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So it's been a full year since I've done a level writeup and then posted a ton of pictures, which is a transgression I shall now fix! I hope you like swamps.
The Smaradagus Swamp is a rather gloomy place located right smack-dab in the middle of Vitrerran. It's populated by a group of frog-like creatures called the Tranalid, and on the whole, is the biggest nuisance on the continent.
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Read MoreHey, have some more Vitrerran music why don'tcha!
So, this song is the main theme for The Scarfoam Coast, or our water area. I was trying to channel my inner Alestorm, and while I probably missed that mark by a wide margin, I am happy with what I got going here. This song was super fun to make!
What sets this one apart, I guess, is that it uses a new plugin called Sakura. Well, not "new" to the world but new to Dual Wield Software. It came with some awesome strings, including the violin and guitars you here in this song. I finally have an upright bass, guys. You have no idea how happy that makes me. Got a wicked nice harp too.
Pretty sure the Greyjoys liked to go "we are the iron born," so that's where the title is coming from. I'm finding it harder to pun off of A Song of Ice and Fire things as I make more tunes. I haven't read the books in a very long time.
Anyhow, cheers. Hope you like the song, and as always, follow us on twitter @DualWieldSoft, find us on FB, and some third thing. I dunno.
Song after the break!
Read MoreYet another long delay in updates. How about one on a new card type? Blueprint Cards! These cards let you make new cards from other cards. Most games call that crafting. We do, too.
Read MoreHoly crap it's been two months since we last updated anything! I'm...really really sorry about that. Been a crazy year so far. There will be a bigger update on THAT sometime in the nearish future, by the way.
For the now, here are two songs, both of which are on our Youtube channel.
More after the break
Read MoreProgress continues with The Land of Glass, this time in the form of a new song. I’m quite happy with this one.
“Viper’s Bite” will be the battle theme music for the Sekhtus Desert.
This song started off as the night-time, rock tune for our Global Game Jam 2016 game. I created the original draft in around five hours on little sleep, and it featured some okay-sounding electric guitar and organ. It was mostly unmixed and unmastered because I ran out of time to do those things.
I liked it then though, and I wasn’t going to just let five hours worth of work sit there like that. So I loaded it back up and re-purposed it.
The okay-sounding electric guitar is now an acoustic guitar–actually two of them, each sounding a little different from each other–and the organ is now a ney flute. Wikipedia says that instrument is prominent in Egypt and the surrounding area.
Like the last song I made for The Land of Glass, there was a nice amount of collaborating at work here. I built the basics, and my brother helped me fix a few things up, partly in pointing out which areas were horribly out of key. I’m a hair tone deaf and have problems with some of that.
And like all my other songs, this one has a nod to A Song of Ice and Fire, The Red Viper being a character from the desert city of Dorn. It’s a bit less in-your-face (and not as clever) as “When Winter Fell” or “A Storm of Sounds,” but it’s the best I managed to do without getting overly wordy.
I hope you enjoy!
With the start of a new year comes both resolutions and reflections, and while we aren’t quite equipped with promising any of the former, we can certainly offer the latter. 2015 was a pretty busy year for The Regret of Vitrerran, and we’d like put out a kind of progress report of sorts. For those interested in the game, it’s only fair you know how far in we are; and for us making it, well, having this out in the open is very helpful.
What follows is a haphazard list of what goes into making a video game and how far we’re in. Please keep in mind that the percents are rough estimates and some categories are much bigger than others.
Read MoreHey everyone, it's been another long bout of time between updates, meaning it's time for another apology. I really, really don't like these voids of silence, but right now, there isn't much progress to show. That might not change for awhile, either.
I've spent the last month or so working on dialogue, finalizing Herahk/Aros and Kvalt/Tylek's journeys through the first five dungeons we have mapped out. I won't lie, they've been difficult to work with. Those four characters have been my problem children from day one, and that maybe wont' change ever.
However, I've smashed their campaigns into something pretty special, and I think you'll like them, especially Herahk/Aros. I really, really like how they've turned out.
To put this into some perspective, the Word document with all of our video game's dialogue currently measures something like 30,000 words, give or take a few hundred. That's a lot. When Vitrerran is all said and done, it'll be the size of a small novel.
On the reverse, Joe has been working on more menu stuff. The last few major bits of programming we need were the buy/sell menu (complete with merchant) and a crafting menu. Well, they're in the game, though none of the assets are, so there's nothing to show for it yet.
I want to say soon, but drawing portraits for our merchant/black smith aren't high on the list of priorities yet. There's still so much more to draw first.
The future holds more work. Work work work work work work work! I plan on hitting up more levels, fully fleshing out the Sehktus Desert and Arboravin Jungle now that my problem children have fully walked through those areas. The thing is, I've already posted tons of pictures of those places, so more really might not mean much.
I also want to keep some things secret for narrative purposes.
Joe, on the other hand, is working on some card effects right now. We want our special cards to look like the kinds of foil cards you'd get out of a random pack of, say, Pokemon cards. I used to collect them when I was younger and damn it, card games need foil cards. It's just fun. A little random reward for your time.
That, honestly, shouldn't take him too long to finish up. I'm not positive where he'll go next, but I can imagine it'll be more design work or churning out more magic cards. The campaigns will be easier to balance when they're all in place; all we'll need to do is tweak their numbers.
So that's it for now. Vitrerran lives and will continue to live until it's done.
Read MoreAs production for The Regret of Vitrerran continues, I'm finding myself heading back to older levels to spruce them up a bit or even completely add new parts. As I was building the interior of Castle Alboiss, it occurred to me that I've yet to write a blog about Vitrerran's ice level, which is strange since it's been fairly complete for a long time now and acts as the setting to our demo. It's high-time we've had a writeup about it!
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Read Morehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3MDux2Ce3Y
The Let's Builds are back, this time with a brand new level and from scratch. Joe also joins in on the fun, so there's two of us to talk and keep things interesting, which is for the best. We're still experimenting around with this, but we do want to keep this updated. We figure it's fun "under the hood" stuff, and you'll get a much better taste of how development actually works.
Plus, it's kind of fun.
~Chad
Read MoreWe thought it might be fun to sit down and play through our own demo, to maybe offer some insight into the design work of our game and explain how the mechanics work while actually playing it. And then we opened our mouths...
I swear we had the best of intentions when we started.
We had fun though, and we hope you do as well. If this looks like something you'd want to try, please give it a download! We're still looking for feedback.
Also, if this is something you enjoyed, let us know. We had fun, and we'd certainly be up for doing more of this kind of thing in the future.
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