own pre made characters? This still raises questions such as whether it is feasible for a player to assemble a full four character party from scratch right away, or if it is like paying for mercenaries in a tavern such as in pillars of eternity.

The risk I see is that the developer name drops the Gold Box games a lot, to the point that I read recently this would be less like Baldurs Gate and more like the Gold Box games. But those adventures were built around the concept of a player generated party that could hire other NPCs, or story-related companions might join.

Still keeping an eye on this.

[Acrux]

Steam news update today. Nothing new for those who have been following it closely, though.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/?em ... 3008488592

Greetings, mighty dungeon crawlers!

Been a while since our last update but David (from Nostaglic Realms) and I have been powering away hard at work on Lair of the Leviathan. It goes without saying that this is easily the biggest thing either of us have worked on ( and I've built over 10 games for Steam already!) , but honestly this is also the most fun I've ever had working on a project.





The more we build the game, the more we realise it's shaping up to be basically our own version of the classic Gold Box D&D games from the 90s. We loved those games so much - but naturally they have aged, and have their own annoyances. We're basically trying to pay homage to them, but also remove a lot of the tedium ( all those random encounters and clunky 3D maps, gone !) , while keeping true to the spirit of the era. There's also hints of Darklands, Ultima, Knights of Legend in there. All the stuff we loved growing up.


My good friend Anders Lauridsen ( developer of Skald : Against the Black Priory ) has been a great supporter of the game, and in our conversations has given me tons of advice in how to program a successful RPG. The major thing he stressed upon me was this : make good tools! . Building deep game editors is an investment in itself, it takes time, but when you're building a huge game, if you have a good toolset , this investment will pay off tenfold later.


With that in mind, I've spent almost all of my time on the project building a massive suite of editor tools for David and I to use ( and down the road, hopefully to make the game moddable for anyone to create their own adventures using the same built-in tools that we do, something akin to the classic Forgotten Reams Unlimited Adventures editor of so long ago.


I've shown off some of these tools in earlier posts ( the character creator and overland map ), the most powerful and central to the game so far being the Encounter Editor. From here you can create conversations, trigger party members to enter and leave, play sound and music, enter towns and so much more.




I've show that editor off before, so today I wanted to show off a few others today and let you know where we are at with the game right now. First up, the Dungeon Editor - where our heroes explore the dark paths of the world in search of treasure and experience.




Aside from the combat itself, dungeon crawling is the largest single component of the game, so I knew I had to do it properly. Since David and I will be making a lot of maps for the game, the map editor has to be relatively easy to use, so I've spent a lot of time making that happen.



The core concept of the Dungeon Editor is making rooms and other props. The dungeon can be put together largely just dragging and dropping these rooms using the mouse. Handles allow us to grow and shrink walls and floors, and even move the whole room around itself. It's not using a traditional tile editor so it's much more flexible for editing on the fly.

We can drag lights into the scene, adjust wall and floor lengths with draggable handles, even add decals like blood splatters, broken debris and loose tiles easily. Lights can be adjusted and cast shadows, props are automatically Z sorted so they appear above and behind characters, and rooms can be moved around the dungeon easily. Doors open and close, and rooms are cloaked in dark shadows which reveal when the party enters, and more.

The best part about the dungeon editor is that encounters can be placed very easily, so we can create everything from simple conversation triggers between the party , right through to full scale battles. This same encounter system can also be used with the overworld editor - so its extremely flexible.


I've also just wrapped up the Monster Editor ( and its sub-editor, the Creature Editor! )




The Creature Editor represents the various archetypes a monster can belong to, everything from Humanoids to Animals right through to Magical Beasts and Dragons. These architects can be assigned immunities, resistances, weaknesses and so on - even setting the creature's general size, from tiny to gargantuan. This is largely based on the Pathfinder / D&D systems , but we'll mix things up to make them better suited to the game itself - I don't want to get too bogged down in the more complicated elements of those systems. We want to reflect the 'heart' of the game but not the tedium of the mechanics ( no encumbrance! )


When we create a monster, we choose it from a base creature archetype to base it on. So, I can create a Green Dragon, based on the Dragon archetype, and it will have all of the hallmarks of a dragon - but I could then set the size to gargantuan to make it an even bigger dragon. I can then give it special creature traits like Incorporeal to make it a ghost green dragon that can only be hit by magic weapons!


You can select an animation for the monster from one of the premade ones we've created, or even import your own images to create your own from scratch. Like all other editors, I want to make it so you can customize almost everything.


Aside from these editors themselves, I've also been working on the actual game mechanics of the dungeon. The party can now move around with full pathfinding. The party formation shrinks when in tight spaces and spreads out again when there is room. You can open and close doors with a radial mouse menu ( and this will be the basis for all interaction , everything is also fully keyboard or gamepad selectable too ).


Character sheets are fully working, as are inventory systems - see below, you can equip your heroes with a ton of great gear. Who doesn't love a Fustibalus!




With the monsters now in-game, my focus this week will turn to combat itself. I can finally put all those crazy bit of data to use ! This is a massive part of the game and I can't wait to finally get stuck into it. I estimate it's easily 3 months work before I have something to show off combat related , but once that is in place, that represents most of the engine work. We can then start on building a short demo to show off - either in time for late this year or early next year.


David's been hard at work creating the fully customizable figurines and portraits for the game ( honestly there is so much variety even now ) . He's also been designing the fully animated monsters, from goblin skirmishers to massive snake headed terrors. His pet project though is the wonderful overworld map, which is looking better than ever. David's dropped in all manner of new locations to explore, from haunted towers to abandon mineshafts and other secrets - and this is just the starter area for the game!




This has been a bit of a mega-post but there's been so much to show off, I feel like I haven't even covered it all. Really encouraged and inspired by everyone's enthusiasm for the game so far - you guys fully motivate us to keep forging ahead.


Let us know what you think of what's been going on so far and anything you want clarified, or want to see in the game as we move into year two of development. Grand adventures await!


Cheers, Oliver Joyce and David Aron

Whiskeybarrel Studios and Nostalgic Realms

[Rand]

[Rand]

[Kalarion]

I don't like the mixture of bit tunes and orchestral tracks. Hopefully that was just a thing for the trailer.