Elements

Full Time Game Dev Podcast
about 2 years ago – Wed, Aug 21, 2024 at 09:10:01 AM

Hey everyone!
Just wanted to post a quick update. I was fortunate enough to be a guest on the Full Time Game Dev Podcast with Thomas Brush. Thomas has launched multiple games and is currently working on a game called Twisted Tower. I have been a subscriber of Thomas’ channel for a long time, so it’s quite the honor to have a chat with him. Our chat talks about my background and how I got into game development, so if you are interested that video is here.

August Update! 🎮
about 2 years ago – Sun, Aug 18, 2024 at 10:29:37 AM

Hey Everyone! 
Thank you so much for your patience. We have had our heads down working hard on the game. Here are some of the things we have been working on.
 

Slime Enemy
A fantasy game wouldn’t be complete without a slime enemy. We just finished some new textures for these guys. They are lower tier enemies who will be found in the Nature, Dark, Fire and Water biomes.

Owl Blacksmith Armor
We also just finished some new textures and rigging on the Owl NPCs blacksmith armor. We still haven’t finalized the name for the Owl creatures so if you have any suggestions. Let us know!

Fire Armor
We showed the Rare Fire Armor in an early update and we have just finished the Legendary version. The Legendary version is a big visual and state upgrade from the Rare version. We hope this will encourage players to upgrade their gear. We are planning to have unique perks for each piece; Helmet, Arms, Chest, Legs, and Boots. What kind of perks do you think the legendary armor should have?

Two-handed Fire Sword
We featured the Rare version of the Two-handed Fire Sword in a previous update. We have now finished the Epic and Legendary versions.

Earth Sword
Nature and Earth sometimes get mixed up. In many worlds and games Nature and Earth are the same Element. In Elemythia, Nature includes anything that grows; grass, plants, trees and even creatures. The Earth Element includes anything found under the ground. This included Rock, Dirt, and Magma. We finished the Earth One-hand Sword. It is our first piece of Earth gear so far. We will be working on more weapons and armor, ensuring they are distinct from Nature, and have their own look and feel. What do you think?

Dark Weapons
We finished some new Dark weapons, giving us a full set. We just added the Dark Shield and Dark Daggers. Some ideas we have for perks for Dark gear are; enhanced vision, closing distances, teleportation, and blink dash. Let us know if you have any ideas for perks for the Dark weapons and armor.

Below is a quick video testing out the new daggers. You will also see the new grass we are testing. We want the grass to be able to propagate fire, but it is a little more tricky than we initially thought. It’s still on our list of wants, but currently lower in priority. What do you think of the new grass?

Custom Font
We want Elements to have its own identity so we had a custom font made. This font is based on the Elements logo and will be used in menus and in game. We are also thinking of creating a “worn” version of the font. You can see our custom font in the start screen menu. This is a work in progress, but we have some ideas on how we want that to look. What game has your all time favorite start screen?

Check Point System
We added a checkpoint system to the game. These checkpoints will activate when you are within a certain distance and instantly save your progress. If you have a misadventure you will spawn at the nearest checkpoint you have found. We are thinking of having different versions of these in each biome.

Bee hives and Wells
We added wells and beehives as interactables in the game. Wells will give you water which can be used in crafting and cooking and beehives will give you honey and may also have some other added benefits like speeding up growth of plants that are near by. Now we need some simple recipes that include honey as an ingredient. Let us know if you have any ideas!

Ice Building Pieces
The building pieces you use in Elements will be based on the biome you are in. This will give your builds some variety and add unique pieces for each biome. We added some new building pieces for the Ice Biome that fit more with the look and feel of that area. It’s more work adding different pieces for each biome, but we think it is worth it.

Alpha
We want to ensure everyone has a good experience with the Alpha, so we conducted a poll on our discord (link here if you haven’t joined) https://t.co/2lbf96ROqt asking which GPUs you are running. 3000 Series was the winner with 34%, but we also noticed that Steam Deck was a large portion with 17%. 

Optimization is typically saved until closer to the end of the development, because of the size of our game and world, we thought it was important to work on some optimization now. We are happy to say that it is working on the Steam Deck and each build is more stable and runs better.

Speaking of the Alpha, we are in the later stages of internal testing. We don’t plan on squashing all the bugs, but we want to have things for you to do and as many pieces of the game ready for testing so the Alpha testing is beneficial to development. We hope to start giving Apogee Playtesters access at the beginning of September and although we can't give an exact date, if all goes well the Alpha code you put in Steam should be ready to play at the end of September. 

Some of the problems we are solving now means we won’t have to solve them later in development. Who would have thought making a large open world would be challenging 🙂

If you haven’t received your Alpha code, please see the previous updates on how you can access it. 

Once the Alpha goes live we will be listening to feedback, adding updates and fixing bugs. The Alpha is a big step to getting something amazing into Early Access. In the discord you will start to see bug reporting channels being added. 

We have opened up the game a little bit more than just the Nature biome. You will be able to explore some of the neighboring biomes, Fire and Dark. This will give us some good feedback on balancing the different biomes and how elemental damages and resistances will play a part in your play through. 

Thank you all for your patience and support. I know things are taking a little longer than we planned, but I hope you know we are working our hardest and fastest to get something in your hands that you are proud to have supported.

Hope you are having an amazing summer! ❤

More Alpha Keys! 🎮
over 2 years ago – Tue, Jul 02, 2024 at 07:27:57 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Initial Alpha Keys Sent!
over 2 years ago – Sun, Jun 30, 2024 at 07:38:51 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Amulets, Enemies, Mineables, Mounts, Puzzles and Alpha Update! 📿
over 2 years ago – Tue, Jun 18, 2024 at 11:41:38 AM

Hey everyone! Just wanted to post an update showing some of the things we have been working on in the last month or so!

