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Tags: Ctrl Alt Ninja; Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest
The next title to get an end-of-year update is Druidstone, the upcoming turn-based RPG from the former Grimrock developers at Ctrl Alt Ninja. They're calling it a "Christmas mega-update", although it's not really all that big. The new update introduces Druidstone's level editor, which seems quite powerful and is more evidence of the game's evolution away from its procedurally generated beginnings. The update also includes a few concept arts and screenshots, revealing new monsters and environments. Here's an excerpt:
Ho ho ho! Welcome to the Druidstone development MEGA-UPDATE! As they say, time flies when you’re having fun, but it’s still hard to believe three months(!) have passed since the last blog update. So what have been up to lately? Well, many things, glad you asked!
For instance, we now have a full fledged level editor, which allows us to make much more detailed levels. A year ago, when the game design was more heavily oriented towards procedurally generated content, we thought that we would not need a level editor at all. The levels were supposed to be mostly generated with some manually crafted rooms thrown in. But as development progressed, we felt the need to make more and more hand crafted locations and the need for a proper level editor arose. We will still keep adding new features to the editor, but as it is now, it’s ready for some prime time and we can start making new content with it.
Some highlights of the Druidstone editor:
– Seamless integration to the game, so we can start playing the edited level immediately by pressing a button, and also summon up the editor whenever we’re playing the game.
– Tools for quickly painting objects, e.g. trees, plants, grass, on the ground with mouse strokes.
– Heightmap and texture painting tools, including configurable brushes and smoothing.
– Compared to the editor we made for Legend of Grimrock, everything is now much more wysiwyg (what-you-see-is-what-you-get). For example, with the Grimrock editor you couldn’t see the effect of painting dungeon walls on the grid unless you hit the play button. Now we can just paint the walls and you immediately see them.
– Multi-level undo/redo. Pretty basic thing but nonetheless crucial to have.
Apart from the editor we also have made a bunch of new monsters, some of which have been featured in our Twitter feed. Here’s the screenshot of the Basilisk and some others behind the scenes material, in case you have missed them. We’ll probably keep updating Facebook and Twitter more frequently than this blog, so if you’re not already following us on social media and have been missing our updates, you know what to do.
Oh, and talking about the new content, check out that new location and environment set above that we have been working on. It brings to the game much needed variation to the summery forests and dungeons you have been so far. And as I write this, Juho is already working on yet another completely new environment, which we’ll feature later as the work progresses. As you can probably guess from the screenshot, the world of Druidstone, the Menhir Forest is a magical place with several different kinds of areas with unique feel to them.
Also featured in the update is a short sample from Druidstone's battle music. And finally, there's the news that the game now has a fourth playable character (which I guess is Ctrl Alt Ninja's term for "companion NPC") who is particularly unique, though apparently they're not ready to show him yet. Next year, then!
The next title to get an end-of-year update is Druidstone, the upcoming turn-based RPG from the former Grimrock developers at Ctrl Alt Ninja. They're calling it a "Christmas mega-update", although it's not really all that big. The new update introduces Druidstone's level editor, which seems quite powerful and is more evidence of the game's evolution away from its procedurally generated beginnings. The update also includes a few concept arts and screenshots, revealing new monsters and environments. Here's an excerpt:
Ho ho ho! Welcome to the Druidstone development MEGA-UPDATE! As they say, time flies when you’re having fun, but it’s still hard to believe three months(!) have passed since the last blog update. So what have been up to lately? Well, many things, glad you asked!
For instance, we now have a full fledged level editor, which allows us to make much more detailed levels. A year ago, when the game design was more heavily oriented towards procedurally generated content, we thought that we would not need a level editor at all. The levels were supposed to be mostly generated with some manually crafted rooms thrown in. But as development progressed, we felt the need to make more and more hand crafted locations and the need for a proper level editor arose. We will still keep adding new features to the editor, but as it is now, it’s ready for some prime time and we can start making new content with it.
Some highlights of the Druidstone editor:
– Seamless integration to the game, so we can start playing the edited level immediately by pressing a button, and also summon up the editor whenever we’re playing the game.
– Tools for quickly painting objects, e.g. trees, plants, grass, on the ground with mouse strokes.
– Heightmap and texture painting tools, including configurable brushes and smoothing.
– Compared to the editor we made for Legend of Grimrock, everything is now much more wysiwyg (what-you-see-is-what-you-get). For example, with the Grimrock editor you couldn’t see the effect of painting dungeon walls on the grid unless you hit the play button. Now we can just paint the walls and you immediately see them.
– Multi-level undo/redo. Pretty basic thing but nonetheless crucial to have.
Apart from the editor we also have made a bunch of new monsters, some of which have been featured in our Twitter feed. Here’s the screenshot of the Basilisk and some others behind the scenes material, in case you have missed them. We’ll probably keep updating Facebook and Twitter more frequently than this blog, so if you’re not already following us on social media and have been missing our updates, you know what to do.
Oh, and talking about the new content, check out that new location and environment set above that we have been working on. It brings to the game much needed variation to the summery forests and dungeons you have been so far. And as I write this, Juho is already working on yet another completely new environment, which we’ll feature later as the work progresses. As you can probably guess from the screenshot, the world of Druidstone, the Menhir Forest is a magical place with several different kinds of areas with unique feel to them.
Also featured in the update is a short sample from Druidstone's battle music. And finally, there's the news that the game now has a fourth playable character (which I guess is Ctrl Alt Ninja's term for "companion NPC") who is particularly unique, though apparently they're not ready to show him yet. Next year, then!
Maybe at last we will get new TOEE?
