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