Curator Floor Design - Macabre Mausoleum

[Jake]

For the first two liches, they're holding a crystal and tome respectively (very hard to create pixelated to say the least!). I like the tome and the skull, but the crystal was just a spitballing attempt on my part, ha.

I thought the second was probably a tome, but I thought the first might be a melty candle. Maybe if we animate it sparkling or something, it'll be clearer . Not something to worry about.

I do like the idea of a passive defense bonus, but what about an ability that mitigates all his damage taken evenly to himself and any other undead in his party? Kind of a shared pain aspect.

That would be interesting. It might be a little harder to indicate in-game, but I think it's doable .

As for the raising dead for the lich, I totally agree that it should be a higher tier minion! Maybe the champions can raise even higher level guys on top of that as they level up:
1. Skeleton Warrior/Skeleton Archer/Zombie
2. Skeleton Mage? (hitting my diablo roots here, ha)/Ghost
3. Wraith/Vampire
4. Bone Dragon?
Maybe rare chance of raising a champion minion of these???

Maybe what you get is dependent upon what you have built (the way I eventually want the Lunarium to work). Probably not bone dragons, because I have some different mechanics in mind for dragons.

[I feel like I just got my list from HOMM 3, geez I'm uninspired!]

HOMM 3 is still the authority on monster progressions to me; there's a lot of good inspiration to be had there .

[nsweeney107]

Hey Jake,

Completely unrelated to this, but I noticed that I never received a Steam Key to my Humble Store account and I see from the Steam Early Access page that Steam is getting all the lovely updates and I'm missing out! How should we go about getting my account to you?

Thanks!

[Jake]

I sent you a PM with a new key .

On topic, I added another undead floor (Barren Barrows) in the latest patch, and as a part of developing that floor, I did some thinking on future undead floors and where they'll fit. I think we might just do one more floor (or set of parallel floors) between the Barrows and your Mausoleum. I think this set of floors may be Barrows + Portal/Workshop, with the Portal version providing Wraiths (Spectral Sepulcher, I'm thinking) and the Workshop version producing Bone Golems (I'm picturing a charnel or cairn--a mass grave with some disturbing equipment set aside). Are Wraiths "demonic" enough, though?

Then the Mausoleum would be either of those floors and the Sinful Study. Opposite your floor, I think I might position mummies with Dark Elves--unlikely to be as strong as liches, but I think they may open up some other Egypt-style floors.

What do you think?

[nsweeney107]

I think Wraiths could be demonic, depending how scary you make them and their abilities! Would there be other ghosts or would these be the only ones? If these are the only ones, I think you'd be right as rain! If there is a seperate, then this would have to be more dramatic and probably red glowing eyes and flamish aura about it. It could have a fear shout that could lower the defense of certain, more cowardly heroes and maybe a flame shield that would burn melee attackers to further cement the demonic aspects of it.

Great ideas! Can't wait to see these all in game and get mine updated on Steam Thanks again for sending me the Steam key, I am at a loss as to what happened with my other one...but if I find it I'll for sure send it to one of my friends!

[nsweeney107]

Hi Jake,

Congrats on the baby boy, my son is almost 2 and it's the greatest thing ever to be a dad! I've got a little girl on the way here in May, so I will soon be in your situation of sleep deprivation!

Anyways, I've been thinking about my floor quite a bit lately and wanted to post some ideas.

First off, for the floor, I think it'd be cool if the coffin itself was a light source in the room instead of the candelabra. I was thinking the light could emit up from the coffin and maybe even glow from the green skull in the front onto the floor (I don't know how you do your animations, but just wanted to throw that out there if it's possible!)

Secondly, I've been on a pixel art kick lately and was curious how the animating of the liches was going? I was thinking it'd be fun if I could take a crack at it if that's cool with you as it might be fun. If that's the case, I was just curious about how many frames I would need to create for each animation and what kinds of animations you use in your game (idle, attack, etc.). Just let me know!

