Zan the Bonebreaker

Happy Halloween!

The Fog is coming

Forging an Arsenal

I've been thinking a lot about Durna's potential arsenal, and decided to grab some paper and lay it out.

While in Thief the weapons are always the same, here I'd like to give the player the ability to pick from a few, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.

As far as the ranged attacks go, I also wanted to limit the types of projectiles to a core few, and instead create complexity by allowing them to be combined with various poisons.

Imagine if instead of using a t...

The Icepeak Dwarves (Hedon Wiki)

Hey guys, as you might have noticed, I stopped working on Hedon's Wikipedia documentation a while ago. The reason is quite simple - it takes just too much damn time to handle, and now that I'm working on a new game, I don't want to spread myself too thin.

I have thus decided to hire Mr. Red (also known as Necrolad on Discord) to help me out with it, so he'll be writing a few articles every month from now on. He knows Hedon's lore well enough, so I hope he'll do as good of a job as I co...

Hedon 2.4.1 is out!

You can find the changelog here.

Also, the Realms Deep 2023 Steam Event/Sale is up, you guys might wanna check that out too!

Hedon 2.4.1 Mini-Update Coming Soon

I've been working on a small update this week, which adds a few hand made maps/clue drawings to some of the levels that tend to overstay their welcome.

The Mansion map in particular has had some streamlining changes made to it.

I also want to record a new gameplay trailer, I've been thinking that the current one up on Steam doesn't represent Hedon for all that it is.

Not sure about release date, but it shouldn't be long, just need to finish testing and doing some touch ups.&...

The Navmesh Issue

I remember the days when I used to make fun of modern games for requiring navigation meshes to work... and here I am now, suffering from bad karma.

Unfortunately, the current pipeline needed to create a hand-crafted level seems to be limited in regards to how much I can edit the navigation mesh...

So basically, I can generate it for the ENTIRE map at once, which also includes undesired parts like the top of the level geometry. Now, in order to solve this I have a few options:
...

Animation Overview

I kinda suck at explaining things on air but I hope you get the gist of it :^)

Animation Update

Things are going smoothly, if this keeps up I should be able to wrap things up at the end of the next week (and by that I mean have all the important animations to test the guard AI). I might make a video showcasing what I made, so keep an eye out!

First Dwarf Animations!

Maaaaan this took a while to set up, but now that I finally got to the good part - actually making the freaking animations - and I'm feeling confident that I can handle this department.

Some of you asked me if I wanna go with mocap or hand animations. The answer is definitely hand made, as anything too realistic would clash with the low fi vibe of Haggard. I wanna stick to simple and visually effective work.

The video features a basic idle and walk animation which I intend to use...

The fog is coming

The fog is coming

Hedon with Goblins

I'm away on a short holiday, so I figured I'd update you on Vostyok's project instead. He's still at it :^)

Animation Preparation

The last couple of weeks I've learned a whole bunch of things about animation, and spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best pipeline for getting the dwarves animated.

As far as I can tell, I'll be rigging and posing in Blender, then bake the animations and export them to Godot. The engine has the option to make an animation library and retarget other models so I won't have to import each and every dwarf with the same animations, but I haven't checked it out in detail yet.
2023-08-07 20:54:04 +0000 UTC View Post

Baking Lights

Being able to bake lights allows for the addition of a lot more lights than I could afford in Hedon without hitting massive performance drops. Of course, like everything so far, this comes with its own set of issues, but I won't go into detail on that now.

Here are some screenshots, I'm mostly satisfied, through a bit concerned that the advanced lighting might give the game a realistic look that won't gel well with the art style.

More Trials and Errors

It took me 3-4 days to make this area in Hedon using GZDoom Builder. In Blender, I've been at it for two weeks and still have ways to go.
At this point I'm 100% sure that it's just unfeasible to use Blender as a main tool for building Haggard's levels, as it is just too bulky and slow to work with. I will have to employ a mix of TrenchBroom and Blender, with TrenchBroom really doing most of the heavy lifting, or else this will drive me insane.

So yeah, here's a shot of the docks ar...

Trials and Errors

I've spent the last couple of weeks mostly making and remaking stuff. It is an unfortunate reality that although Haggard is very much an old school game in style and scope, the engine it will run on (Godot) isn't.

I was pretty enthusiastic to use TrenchBroom (the Quake map editor) to flesh out the levels, but unfortunately it seems to not gel well with the sensibilities of a modern game engine. It works 90% fine, but it's that 10% that makes using it insensible, at least as far as me a...

A first taste of the visuals...

What do you guys think?

Laying the Foundation

Ever wondered how the abandoned dwarf town looked back when... well, it wasn't abandoned?

I guess we're going to find out :^)

Finding a New Look: Hedon vs Haggard

After spending the last week working on a set of textures to recreate the abandoned dwarven town, I decided that I might as well apply them in GZDoom and compare the Haggard visuals to the ones in Hedon directly. So far Haggard is turning out to look like a Hedon HD of sorts, but there are a few key differences.
And yes, the sprites and improper texture alignment do bias the end result, but it's enough information for me to work on the next step for now.

Anyway, I am very pleased wi...

Haggard Texture Work

I decided to re-draw some of Hedon's textures to the style I want to use in Haggard, which will basically be more detailed and with a stronger painterly feel to it. The textures will still be pixelated, except in 128x128 size rather than Hedon's 64x64 standard.

It is important to figure out the visual rules I want to stick to early on, so I picked 32 textures used in Map15 (the abandoned dwarven town in Bloodrite) in order to re-make and re-apply them to the very same level, and thus ge...

Hedon 2.4.0 is Out!

At long last, the new update has been released, featuring:

- Improved, non-slippery movement;

- Terrain-based footstep sounds;

- Weapon camera shake slider;
- New decoration sprites, textures and graphic improvements;
- And several other fixes and improvements - full changelog here!

Remember that updating Hedon requires a clean reinstallation. Enjoy ...

Map09 Final Sketch & What's Next

And here's the 9th map in all its glory! So what's next?

Well a while ago I have decided to turn the final, 10th map into two separate ones, with the very final one being a short epilogue - similar to the tutorial/prologue mission. Therefore, I have 3 maps left to sketch out, but I am going to leave them for later, so I can benefit from as much time as possible to think about them and gather ideas.

I will spend the next week to finally polish that Hedon update that has been wai...

Map09 More Progress

This has been a tough one, but I'm getting there!

Map09 Concept Progress

With this level coming close to the end of the game, things need to be appropriately eye candy :^)

First Map09 Sketch

I have returned from the Easter Holidays, time to get the gears spinning again :^)

Map08 Final Sketch

This took a while, but I am once again extremely pleased with how it came out. There's definitely going to be a few challenges in modelling this one, but if I can even get 90% of what I have planned done, it will be a great map!

Map08 Sketch Progress

Making steady progress with this one. Hopefully the next update will be of the finished sketch :^)

Commencing Map08

Probably the most Hedon-like map so far :^)

Map07 Final Sketch

Aaand here's Map07 done! The top part cutting off is actually Map01, which you will revisit here. Once again, I'm pretty happy with the result, I feel like it's a well balanced (albeit bit long) map.

Onward with Map08 then!

Map07 Progress

This week's progress with the seventh map :^)

Map07 - First WIP

We're well in the second half of Haggard's level design concept with another fairly Deus Ex-istic piece. It's a blend of linear and open paths, verticality, and lots of opportunities to apply imsim mechanics :^)

All layers turned on as usual to give you a sense of size without spoiling too much.