Follow-up on the development

[ZeddOTak 407]

Hey everyone!

We will use this discussion to share our progress on Naïca with you. Developpers and graphic designers will answer to this post by describing & explaining the work they have done and/or what they are working on.

Posts will not be published on a regular basis, it will all depend on which topics the members of the team can share (yes, it will be spoiler free so do not worry).

It will be "raw discussion" which is entirely different from the DevBlogs: not long, planned articles but short posts.

[Naphtaline 56]

I'll begin this topic then !
I am currently working on interactable objects, such as chests and harvestable items !

We are planning on having different types of opening conditions. For instance it can be with a time constraint : it means that you'll have a "casting" time to open it, but you can be interrupted on a hit. Or else you could need a consumable object to open the container, or a tool to harvest something etc...
This is not an exaustive list of course, it's just some example to give you an idea of what kind of interaction you will find in the game.

[Naphtaline 56]

Hi there !

So, today i'm working on quest completion !
There will be many ways to accomplish quests, i wanted to show you a sneak peek of the (not finished) quest interface

These quest mechanics are not the most complex ones, and again this is just a small example of what you will be able to do in game.
We are cooking a neat and rich quest experience for you !

See you in the next episode !

 

[Sol 56]

Hey everyone !

I've been doing some research sketches for the forest of Lazul these last few days !
Here are two drawings regarding this area !
 

[Sol 56]

Hey there!

We're busy setting everything up for the next test but I thought I'd share a little something with you!

I just recently added a new fog animation on the map.
It is still a work in progress so it might not be the final design.

The first one you can see is at the very beginning of the map we set for the test.
The second one is located at the edge, leading to the real troubles awaiting you in the future test!

 

[greglofe 20]

Hi!

I'm Greg, I design and animate In Naica. I'll post some artworks from time to time here. Hope you will enjoy!

For my first post, this is some tiles, and a view  of what it will look like in the game (it's the work of Tibo, our DA).

[Naphtaline 56]

Hi there!

As we all know, there were some indication missing during the PvE test, we initially planned to include these littles indications later but it seems like it's way more urgent then we expected.

So this week I worked a bit with Tibo, to create those indications in game.

Here is a sneak peek of this system :

:

This is still raw, we have a lot of modification to add to this, but so far, the core mechanic is working pretty well

That's it for today!

See you soon!

[ZeddOTak 407]

Hey everyone!

Here are some sketches for monster research made by @greglofe and @Sol. Most of them won't be in Naïca, but you may see some in Lazul: you'll have to keep attention!

 

 

[ZeddOTak 407]

A new script was written by @Naphtalineto randomize the animation time of the crystals glow in the Swamps. This way, it won't feel robotic but more organic!

[Balayne 33]

Hi, I wanna show you today something we did some weeks ago. There is still work to do on it but basically trading will be like that (still Work In Progress).

You take the items you wish to exchange and put them in your exchange window. Once done, you can confirm the exchange and when both players have done it, the trade proceeds.

[ZeddOTak 407]

Hey adventurers! A few months back (just scroll up), we announced we were working on a new interaction system. We are using visuals to make it easier for players to understand the purpose of each NPCs and, since then, we've made some progress and changes.

Currently, you will see a specific logo on top of an NPC related to his function (Merchant, Quest giver...). Also, if you have a quest with a collect objective (say, twigs) you will see a bag on top of it. This way, you'll know exactly which item to interact with in the game to complete your quests!

Naïca's closed Alpha: Dank Camp

[Sol 56]

Hi everyone !

I'm Sol and I work as Level Designer on Naïca.
Today I wanted to show you a tool I am using on a daily basis. We call it the Magic Tile.
It was designed for Unity by the dev team to allow me to create various grounds on a large scale.
The tool calculates the position of every tiles within the area I'm drawing and links the appropriate sprite to each of these tiles.
Here on this example I am using the "Paint with a filled box" tool of my Tile Palette with the Magic Tile selected.

That specific tile is even more special as it uses a 5*5 tile set as reference, allowing me to draw multiple levels of ground at once.
By just erasing the middle section it draws the inner section and by adding more filled boxes to the sides it draws the outter section.

