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Ben and Nyka have been working for a while designing all of the mobs for Dungeons of the Obelisk. We have quite a few drawn, some animated, and only two in the actual game.

Until now! Our resident Digital Alchemist, Tj, has turned his attention to getting more mobs into the actual game. Starting with the big boy tank mob, Blub, and everybody’s sure to be favorite clever girl, Sludgesaurus.

Both of these mobs are considered “specialists” as they fill a certain roll on the enemy team. Blub is a tank and focuses almost entirely on having as much Health as possible. Blub can still pack a good punch, but they’re also very slow so you should have time to see it coming.

Sludgesaurus on the other hand is all about doing damage. Their “Spit” attack hits hard, but they can also “Anticipate” your movements and increase their Critical Hit Chance.

If you’re looking at the image above and wondering why Puke Rats and Blubs are still in black and white, well that’s something we had planned early on. We were going to allow the code to color the mobs with shaders to allow for different colors and recycling mobs. For example, maybe a blue Glub would show up and have different abilities.

We pretty quickly decided against this idea. Ben’s skills at coloring would go to waste and shaders just cant color as good as Ben can. So we just need to get the Puke Rat and Blub animations re-skinned with the updated colored versions. This should happen as soon as Nyka wraps up work on the current batch of mob animations.

Building a game like this is lots of small steps that keep adding up. There is always something new to do and some new challenge to overcome. Each decision can impact the future look, feel, and direction of the game.

Now that Blub and Sludgesaurus have joined up with Glub and Puke Rat, we just have the healer mob, Rot Bat, and the Dungeon Boss, who still goes unnamed…

Hope that gives you some fun info about the new mobs. I hope to share the Rot Bat details with you all soon! Talk to you next week!

Cheers,
Joe
Executive Prime

Hello again, time for my Saturday Monday DotO Blog Update! A lot has happened in the past week. Most of it has been bug fixes and things are really running smooth now. (Perhaps I will find the time to make a new video soon…)

For today, I thought I’d give you all the run down on our “Minor Stats” since we finally have them all programmed and working! They have taken the depth of the game to a new level of playtesting and are turning out to work really well, even at the lower starting levels.

We’re not breaking much new ground in game design here, as most of these things are in a lot of other games. But I do feel that we have a great batch of stats to play with that will allow for some really fun character builds and strategies!

And what better way to present our Minor Stats than with a nice bulleted list!

• Area Damage – A percent chance to also deal 20% of an attack’s damage to all other enemies.
• Critical Chance – This is a percent chance that you will deal increased damage per your Critical Damage stat. Critical Hits also Ignore Damage Reduction.
• Critical Damage – How much extra damage a Critical Hit will deal. Base Critical Damage is 50%.
• Damage vs Elites – A percentage increase to all damage done to elite enemies.
• Double Attack – This is the percent chance that your attack will hit twice.
• Physical Damage Boost – A percent increase to Physical Damage dealt by an attack.
• Block Chance – This is a percent chance that you will receive only 50% damage from an attack.
• Damage Reduction – This is a percent of damage that you will not take from an incoming Physical attack.
• Dodge Chance – This is a percent chance that you will receive no damage from an attack.
• Health Regenerate – Percent of Max Health that is regained per turn.
• Lifesteal – This is a percent of your Damage dealt that is returned back as Health.
• Mana Cost Reduction – A percent reduction to the Mana Cost of attacks.
• Mana Regenerate – The rate of Mana that is gained per turn. Base rate is 10%.
• Revitalize – This is a percent chance that you will regain the Mana you used for an attack.
• Thorns – This is the percent of damage that you will deal back when you are hit by an attack.
• Focus Damage – This is an increase to your attack damage. It is only available on Offhand Focuses.
• Shield Reduction – This is a decrease of incoming damage. It is only available on Offhand Shields.

As you can see, lots of options and a lot that can happen each turn. If you have any specific questions, always feel free to jump in our Discord Server and chat with us!

See you next week!

Cheers,
Joe
Executive Prime

Um, hi…

It’s been a while since I’ve done my regular Saturday DotO Blog Update. In fact, it’s been over 4 months since it’s been done properly. I am really going to apply myself and try to get back in the swing of things.

I’m well on my way recovering from my back injury. And we’ve kicked DotO back into high gear in the past couple weeks. The biggest news is our newest addition to the team, Tj! He is our new Digital Alchemist here at Knob Cat Games and he has hit the ground running.

It’s been about 3 weeks and Tj has gone through and commented our entire code base. It’s a necessary step in case we ever need another person to join the team.

Tj has also applied a ton of bug fixes and polish to the game. Some things we sorely needed. Like a button to clear your inventory, which makes testing so much easier. Also, those pesky Puke Rats no longer dodge attacks! That’s been a reoccurring bug for months now.

Another exciting update, we now have most of our minor stats working. We only had about half of them done in the last version. Now we have Area Damage, Damage Against Elites, Double Attack, Health Regenerate, Lifesteal, Mana Cost Reduction, and Thorns! These have made a huge difference to the feel of the game. I’ll probably go into more detail on all of these in a future update.

Tj has also changed the font in the entire game. It’s something small and hard to explain when just writing about it here. But it has made a huge difference in the look and feel. Everything from battle numbers, to inventory, and menus all look so much more cohesive.

This blog update has a lot about Tj in it and we are super happy to have him on the team. But don’t worry! Everyone else has been hard at work. Ben and Nyka have several new mobs that are in the process of drawing and animating. I’ll get into more about them in a future update.

That’s it for now. Don’t forget to jump in the discord and welcome Tj to the team. Keep an eye out for the new podcast episode and hopefully we’ll have more fun stuff to show you soon!

