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Hi everyone!  Before the year comes to a close I have one last update for you all. This update is largely focused on polish, fix-ups, and some fancy new icons.

New Icons

So, a couple weeks back, I ran a little review of development to identify anything that could be holding the project back, and one of the biggest time eaters thus far has been developing choice portraits. I enjoy making them, but it's been such a great time expense that I’m worried it’s going to make it troublesome to add more boons, and banes in the future. I don’t want the game to be in a place where there are constant “no image found” gaps in the character creator, so the solution I’ve landed on is to replace blessing/curse/item portraits, with simplified icons in a similar vein to the current faith icons. Creating an icon, or just finding ones I can use without trouble is far quicker than whipping up a whole portrait. It took less than a week to create / assign icons for all our choices, and this solution also benefits another objective I've been thinking about, which is how we display traits to the player once they’re in game. My instinct has been to use trait icons. They’re easy to read at a glance, and can be shrunken down into a little panel. Portraits, just don’t work as well when shrunken down. All the details get lost... I believe using the icons between both the character creator, and main game would also create a better sense of consistency.

Arkavite - Just some of the new icons which have made their way into the update~

If you loved the old art, I’ve left it hidden behind a " Classic Choice Art " settings option. Finished or not, it's worth keeping the legacy system, on the off chance Arkavite becomes a glorious success, and I can wangle an artist into making art for me in my stead. Unfortunately, we’re not quite there yet, so I’ll keep doing my darndest in the meantime.

A New Perspective

As for other roadblocks I’m hoping to remove, I believe the main camera perspective requires some rethought. My initial plans were to have a third person over the shoulder camera as well as a top down view the player could either toggle between manually, or would switch between dynamically based on location. While this plan is not impossible to execute, in practice I have found it does pose a number of additional challenges as compared to say, focusing on a single perspective. The issues really became apparent when working on combat, where animations, control scheme, and aiming end up tied to the camera view. Were we to then have a top down combat framework on top of this, it would only add to the complexity and warrant quite a lot more work. It is not so much a matter of practicality as it is time required to implement and polish everything to a degree I’d be pleased with.

How exactly I intend to get past this, is by flipping things on their head, and focusing on one perspective. But which one? I think we should use top down as the main perspective, while still allowing a manual toggle to over the shoulder cam. If the player initiates combat, we will simply force them into the main view. Ultimately, this depends on how the world is constructed. I believe top down combat does have simpler control/animation demands compared to over the shoulder, and it is more in line with my original vision for Arkavite.

This may also lead me to testing isometric views as I’m curious to see how a Transistor-esque type perspective would feel. I think something like that could also lend itself well to the tiled structure of dungeons. This is something I haven’t dedicated enough time to playing around with, so I think it’s at least worth a shot. If it doesn’t work, so be it, I’ll revert and try something else.

End of the Year

This has been quite a tumultuous year for me to say the least. I’m glad it’s finally over, and I’m excited for all the new things I’m going to try in the New Year. I’ll be pushing hard for the sandbox to come out in the first quarter of 2025. Probably on more of a ready or not basis. Should be exciting!

There are also a couple of extras I’ve sneakily been working on. The first of which might not be for everyone, but I believe it will benefit the project as a whole, and help us grow.

Thank you for joining me this year, and following me on this march. None of this would be possible without your support, so once again, thank you! I hope you are enjoying the jolly season, had a very merry Christmas, and I wish you all a Happy New Year!
See you next year. Take care!

For the full changelog, click the link below.

• Full Changelog