WARP DOGS

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Posts posted by WARP DOGS


  1. Man, I let this topic die without ever intending to.

     

    First I was busy with Kickstarter, then I was busy about being sad that the Kickstarter looked like it was going to fail, and now I'm back to thinking this thing might actually succeed!

     

    It's still a long shot, and there's only 12 hours left, but I'm really...really hopeful it can make it.

     

    (And hopefully I can stop spamming this dumb link!)

     

    Please consider backing or sharing to help me through this final stretch!


  2. The whirlwind rages on. 

     

    It's stressful, sure, but there's also something fun about running around like your hair is on fire - it makes the days feel a lot more productive

     

    I'm foregoing the typical weekend digest this week because a) I don't have time, and B) I didn't really do a whole lot on the game this week/ Still, I do have a few things to chat about, so let's make like a gun and bullet.

     

    Oh, and again, I'd be silly to not link to the Kickstarter at the top of the post! If you like what you see in this topic and want to support me, then please consider sharing or making a pledge.

     

    Regarding Kickstarter...

    • Early this afternoon I crossed the 30% funded mark, which is a tremendous milestone. Thank you to everyone who has backed the campaign! Your support has given me so much motivation.
    • The Early Bird tier is just about sold out - as of writing this there's only ~15 slots left. Act fast if you want to get the game at the lowest possible price
    • The newly introduced Village Younger tier has slots left as well. If you're interested in a monster of your design being added to the cast of Village Monsters then please take a look
    • I've started posting longer looks at the various systems and features of Village Monsters on Kickstarter. The latest one is on the Mysteries system. They're view-able by anyone - no backing required

     

    m1Es8XU.gif

     

    Regarding the Game...

    • Another Alpha 1 released today. You can grab it right here. Alpha 1.03 brings with it some more bug fixes, but more importantly it's the first demo that includes Linux support! You'll see a separate link on the Downloads page for Linux. I haven't forgotten about you, Mac - it's just a lot harder to get you up and running on Virtual Box
    • Alpha 1.03 also re-implements the ability to swap your gender - a much requested feature
    • Finally, Alpha 1.03 makes it a bit easier to send feedback. It seems some people were having some issues, as my inbox has been full of feedback emails that look like the below. That should hopefully now be fixed :)

     

    ennPxdK.png

     

    Well, that'll do it for now. Hopefully this coming week is a bit slower, as I'll be able to get more done on the game - including more dev streams!


  3. Phew, what a whirlwind the last 36 hours have been. I'm not exactly sure how much sleep I've grabbed since this thing launched, but it's surely not a lot!

     

    Hopefully I'm not being too annoying spamming this, but I'd be remiss not to include a link to the Kickstarter at the top of this post :)

     

    A few notes!

    • I am super insanely happy to report the game has reached the 20% funding mark! There's still plenty of campaign left, but I cannot even properly express how much gratitude I feel toward people that have backed already. Thank you!!!
    • A number of tiers have sold out already, but the Early Bird tier - where you can grab the game for $12 - still has ~60 slots
    • Today I also added an additional reward I'm calling Village Younger. The Village Elder tier - the reward that allowed you to design your own monster - sold out very quickly on the first day. This new tier is identical to Elder with one difference: the monster you design will be added to the game after launch. This is so that we have enough time to design and create a really cool monster without impacting the overall schedule of the game


    Things will most likely slow down from here on out if previous Kickstarters are any indication. I'm actually ok with that, as I'll use the 'downtime' to resume working on the game. I'm hoping to get out several new releases between now and the end of the Kickstarter, though of course they'll be smaller in size than the previous bi-monthly demos.

     

    Thanks as always for following along!


  4. Hello monster friends!

     

    It's the weekend, and that means another edition of the Village Monsters Dev Diary Digest (VMD3)

     

    The marathon continues! This past week saw the release of the latest demo, and it was a big one.

     

    www.warpdogs.com/wererelease/

     

    I want to thank all the people who took the time to share feedback! You are making Village Monsters a better game. You can expect another release tomorrow that contains more features and bugfixes reported via feedback

     

    The Kickstarter is coming soon. Real soon. As in, in the next 48 hours! I'm so pumped. And nervous. Mostly pumped!

