We were recently asked when we would be in “Alpha” or “Beta”. The short answer is: it’s still too early to tell. Those terms are thrown around a lot with games and they’re really pretty arbitrary. Some games are basically done when they launch their Beta. Some games are really janky when in Beta.

The reason we are calling our builds “Prototypes” is because we are super early in development still and these builds are honestly just tests to see if the game is fun and worth continuing. ( Good news, it’s pretty fun!) We will most likely continue building on this Prototype, as things are actually going well.

When will the game be in Alpha? To me that is when every element is in the game but we still have work to do. Alpha is working, but lots of bugs. Right now we DON’T have a town, villagers, blacksmith, tutorial text, 90% of our mobs, and half of our character stats. Just to name a few things. As you can see, we still have a long way to go before we meet my definition of Alpha.

When will it be in Beta? Oh god. That is going to be the most asked question, I think. The unsatisfying answer is, “when it’s ready”. It could be two years, I honestly don’t know what is going to happen. For me, Beta means we’ve finished all elements of the game and there’s nothing left to add. At that point you just need people to to see what they can break. That’s what Beta Testers do. They get in and play hard and see what doesn’t work. Then we go back in and fix it.

What I don’t want to do is launch a broken game or open to Beta Testers too early. Some companies need to rush, and I understand that. My philosophy is to play things safer. We keep plugging away diligently and before you know it we’ll have a great game.

The only limiting factor is the budget. Everyone at Knob Cat has been working so efficiently and I am impressed with the progress. I’ve been trying to guess what the rest of development might be like and I think we’re on track. Obviously, our priority is getting the game released as soon as we can so that we can fund future development. This game is going to be continuously evolving and growing. Hopefully, it will bring years of entertainment to a lot of people.

I started this project because I want to play this game. That’s our driving force. I love this game and I want to play it. I want to launch and have others enjoy it so badly. I doubt anyone wants to play DotO more than me, so you can believe that I’m trying to get it out as soon as reasonably possible, while still maintaining everything that makes this game fun.

So, too long and didn’t read? I don’t know when Alpha, Beta, or launch will be, but I want to get there as bad as you!

Cheers,
Joe
Executive Prime

Hello Dungeon Dwellers! It is again I, Animancer of Movement & Life Nyka! Here with an update and preview of our game’s second mob; the Puke Rat! The Puke Rat is a sewer dwelling mob which finds itself reanimated by the arcane energy seeping down through the earth from under the Obelisk.

Of course as our resident animator, I get the honor to animate the amazing art created by our artist, Ben Sigas, and here I’ll show off just that!

This is our Puke Rat! A zombie mob that’s quite feral! Above we have it’s idle animation and on all fours; here we see it’s run!

One goal of ours with this mob, was to make sure that it came off as ferocious and monstrous! All of us on the team love our animal friends, and didn’t want the players killing little sweet possums or what have you! Of course, this rat is no love, ALL bite!

While any brave dungeoneer may be lucky enough to land a hit on this critter, it’ll be hard to knock this rat off it’s feet!

& of course, what dramatic foe is complete, without a dramatic finale!?

But that is all for now! This Rat isn’t in game quiiiiiteee yet but we’ll be excited to show this mob and others off more soon!

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

Hi everyone, I hope you all had a great holiday.

Today’s DotO Blog Update is a bit of a non-update. We are all currently working hard, but we’re kind of in between things that I can show you.

Last week we saw the big Turn Meter update and I’m still super hyped about it. Now, everyone is back to grinding. Ben is working on some of our first actual art for Loot. We decided to start at the uncommon rarity. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with for all of the items.

Nyka is hard at work making the Puke Rat move. It’s a squirmy little bugger and I can’t wait to see it filling the dungeons.

Kel is working on the rest of Prototype 4 (and hopes to be done at the end of the month!) and has so much to do. Seriously, the amount of work he is packing into this update is just crazy. There’s UI and borders, fixing bugs, adding more dungeon levels, more mobs, XP improvements, and even updates to the character creator.

