Category: DotO Update Blog

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

Well, the holidays are over and we’re all getting back to work here at Knob Cat Games. It’s definitely nice to have a break and take things easy for a bit, but I’m definitely excited to get back into developing this game.

Ben is starting work on designing our next dungeon mob. It’s going to be the DPS mob and I’m not sure what we’re going to call it yet. I’m waiting to see how the design turns out.

Nyka is back to animating, taking on the new tank mob, Blub. Blub is a bit of a bigger sibling to the Glub. Still slimy, but way tougher. I’m excited to finally have a dungeon mob that posses a bit of a challenge!

Blubs will come in varying rarity from trash and uncommon, to elite rare! They also have multiple attacks to use including a mana spender. So no more bonks, this one will mean business.

As for me, January means tax season so I’m going to be busy getting all of that stuff in order. That’s definitely my least favorite part of running a business, just because of all the paperwork I have to do.

I can’t wait to get past that and focus on game design again. I still have some loose ends to get tied up.

Hope you have a great week and I’ll talk to you again next Saturday!

Cheers,
Joe
Executive Prime

I hope you’re all having a great first day of the new year.

Looking back, Knob Cat Games has accomplished a lot in 2021. We started our company in June and have been steadily moving forward ever since. We went from a spark of an idea to a playable prototype.

We’ve got a full on character creator, 10 dungeon levels, an intricate loot system, a totally custom turn meter, and a sortable inventory.

It’s been tough building a company. I really learned a lot last year. A lot about game design, but also about the legal and accounting side of things. It certainly hasn’t been easy, but it really has been fun.

Looking forward at the new year we have so many things spread out before us. Every month DotO becomes more and more complete. I hope my vision of this game comes together to be something that many people can really enjoy playing.

Maybe I say this a lot, but I really want to play this game. It’s been an incredibly inspiring seeing my ideal game form together into something cohesive.

I hope you continue on the journey with us. I can’t wait to see what new secrets the Obelisk holds!

Cheers,
Joe
Executive Prime

Today is December 25th, commonly referred to as “Christmas”. But I decided I better not take the day off from the blog. Gotta keep up the good habits, you know.

With it being a holiday, it makes me think of lots of ideas for ways to celebrate in game, eventually. I’m hoping events can eventually be a big part of DotO. But that’s definitely getting ahead of myself.

I’ve been testing Prototype 5 daily for the past week and a half. It’s fun to pretend the game is further along and has the daily tasks and bounties. I really look forward to logging in and seeing other players too. All in good time though.

You can expect the Prototype 5 video update next weekend. I’m excited to record that. I can’t wait till the game is live and the update videos are of things that get pushed out for everyone to play. I still hope they’re enjoyable.

I have to keep reminding myself how much we still have to do. My wife played the Prototype for the first time and it really helped me see a lot of areas that still need improvement. For example, my “Tutorial Sword” idea just didn’t cut it. The sword is too good and you can’t replace it for several levels. But you really want to equip new things you find. But if you replace the Tutorial Sword, you’re character becomes powerless against the Glubs. So that’s how I learned it’s probably going to be better to start the game with junk than with a legendary sword.

I’ve been going back to the drawing board on a lot of things, the game is continually growing and evolving. But, I’ll save those for another update.

Anyway, I really hope everyone has a great holiday and stays safe! I’ll talk to you again next Saturday! ( Also known as New Year’s Day. )

Cheers,
Joe
Executive Prime