Atlyss Development Update 7/7/2022

Hello everyone, and thank you for following the development of my rpg passion project. 

There's quite a lot to unpack here, but I'll do my best to keep it fairly simple.

For the past couple months, I have begun a new iteration of Atlyss, as before previously mentioned in the last devlog, I was talking about looking for ways to develop the game in a more comfortable manner, but also considering to focus more on the back-end aspect of things rather than jumping into the graphical assets/polish too early.

"New Iteration"? Yes, I have salvaged some code from the version that's available here on itch io right now and have begun re-working the game from scratch, primarily focusing on the systems that hold it together this time.

Some things that I will mention what Atlyss is "turning into":

• The game will no longer be a rogue-lite, but more of a character progression based "mmo-lite". The game will play nearly the same (if not better) as the current version that's available, so it'll still be a 3rd person action RPG.
• There will still be a singleplayer/solo option, and you can send your character data to a hosted game from your solo-gameplay. (like how terraria does it)

• The game will have a stronger server-based back-end framework for people to host dedicated servers and send/receive character progression data. (A headless server application for hosting will also be an option as well.)
• Character customization will be more robust with some technical improvements (ie using blendshapes for body manipulation rather than scaling bones). In the current demo, character customization just manipulated the scale of the character's bones, which easily caused clipping/jagged edges for large scale proportions. Blendshape manipulation will help smooth out the effect and allow for even larger sizes.

• There will be a male and female body type structures for character customization, including the fun stuff like bulges, nipples, etc.

• Classes will no longer be natively set when starting a game, but rather you will start "classless" (called a freelancer), and as you level you will be able to choose a base class (fighter, caster, ranger). Subclasses will be a future prospect (Such as warlocks, paladins, etc.) later on in development.

• There is now a fully-reworked inventory and newly added equipment system with helmet, chestpiece, leggings and previously applied ring slots. The game will not entirely focus on gear min-maxxing as a primary game-play archetype but rather they will function more like cosmetics with slight stat adjustment/improvements.
  

• The Stat system has been completely re-worked and actually functions like a stat system. There is leveling now, and for every level you can achieve attribute points to customize your character's build. (Strength, Intellect, Dexterity, Vitality, etc).

• A sub-scene map instancing system has been added, which are additively loaded/unloaded on the server.
• Going hand-in-hand with the sub-scene instancing system there will be a Questing system where selecting a quest will modify/alter aspects of certain instances pertaining to the quest (such as different enemy spawns, obstacles, entities, etc).
• NPC Pathfinding has been re-vamped entirely. I ditched the unity navmesh systems and now I'm using raycasts, which no longer causes the issue of enemies doing noticeably stupid behaviors like walking around an entire plane if you jumped off a ledge.

There's probably a whole lot more that I'm missing, but what I got posted here is mostly what I have to note down here. What's exciting about most of this though is that despite the amount of playtesting/bugfixing/brick walls that come up, finding solutions have been very speedy so far especially since most of the work has been going towards the back-end of the game. Once this stuff gets a strong enough foundation, creating graphical assets/content/instances/characters/items/spells/etc will be very streamlined in development.

It's been a long couple of years of trial and error, failing and succeeding, but I will continue to persist with this project.

Thanks for reading, and until next time.