#002 - Better Late than Never.

Hey folks,

So over the past week and a day since I last made a post, much has happened.


First of all- naming. It seems that I took so long to get this going, someone else who is a part of the same community as I am, has come up with a similar name for their project, I've also recently been thinking it's not a great name.

With that said I decided to use the name of another old project called Grand Eternia.

Alongside the name, other changes have been made, namely the starting zone. The starting area that I'd designed was way too small and linear. I want the player to step out into the world and want to explore immediately, so to contribute to the open-world feeling, the starting area has been changed. The player will now start at a small temple in the North-West of Nyube Woods, the Nyube Woods constitute the north-western most part of the Nyube Valley which exists along a mountain range.

Also, the story has somewhat changed- I was finding it hard to really make it apparent to the player that the world was floating and I've decided that this also limits what I can do in terms of world building, so now instead of it floating in the air and the world being flooded, the world /was/ flooded and takes place in a Legend of Zelda Windwaker-esque world.

I'll be using the existing art and music in Grand Eternia and come next Saturday, I will update the blog address and logo or create a new blog and link to it from here.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to make any actual progress (as far as developing gameplay) this week, as I'm currently facing a mapping/camera bug that will likely only be able to be fixed by deleting the database file that contains all of the maps (and everything else.)
So I'm hesitant to move forward on creating areas, items and monsters until the issue is resolved in the next update of the engine.

I've talked and discussed with someone who's interested in working on a project and we seem to share and want many of the same ideas, such as a fully interactable world and branching quests (some quests opening new areas and blocking off others, or opening new quests and blocking others) he's willing to join and map out the world as I create the art and work on getting my rusty programming back into operating shape.

Unfortunately since there has been no mapping progress I can't show you an area from the game, I know I said I'd do it every week, but nothing this week. Next week for sure, regardless I'll post an example of the Nyube Farmland.


Other News:

I sat and thought about what game it really is, that I want to play and surprisingly the game I wanted to play, wasn't Godwind or Grand Eternia.

I was messing around with a concept for an online Orthographic ORPG where you play as a General (starting out with 30 peasants) and eventually you'll work up to having a 25,000+ troop army. If you form an alliance or party, you could potentially command hundreds of thousands via other players.

I want the game to be about army management from the equipment your soldiers wear in each unit, to the unit experience, to keeping up a unit's morale by giving them alcohol or other luxuries and which officers you hire and recruit that will give passive bonuses and abilities for your units or army. Naturally it's an ORPG and you have a "character" - so your main character will be a General and you will be able to acquire gear for yourself also, including legendary "Great General" gear.

I've written out a design document and I have many ideas and features that come together to make something that I /really/ want to play. The game will be a mix between Dynasty Tactics gameplay (simplified to an extent) with the visuals of Advance Wars, set in a randomly generated medieval world, with roving AI armies.

The goal of the game will be to take over the generated world. This means wiping out every other player alliance and AI faction. Each AI faction will be controlled by a Great General and when the General is killed, the faction will be destroyed and any armies existing elsewhere will become Bandits and freely roam the world, attacking player castles, citadels and players.

Players will be able to construct castles to store their gear, build bridges and tunnels to traverse rivers and mountains, place bounties on other players at citadels, earn reputation with factions by destroying AI and players in other factions and if they're so inclined, create a player alliance, take over territory and build an alliance citadel from which to operate, though be careful, the bigger you are then the harder you will fall as if your citadel is conquered and held for a specific amount of time, your alliance will be disbanded.

It's a somewhat ambitious game, but I've already made a start on the art and with the design document written up, I've got a clear roadmap to where I want this to be. Once the engine I'm using for Grand Eternia is released, I can find help programming these features in (I have a bit of a programming background myself so with some help I can get there) since this game is almost entirely feature additions and modifications to the existing engine. It's not like Grand Eternia, in that Grand Eternia is having to create a whole library of art assets and music at a somewhat more difficult level.

I did complete my to do list last week (minus the mapped area), so I'll be sticking to that one again. For this week.

Thanks for reading-
Kem

#001 - The New Godwind

Hey folks!

Today I'd like to give you a brief on where exactly Godwind is going and what the general timeframe is.