Cheers,
Joe
Executive Prime

Hello Dungeon Dwellers! Nyka here, your Animancer, Giver of Movement! So far we have given you peaks at our various mobs, but today we’ll be sharing a quick peak at some of the rare loot you can potentially find beneath The Obelisk. Let’s take a look!

First off we have our Blade of End, This special dagger is always giving off a smoke/like vapor from it’s blade, could it be toxic? maybe DON’T BREATH THIS!

Second, we have our Baying Blade, this weapon spins so fast that it can be come hot in the wielder’s hands, careful!

Third, we have the Historic Globe, and it’s a globe! But does it contain esoteric power?… Or is it just a globe?! Stick around to find out!

The forth on our list is the sword; Wolf, Gift of Slaughter, a terrifying blade ever-dripping with the blood of past foes, yet ever-thirsty still…

Last we have Shiver, a mysterious offhand weapon; glowing with an ethereal shimmer, but what does it do? Stay tuned for more details!

And there you have it! A very small peak at some of the loot you can expect to see in Dungeons of The Obelisk!

Until next time, dungeon dwellers!

-nyka

I’d like to start by apologizing for the lack of Saturday DotO Updates. There also hasn’t been a DotO podcast in a bit too.

But, don’t worry! The team is still hard at work making the game. Our new hackerman, Nicolas, is diving into the code, fixing bugs, and starting work on some of the next big steps.

Ben is still drawing up a storm and Nyka continues to make things wiggle!

As for me, I actually got hurt at the day job. Nothing too serious, my back has just gone out and I’ve pretty much just laying in bed for a month, doing exercises when I can, and sleeping from this medicine making me drowsy.

Since I can’t sit at my PC, I can’t record or edit the podcast. And it’s just been hard to keep up on life and everything else.

Good news though! I have actually been able to secure some more funding for the game! We now have over double our original budget and should be able to carry us well through the games launch!

Anyway, for me it’s back to recovery and napping. Have a great week!

Cheers,
Joe
Executive Prime

Last week I missed an update for the first time since I started doing the Saturday DotO Blog Updates. As you probably know, we are all creating DotO alongside our daily jobs and other gigs. For me the day job has been excruciatingly busy for the past week.

The other reason for missing the update is that there just wasn’t a lot going on for us for the past couple of weeks so I wasn’t sure what to write about even if I had the time.

Ben and Nyka are forging onward with the art and animation. Things are looking really good on that front. We also have a new programmer coming onboard. He has just started and I’m sure you’ll be hearing more from him soon! For me, I’ve just been busy making sure everything is ready and easy for someone jumping into current workflow. So I’ve completely reedited our design documents and have all the current game data lined out.

I’m really looking forward to doing the next big update video, but I know we’re still a ways out from that. Thanks to everyone for hanging in there with us and hopefully we’ll have some exciting stuff to show again soon!

Cheers,
Joe
Executive Prime

It’s been a long past couple of days and a lot has happened. Unfortunately, we haven’t made much progress on DotO because of it.

For our first major setback, I was totally left hanging by my accountant. We were supposed to have a meeting and he never showed up, no answer, no reply in the message center of the accounting app. Just nothing. This left me scrambling to make sure our taxes are going to be done properly. For businesses, a lot of stuff is due on January 31st.

Long story short, 1-800Accountants is a huge rip off and H&R Block to the rescue!

Our other big, bad news is that Kel has decided to move on to bigger and better things. It was a bit of a surprise to us, but we wish him the best in everything he does!

This has obviously left us without a programmer for our game, so I sent out an email or two to some people and I think we should be getting things up and going again soon.

I’ll definitely fill everyone in when we know for sure. Hopefully we can start posting cool game updates again soon!

Cheers,
Joe
Executive Prime

What kind of monstrosities live in the sewer levels of the Obelisk? We’ll, we’ve seen slimes, rats, and giant slime cubes so far. But as we go deeper, it seems like there’s something else…

Not much is known about this strange dinosaur yet, but one thing is for sure… it’s angry and it wants to attack adventurers. I’d steer clear. And watch out, it spits slime!

I’m keeping it short this Saturday. I hope you like the first look at our new mob.

Cheers,
Joe
Executive Prime

This week our resident Animancer, Nyka, takes over the DotO Update Blog duties with her new animations for the Blub! Enjoy!

Good afternoon dungeon dwellers & Happy New Year! We’ve had a lot going on behind the scenes and today I’m excited to show you a peak at the animations for our new Blub mob! The Blub is a large block of slime which encases the body of a woeful adventurer who was less fortunate in their journey. As such! The animation ends up having two main components to consider, being the Blub’s slime body and the leftover skeletal body within! The idle is simple enough, the Blub stands ready with the corpse floating within.

Then there it’s walking animation, a brisk scoot that jiggles it’s body, causing the skeleton to rattle around within.

Don’t let the Blub’s soft exterior fool you, it attacks with a MEAN bodyslam courtesy of it’s accosted skeleton-buddy!

When the Blub gets hurt, it tries to throw the bones forward as a sort of “bodyshield” to lessen the impact, this of course causes it to bounce away on impact!

The Blub has a special move known as Shelter, here we see the Blub make a more concerted effort to defend itself! A success!

& when the Blub dies, an attempt is made to throw it’s inner bone-friend forward, but of course it collapses, our skeleton is free! (Poor Blub, though ;< )

The Blub was a lot of fun to animate and an interesting design challenge, considering it’s simple silhouette gave me a lot room to explore & think about how such a thing would move! I’m really looking forward to you all meeting the Blub in-game!

Until next time Dungeon Dwellers o/
Nyka,
Animancer, Giver of Movement