Archives 2017

Small Updates

I’m still spending alot of time play-testing 2.26 and fixing bugs as I go along, but I’ve still managed to mash a few new stuff in the last week aswell!

To start of somewhere, the UI has been further updated, this time with a new Loading screen and as the game is saved a hint will appear on screen to notify about it.

newLoading newSaving

Some new tooltips/icons have been implemented for the inventory window, when an item repair kit has been selected a wrench icon will appear inside the mouse cursor and if items that can be used to upgrade other items a “+” icon will appear.

newMenu

I’ve added some geometry to the main menu, now rendering an interior area of the IGCC station, all world chunks have been optimized regarding both collision data and rendering. Another three achievments have been added and the mission “Hunter’s Heritage” has been completely revisioned.

Also worth saying is that a bug that made the player character fall through platforms if the player was using an ability or weapon attack while standing on the platform, has now been fixed. 🙂 (Yay! It’s only been haunting me since forever.)

Dev. Report #11 – 2.26

I’ve been spending quite some time, updating my custom tools and editor extensions in order to keep them compatible with the changes I’ve made to some game mechanics and game logic managers that I’ve modified rather heavily for 2.26. Therefore I haven’t had very much to post about… well except mentioned editor updates but I can’t quite imagine that it would be very interesting for the common player.

But in any case, 2.26 is closing in, I’m currently bug and play testing the game thoroughly and fix old and new issues as I go. New game mechanics are up and running and old ones have been and are still beeing updated! I’ve also spent nearly two weeks doing pretty much nothing else than optimizing world collision data and code optimizations for the game mechanics that consume the most memory. For the world collision optimizations I will probably need another few days to have fully optimized all world chunks/tiles.

20177702331

Another thing I’ve fiddled with for 2.26 is game balancing, primarily regarding the game difficulty setting. Without going into detail I can say that it’s more adapted to the length of the game than it was before, also the item generator now calculate item tiers determined by the level of the monster or loot that was opened/killed instead of the player level. The new way of calculating item tiers ensure that the player can’t go back to the first map where monsters are of level 1 – 6 and still loot items of high-rated tiers.
A minor set-back with this approach did appear though, as the level of monsters in one map may vary individually I noticed that there usually is three item tiers that may drop within the same map. This turned into a headache when looting consumables that stack as I soon discovered that my inventory was full with health vials of various item tiers.

ui tiers
In order to get around this obstacle I added a small text on each item icon that present the item tier in roman numerals. I chose roman numerals in hope that the number should not be confused with the item’s stack size.

Some new visual updates has been made aswell, as I spoke of earlier, the character splatmaps that are applied to monsters as they get killed to splash some blood on their bodies- available if “Enable Gore” setting is toggled on.

gfx splatmap01 gfx splatmap02

gfx splatmap03

Also pay attention to the strong light sources in the images, as the bloom image effect is now generating anamorphic lens flares.

gfx anamorphic

There are also alot of world events and boss encounters that I have planned to modify for v2.27, but I’ve actually already begun to change a few of them. Just to spill some examples, the Necromancing mission’s boss encounter as mentioned in my previous article, and also the Machinist boss encounter has been redone. And as I felt that the Machinist model and animations were of too crappy quality I went ahead and created a new Machinist boss. The Machinist now also have the ability to jump into vent shafts to regain some health.

gen machinist gen necroject

-Achievments-

There’s currently 12 new achievments implemented, I still have a few to add before the release though. Do note that for 2.26 achievments may now hold alot more restrictions than earlier. Previous versions of the game forced each achievment to have 6 restrictions or less, while it currently may hold up to 20 restrictions. (Restrictions are achievment goals/stages/phases.)

upd achievmentLength

As mentioned in earlier posts regarding the 2.26 release lots of new game content awaits. I still need a few weeks to get done with all planned optimizations and update/implemented to remaining content of this game version and to ensure that everything works properly (aswell as make sure that old character profiles remain compatible.) But I dare to say that 2.26 is not far from done!

Another note, regarding the UI is that the game now gives a more clear hint of a character level up as can be seen below.

ui levelUp

I think that I spoke about the update log in an earlier post and the fact that I was about to start posting it on LBKR’s website with more or less live updates but I can’t recall ever telling anyone about it beeing done. In any case, I have begun to post the updates on the website on a weekly-ish basis so if you’re interested to check out the log with all updates and bug fixes this far go on and check LBKR Update Log. (2.26 current progress: 401 Updates/Changes, 127 Bug Fixes)

Quick dev. report

Just wanna keep you guys up to speed, I’ve worked alot with implementing the world chunks and new chapters and making them reachable in the game, the last week. Also I’ve added even more world chunks, some new world events and items.


While working with the world events for these new chapters I’ve come to realize that the events that can be encountered in the first five chapters of LBKR feel quite outdated. I’ve set up a goal to improve them though, I’m not sure if I’ll have it done before the 2.26 release or if I’ll save it for later, but it will be done!


Some more updates on the UI has also been made, the character profile window has a new look and as you can see on the screenshot below there’s far less dead space than previous layout. Also the amount of categories have been reduced to “Character” and “Game Stats”. All info that was found earlier is still there but I’ve just combined all categories to make things easier.

uitooltip
The item tooltip’s been improved aswell, now with a more highlighted label and icon background.

