June Development Update - Currencies, Graphics, and Bugfixes

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 Status Report

Apologies for the delay - May was a busy month for me so this development update will serve as the development update for both May and June.

    The focus of the last couple months has been consistency and polish. Aetherdale was rife with inconsistent bugs and crashes as a byproduct of programming without frequent multiplayer testing. The vast majority of these have been eliminated, and the rest of the time was spent making things look and feel nicer.


Currencies

Aether (top), and Gold (bottom)

I reworked Aetherdale's item system a little bit - enemies no longer drop various materials. This was a difficult design decision to make, but I believe it was the correct one. Having dozens of items with no specific purpose for them yet was a relic of trying to develop a full-scale RPG, and added an unnecessary layer of complexity.
    
    So for now, there are two items that the player can receive in place of all the materials that enemies dropped before: gold and aether. 

    Gold can be collected during a run by killing enemies and opening chests, and is only usable within that run. Gold has no uses at the moment, but it will soon be used to buy power ups and various items/advantages.

    Aether is collected throughout a run for more rare accomplishments, and persists when you return to the hub. It is used to purchase permanent upgrades to weapons and Idols, so that your baseline is stronger the next time you set out.
 

Graphics and Animations

I've put some more effort into developing Aetherdale's style. To start, the Wraith's attack and movement animations have been refined, with more emphasis being put into certain actions to improve readability. I've also made progress in developing sword slash effects, so a silver streak indicates where the blade has swung.

    In addition, I picked up Adobe Substance Designer to make custom materials faster. This has resulted in much higher quality textures already, and I'm able to craft them much faster.

A wood planks texture made with Substance Designer

    
    Early work with some new materials shows promising results in developing the next region after the Forest - the Mines:
An early version of the first Mines map


Closing

Thanks for reading the development update. It wasn't the flashiest yet but significant progress has been made behind the scenes. Aetherdale is almost ready for a more publicly available playtest version - stay tuned for updates. As always, feel free to join the Discord: https://discord.gg/g5XrMeRQ

And if you would like to try out what's been developed so far, message me and I can provide a Steam key.

Until next time.

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