Has it been a month already? The time has absolutely flown by. As this campaign comes ot a close, our hearts are filled with a variety of emotions. Happiness that so many people put faith in our work enough to back us, sadness to see that we did not reach our goal.
First of all, I want to thank everyone who backed this project. You guys are great. We could never be sure on who would back us and we were surprised by the diversity of those who did back us. We knew some of you guys, but others are complete strangers to us. So it is great to see that there are people out there who like our work on its own merits as well as those who backed us because they believe in us as developers.
However, the campaign did not get off the ground. We held out hope til the end but it didn’t take off. We tried reaching out to various media outlets to spread the world, but we got no hits. I guess this project was just not interesting enough for it to rise above the tides.
So what is in the future for Demon’s Hex? We are not really sure. We would like to finish what we advertised here, but it seems that even if we did, we might not bring in the player base that would make it financially feasible. So we will have to adjust that vision.
Basically, this means that multiplayer is out of the question. Without the funds from the campaign, we won’t be able to run the servers needed to make it work.
For now, we are going to iron out the wrinkles of the battle system and possibly implement the story mode. But this will be a piece meal thing. We have decided that we are going to focus primarily on another game, so this one will not get the full attention we planned.
We have not decided on our next game. We are going to be meeting over the next few weeks to decide on that. We do have a few games that we want to work on, some that our One Game A Month challenge have helped prototype and a few that we have not yet developed a prototype for. Needless to say, the next game will be something we believe in.
Thank you again for your support, whether you backed us or just shared this campaign.
So we have less than a week left until this Kickstarter is done. As of now, things are not looking too hot, but miracles can happen.
We really want to get this game done for you guys and regardless of successful funding or not, we are going to get a good game out to you.
The fact of the matter is that if we are to bring you the game we describe, we will need to get the funding we are asking for. So we need you guys to share this campaign with everyone you know. It is really all down to the fans as to whether this game is a success.
Throughout the course of the story mode, players will earn experience that can be used to increase the strength of their default set of tokens through advancement. Think of it as a promotion for your token’s class.
There are two types of token classes that will be available at the beginning of the game, Squire and Acolyte. These two classes will determine what path that token will be on to advancement and better tokens. There are a total of 16 classes in each class structure.
The Squires
The first class, Squire, is a physical class. These are your warriors and fighters. They advance in various forms of fighting and weaponry. For example, here is a branch showing the Squire advancing through to Paladin and dabbling as a Knight.
As you follow the arrows from one class to the next, that token will increase in attack, defense, as well as directional attacks.
The Acolytes
Moving on to the Acolytes, they are masters of the metaphysical. They tap into the spiritual energies of their surroundings to defeat their foes and support their fellow warriors.
As Acolytes advance through the ranks, their path is set based on how they apply their magic. If they wish to use that magic for fighting or support, they will grow in knowledge and wisdom.
This example shows an acolyte advancing to Sorcerer while dabbling a little as a Priest.
How Advancement Works
The way this works, is that as you fight story battles with a token of a certain class, let’s say Squire for this explanation, That token will gain experience in that class. Once it reaches a certain level, that experience can be cashed in to advance to the next class. In cases where a class branches off to two or more classes, you would have to play as the base class multiple times to unlock all classes that branch off.
To gain experience, you simply need to use the token in battle. The more the token interacts on the board, the more experience it gains. For example, you gain some experience by simply placing a token on the board. The token gains more experience if that token captures another token on the board. You also gain experience when the token successfully blocks a capture.
Special classes
Not seen in these two paths are special classes that open up as you master certain branches. These classes only show as you experiment with each class and their branches.
Other Notes
The game will be structured in such a way that each of your default tokens will be able to advance through all the classes, if you wish. So you will not be lost if you decide you would rather become a priest and beyond rather than a wizard.
While the story mode limits you to only the starting 6 tokens and what ever class they are at for the story battles, every time you unlock a class, you gain one unique token of that class that is added to your collection that can be used in coliseum and multiplayer matches. So you have an opportunity to gain up to six copies of every token in these class trees for casual play. Story mode is the only way to earn these particular tokens.
