KickStarter SKALD: Against the Black Priory - retro RPG inspired by Ultima

[Infinitron]

https://www.skaldrpg.com/2021/11/the-silver-dancer-part-2/

The Silver-Dancer (Part 2)

Greetings all!

While we pass the time until we reveal the indentity of our newest party-member, it’s time for the next installment of our three-part Skald short-story: “The Silver-Dancer”.

If you haven’t yet, I strongly recommend you read Part 1 before you leave the flesh-world behind and delve into the abyss of the silver-scape.

While you guys dig into the “Skaldiverse”, I’m hard at work doing some cool stuff with the skald animation system. I need the system to be a bit more flexible so I can more easily add more costumes and customization options to human models as well as richer animations (for combat etc). The trick here is doing a bit of skeletal animation – only with tiny little sprites. Rest assured: You’ll be seeing plenty of it soon.

Have a great day and enjoy the story!

Spoiler

The Silver-Dancer
PART 2
Every step was painful for the Magos. The dais might as well have been a mountain. “Curse this stranger. ‘Historian’ he calls himself!” but the magos saw through him. His very presence in the resonance-chamber was sacrilege. But there were some Courts that could not be ignored. “Mine is the will of the Princeps” he had said. Arrogant fool. These rituals were as old as the Empire itself. Perhaps… perhaps even older.

The magos lowered his aching body into the thick, oily fluid of the sarcophagus. It was lukewarm and thick as it greedily accepted his broken frame. Letting himself sink in, the magos tried to relax and give himself over to the embrace but something was wrong. There was a taint in his mind. Something he had not felt for a very long time: Fear. The High Master would have heard by now and no doubt they were on their way to stop this transgression. He would have to bide for time!



He had known why the HISTORIAN had come the moment he had seen him. He had prayed to be wrong but that was folly: Magi of Auspice were never wrong. The HISTORIAN had, of course, come for the glow.

The pulsating, alien shimmer in the Reticulum had caught his attention a few weeks ago. At first it was naught but the faintest hint of color that he could only just make out in the corner of his mind’s eye when he “danced”. Since then, it had grown significantly. Now it loomed in the silver-scape, sickly and eldritch. Yet he had not reported it. Truth be told, he was terrified of it.

His mind left the buoyant pile of flesh suspended in the sarcophagus. First came the sharp drop as his flesh-mind mistook the weightlessness of the state-shift for a fall. Then, the feeling of wind on his face and the elation of rising up through the air. The magos opened his mind’s eye and gazed out over the silvered landscape of the roiling Reticulum. The dance had begun.

The silver-scape was in turmoil. Impossible geometric shapes rose and collapsed in on themselves like titanic ramparts in tones of burnished steel and mercury. Had it always been like this? No. When he took his oath and joined the Court of Auspice in his youth, it had been much different. Though nearly 200 years had passed, he could still clearly recall his first silver-dance. The Reticulum had been as still as the surface of an unfathomable mountain lake. Not any more. Now it was more like a raging sea and it took greater and greater effort to navigate its churning eddies.

Setting his mind at the grim task ahead, he reluctantly began to scan the glimmering horizon. By the Golden Dead how it had grown! Though it was far away, he could clearly see the sickly glow spreading its tendrils into the silver clouds. It reminded him of glimmering ink dropped in water.

He instinctively knew that the flesh-world direction was north-easterly and far out. Perhaps over the sea? The Outer Isles maybe. Though the Reticulum was treacherous as of late, his mind was a fortress and he took pride in his skill in traversing it. He easily projected closer to his target, and crossing the distance took no more than mere flesh-world moments.

The cancerous light loomed over him now and he held an orbit just out of reach of its tendrils. For that is what they were to him. The luminous wisps shifted in a manner that gave them the uncanny appearance of being animated by some intellect, and there was something else… For a moment, he thought he had seen a shadow flutter by at the edge of his vision. His mastery of the silver-scape was absolute and he knew that there was nothing in here that could harm his fortified mind. But then again, the glow was like nothing he had seen before.

