Zan the Bonebreaker

New Sprites for Map08

I think this map will bring in more new textures than sprites but in any case, here's some of the new stuff.

Map08 Sketch

Here's a draft of the new map! I'm still waiting on Robopatron, ekwood and Albatross for their reward ideas, but in the meantime I'll start working on the next level. It would be great if I could release it in another 3 weeks or so.

Iceman13's Reward

An ass kicking Valkyrie.

Karitan Aegis' Reward

He's asked for an upgrade of his previous reward pic. Well, here it is~

Kyurae Minasaki's Reward

A floating mage wolf girl :^)

Sorry for the delay.

Freeze Monster Death Sprites

Alright, so here's what I've been working on in parallel to adjusting the new map and RL stuff. Frozen monster sprites!

For once I thought I'd make them since the next map will have a colder aesthetic. The freeze death can only occur if the monsters get friendly fired by a Crawler right now (since they do cold damage), but it's a fun feature nonetheless, even if players might not even get to see it happen. The Potion Launcher initially had frost potions planned, but I'm probably not...

Copper Boltwire Stream Reminder

Friendly reminder that he streams a playthrough of Hedon today, at 8 p.m. GMT+1 (so in about 3-4 hours from this post). More info in the "Community" tab here on my Patreon.

Hop in for the bantz

Busy Week

Hey guys, I'm in for quite a frantic week so I'm going to let you know about what I'll be doing Hedon related right now.

We've hit a neat rank 14 on ModDB (not sure if we got even further, I just woke up to it like that and it changes pretty quickly. We're at 100ish now, but nonetheless, a whole lot of people have been exposed to Hedon with that recent article I've posted it seems, so that's a good thing. New patrons welcome! :p

The last days I've worked on fixing stuff for Ma...

New ModDB Article

Posted a little update on ModDB, few screenshots and info about the new map, enjoy.

Gore is now entirely switchable off

A while ago I worked on an option to turn off gory deaths, but editor-placed gore bits would still be around. Now I've made it so that everything gore related switches off according to the setting. 

New month btw, rewards will start coming as I'm also taking the first batch of tester feedback. Many thanks to Kyurae Minasaki, Sasha the Lynx and Sheela & Cyanide for the feedback given so far, I've already started polishing the map up.

0.7.a build

Refreshed the link, grab it here.

0.7.a is out!

21 days. That's how much the new map took me to make, very close to the Plaza and Grove maps, although I had time to work more consistently on this one. In any case, it's probably the most gameplay heavy map so far, at least where combat is involved. But you'll have to go see for yourself!

As always, I'll be awaiting your feedback!

Map07 almost complete

I have one final room to make, and a small outro segment.

Then I'll have to finish the scripts, and place monsters, and lastly test the whole map obsessively. Should be ready for release in 4 or 5 days!

More Map07 Progress

Outside buildings and open areas are a huge pain in the ass to make in GZDoom, that's for sure. I'm pretty much using a ton of 3D floors at this point, and I've been spending almost the entire day inching with detail/decoration, then testing the fps and sacrificing on lights/sprites/trees/terrain detail so on and so forth. This is probably by far the worst FPS performance map so far, I can hardly keep it at over 60fps for my GTX 1060. Well, I guess there's a lesson to be learned here.

Zan (by Ardat Lilitu)

Commissioned this from Ardat Lilitu 

Click to see her Patreon, she's drawing some dope retro FPS themed art~

Map 07 about 50% done

Been putting some nice 12 hour a day workloads into this so far, so progress goes well. I went overboard with my ambitions from this particular map, but I'll make use of the spare time I have to push the limit. It's roughly half done, and I am hoping to finish it in two weeks from now (including testing and balancing and all that stuff). Hang in there~

Setting the Scale

One of the difficult things to do when working with the GZDoom Builder is keep track of realistic dimensions and make sure that the level and objects are (more or less) scaled to fit the characters who make use of it.

Now with the Iron Division things are a bit complicated due to the Orcs and Goblins having significant size differences. I tailor the size of the environment after the Bear Warriors, since Zan has a similar size. We know they reach an average of 2.1m / 7ft, so well abo...

One Calm Day

In case you were wondering why I haven't updated the money goal this month it's because I was in the talks to get another soundtrack from Alexander Brandon. Well, here it is. One Calm Day.

I will reset the goal to get a third track for one of the future maps as well. Thanks a lot for making this possible, guys!

Perspective & Visual Logic

I decided this would be interesting to make a short explanation on. Here's how I tinkered up the layout and visuals for Map07's starting segment.

Before & After

Here's how it's starting to look. Trees are a massive pain for FPS, though, it will need a lot of testing before I can balance looks with performance. 

New Trees

One million hours and fucked up carpal tunnel later...

Got them pine trees for the new tileset, and I've been implementing them too. There's a delicate issue with how I'll have to place them to emulate a forest-like density while keeping FPS under control. I'm planning on making a study and sharing it, along with some other visual effects I'm planning to work with for this map.

Map07 Sky Texture

Wew, now this took some work. It came out nice though. If you look at the orange-lit spot in the forest, that's the spot from Map01 where you'd exit from the mining outpost and see the the mountain ahead of you. Well, now you're on the mountain (although you still get to look up to its' peak).

Map07 Begins

Here's a first glance at a rough terrain draft for the starting area of Map07 "Parapet". You guessed it, it's on the outside, and one of the few maps in Hedon that will let you see the broad sky.

This screenshot doesn't show much outside a new tileset/texture aesthetic that I've been working on. Also, the mountain is supposed to be on the right side, but I still need to work on the new sky texture for this.

I wanna do a before/after shot from around this angle and see how this...

Credits Update

I've moved the patrons to a separate credit page, and put them in donation order (obviously this will be updated over time). It also mentions the existence of the patron gallery so players will have incentive to go look for it.

I want to put the gallery in map10 (which is the final one, at least for this episode that is), in a not THAT secret spot, but still something that would not look like it's where you're supposed to go.

Danyx992's Reward

DIpping into cyberpunk. Love how this came out.

papyLaPlage's Reward

Here it is, a banner with papy's name stylised in cuneiform-like letters.

This actually got me into making an actual banner prop which will be in the levels derived from this one, so it's double the NICE.

Ekwood's Reward

Here we have a rare Rule 63 Baratus (or well, a personal interpretation) :^)

Ambient sound replacement done!

Wew, this took a lot more than I imagined. Still, was really enjoyable to come up with replacements for the placeholders I had in. Sure, my sounds won't be as good as the ones from Thief or Blood, but then again, what game has better sound design than them anyway?

Not as many interesting/alien sounds have been used, except for one rain drop sound I used for the campfire ambient, because I really liked the texture. Also, paulstretching can get some amazing results.

Sound replacement almost complete

I've worked on sound replacements for the doors, switches and elevators. Pretty decent result given my experience in the field, I made myself some loops from metal hits and patched them together into something more or less seamless. Can't wait to see what you guys think about them (will probably make another 0.6.a release soonish).

And yes, I'm almost done with sounds, still have the ambient ones which will probably be the most challenging, but I'm getting there. Map07 will get started so...

5$ Monthly Reward Raffle

Winner is papyLaPlage!