That's all for today !

 

[ZeddOTak 407]

Hello everyone, it's been a while!

Since the last post, a lot of things happened for Naïca and this is mainly due to the preparation of our big test phase prior to the closed Alpha. We launched it this week with a few selected players in order to have direct feedback, and fix most of the servers issues & bugs.

The best news out of this is it's working better than expected. Our previous tests lasted only for a few hours (2-3h) and this is the first time we have had servers open 24/7. We experienced some crashes & bugs but we are fixing them along the way: for example, monsters didn't work correctly (they had only 1 attack instead of 2) and you couldn't get into the arena nor into the dungeon. This works totally fine now, don't worry! But, we kinda forgot to put Pupuce, the dungeon boss, level 7 so she was level 1 for the first teams going in the dungeon... And they couldn't loot her but this is going to be fixed today so no biggie. Great news for everyone right?

In the coming weeks there will be a lot of fixing, patching, and we will be adding new features to ease the gameplay for players (but not making the game itself easier, just easier to play & to understand). This way, we'll have a great closed Alpha to show you all guys!

We hope you'll like this longer post which embraces an important step for us before the launch of the closed Alpha, still planned for the coming months!

[ZeddOTak 407]

Hello everyone!

As you may have seen in our newsletter a few weeks back, we are working on the UI for PC. As you can see, many things have change but it works in the same way. You will find your 5 differents actions, your items bar and we added a minimap to improve your adventure in Naïca. Minimap is a mandatory feature for MMORPGs on PC and we are looking if we can add it to the mobile version. Nothing sure for now, since we do not want to have too much information on your User Interface and we do not know if it's extremely useful on mobile.

While developing it, we have had some issues with the drag and drop for short cuts menus but it's now resolved (thank you devs). In fact, in PC, you will be able to customize your short cuts bar to optimize your gaming experience.

We will gladly listen to your feedback once you lay hand on the PC version of Naïca!

WIP - User Interface of Naïca on PC

[ZeddOTak 407]

Hello everyone!

As some of you may know, we ended our last test on August 7 which was exclusively on Android: so after almost 2 months of testing, what's to say?

During this period, over 1300 players participated to the test, 3972 quests were completed and 4 players reached level 10: congratulations @Reeser, @DilBert, @TORRES and @Lismo! Everyone started in the Dank camp, and so will you once the closed Alpha is out.

This will be your home in Naïca for the closed Alpha.

Over the course of the test, we made several changes to the game. First, monsters were way too hard (yes, again...) so we reduced their damage and health points a bit. All monsters were aggressive (a.k.a. they attacked players on sight) and we decided to let only a handful of monsters that way. You can now walk around the swamp (or even go AFK) without the fear of being attacked by dozens of monsters.

This is exactly how it felt like for players (and for us too).

The dungeon was the most tricky part but in the end we decided to relieve the complexity a bit. At first the dungeon has 3 rooms: 2 normal rooms and the boss room (Pupuce). By playing with other players we noticed it was a bit uneasy for new players to complete it and sometimes they would just give up. Because we already know we will add an option to increase the difficulty of the dungeon, we removed the 2nd room.

For players who just want to do the dungeon to get a taste of this feature and see what it's like, they won't have this fear of getting bored, killed again and again or won't even try it because it's too long.

Pupuce, the boss of the dungeon (Credits: @Skēto).

On the other hand, the players who love challenges and wish to sweat blood and tears could increase the difficulty by setting the dungeon in Elite 1 and see how it goes with stronger monsters and 3 rooms instead of 2 in Elite 0. The Elite feature won't be available at the launch of the closed Alpha but it is something we aim to release later on.

We are extremely happy about the test and players feedback. It is heartwarming and we are excited to show you the game in a few months! Also we learnt that walking around and discovering the area was the second favorite things for players: you will definitely have to walk a lot when you will be looking for these crystal pages...

Thank you again for your support and your feedback: our next step is the closed Alpha which will launch in the next months!

[Sol 56]

Hey everyone!

