Meet the newest member of the Faith of the Guardians-family. The cute little 'Swarmer'.
One of the weaker units of the game, the Swarmer is easily dealt with when encountered alone, but can be quite a challenge when encountered in numbers. Especially if they have been whipped into a bloodthirsty fervor by the higher-level Brawlers, that often accompany them in the arena.
The Swarmer and the BetaDwarf team wishes you all a happy weekend with lots of gaming. Talk to you soon!
/ The BetaDwarf-team.
What a week!
After guzzling through gallons of coffee, cola, red bull and a plethora of other caffeine or sugar based beverages, we are finally near the end of our 'Week of Crunch'.
We have been more people than ever at Dwarf Central, topping out at 18 persons, digging in for the weeklong siege of bugs, glitches and missing textures. But luckily it's looks like we are making progress.
We also had our musician Fredrik come and stay with us. He (and his two stuffed animals) have been hammering away on the keyboard down in the basement all week long, coming up with music that fits the game.
Aiming for a more gritty and barebones musical style, than the classic epic fantasy choir and strings, Fredriks music is more tribal and percussion-heavy than what you normally hear. But it still retains a fair taste of epic fantasy, to strike a balance between the two.
Fredrik has created a different orchestration for the different locations in the game, so you will be able to hear the same musical motifs repeated thorughout the game, but with different instruments depending on where your character is. We think it's pretty cool :-)
Lucky for us all, our resident master of the dwarves guild of video documentation Anchel was the to document it all!
Remember those boring particles from your physics and chemistry lessons? Yeah, dead boring little critters, too small to be seen with the naked eye. Not so with the particles we are putting into our game!
Particle effects, for those who don’t know, is a term for all the cool little effects, that are made up of a number of small…..yeah, particles. Smoke, magical glimmer, explosions, flashes etc. All those nifty little things that really make a world come alive and look vibrant and inviting.
That’s why our art-dwarf Alexander has been hard at work the last week, overhauling our particle system, so we can have our game world look as exciting and fun as possible.
Here’s a sneak peak of the cool looks of one of the new abilities we have implemented. Oh – We haven’t told you about that yet, have we? Well, have patience, and I’m sure we’ll get to it. For now, just admire the nice particle effects :-)
Hey! - Look at our new office.
We can hardly contain our joy over our new offices. Lots of space and light, a dishwasher and refrigerators that can actually close when you want them to.
Take the tour of our new premises, presented by head-dwarf and CEO Steffen, in true MTV Cribs-style.
And you might also just get a glimpse of the new level we are working on right now :-)
A big Huzzah! and mighty dwarrf salutes to the winners of our alpha-test competition.
Here's Mikkel and Kasper at our new offices, getting a set of Betadwarf t-shirts handed to them by coder-dwarf Kristian.
Such is the sweet life, for those talented enought to win the alpha-test competition.
Hello and welcome to the (hopefully now) weekly Beta Dwarf blog on everything dwarf and video game related.
It seems like yesterday, but the truth is, that on the 31st of January, BetaDwarf will be one year old. Since it’s really hard to distribute a birthday cake via the internet, we have instead chosen to release a whole playable arena-level of our upcoming Faith of the Guardians. And since this is our birthday, there will be prizes for the players that rank up the best score, over the next two weeks.
In our ‘Game Slice’, you will have the opportunity to play together with a friend in one of the many arenas of the game, where you will be facing Bonelings, Swarmers, Ossmancers and many other hideous enemies, that can only be defeated through cooperation on clever tactics, to try and achieve the best score, before the competition ends on February 10th.
The ‘Slice’ has one whole level (arena) with 12 unique challenges, 4 player classes og 7 different enemies. And the couple that completes all the challenges in the shortest time before the deadline on February 13th, will receive 2 copies of the final game, when it is released, plus a little extra goodies, that we won’t disclose just yet.
2012 is getting serious, and we’re getting closer to launching our next playable part of the game in this weeks update on BetaDwarf.
Welcome to this weeks blogpost ! First and foremost, sorry for not getting updates out for the last two weeks. Technical issues came about, and put a stop to our updates, but now we are back in full blogging force.
In this first entry, focus is put on our unique gameplay mechanic The Orb.
If there is something you would like me to feature in the next entry, let me know in the comments below and it might just happen.
Feature of The Guardians
This is it, the bi-monthly feature focusing on a specific game aspect. As mentioned before, focus is on the orb, the big gameplay hook for Faith of the Guardians.
The Orb is a central gameplay mechanic, as it allows you to unleash it’s destructive powers during gameplay. Each player can equip their own unique Orb power, and use them alone or together with a partner.