So, Godwind is a world set in the sky on floating islands and continents.

The back story of Godwind is that in the Old World, something happened that made the Goddess weep until her tears drowned the world, mages and others called "Heroes" used their power to raise up areas of the land in an attempt to save what they could. These lands are kept floating by the magical power imbued into the rocks and dirt from the mages and Heroes of old, their power is fading very slowly over time, causing the lands to erode and crumble at the edges and hundreds of years have passed since the flood of the Old World.

The player will take on a role of an agent of the Goddess- your character has no memory of how they came to be and will begin inside of a somewhat forgotten Goddess's Wayshrine located in the forest on the first continent of Duri.

A Wayshrine is usually in a cave or small traveller's temple alongside a road (or maybe something special based on location), when you make an offering at these, they will heal your battle wounds and save this location, you will respawn at whichever Wayshrine you last made an offering.


I've made some good progress this week (having restarted development three days ago) and have a decent amount of art to use as a base thanks to a guy called George. I'll be basing all of the art for Godwind on his foundation tilesets.

I will still be using the soundtrack as previewed below and have several other tracks I never posted to the blog.

In total, I believe I have enough assets (minus NPCs) to create 5-7 zones, this should cover the starting area, a town and another area. It should be ready way before Christmas- providing all goes well (it seldom does.)

My hope is to release a playable client before the end of the year, I will try to get as much done before then, however I'm not against releasing before everything is ready so long as there's enough content to reach level 5-10 and hopefully this will drum up some interest and attract some talent willing to work on the project to help me add even more content than I would have added alone for the active players.

My weekly goals are:

• Map at least one area per week.
• Draw at least a quarter of a tileset for the next area.
• Draw at least two UI pieces.
• Sprite and animate at least three NPCs.
• Add at least three new items (icons & paperdoll) for the player to use.
• Write one blog post at the end of the week discussing what I worked on and ramble about ideas- also show the area that was mapped.

If I stick to this, it will easily be playable within 2 months.

Keep checking the blog for updates. Every Saturday / Sunday.

Thanks-
Kem

Fresh Attempt

Hi there- a while back I began development on this project with the hopes making the game I've wanted to play. Things happened, it didn't work out, it happens.

Godwind was never cancelled, only shelved.

 Well, now I can tell you with a smile - Godwind is back in development! For now.

I have finally gotten a hold of an engine that's intuitive to use, tailored to what I need, open-source (eventually) and it's looking like the one. I can't currently show you pictures, yet, as the UI is placeholder and since it's hard-coded and the engine is closed-source until development reaches 1.0 (I'm confident it will reach that far.)

Suffice it to say, I spent a solid 8 hours drawing up a castle tileset yesterday, so that I can start mapping a town with the current house and furniture assets I have.

Keep your eyes peeled, I will definitely provide a follow up post as I move forward with this project, hopefully I can show something to you by the end of the weekend, if not next week at the latest.

I'll be leaving my old posts however those ideas are no longer relevant for the initial tutorial area, though I plan on bringing these areas into the game in the future. I've decided instead to begin the player in the woods, heading through a small cave and emerging into the large town area.

Regards-
Kem

Update Quatro

Alright, a new week a new update!

I decided to do these on Tuesdays as Monday seems to be the default, so let's be different!


First part of this week's update;
Here's some more music for your ears! This is the main menu music for Godwind






On to the second part of the update!

Today's location coverage will cover the "Wispy Woods" This area is located before "Liverock Caverns" and after "Spirit's Grotto" (That's for next week!)

Wispy Woods is a bit darker than it sounds, the reason for the naming is that the souls of people in purgatory are attracted to this place due to the powerful magical radiance of the Spirit who resides here, mistaking it for the "Light" these Wisps wander the woods confused, lost and slowly forgetting who and what they were. These Wisps are intended to be quite unpredictable, some may attack, some might attack other Wisps, some may just be rambling to themselves.  The Wispy Woods is a cruel end for any soul who dies here, they won't enter an afterlife and will be doomed to wander.

That's  the story out of the way, now let's get down to brass tacks.

The Wispy Woods is an introductory area where the player will learn to move, interact with the environment, attack and learn that in Godwind there's more than one route to a destination and that exploration might yield an interesting path or two.