     

    As with last week I'm going to keep the text at a minimum and make this a screenshot blitz. Let's get to it

     

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    I did a fair amount of work on the last hobby prototype, Cooking. It's far from where I want it, but it'll improve over time

     

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    Remember the potion system? I went and combined it with food effects to open the door for all sorts of goofy fun. Snowberry Shrooms now properly chill you to the bone, while Spicy Shrooms put an extra kick in your step

     

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    A new area, the forest, has been implemented. This is also your first chance to investigate some of the glitches and faults ruining the world outside the village

     

    uLq6XDC.png

     

    The first of many quests have been added - meet all villagers in town! There's no reward for finding them all (yet...), but it's a good way to track your progress

     

    rYzbZH9.png

     

    Finally, more helper text has been added to Home Customizer mode. You also are automatically placed in this mode when placing a new piece of furniture


  5. On 9/8/2017 at 1:32 AM, SuperBiasedMan said:

    I've been documenting a playthrough of Breath of the Wild just by taking screenshots and then mass grabbing them from my SD card to my PC. I am then uploading them though, just onto tumblr instead of twitter. The journaling is a lot of fun, I'd definitely like to do it for other games on the Switch that have the right feel. Unfortunately I don't think my other main game Spla2n quite has the right fit...

    I tried doing the same thing! But the process of transferring pics really got to me. I think I took maybe 1,000 photos total (no exaggeration!) 


  6. Happy Full Moon, Y’all
    A new full moon means a new version of Village Monsters for you to enjoy. I’m happy to announce that the latest demo, Alpha 1, is now officially released.

     

    Go download it now!

     

    This is a big release, so I included the patch notes in a whole other post - go check them out if you're into that kind of thing!

     

    It's a great milestone, but with the Kickstarter coming up next week there's no rest for the wicked quite yet. My attention now shifts toward finishing up the loose ends in the Kickstarter. 

     

    However, there is more good news - because I want to present the best possible demo for the Kickstarter (and for you, of course!), you can expect another release within the next week that contains even more features and polish based on feedback from this demo.

     

    Feel free to leave your feedback here, or send me an email at josh@warpdogs.com. Thanks guys!

     

    screenshotsaturday3.gif 



  7. I haven't started my own company quite yet, but I've done research. One thing that kept surprising me is how much your local government is involved. I expected federal and state forms, but even my small town of less than 20,000 people required a lot of paperwork and fees because I'd be working out of my house

     

    Are you the only employee of your particular business? If so, you may want to consider a sole proprietorship to make things easy on you


  8. As 'promised', this week's edition of the VMD3 is late, and it'll be quite brief. I'm keeping descriptions to a minimum and instead focusing of a screenshot blitz.

     

    First up, some usual housekeeping: September has begun, and with it begins the most important month of my entire life. Nearly a 9 months ago I quit my day job to pursue this dream of creating games, and this month will be my first attempt at making it a viable.

     

    On September 6th I'm releasing the Alpha 1 demo of Village Monsters. This is an enormous release that builds upon everything I've done in the last 9 months. 

     

    A week later, on September 12th, I launch my Kickstarter campaign that'll run through September and into the appropriately spooky month of October. I'm very excited and anxious for you all to see what I have cooking.

     

    Ok. Enough words. Onto the screenshot blitz.

     

    nWd6y2u.png

     

    More village changes have been enacted. The still-unnamed Treasure Chest merchant - run by Skunkworks, the Mimic - has been converted into furniture-only...

     

    ohz8yik.png

     

    ...while a new General Store (run by Bottes) has been constructed to sell food, potions, and other sundries

     

    byT3Aha.png

     

    Nearly a month ago I renamed all the months of the in-game calendar, but until now that has only existed in an Excel doc, not the game. That has changed

     

    X0rZy2w.gif

     

    New interiors have been added to all new home. That has also prompted me to add more furniture, floor and wall types

     

    yy1MJ49.gif

     

    This includes new homes + portraits and dialogue for the new villagers introduced last week.

     

    kcV5spP.gif

     

    These WIP icons for tools are still ugly, but I added numbers to each to make it a bit easier to keep track of. You can also press the number on your keyboard to quickly bring it up instead of rotating to find it

     

    T4Aewix.gif

     

    There's so much I can and want to show you, but some stuff I gotta keep under the hat for now. Here's a short clip from the upcoming Kickstarter trailer. It'll be strikingly similar to my first trailer, but like everything else it's been heavily iterated and updated. Hope you're looking forward to seeing it!

     

    That'll do it for this week. With any luck I'll be back on a more regular schedule this week, but things are going to be pretty crazy for awhile.