It has been five days since we launched this campaign and we are really impressed with those who have supported us so far. You guys are awesome.
However, we did realize that our rewards weren’t explained at all really. We can’t believe that we let that slip our minds the way we did. So we have come to tell you what those special rewards are.
The Booster Packs
The booster packs will be pulled from the over 100 tokens we have planned for launch plus the many many more we will add as the game grows. Each token will be assigned a rarity value, common, uncommon, rare and legendary. This value will be based on the token strength relative to the rest. Each pack will contain 6 tokens, 1 rare or legendary, 2 uncommon, 3 common.
The booster packs you get can be redeemed at any time after the game launches. We will not force you to redeem them at the beginning. So if you want to save your packs until we have more tokens in the game, you will have that ability.
Additionally, if you would like to add booster packs to your pledge, you can do so quite easily. For every $1 you pledge above your reward tier, you will be eligible to get 1 extra booster. So if you pick the $5 reward tier and pay $8, you get the 2 boosters that come with the tier plus 3 extras for a total of 5 booster packs.
When we send out the surveys, you can let us know how many you want.
The Badges
We have 5 embroidered patches that backers can get. These will be based on the corresponding tokens in the game. They won’t be exactly the same, as we have color limits, but they will be as close as we can make them. So here are all the badges we have coming to you.
The T-shirt
We also have a t-shirt that you can earn through backing us at $75 or more. This shirt will be a royal blue with our game’s logo across the chest. Here is a mock up of what that shirt will look like.
There you have it. We have a lot more news and updates coming your way as this Kickstarter rolls on. So stay tuned.
We wanted to send a thank you to everyone who has backed Demon’s Hex so far. We really appreciate your support. We are working hard to make this a successful campaign and a successful game.
And to show you more about the direction we are planning on taking Demon’s Hex, we wanted to explore more about the single player RPG mode.
This is where much of a player’s time will be spent. It is in this mode that the players will advance in the story, level up their tokens and earn new tokens for play in the multiplayer portion of the game.
But right now, the story mode contained in the prototype is not much more than a map. So I wanted to provide you an idea of the direction that we will be going with it.
We have been taking part in a one game a month challenge this year. One reason is to better familiarize ourselves with the HaxeFlixel engine but also to expand on ideas we have for features in Demon’s Hex. In June, we explored two features, Tiled Map Editor support and the single player RPG mode. The resulting game is Alex’s Meadow RPG.
We hope this game gives you an idea of how we want to approach the single player interactions in Demon’s Hex. Each point on the map will feature either a story node or a battle node. In the story nodes, you will have your conversations with NPCs and open up new areas to explore. In the battle nodes, you will fight the evil that has cursed the land.
We really like the idea of allowing the player to walk around the map, but we understand that will not work well with touch screen devices. To that end, we are going to be adding in path finding AI into the game so that the player characters walk to where ever the player touches on the screen.
The portrait window will also see an update. We are going to be changing out that rectangle with a hexagon to be consistent with the game theme. We think that would be a nice touch.
So try out Alex’s Meadow RPG and let us know what you think. Also, please continue to share our Kickstarter campaign with everyone you know.
As of today, we have launched our campaign to fund Demon’s Hex. All the details are available at our Kickstarter Campaign Page. So check it out.
From this time forward, we will be posting regular updates over on the Kickstarter page and cross posting them here. We also have a handy widget over in the sidebar to allow you to quickly find the campaign and track it.
Please share our campaign and help fund Demon’s Hex.
Every month, there is a meeting of Oklahoma Game Developers. This gives anyone attending an opportunity to show off their projects. So we took some time to show off our progress on Demon’s Hex and our January One Game A Month entry, Dragon Canyon.
We plan on showing off each of our One Game A Month entries at each meeting this year. It gives us a goal and a deadline for completion. Something that we didn’t have last year when we tried it.