Ice Shield
We added an Elemental Ice Shield. As you upgrade the shield it will become more durable and covered in Elemental Ice. Below you can see the Legendary version. What do you think this shield should have for perks?

Gremlins
We added a new enemy type, Gremlins to Elements. These Gremlins are fire based, but may be found in other biomes as well. As you can see here they have a chance to give you a burn. What do you think of these guys? And are Gremlins a good name or do you have other suggestions?

Water Frotles
We started adding different elemental versions of our Frotles. We had these repainted a while ago by a very talented artist and I am still in love with the art. There will be a Melee, Shielded, Ranged, Throwing, and Magic version of these enemies.

Enemy Health Bars
Enemy health bars will now show up as the color of their main elemental type. This will give you a better read of their weaknesses, so you can decide on what weapon type and magic to use against them.

Stagger Bars
Some enemies can be staggered. If they can be, a stagger bar will appear under the enemies health bar.

FOV Slider
We started adding some menu options to ensure players can customize their experiences. Although we might not have every option during the Alpha, we wanted to make sure you have the ability to invert your camera and adjust the Field of View (FOV). Also, Ultrawide will be supported from the beginning. Are there any quality of life options you would like to see that will affect your experience with Elements?

Amulets
When you start your adventure you will get to pick one of three amulets; Nature, Water, or Fire. There will be amulets for each biome, but to start you will have a choice of these three. Amulets will act as pieces of armor and give you different passive buffs and perks. Nature will give increased armor and health regen. Water will give increased melee damage and critical hit chance. And fire will give you increased melee and ranged attack speed. Amulets can be upgraded and their inherent perks will increase as you upgrade them.

Throwables
We connected the consumables with the throwing system. You will be able to find throwable items in chests or around bandit camps. You will also be able to craft throwable items. I am thinking we need an original name for throwables that explode. Someone suggested “Boombs”. What do you think about that? Or do you have any other suggestions?

Shields as Weapons
In keeping with our ethos of giving players options on how they play, we have added shields as weapons. While shields have one of the shortest ranges, they also have one of the highest damages of all weapons. We still need to add weapon trails and sound effects to the shields, but we have them working and they feel powerful. Excited to work on Skills for the Shields. Maybe we can do a throwable shield for one of the skills? Right now, you cannot dual wield shields. Not sure if that is anyone's preferred weapon build?

Minable Minerals
We want to ensure that each biome looks and feels different. This includes the type of minerals and resources you can mine and obtain. While basic crafting and forging can be done with resources from any biome. If you would like to craft or upgrade specific elemental items, you will have to gather resources from that biome. We hope this will encourage players to explore new biomes.
Here is a video showing some updated mining. What do you think about the time to mine and the feedback? We have already made the “Health Bars” smaller, but do you think they should be removed all together? We are trying to find a good way to identify trees and rocks that can be mined, but also don’t want to be too intrusive to the player's immersion.

Fire Update
We have been tweaking the fire, trying to improve how it fits in the world. Which fire do you think looks better?

Mounts
We have been tweaking the speed and locomotion of some of the mounts, including the horse mounts. There will be close to 5-10 different horse types in the game. These will mostly be found in the world, but some might be acquired by doing certain quests.

Glider Trails
We are starting to add smaller details to the game like glider trails. We still need to make these a bit thicker, but we are excited to get them in there. What other details make gliders look and feel great?
 

Puzzles
We have been working on the base mechanics for one of our custom puzzles. With this puzzle we will be able to make many different variations by adding new elements and pathways and changing the block order. My 8 year old son helped me design the real life testing prototypes to test the puzzle before we made it in the engine 😊
We realize not everyone likes puzzles, so we are trying to find a balance between difficulty and frequency. Are you the type of player who loves solving puzzles or prefers to skip them if possible? What are some of your favorite puzzle types in games and ones that you think might fit in Elemythia?

Villages
We are looking to expand the area for the Alpha to include a small portion of the Dark and Fire Biomes. These are biomes that neighbor the Nature biome. We think it would be great to showcase how the same weapons work in different biomes. So we started blocking out one of the villages in the Dark Biome. What else does this village need to bring it to life?
 

We have also been working on some of the villages in the Nature Biome. We still haven’t decided who will reside in this village. What type of creatures could you picture here?
 

New Building Peices
Each biome will have its own set of building pieces. I would love to have different sets for each village, but that might be a bit ambitious. These pieces were originally intended for the Dark Biome, but after seeing them in game, they might end up fitting better in the Water Biome. I am thinking maybe the Dark Biome has more of a stone or old castle vibe. Or maybe a more creepy feel. What do you think?

Alpha Update
As the end of June approaches, we’re excited to share our progress. We are still aiming to get the Alpha version in your hands by the end of the month. However, there are still a few critical elements we’re refining to ensure a great player experience.

To reassure you that we’re close, we will be sending out Alpha keys before the month’s end. While you will receive the key soon, it could take a bit longer before you can start playing. You can add the key to your library and be ready to go as soon as we give the word.

Any potential delays in the Alpha release should not impact the rest of our roadmap. Our priority is to make your first experience with Elements exceptional. Delivering something great sometimes requires a bit more time than anticipated. As soon as QA resolves major bugs, you’ll be able to jump in. We want to ensure thorough internal testing to avoid giving you a broken experience.

If you didn’t receive the Wallpaper we sent out a couple months ago via Backerkit, please let us know so we can ensure you get your Alpha Key when we send them out.

Thank you for your patience and trust in us. We’re committed to delivering something amazing. And it’s so awesome to have others as excited about Elements as we are ❤️