Thanks,

[Jake]

Thanks from the baby front. We had a rough 18-hour journey to the in-laws' this week, and I'm not looking forward to the return trip, but I felt like my wife complained more than the baby, really =P.

We can definitely do some lights on the coffin; if you want to do a mock-up of what you have in mind, I'll see what I can do. If you want that to come with more than just lighting (i.e., animated stuff like the Necrotic Nexus has), we can do that, too.

All of the characters are assembled from separate frames, so I don't draw the animations directly. Rather, I define animation cycles as a series of part frames and offsets. This makes it kind of difficult to offload this work to others, but if you feel like animating the character, I can certainly use it as a reference when I implement the character in-game. Standard animations include idle (floating about with the tattered robes flapping in the wind?), movement, defense (most characters just use their idle animation for this, but technically, the game allows for them to take a different pose while being attacked), and attacks (this includes any animations for passive abilities, like raising a staff to indicate that they are taking some sort of action).

You can go ahead and take a stab at it, if you like; I still have other floors I'd like to get in before this (although I am constantly tempted to toss it in early, because liches =)), and on top of that, I am actually dividing my efforts between general development and trying out some major changes right now, so it will probably still be a little while.

[nsweeney107]

For the animation, I changed my mind. I remember a while back you talking about things being darker, so I've attached a darker one. As for the animation, I think I like the hanging light, but maybe you could animate it to swing every so slowly above the coffin and maybe animate the skull to fade in and out...

All of the characters are assembled from separate frames, so I don't draw the animations directly. Rather, I define animation cycles as a series of part frames and offsets. This makes it kind of difficult to offload this work to others, but if you feel like animating the character, I can certainly use it as a reference when I implement the character in-game. Standard animations include idle (floating about with the tattered robes flapping in the wind?), movement, defense (most characters just use their idle animation for this, but technically, the game allows for them to take a different pose while being attacked), and attacks (this includes any animations for passive abilities, like raising a staff to indicate that they are taking some sort of action).

As for the animations, it sounds like you have a pretty set process so I can just transmit my ideas here and you can do with them what you will!
idle: I like the floating with his tattered robe flapping, could he be reading his tome as well? Then when he either moves or attacks, he could slam shut his tome and do whatever it is he was going to do.
movement: The tome is shut, but hovering off to the side as he glides around.
defense: Could green emit from the tome, travel through his chest, rattle around in there, then up to his forward arm as he takes his open hand and draws it in almost in fist pump kind of way, emitting a greenish shield to take the blow?
attack 1: Along the same lines for his attack spell, but his eyes would glow as well and his hand would be outstretched and closed, opening a bit as he shoots his magical energy
attack 2: Pretty much the same as attack 1, but since this would be his passive, his hand would be in the fist pump motion, starting closed, then projecting his hand upward as he opens his hand to release his magical energy
death?: When he dies, can we have him look up in agony, start convulsing, then explode killing all living creatures on the floor? Since he's an epic unit, epic deaths? (this might open up a can of worms since I don't believe death animations are in there)

This makes more sense, rather than me spinning my wheels to create concept art since free time isn't a luxury I possess

[nsweeney107]

Classic Nate forgetting the attachment...ha

[Jake]

Hey Nate,

Sorry for the delayed response to this. I saw it and made notes about it on my to-do list, but felt like waiting until I had something to show you. However, I just wrapped up a major set of changes to the gameplay mechanics, and that took most of my development time for the last couple weeks, so I don't have anything fun to show you yet.

I have been thinking that I may position the Lich opposite the Wraith unit, with a slightly different version of your floor. Would it be okay if I used a lot of your art for this secondary floor? The Spectral Sepulcher would be similarly positioned in the floor tree, but require Dark Elves over Cultists. Visually, it would be a little more ghostly and less arcane, I imagine.

[nsweeney107]

Hey Jake,

Sorry for the delayed response on my part, I was out on paternity leave so I didn't get a chance to check in on this.

You can totally use whatever you want for the secondary floor, I'll be excited to see what you come up with!

Is the Macabre Mausoleum still happening or is it morphing into that other floor?

Thanks