You can see everything else that happened at the meetup over at OKGamDev.com.
This weekend, I updated the title image for Demon’s Hex. It didn’t really need it, but I thought it would look better with an upgrade. You can see it above.
I personally like how the hex tokens kind of blend into the stroke around the text including the border. This is going into the game as we speak.
Years come and go. Game ideas come and go. But one thing is for certain, there is no time like the present.
This past year brought with it a lot of challenges and a lot of surprises. We entered the year 2013 with the idea that this would be the year that we completed Demon’s Hex and began looking forward to developing new games. We had hoped to take advantage of the One Game A Month Challenge to help spur that forward.
Sadly, that didn’t happen.
However, it is not all bad news. We entered 2013 with Demon’s Hex as merely a concept with visuals. It had no gameplay at all. But with some great motivation from local game developers, we were able to bring Demon’s Hex to a fairly playable state. You can actually play battles in the game and it is pretty fun. While the full game proper is not at all near complete, this makes a major milestone for us as developers.
With that success under our belt, we look forward to taking on the challenge of making Demon’s Hex fully playable. Everything will be done.
We also have a number of other games we want to start making. This year, we really want to achieve that One Game A Month challenge. It is a noble goal and one that we could easily do. We just need to sit down and do it. Just one weekend a month would get that done. Just some private game jams to get them done and out. They don’t have to be flashy or big, just done. That is all that matters. Completing the game.
That seems to be the gist of our New Year’s resolutions. We just want to complete some games.
With our technology pipeline pretty solidified this past year, that will make it far easier to complete. Now that I have my bearings inside HaxeFlixel, I can easily complete this challenge with the help of Willis. Together we can do it.
I can’t make any promises on what types of games we will create along side Demon’s Hex. I can just promise that we will try to do something different each time. While it would be easy to fall back on the same mechanics and genre’s it wouldn’t expand our minds nor foster creativity.
We were glad to make the strides we made in 2013 and look forward to making further strides in 2014. We hope that 2014 is the year that we make a name for ourselves.
I have finally gotten back into my groove with Demon’s Hex. This is after a long while where I decided to take a quick breather and try out some other stuff. Unfortunately, I did not manage to get a game up and running on the Ouya like I had hoped. Many of the snags I hit there had a lot to do with my knowledge of HaxeFlixel. Not that it was anything bad about the technology, it is just that I have not quite figured it out enough to get where I need to be.
So I have taken up Demon’s Hex again and boy did I run into a wall. HaxeFlixel released its version 3 during this brief respite. And with that update came a whole lot of changes to some of the core functionality of Demon’s Hex. There were three big changes that tripped up Demon’s Hex.
The first was with the way to embed a custom font. Demon’s Hex uses a font called Solemnity which gives it that nice look. But with the new update, the ability to add a custom font was removed on accident. Thankfully the fine folks working on HaxeFlixel were able to quickly add that functionality back, although in a very different fashion. I still need to make some tweaks to the display of text as now everything is offset from where it needs to be.
The second problem was with animation. Previously, I was using a function called goToAndStop to run an animation to a specific frame and end the animation. However, the new version of HaxeFlixel uses a very different way of animating sprites and goToAndStop was decommissioned. I had to figure out a custom solution that duplicated the behavior. This is working as needed now.
The final problem was with the glow effect around the tokens when placed on the board. This one was the most difficult to figure out after the change. This was a highly different process from before. It required some extensive rewriting and experimentation to get functioning correctly. I spent many hours working on it. I just finished this up this morning and I am happy with the result.
Overall, I like the changes that were made to HaxeFlixel. The new organization of the class files should make developing games with the technology far easier in the future. I had just not been keeping up with the development of it like I should have been. Had I actually been watching these updates, I probably would have been able to anticipate and account for these changes earlier.
I am now moving one to working on the actual story mode of the game. I think for now the battle portion works as a very close approximation of the final game. So it is time to give other parts of the game the love they deserve.