He offered a silent prayer that the High Master would burst through the doors of the resonance chamber any moment and put an end to this outrage. For the first time in many years, he longed to return to his flesh-body.

That’s all for now. Check in next week for part three.

For everything else, follow us on Twitter and join our Discord!

Stay warm!

Cheers,

AL

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.skaldrpg.com/2021/12/the-silver-dancer-part-3/

The Silver-Dancer (Part 3)

Greetings all!

One week till we’re dropping the curtain on who our newest, amazing party-member is! I’m psyched to be able to talk openly about it and show off some of the fantastic stuff we’re working on! Believe me when I say, 2022 will be the year of Skald!



Just make sure you watch this blog and my Twitter account on December 15th!


But before then, and by popular demand, here is the epic conclusion to the three-piece Skald short-story “The Silve Dancer”!

If you haven’t yet, I strongly recommend you read Part 1 and Part 2 before you dig into the conclusion of the HISTORIAN’s ill-fated dealings with the Court of Auspice.

Enjoy!

Spoiler

The Silver-Dancer
PART 3
In the darkness of the resonance-chamber a change had come over the group of blind wretches that sat by the sarcophagus as soon as the magos had gone under. Their moaning had ceased and they were now whispering instead. At first, it sounded like nonsense to the HISTORIAN, but the strange whispers would occasionally converge and overlap on certain words:

“I see it… Shimmering… Looming ing ing…”

The wretches had once been men and women with an aptitude for auspices and, though their minds were gone, no doubt a certain sensitivity persisted: Now they were channeling their master’s voice.

“Hard hard hard to see, see… Dangerous to get closer oser oser…“

“You’ll get me what I came for, soothsayer!” the HISTORIAN boomed as he mounted the first step leading up the dais. The wretches moaned as they covered their ears.

“If you don’t, by the Golden Dead, I’ll drown you myself!”

—

“…drown you myself!” rang out around the magos. The words sounded as if carried by water. He hesitated a moment but there was no way around it. He needed to finish what he had started or he would never be free of his tormentor. With the ease and grace of a sparrow, he weaved through the groping tendrils of sickly light as he scanned for a color-pool: The tell-tale discoloration where the silver-scape and flesh-world almost touched. Like peeking through a lense of smoky glass, the flesh-world could be viewed through a color pool by someone with the proper training. The members of the Court of Auspice had perfected this art millennia ago.

There! He spotted the color-pool close to the luminous center of the glow. But there had been something else as well hadn’t there? The shadow in the corner of his eye? No. He had to focus. Even for him this would be a difficult projection, for the Reticular turbulence was rising and he still wanted to avoid touching the actual glow itself.

It took much more effort than he had anticipated but he made it. Here, so close to the source of the glow, it’s presence was palpable! Like a flesh-body orbiting a great sun. Whatever was causing this in the flesh-world had a power like nothing he had experienced before.

—

“Commencing inspection!”

Even though it was modulated through the wretch-chorus, the voice sounded strained and oddly mechanical.

“Islands, islands… Mountainous. Raging seas… The Outer Isles, isles, isles!”

The HISTORIAN’s breath quickened. The decrepit old fools had their use after all!

“Think I see the source ource ource…”

A moment passed as the wretch-choirs babbling rose excitedly without offering any coherent words. Then:

“There is a structure ucture ucture! Black. Imperial make. First age I think ink ink.”

The babbling intensified.

“Wait… ait ait! I’m not alone lone lone!”

The last words came through with a sense of urgency. Then a loud bang as the great doors to the resonance chamber were flung open! The HISTORIAN whirled to face who he immediately recognized as the High Master of the Court of Auspice.

The ancient magos had long lost any natural use of his limbs and his shrivelled corpse of a body was suspended in a fluid-filled container that glowed internally with a sickly light. A dozen servants trailed behind, dragging grotesque cords and tubing that hung after the container like spilled viscera. Two rows of six silver-armored knights flanked the procession with their great two-handed swords. Magi-killers. The HISTORIAN shifted his stance imperceptibly and stilled his breath as the eyes of the ancient husk fixed on him through the glass container.