That's about it for the update this week.
Next week I'll cover the Spirit Grotto and accompanying soundtrack.

Before I leave you, if anyone is interested in helping with the development of Godwind, just leave a comment with Steam or an email at which I can reach you, along with what you think you could contribute.

Thanks for reading this week's update!

Regards-
Kem

Update Trois

A day late, but that's because as I was writing this post, my computer lost connection to the internet so I said to myself "Screw it, bed time" and turned off my computer.
Okay, now on with the show!
Today's information update will tell you about the "Timid Fields" and provide another song from the soundtrack.
Here's the song for your listening pleasure whilst you read;

Timid Fields is a location nestled between "Liverock Cavern" and "Shybrooke". These are the fields where the farmers of Shybrooke grow their main crop, known as Timids.

Timids are a plant in our world based on a combination of the Potato and the Mimosa pudica, otherwise known as the Makahiya or Shy Plant. When you touch this plant, the leaves pull themselves in to avoid damage to the plant's ability to gather sunlight, I've provided an example video here.

I mentioned it was combined with a potato right? Yep. It'll be called a Timato. (What does he mean?) I mean you'll be able to harvest/gather the plant as if it were a resource, another possible way for you to earn money for crossing the toll bridge to town.

Anyway, back to the area itself - The Timid Fields area will be somewhat of a crossroads that will allow the player to choose a direction and start their journey. (I never said you had to pay the toll, did I?) Players should be wary though, the road might seem friendly at first but danger could be anywhere.

The Timid Fields are a low level training area for gathering and combat with some small pest creatures you'll be asked to kill by the local farmers and the area itself will be the largest you've heard about up until this point, comprised of multiple maps.

I think that's all for Timid Fields.

One last thing in this update-

I've been back and forward with the main composer quite a bit over the past few days and I feel we're finally making headway on a solid menu theme.

In hindsight every few days might be a poor choice of update regularity given the early development status of the game, so I think we'll make it weekly rather than every few days, at least for now.

And with that that's the end of today's update!

Thanks for reading the blog!

Best Regards~
Kem

Update Dos

Update time folks.


Okay, so I mentioned before that we already had some tracks.

So here's something for your ears!


This track is for the first village the player will  encounter called "Shybrooke" - Shybrooke is a small village with dirt paths and is bordered on one side by a small brooke and toll bridge and the other by a mountain.

The player will have to earn gold in a few various ways to afford the toll fee. This will move us on to the next part in today's update - the place you'll  be "grinding", completing kill and collect quests or farming the first boss from level 1-8 of the game .

In the previous update I also mentioned that I was working on a cave tileset - progress on this has been slow going as I've been working on art assets for another game as a commission.

I will be explaining more about the first location that requires cave tiles.

This location is called "Liverock Cavern" -  In this place is a central large cavern with two or three small "arms" coming off of it - Each arm will serve a purpose, Entry, Exit and Introductory Boss.

The NPCs inhabiting this cave will be essentially rocks, in numerous different shapes, sizes and naturally strengths. You'll find it tough to move through this cavern the first few times until  you know which rocks are actually alive. I've decided that the names of these creatures shall be "Stalag Mites" - I know, GENIUS.

Obviously I'd like to make the game challenging. So naturally  I  have a rather entertaining little trick that will force new players to subconsciously meander into the maws of the game's first boss, which has been named the "Stalag Mite Queen", a large seemingly lifeless boulder with a few nasty tricks and a defined tactic to winning that won't be explained. Capable of  self-healing this boss WILL require a party.

Alot of information for this update.

That's it for today and the location of "Liverock Cavern", stay turned for more updates every 2-3 days from here onwards.

Best Regards~
Kem

First post

Okay, so this is the first post to the Godwind Blog.

Blogger will serve as a temporary hub for updates until we need a website and forum.



 Update 001:

Today I started progress on the Liverock Cavern tileset. Threw some basic tiles together after staying up for 25~ hours then I went to sleep.

In other news, we now have four soundtrack files for use in  4/5 of the first "region" areas.

We also now have a new and improved official logo! Commissioned by me with my design from Mr. Faux, a talented graphics designer - you can view his portfolio here;  http://portofolio.co.nf/folio.html