I think it's about time for another progress update. Before I continue though, I want to talk about 1.0, so we're all on the same page.
Over the past couple of months, we have hit some bumps when it comes to making progress and hitting certain marks that we wanted to make. This is making it tougher for us to be confident in releasing somewhere in August. We are still trying to figure out an ideal date, but right now I'm thinking late August or early September, but it's likely to be a bit longer than that.
That is pretty much all that needs to be said about that right now.
With that being said, let's talk about what we've been working on recently, and what we'll be working on next.
Layer 3
There are lot of moving parts going on behind the scenes with Layer 3, and fortunately with our volunteers who are helping, we're able to chip away at that with a decent pace.
Creatures
I'd like to introduce to you as many Layer 3 creatures as possible, but there may be a few that are not ready yet, or I might miss because I don't want this post to get too long.
(Water, Fire, Air) Elementals
Evil genies who shoot massive projectiles in various directions. Stay clear of them, as you might get caught up in the strong forces they produce.
Tomb Tapper
Does he tap your tomb? Maybe, we don't know enough about that.
What we do know is that he's creepy, and burps sludge balls out of its torso.
Mommy Dino and Baby Dino Stuck In Egg
Be careful around dinosaur eggs, you might anger the mommy.
Elf Mummy
Somehow, it has an unlimited supply of mummy wrap, which it slings at you in order to restrict movement.
(Normal and Fire) Cave Leech
They fly around like bats, but a lot more aggressive. They circle the player and then perform a fly-by bite attack. The red one creates dangerous trails of fire.
Medusa
A humanoid snake being with a dangerous stare, do not look it in the eyes. The medusa can also evade some of your attacks with a teleport spell.
Biomes
Our standard is that each Layer will have at least 9 biomes. This means that what you see here is not all of it, but this is what we have done so far.
I would also like to thank our friends, Corviid and Vecima, for helping to get the Layer 3 biomes set up.
Dungeons
While most of this update is about adding Layer 3, there are many parts of Layer 2 that need to be finished as well. So recently we've been working on adding boss dungeons for both Layer 2 and Layer 3. Dungeons now have procedurally generated layouts, just like Minecraft villages (for example). So now we get to focus on building individual dungeon rooms, hallways, junctions, etc.
I would like to thank our friend Yari for helping to build these structure pieces.
What's next for our work?
We have a few other things we are currently in the middle of finishing.
Most notably, we are in the middle of working on a new class of weapons, magic weapons!
As soon as we have something worth screenshotting, we'll definitely be showing it.
We are also looking to improve Steam Deck support. One issue was with not being able to use text fields (such as when creating your character's name) since no virtual keyboard would automatically be summoned. We are looking to fix that so a virtual keyboard will come up when you interact with text fields on Steam Deck.
We would also like to add some basic Steam achievements as well.
Another good thing to bring up as well would be the Layer 3 boss. I can't say much about that at the moment, but we do want to make something that really sets things apart from the cave troll and the beholder. I should also say that it will not be called the beholder in-game, we are going to give it a new name at some point, but that's the name we've been using when talking about it.
Plenty More To Come!
This is not all of what we are working on, just the highlights. But there are many other things coming down the pipeline that we can't wait to show all of you!
So thank you for reading!