The tramp of the knight’s heavy boots died down, and an eerie silence filled the chamber. Even the wretch-choir produced only the faintest whimpering. The HISTORIAN moved backwards up the stairs of the dais another step. Under normal circumstances, the Master of Auspice would be mad to attempt to lay hands on him. Then again, he had come of his own free will to the heart of the spider’s web.

Without warning, the voice of the High Master boomed through the chamber. Though the blood-red eyes bored into the HISTORIAN, no movement of the corpse-like figure indicated that the voice was produced by any normal vocal organ. Instead it sounded metallic and hard and seemed to come from all around at once:“You have no right! The magi of this Court are mine and mine alone to command!”

The HISTORIAN smiled wryly:

“That may be, but you on the other hand is for the Princeps’ to command. Are you not?”

“INSOLENT!” the voice boomed again. “The Court of Shadow may hold itself above the other courts but you would be wise to know your place nonetheless! We see you. For all your subterfuge, we have always seen you. The Helix projects? The polar expeditions? The black camps?”

The last words dripped like poison. The HISTORIAN had underestimated the Court of Auspice. They knew more than they should. More than even their scrying should allow. How? Sprawling analysis-webs spread out before the HISTORIAN’s inner eye as the full ramifications began to reveal themselves.

The Master of Auspice delighted in the fact that he had managed to shake the envoy of the Shadow Court. They had overstepped and now he would pay the price. A metallic laugh filled the room and almost drowned out the rising screams of the wretch-choir!

Abruptly, one of the knights took a half step backwards as he raised his greatsword. The HISTORIAN was ready and drew in reticular energy so fast it felt like he was going to red-out. Luminous particles materialized around him and currents arced from his fingertips as he rose ever so slightly into the air. The other knights fanned out in front of their Master and somewhere inside a helmet, a man cried in terror. A reflection on the face of the glass coffin was all the warning the HISTORIAN needed.



He spun, mid air, as he drew in more energy still. Behind him, on the dais, the fluid in the sarcophagus churned and spilled as something massive shifted. Rending space itself, something was forcing itself into being. As a great horrible mass of half-flesh rose, a myriad of eyes formed and died in an instance. All were grotesque simulacra of the eyes of the man that had gone into that sarcophagus mere minutes before. With an otherworldly cry, the massive abomination launched off the dais in a mass of churning tentacles and fangs. Men screamed and the Master of Auspices’ eyes widened in terror. Where the HISTORIAN had stood mere moments before, nothing remained but a haze of glowing particles.

The doors of the resonance-chamber slammed shut with a loud bang leaving those inside to their horrific fate.

—

The HISTORIAN panted as he wiped the blood from his nose. Though the cost had been great, the shadow-shift had saved his life. It had borne him no longer than just outside the doors of the chamber, but that was all he needed. In a final effort that nearly caused him to collapse, he had welded the doors together with his bare hands. He did not know how long it would hold, but he could not linger: He was already nearly spent and the hour was much, much later than he had hoped.

That’s all for now – see you on the 15th!

For everything else, follow us on Twitter and join our Discord!

Stay warm!

Cheers,

AL

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[Abu Antar]

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/skald-against-the-black-priory#/updates/all

Aaaaand our Publisher is........
RAW FURY!!!!!!

It's RAW FURY and it's a match made in Heaven!

Check out out awesome new teaser and get all the info on the devlog now!

Cheers,

AL

https://www.skaldrpg.com/2021/12/meet-our-new-publishing-partner/

Meet our new Publishing Partner!


Snowflakes turn to steam as they land on the scarred flesh. The blood of the slain drips from their rough beard. They howl as they raise their broken blade to the moons.

Noble savage indeed – Thank the Golden they are on our side.

It’s official! Swedish publisher RAW FURY and I have formed an adventuring party and our quest journal is now crystal clear:

“Quest Begun: Make ‘Skald: Against the Black Priory’ amazing!”



Raw Fury is a level 12, chaotic good barbarian: Illiterate yet strong as a bull, their heart burns white-hot with passion for awesome games. Founded in 2015, they’re based in Stockholm and on a quest to serve as a publisher for “boutique and indie games”. A strong emphasis on ethics, transparency and partnership-based developer relations is their guiding star.




Raw Fury has published more than 25 titles to date with plenty more coming up. Check out their other games here!

Meet the “Fists of Fury”
Part of Raw Fury’s secret sauce is that they are a “hands-on” publisher and offer a whole suite of incredibly useful services to projects they sign. This means Skald has it’s very own dedicated team of talented and passionate RPG-fans all working with me to make Skald the CRPG of our dreams! Everyone, say “hi” to the “Fists of Fury” (yes that’s their actual team-name and not something I just made up):

Daniel Jonsson (@wdjonsson) is a reasonably boring Game Producer at Raw Fury. He holds Mutant Chronicles as the best RPG of all times, and he still reminisces about the Paul Bonner artworks. Outside of work he is a recreational chess player (1600+ ELO on chess.com), recreational runner and recreational procrastinator.

Jacob Kroon is a reasonably creative Sales and Analytics person at Raw Fury. He has a lifelong love story with RPG’s, claiming Realms, Suikoden and Baldur’s Gate among his favorites. The gentleman is partial to the wizard class and is also rumored to be playing the mythical saxophone and pickling a decent cucumber.

Susie McBeth is one part mage and all parts brand manager. When not diving deep into fantasy and sci-fi books, she enjoys living out the life of a decadent Toreador in Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines and going deep in RPGs like Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. She also drinks way too much tea and has a soft spot for killing zombies.



Rasmus Liljenberg is a fairly strict Quality Producer at Raw Fury. Testing, coordinating and gathering data. He uses all the tools to make sure the developer’s vision of the game is not lost during production. When not analyzing games he also plays them for fun. Although he doesn’t have a specific favorite RPG, you can see him playing anything from tabletop DnD to Morrowind and The Witcher series. It has been rumored that you might find him hunched over midi keyboards making weird music, blips n blops and orchestral pieces.

The team can now be found lurking in the Skald Discord as well. Look for the “Raw Fury” tag and be sure to make them feel welcome.

All in all I couldn’t be happier about how things are turning out for me and our game. 2022 will surely be the Year of the Skald and I can’t wait till we kick off the new year!

Keep following this devlog, my twitter and the Skald Discord to stay posted on our awesome quest to bring you more retro-RPG awesomeness!

Cheers,

AL

 

[Infinitron]

https://rawfury.com/skald-announcement/

SKALD: Against the Black Priory – The Bard’s Song
♫

Oh winter, oh winter,

early comes the dawn,

and the gloom is soon gone,

the time is right for stories

and golden memories…

♫

The bard interrupts his song as a freezing wind sweeps through the tavern, extinguishing the candles on the richly set tables. A shiver runs down the spines of the celebrating guests as a cloaked figure enters the now deathly quiet room.

>>Greetings brave adventurers and unfortunate fools,
the time has come to announce the gathering of Raw Fury‘s bravest Sorcerers and Bards with the great and terrible dungeon master Anders Lauridsen!<<

Even if the visitor’s face is veiled by the shadow of a hood, an observant gaze is noticeable. The faces of the tavern visitors vary between barely definable fear, abrupt surprise, but also a certain fascination about the message of this mysterious nocturnal visitor.

>>The Black Priory calls every brave soul to the island of Idra, where horrors, as they could come directly from the sinister mind of Lovecraft, roam. Take with you all the golden memories of long-gone adventures and cling to them as you gradually uncover the secrets of Skald. But be warned! Don’t let the pixelated beauty and captivating story drag you into an endless abyss. <<

While the grim character speaks of vile creatures and dark secrets, despite this dreary prospect, the hearts of the just-celebrating tavern-goers fill again with a tender flame of courage, but also doubt.

How did they get to this tavern in the first place, who is the generous innkeeper who piled the tables with delicious food and sparkling drinks? Was it even this figure? It must have been so…

>> Take this as a challenge to take up the fight Against the Black Priory! Be aware of the dangers… but for now, eat and drink. The gathering has just begun. Save your strength and courage… you will hear more from us very soon! The Black Priory awaits you brave fools! <<

With these words, the cloaked figure collapses, leaving only an empty robe. The candles and hearth flare up as if by magic and fill the room again with a comforting warmth.

Was this just a dream… was it a phantasm of alcohol? The tavern-goers, celebrating again, do not let on about this doubt. But in their hearts, everyone is convinced that this is only the beginning of a new adventure called: “SKALD: Against the Black Priory“.

The playable prologue of SKALD: Against the Black Priory is available for free on Steam and GOG. Anders Lauridsen and Raw Fury would like to invite all role-playing game fans and dungeon crawlers to spend the holidays in the rich fantasy universe of SKALD.

More information will be revealed by the Bards of Raw Fury in 2022. In the meantime, wishlist Skald on Steam, here.

 

[Abu Antar]

Morrowind style.

 

[Lacrymas]

I had a feeling the Tyranny highlighting would become the standard.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Doesn't this mean that mouse is pretty much required for full gameplay experience?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Looks that way unless first letter of highlighted words is used along with that numbered menu and escape.

 

[Denim Destroyer]

The game cannot seem to figure out if it wants to be keyboard focused or mouse focused so hopefully this issue is fixed in the final release. Hopefully they will let you select the first letter of a highlighted word to avoid having to switch or let you press TAB to select the phrase.

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[mindx2]

I want this game NOW!!

 

[Acrux]

Dev log update
https://www.skaldrpg.com/2022/02/happy-new-year/

Spoiler

Happy New Year!


Happy new year!

Wait, what? Is it February already? All I can say is time flies when you’re having fun. This update is a bit overdue but as always, if I’m a bit tardy in posting on the devlog it’s because I’m making our dream game.

The new year has been a torrent of making cool plans, have Covid wreck it all and instead write awesome code!

Our big carrot of Q1 2022 was that Raw Fury and I were going to GDC in San Francisco to promote Skald. We always knew it was a risky prospect and as Omicron ramped up over Christmas we reconsidered and canceled the trip. And let me tell you: I’m almost glad we did!

It’s given me time to dig deep on a few areas that I always wanted to improve in the game. I’ll try to summarize some of the latest developments:

The GUI System
I’ve rewritten the GUI system. Yes, pretty much all of it. It was pretty much one of the last components of the game where I used Unity’s built in system but it was a bit of a mess. I’m sure someone who’s better at Unity could pull it off, but I really just want Unity to compile my game and leave me alone beyond that.

Thankfully, the Skald engine is really good at drawing pixels on screen with perfect precision and so I was able to use my engine to do stuff like draw fonts, UI-elements and handle transitions and mouse interactions.

One of the first big advantages is that I can now have the game scale perfectly to the screen so it gets pixel perfect resolution.



If you zoomed in on the game in full-screen mode, it used looked like the left image. Now everything scales perfectly and it all looks like the right image. Crisp enough to make your eyes bleed.

For a pixel-purist like me, another advantage of the new system is that we can swap Unity’s vectorized fonts for home-made “real” pixel fonts.



I also added the ability to insert big illuminated first letters at the start of the script. I need to polish the graphic design a little bit but all in all I think it’s going to look amazing.

But there’s more: The new system allows for highlighting of keywords in the text that you can mouse over to get helpful info. Naturally this will also be possible on menus like the character sheets where you can mouse over attributes to get a description or on the map where mousing over objects will allow you to get info in pop-up boxes.



Finally, note how the menu above slides on and off the screen for a bit of a smoother transition.

With all the UI stuff, the technical stuff is now done but there’s still work to be done to really take advantage of its full potential. Stay posted for more updates!

The Animation System
The moment I signed with Raw Fury, one of the first features I knew I wanted to expand upon a bit was the animation system.

Building an animation system that cycles through frames of animation is easy enough. The trouble is scaling it. There are basically three types of models in Skald:

• Simple Models: These are models like the rats in the demo. They have few animation frames and very few customization options. This works because for the most part, you won’t see them doing anything outside of combat so all you need is a few idle frames and some combat frames.
• Custom Models: These models have more complex animations so we can have it perform more complex actions. A great example of that is the big monster below. These are very cool and expressive but costly to make since each frame needs to be hand drawn. The upside is that there isn’t a ton of them in the game.
• Humanoid models: This is the tricky part and where the Skald engine shines. The humanoid models in Skald are “paper-dolls”. That means you can swap costumes, items, skin-color, hair etc and have it show up on the model. They also need dozens of animation frames (and perhaps hundreds by the end). This means hundreds of thousands of different frames to account for all possible permutations of costumes and animations.

Fear not! The Skald engine solves this by doing humanoid animation in a semi-procedural way. Basically each model consists of a dozen components drawn using a kind of animation skeleton. Legs, torsos, arms, heads, hair, items etc are drawn in relation to each other and colored according to specifications. This means that for each new behavior we want to animate, we’ll only ever have to add a very few frames.

As an example, look at the image above again. The character falling to his knees is not a unique animation. Any of the characters on-screen would perform the same animation if given the command.

The awesome part is that adding that particular animation strip to ALL HUMANOID MODELS in the game took only about 20 minutes.

Anyways, you’ll be seeing a lot more of this system as we go. Here is an example of me experimenting with adding some animation frames to the player’s attack animation:



Trust me; the system works – it’s just that I’m not a very good animator

The Level Editor
This one is the Golden Goose for me. My level editor has been a pretty big bottleneck so far. I just couldn’t get it right and I lacked a clear vision for what a great tool would even look like for Skald. Then I saw the amazing “Tiled” editor and I was saved.

“Tiled” had a simple suit of features that were all I had ever asked for and I knew I needed something like that for Skald. I had two options:

1) adopt “Tiled” (it’s free) and use it for Skald or 2) try to write my own version of it? Well, I just told you I rewrote my whole GUI system to get nicer fonts so I doubt you’ll be surprised to hear I made my own in-house version of Tiled.



This may seem excessive, but a good level editor is critical and this way I get one that is seamlessly integrated with my other tools. I also don’t have to depend on external software. Most importantly though: All the Skald tools will now be collected in a single application so the Skald community can eventually get to mod and create their own application using the exact same tools I used to make this game.

I still have some development to do on the editor before it’s fully functional but as soon as it is, I’ll be doing some streaming of me making levels in style!

Next Steps
So in broad terms, the next big step is doing a major overhaul of the demo to be released in spring / summer. This is primarily to show off and test the new features and it’s also a hugely important tool to get Skald on the radar of press and content creators.

To that end, we’re also going to redo the Steam pages, the website and make a new trailer.

We will be doing more Beta testing before then as well but I’m waiting till things are a bit more stable so I don’t get swamped in reports of issues that are already known. Testers are a limited resource and we need to save it until it really counts.

That’s what I had time for today! I hope it was somewhat informative. To stay posted, follow us on Twitter and join our Discord!

Cheers,

AL

A few highlights:

• GUI system rewritten ("I really just want Unity to compile my game and leave me alone beyond that")
• New animation system
• Level editor
• Next step: Updating demo (to be released in spring/summer )

 

[OndrejSc]

SCAT: Against the Black Posterior

 

[Comte]

Vaporware

 

[agris]

Y’all are some bitches, give it time.

 

[Ludwig von Eisenthal]

I backed this game quite some time ago. Almost forgot about it.