The character preview image in the inventory window has now received controls that allow you to rotate the camera around your character and to zoom in or out. I’m not sure if it’s such a good idea to give the player free hands to get close to the character and see my craptastic texturing but it felt like a neat feature to have, so I’m going to leave it like this for now! 🙂

uigearcam
I’ve also managed to sort out alot of bugs and glitches in the game, they can be seen in the games update log, and while speaking of the log… I’ve decided to start writing the update log on the LBKR website, so it’s updated realtime.

By the time I write this article I’ve not published a link to the log but it will become available sometime this weekend so if you’re curious to have a look at everything that’s been done this far check it out!


The update log will be found under the Home> tab on the LBKR website.

Characters & Items [Update 3/3]

It’s probably not a surprise that there are some new monsters poping up along with the new chapters however, I’ve laid some extra focus on the “unique” monsters in the game.
All previously added uniques have received their own texture/skin, and some new unique monsters has been added aswell.

Player character

There are now three new skills for every player character in the game- Charisma, Move Speed modifier and block multiplier.
Charisma helps determine the cost of merchant’s services and item prices, better charisma will reduce the costs.
Move Speed Modifier is as simple as it sounds. It has been around all along but was hard-coded in earlier versions of the game. Having it as a skill gives the player a better overview of his/hers current move speed and also makes it possible for items to affect the move speed.
Block Multiplier is a hidden statistic that is purely modified by buffs or item modifiers. It will reduce incoming damage by a specified percent of the full damage value.

Monster characters

Let’s just quickly go through the new monsters and monster variations done this far-
Masher, a relatively small alien creature that charge it’s victims. It’s a melee combatant and primarily deal physical damage
masher
Arctic Grunt, it’s an off-spring to the regular “Infected Grunt” monster but is wearing equipment better suited for winter conditions.
The arctic Grunt is a ranged combatant and deal frost damage. It also has the ability to buff itself and nearby monsters.
agrunt
Tentacloid, it’s the result of cutting an arctic grunt in half. It continuously moves toward your character and inflict toxic damage over time if you stand to close to it.
tentacloid
On to the “uniques“… Unique monster in LBKR can be placed somewhere in between the “Master” minibosses and the main bosses of the game. They are powerful and have all developed their unique skills and abilities.
At this time there are five new uniques, the Dweller, Nuk’thal, Forlorn Signalist, Dahl’kuztak, the trapped and Awakened Guardian and they’re scattered out in the five new chapters.
Something worth mentioning regarding the uniques is that first of all, the chance of receiving mythical-rated loot by killing them is alot better than other monsters. Furthermore alot of them can drop unique (exquisite) items.
There’s also some new monsters that inherit from old monsters, but are simply more powerful such as the Brawler (inherits from Brute), Excavator (inherits from Scientist) and Desola Worker (inherits from Hypoxia Worker).


If anyone of you who read this article have played the secret map Excavation Site2 you might notice that Brawler is the same character as one of the bosses in that map. That’s because I’ve decided to remake the Excavation Site2-map aswell as the Heritage challenge mission, this lead to the brawler becoming the first regular variation of the Brute instead of a boss.

The second boss Feedzilla has become a unique monster that spawn with a randomized world event, and the Forgotten Feeder boss has been removed from the game entirely.

Items

For 2.26 there will be an entirely new type of equipable gear, runes. You may equip up to three runes simultaneously and each rune will buff your character’s skills in a variety of ways.
As with all other gear the runes may be generated with item modifiers attached that you can unlock in exchange for some crafting materials.


There are three different conditions of a rune (as one part of the item generation procedure), Corrupted, Default and Ancient. Ancient runes are the most powerful ones and usually provide a great passive effect and usually comes with a powerful active damage / vital reg bonus but they require a sacrifice to be used, usually draining your health over time or inflicting instant damage when you equip / unequip the item.

If a rune is corrupted they will usually be more powerful than “Default” runes as well however, a corrupted rune has a chance to get a negative bonus rating, meaning that some of your character’s skills will become weaker when wearing the rune.
Currently there are 26 different types of runes where 6 of those are of exquisite item rarity rating (mega-rare)
Two other new items are the Item Tier Chip and Property Modifier. They are used to upgrade/improve equipment of your choice.
icon_propertymod
I’ve also added two new exquisite items, Radiant Gauntlets of Purple Skin (Armor) and The Needler (Weapon), on top of that I’ve added a new “super modifier” that is used on most exquisite gear. When you’ve unlocked all item modifiers of an exquisite item the super modifier will automaticly be unlocked.
The super modifiers are alot more specific than common modifiers, such as the Pillar of Light super-mod, it has a relatively large chance to turn any opponent you hit with your weapon into a wandering lightning tower that shoot lightning bolts on nearby monsters.
Or perhaps the Shield super-mod that activates a shield that absorbs all damage received for as long as it’s not broken. When your shield has been drained (ie. you’ve received too much damage) it will break and any received damage will drain your health again, but the shield will regenerate after a few seconds.
Right, moving on. Earlier a weapon’s Armor penetration rating was determined by what type of weapon class it was assigned to but this is no longer the case.
While the weapon classes still determine the base points given to the item’s AP value, the value is now also modified during the item generation procedure depending on the item’s condition and rarity aswell.
The amount of “Void Crystals” required to unlock item modifiers for mythical and exquisite items has been decreased alot.