I seriously can’t wait to show you this next update. I’m also stoked to see where we go next.

It’s still going to be a long long time before the game can go live, but I really hope you are enjoying watching our progress. If you have any questions or things you think I should post about, send them to me on Discord or email to Joe@knobcat.com

Cheers,
Joe
Executive Prime

It’s Saturday evening and for this DotO Update Blog I want to tell you all about our new Turn Meter! Since our game is turn-based it is super important to know when your turn is coming up and when the enemies are going to be attacking you.

We originally had little bars under everyone that would fill up based on some weird equation that we grabbed online. It really didn’t work. You couldn’t tell who was going when or how fast the bars would fill up. And you couldn’t tell what your Dexterity was doing for you. It was impossible to know how much Dexterity your character needed to outspeed the Glubs.

We needed a new turn calculation and a way to show it. I got to brainstorming and came up with the idea of a “Tetris Style” meter. In Tetris, they tell you the upcoming block and in some versions I’ve played, they’ll show you the next five blocks. So I wanted a meter that would scroll each turn and show you the upcoming attackers.

I passed this idea on to Kel and he ran with it. Now, in our new build of the game, Prototype 4, we have a functioning turn meter that feels very clean and intuitive. I actually recorded a video of it in action yesterday, so you may want to check that out…

And now that you’ve seen it in action, you may be asking, “But Joe, how do you determine the turn order?”

Well, my friend, you’ve come to the right place. I’m going to let you into a bit of our Design Document and show you exactly what I gave Kel to work with. For the rest of this blog, you’ll get the nitty-gritty detail on how we determine turns in Dungeons of the Obelisk. At least for right now, it’s always subject to change. You know how it is. (But I really don’t want to have to change it.)

First, we go into our battle and need to know how big our turn bar should be. We may not show this bar anymore, but this is how it works in the background. We use the highest Dexterity among participants of the battle for the bar size. So say the Player Character is fighting 2 Glubs. PC has 10 Dex and the Glubs have 3 and 6 Dex respectively. Each set of turns is called a cycle.

• Cycle 1: 
  • PC gains 10 on its bar because its Dex is 10, and its bar is now full. 
  • Glub1 gains 3.
  • Glub2 gains 6. 
  • Because the PC filled the bar, they now attack and reset the bar to 0.

• Cycle 2: 
  • PC gains 10 and its bar is full. 
  • Glub1 gains 3 and is at 6. 
  • Glub2 gains 6 and is now at 12. 
  • Both PC and Glub2 filled their bars so they both get to attack this Cycle. Glub2 is fuller than PC so Glub2 attacks first, followed by PC. 
  • PC resets to 0. Glub2 resets but is at 2, because they had 12 and reset the 10.

• Cycle 3: 
  • PC gains 10 and its bar is full. 
  • Glub1 gains 3 and is at 9. 
  • Glub 2 gains 6 and is at 8. 
  • The PC attacks and resets to 0.

• Cycle 4: 
  • PC gains 10 and its bar is full. 
  • Glub1 gains 3 and is at 12. 
  • Glub2 gains 6 and is now at 14. 
  • Attack order is now 14, 12, 10. Or Glub2, Glub1, PC. 
  • Everyone resets their bar because they all attacked. PC is at 0, Glub1 is at 2. Glub2 is at 4.

• Cycle 5: 
  • PC gains 10 and its bar is full. 
  • Glub1 gains 3 and is at 5. 
  • Glub2 gains 6 and is at 10. 
  • Both PC and Glub2 are now tied at 10 and should attack. PC goes first because their Dex is higher.

Only other situation that is not represented in the above example, is if two or more characters have the exact same Dex. If we had an example where a PC was battling a Glub with the exact same Dexterity, they would both attack every cycle and their turn order would be decided randomly between them.

And there you have it! More than you ever wanted to know about Turn Order. Thanks so much for reading and if you have any questions, join our Discord Server and feel free to ask me!

Cheers,
Joe
Executive Prime