    It's been a wild ride. I hope it never stops. Thanks for joining me on it! <3


  9. Hello monster friends! 

     

    It's the weekend, and that means another edition of the Village Monsters Dev Diary Digest (VMD3)

     

    Today's update is both late and briefer than usual, but I hope i have a good excuse: with PAX being this week, Alpha 1 release next week, and Kickstarter kicking off the week after that, I've been pretty dang busy.

     

    So no preamble this week - let's just get onto it!

     

    Under Construction
    The majority of my time last week was spent on improving the village in some pretty major ways.

     

    First, I created and furnished four new homes for monsters to live in (though they're still pretty sparse for now). I also converted that strange skull in town into a proper home for Saley & Stapes, the two skeletal guards.

     

    ziSO94i.png

     

    Overflow - the town's tavern and a major hangout spot for locals - was also completely revamped...in the sense that before the revamp, the exterior was unfinished and the interior didn't exist. Both outside and inside are now in a much better place.

     

    Beyond new buildings, I also began moving things around to accommodate new ideas. I now have enough buildings to actually have something close to 'districts' in our little village - the town hall, church, and historical society fill out the Civic District, a new general store and existing furniture merchant have made something like a Commercial District, and of course the houses make up the Residential District

     

    Here's a neat GIF showing how the village has changed and evolved in the last 8 months:

     

    of492lR.gif

     

    Finally, I also created 3 additional villagers and revamped a 4th. Meet Bavarian the Chef Blob, Lucy the Artistic Golem, Rainboy the Elemental, and Serin the...uh...tree.

     

    SMOgB4D.gif

     

    Dynamic Camera
    It seems at least once a month I get bogged down by some obnoxious camera bug that comes out of nowhere, and this month was no different.

     

    However, this time my solution ended up turning into a feature - a dynamic camera. There's probably a better name for this, but what I mean is that the camera smoothly follows the player at its own speed as opposed to always keeping the player dead-center on screen.

     

    Hv5x2jM.gif

     

    This fits better with the relaxed style of game I'm making, and also looks a lot better in motion. It's hard to capture via a GIF, so you'll need to trust me that it looks better. 

     

    New Critters?
    Sometimes I sit down to do one thing and end up feeling motivated to do something else entirely. That was the case this week, and it's why I ended up creating four new critters to find and collect.

     

    I won't share them so they can remain a bit of a secret, but here's the Capricious Cumulus, a cloud-based critter that oscillates between feelings of timidness and aggression. 

     

    b1LlXfe.gif

     

    That'll do this for this week. Next week is likely to be just as sparse and late, but things are going very well and you'll have a chance to see for yourself on September 6th when Alpha 1 releases.

     

    Don't forget that the Kickstarter starts a week later on September 12th. It's going to be a hectic month, but this fall is shaping up to be a hell of a good time.

     

    q9355Dt.gif


     


  10. 1 hour ago, feelthedarkness said:

    At this point, the resistance will have failed or succeeded, no thanks to me. Old friends have been silenced, or fallen by the wayside. I no longer know or recognize most members of the research team, though I believe the spirit of rebellion still persists.

     

    Kind of heartbreaking. 

    Not sure if this is a common interpretation or not, but definitely feels like he's addressing Valve personally with this


  11. On 8/14/2017 at 4:21 AM, thepaulhoey said:

    I played 5 or so hours over the weekend. The update improves the game, but I think it's still a game that has such fundamental issues that are just being cosmetically hidden by these updates. Take the new mission system for instance, the missions are terrible because they have nothing to work with. Go to a planet and shoot some creatures, or scan them, or blow up a random building in the middle of an empty expanse with no enemies or challenge. Collect 250 of something and go to a trade depot. That's it, so a mission system might sound cool in a blurb and when you're picking them up they sound interesting, but once you get to the meat of it you get bored after you've done the 5 lame types of mission. I only did as many as I did to raise my standing to get to the end of a slightly more interesting quest line, but one that was pretty similar in terms of what I had to do(fly to different places, build a thing, repeat 3 times, do quests to raise your standing, learn 3 new words etc.). There was no substance to it and when the game crashed I didn't care to go back to it.

     

    I'd go into more detail if I had time, but to quickly cover another couple of annoyances: Base building takes forever and is a massive slog of farming materials. Missions and quests can be even more frustrating when the goal is constantly on a toxic planet that you can survive on for 2 minutes before having to rush back to your ship.

     

    Absolutely agreed. It's a better version of the base game, but it's not a different game, and it's still just a more grindy version of a music visualizer

     

    It's not a bad game by any means, but I cannot imagine being happy if I paid $60 for it - either now or at launch. It's a perfect $20ish indie game.