With the Closed Alpha release we almost forgot to keep this thread up to date!
But have no fear! Here are some screenshots of the Cerulean Forest we are actually working on!

Here you can see the Lumberjack's house who is the first NPC you will encounter at the entrance of the Cerulean Forest!

As you may know, Naïca is home to the cults of Naïde and Icaon and here is a shrine of the latter one.
You will discover these shrines all across Lazul waiting for you to find them!

The landscape will also be quite different and more diverse than the swamp are.

New area of course means new camp! Here is a glimpse of what the camps of the Cerulean forest might look like...
On the left you can see the statue of one Lazul's legendary heroes. You will find few of them along the way!

All these screenshots are still Work In Progress as the Cerulean Forest is a much wider area than the Swamp and we still need some time to refine it!

That's it for today, we are still busy fixing and designing the game at the same time but we will keep you up to dat with the devellopment of the game in the coming months!

Thanks again for your support and I hope to see you all soon in Naïca!

[Balayne 33]

Today we are going to talk about a new system implemented on Naïca: the level scaling. The principle is simple, a creature has a minimum level and a maximum one. Its level will adapt according to the player attacking it, from minimum to maximum.

If the player's level is higher than the maximum level of the creature, then that creature will appear at its maximum level. But if the player's level is lower than the creature's minimum level, then it will appear at his minimum level.

Otherwise it will appear on the same level as the player.

Their difficulty will be the same for two players of different levels because the level is scaling correctly according to the players. The creatures will give loot and experience depending on the level seen by the player.

Here is a screenshot that illustrates 3 players of different levels in front of a Pungi with their level being scaled (min 15 - max 20).

Level 15 (minimum): sees a Pungi lvl 15

Level 23 (maximum): sees a Pungi lvl 20

Level 19 (range level): sees a Pungi lvl 19

This will primarily allow players to access the same content as other players of different levels and enjoy as much. For the moment the Level Scaling will be set up only on the mini dungeon with a minimum level at 15 and maximum at 23 and then it will be set up in other areas thereafter.

Note: Level scaling is not yet available.

[greglofe 20]

Hi folks!

I'm Greg, designer and animator for Naica. Today we will talk about monsters!

The Cerulean Forest is really close to be over and we need to add some monsters in it. We did some traditionnal sketches in the early developpement of the game, but started directly in pixel-art for most of monsters' forest, in order to save conception time.

Here is an image of the designs Tibo and I made for the forest. Since the forest will be way bigger than the swamps, we decided to make more mobs!

Notice, they will not all be in the game. At the release of the Cerulean Forest there will be 17 different monsters in the forest. Some will be adaptations of swamp monsters, but most of it will be completely new.

One of my favorite is the Bulbon. It's a monster I drew in my very first sketches.

Then I translated it to pixel-art. The original idea was to create a mandrake like in Harry Potter, with a sound attack. The idea of the animation started there.

We chose the second design to animate. We thought it could be fun if the Bulbon could walk like a zombie and crying like a big baby.

As I started to animate his walk, I had his sound attacks in mind, including an angry crying.

In this attack, the damage will be dealt right in front of the monster, so I needed to animate the 4 positions, just like the walk.

For the second attack, we kept the idea of a big crying baby. We wanted to add a buff or debuff attack. But how a crying could do damage? We already have a sound attack.

This is the solution I thought of. I like it, because it changes from biting and hitting monsters we usually think of. Since it's an all around zone attack, we didn't need to animate all the views, wich save some time we can spend on other monsters (and because i'm pretty lazy  )!

This is the animation we decided to go with. We had some tests to arrive to the final animation. The big tear pool is pretty cool, but too big for a mob sprite, and the visual effect would not be very good if players were to walk on it.

The first sketch was made about a year ago. The design and animation of this particular monster was made in aproximately 3 days in Aseprite. We have the walk in 4 directions, 2 animations of Stay (face and back, no need of left and right, told you I was lazy!) a 4 direction sound attack and a Buff/Debuff crying attack. Once finished and validated, I exported the spritesheet, and sent it to Nico, who will link each animation in Unity.
 

Here are all the animations: