Zan the Bonebreaker

Dwarven Outlaws

Also known as "haggards." Or your future competition.

Texturing the War Priest

Figured I'd record another character painting process since it's been a while. Enjoy!

To 2026!

2025 was pretty good, me and Papy locked in and worked at a nice and steady pace. I got a lot of bitch work done with the game's assets - props, animations, UI, VFX, sound and some characters, which I will be wrapping up in the upcoming months. Papy worked on the game's systems - combat, NPCs, inventory and many other things that everyone takes for granted but are actually very complicated to do (eg. doors). :^)

Yeah, it's annoying how much work goes into things that are not even worth...

Dwarven Militia

The city watch.

Dwarven Mercenaries

Man, drawing armor is pure hell :^)

Dwarven Soldiers

Back to working on some dwarves. Figured I'd finally tackle the concept for the army side of the "factions."
This should also give you an idea on what kind of enemies you'll be running into, and the reason why unlike in Thief, here you will have to choose your weapon wisely before embarking on a mission.

Finished Player Weapon Animations

A quick tease of the player's arsenal: 3 melee weapons (each with 2 stances) and 2 crossbows. Around 180 animations, finally finished!

I will never take for granted the weapon animations I see in a 3D game from now on :^)

VFX

Done working on most of the particle vfx that will be used in the game. Here's a sneak peak at the effects you can have on your weapon.

Expect to see more of the combat system next, Papy has been making steady progress with it.

Lots of Sound Work

I have finished working the majority of UI/inventory/interaction and generic ambient sounds these last few weeks. The sneak peek at my sound list above should give you better idea...

Anyway, time to switch back to visual artist mode and work on some VFX up next!

Combat Sound Work

Since we're working on combat, I've been tackling the ever-vital sound design behind it. You know I'm very keen on this often overlooked part of making games, so I'm investing a lot of time and effort in making it right. The goal these days is to set up a modular system that produces a proper combination of sound between the weapon and the surface that it hits, especially in regard to locational body damage & layered armor.

Not a particularly easy task, but then again, is there such...

Shardbreaker - New Hedon Fan Map is Out!

For anyone who's missed the announcement on Discord, Hedon now has a second full-length fan map out there, made by Blake! It's awesome and you should definitely play it (just drag the map .wad file over hedon.exe to run it).
https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/154149-shardbreaker-part-1/

And don't forget about Below the Gaudy Goblin if you haven't checked it out yet.

Melee Weapon Arsenal

While Papy has been working on the NPC AI and we are going into the combat system, I figured I'd take the time to work on the variety of melee weapons. Unlike Thief, the guards in Haggard will have a variety of melee weapons to use. I also tossed in a teaser pic of fancy variants, as a treat :^)

Animation... Lots of Animation

I've pretty much spent the entire month of June working on animations for the dwarves, but I'm done with almost everything other than combat and emotes.
With my handmade approach, I obviously want each dwarf to ooze personality, so one thing I did was come up with different types of walking/running styles. This will also be a subtle way to tell the player what kind of dwarf they're dealing with before they verify whether they have a weapon in hand or not. Here's a sneak peek at it.
2025-06-28 19:25:58 +0000 UTC View Post

Back to Animating

Since Papy has been working on the quite enormous task of programming the guards' AI, I put the animator hat back on. Just a status update, don't want to spoil too much now.

Progress is being made + Dwarf Hats

Papy has been making progress with coding the guards' behavior, and I'm back to working on animations for the dwarves - a whole lot of stuff that we can't show for now.

But to break radio silence, here are some hats I made for the sake of giving the dwarves more variety of outfit.

Cinematic Test

Even if it's not a major concern at this stage, I wanted to try my hand at creating cinematics for the game. It's doable in a decent amount of time, if enough people show interest in this, it may be worth pursuing later on.

The Wealth of Knowledge

Various "readables" - some valuable, some containing valuable information.

Book Ornamentation

Inking & Painting some book ornamentation for them readables :^)

More Statuettes

A few statuettes that can be picked in the inventory, with some valuable versions to help you hit that loot goal :^)

Musical Instruments

Used in the making of Dwarven Metal.

Mould Casting

Basically Hedon's Great Forge interactions but as a system. Making these assets took quite a bit of planning, but I think I'm onto something with this setup. Designing systems is the main challenge of an imsim, after all :^)

Switches

A plethora of switches, to be attached to various contraptions. I want them to stand out visually and share the same general fancy-dwarf-craft aesthetic.

Making Tools

Tools will be serving various purposes, from the ones you are used to if you've played Arx Fatalis to several others. Here's the making-of vid :^)

Alchemy Equipment

We're going to brew so many ̶ ̶̶̶m̶̶̶u̶̶̶s̶̶̶h̶̶̶r̶̶̶o̶̶̶o̶̶̶m̶̶̶ ̶̶̶v̶̶̶o̶̶̶d̶̶̶k̶̶̶a̶̶̶s̶ potions with these bad boys :^)

2024 Was Good

For our game project, that is (not so much for everything else). Besides the game budget I had gathered being slowly devalued away by inflation, I'm pretty happy with how things are going on the development side. We've achieved about 90% of what me and Papy planned to get done, and I'm hopeful that we can keep the pace into 2025.

The big main goal right now is to finish the vertical slice of Haggard, so we can make the demo. This mainly involves Papy finishing programing the base system...

Average Dwarven Lunch

Soup: mushroom stew
Main course: fried mushrooms with bread

Desert: mushroom cream & dried mushrooms

And of course, strong spirits to drink :^)

Making Props...

Been working on inventory stuff these weeks. Here's a making of process for a valuable item, since I haven't posted anything in a while.

Right now the plan is to ̶b̶o̶o̶z̶e̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶m̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶I̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ finish making most of the props that the player will be able to get.

Below the Gaudy Goblin - Fan Map Release!

I'm honored to announce that the first Hedon Fan Map has been released, after being worked on by Doomax for over an year! And it's awesome!

It's a large level with great visuals, custom sprites, spot-on atmosphere and... I'll let you find out more by yourselves :^)

You can get the map here -  https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/149566-below-the-gaudy-goblin/
2024-11-23 11:48:42 +0000 UTC View Post

Making Statues

Max asked about statues, so here we go :^)

Bountiful Harvest

More TrenchBroom plant models (+couple of sprites).

Some you may eat, some may eat you :^)