Some of the cooler aspects of the Orb is how it plays into our co-op gameplay. For example the Shield Character (relax, it’s not his final name yet), can take direct control of the Orb, and guide it around the screen (with the caveat that you can no longer move your character while doing so).
When the Orb is flying around, the other player can activate his Orb power and do some serious damage to enemies.
To illustrate some of the cool co-op stuff, we recorded some video from our current build of the game. In the video below, me and Kristian Klie from the team is playing the game. Kristian is playing the Shield class, and I’m playing the Archer class.
To set it up, we run into a one-entry area, where Kristian takes control of the Orb and flies it around, while doing so I use my Orb power of fire, to create a firewall that stops the enemies in their tracks and burns them alive (fun!).
The firewall is a pretty important tool, since it allows us to push the enemies back, and for me to use my terrible bow abilities to kill some enemies at a distance.
Another example of the co-op power structure is with the use of the Blink power. In this video, Kristian has taken control of the “Hammer Guy”, while I’m checking out the “Claw Guy” (also not final names).
The Hammer is capable of throwing the Orb, making it possible to send it across barriers and similar places not easy to get to. We combine this with the Blink ability of the Claw Guy, that makes him teleport instantly to where the Orb is, allowing for some quick getaways and some brutal surprise attacks.
The latter is the focus of this video below, we spot a enemy behind fortifications, and Kristian sends the orb away, while I blink over to it and deal some stabby-stab-stab damage to the enemy:
http://www.youtube.com/v/0ZMTdSnSXo8?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0
The really cool thing about combination attacks is, that we are just scratching the surface of what we can do. There are so many cool possibilities still left to show you guys, and we can’t wait to see what you yourself come up when you get your hands on the game.
Other than me showing some of the game, I cornered Kristian (lead on the orb) to answer a few questions about it’s origins, so take it away Kristian:
How did the idea of the Orb come about?
"The orb was one of the early brain children of our designer Steffen. From early on, we wanted to create a shared resource between the players, to award players who coordinated their strategy. At the same time we saw the need for a supportive role in co-op games, but felt that it was often the least interesting one to play (healers in WoW, am I right? ;) )
So he said "Hvorfor ikke lade spillerne deles om en supporter" or in english "Why not let the players share their supporter?" and the orb was born."
What has been the big challenge in terms of balancing the Orb in gameplay context?
"Since the orb is based on positioning, and the position is controlled by the players calling the orb over to them, we saw a huge difference in how 2 players used the orb, compared to 4 players. The more players there were, the more awesome stuff could be done with the orb. This sadly left the two-player experience somewhat lacking to our expectations. Based on this we decided to do a rework of the control system, which is what we are premiering this week. In this rework, we focused on abilities that let the individual player do more interesting stuff with the orb. This we feel, has made the two-player experience more nuanced; and certainly more fun!"
Whats your favorite Orb combination attack right now?
"So hard to choose. Being the ranger loving guy that I am, I guess I'll have to pick the fire wall. This, combined with a orb controller who knows what he's doing can seriously hamper the enemies armies, after which you can just lay back and pick of the remains with some well aimed arrows."
Thanks a ton to Kristian for spending a moment with me recording the videos and doing the interview about the orb. Again, if there is a certain subject you think we should look into for these posts, let me know in the comments below.
NewsDwarf:
Other then preparing for moving day next month, we also have a birthday to celebrate. BetaDwarf is turning one on the 27th of January, something that we are going to celebrate with a give-away that is tied to our upcoming multiplayer enabled Slice of the game, that we will launch next week.
The multiplayer Slice will focus on two player co-op gameplay, and will be available next friday for everyone to play. More information in the coming week.
Anything else:
Today we’re having a internal test-tournament to see which team is the better here at the office, something that should hopefully result in some pictures and stories involving someone getting angry and throwing people out of the window (I really hope that happens)
Welcome to 2012! The final year of humanity! Hurray! New Years came and went with some pretty great explosions here and there, and from what I gather, no one lost anything of value during the break, so that’s all good.
So with that out of the way, let’s get going on this years first Weekly Dwarf post.
Hi again!
News of the Guardians
This week we’re going to be focusing on one of our artists, newly hired Lesley Fersztman who also made an appearance last week. This time we’ll go a bit deeper on who Lesley is, and what she does at betaDwarf. Oh and we will also debut some new concept art for our game!
More Articles...
- 1: New Dwarfs!
- Slices are up and running!
- Feature video of FOTG
- Interview with BetaDwarf
- railgun.newz.dk - article
- IGF & Crowdfunding
- Armies Vs Champions is halted
- Here we come Roskilde!
- Beta Dwarf is going to Roskilde!
- Development on a new game has started!
- The company has grown!
- Armies Vs Champions article at IGF.