 

[Infinitron]

I mix things up a bit with a Video Blog! I might make this a monthly thing if it works out.

 

[cyborgboy95]

Text version: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1069160/view/3104673961989526375

Originally posted by Anders:
Hey RPG fans, welcome to the first Skald video devlog. My name is Anders Lauridsen. I am the developer for Skald: The Black Priory, which is an upcoming indie RPG. The game is kinda an old school retro style RPG similar to games like Ultima 5 and The Magic Candle series. It's slated for release later in 2022 and will be published by Swedish game publisher Raw Fury.

So the last couple of weeks has been busy. All of February has been busy, but unfortunately, I've been down for the last week with COVID, which sucks. I lost a week of work, and I hate that but fortunately, I feel much better now, and I'm back on the horse, which is good as there's a lot to do.

In terms of development, the last month--probably the last three weeks if you subtract the week with COVID, I've been working on the level editor for Skald. I've had many iterations of it already but the way it used to be didn't really work the way I wanted it to, so I remade it from scratch. That might sound excessive, but a level editor is a tool that you use a lot as a game developer so having a good tool is extremely important. Basically, what made me reconsider the tool I was currently using; first of all it wasn't really a good tool, but it worked for me as I was the only one using it, but then I saw tiled, which is an open-source free level editor tool[www.mapeditor.org] that you can use to make games that look pretty much like Skald.

It's a fantastic tool and I was really impressed by it. I decided I could use tiled or make my own tool that emulates tiled and the functionality of that tool. So to make sure that I had a tool that I could control 100%, I didn't really want a third party in this project in any way, even though it's open-source, I opted to make my own tool, my own version of tiled. That's what I've been working on for the past 3 weeks, and it's been going really good.

So what I'd thought I'd do is just spend a couple of minutes playing around with the tool and showing it to you guys so you can see what it looks like today. Both because it's nice for me to show off the work I've done but also the tool is something we'll release to the public at some point in the project. We might release an alpha version either to the public or the community before launch so you guys can play around with it a little bit and we will definitely be releasing it at some form post-launch, maybe at DLC or part of a DLC package; we'll just have to see but modding and having the community be able to create their own content for Skald has always been a pretty big pillar for the project for me even though it's not my first priority. My first priority is to make a good single player experience out of the box. but it's also pretty low effort for me to just give you the tools that I used to make the game and nothing would make me happier to see you guys use it down the line so, so I think it's well worth the effort to spend a little bit of time working on stuff like the level editor.

Okay, so let's do a short tour of the editor. If you're familiar with tiled, then basically, this is what this is; it's tabbed based so you can have different maps up at the same time, and you can swap between them. This is the main draw area, and you can obviously of course, zoom in and pan around, just as you would expect. But you couldn't zoom in on my old editor, so you couldn't zoom out and edit large areas at once, so this is already hugely helpful.

So let's just say we want to draw some wall down here, we'll just do it like that, easy peasy lemon squeezy. Let's zoom in a little bit. What we can also do is we can use the draw random function, which allows you to select multiple tiles and select one of them at random. It's great for letting you visual variation like so. You could also use another super handy tool called draw pattern, which allows you to select several tiles and draw them all at once. So, for instance, here we draw this arch, select these tiles, press the button and it comes on screen. So pretty easy, nothing revolutionary but hugely, very functional, and it works the way I need it to.

You can basically also add any object that's in the game using this editor. Let's say why not add a cat, a couple of cats? We could add a dog as well and just hope they don't kill each other; you get the idea.

The maps in Skald are also layered on top of each other inside the game so usually, if you see a building like this, the ground floor is drawn on one map, and the upper floor is drawn on another map, and this is also supported in the game.

So let's say we wanted more dogs-oh crap, I put a wall in there instead- let's just leave it for now. See if we can put a dog in, there we go, now we can have the dog pee on the wall, which is super nice.

I think you all get the gist; it's nothing revolutionary, but it's hugely helpful for me, and it's really, really fast to make content in. I'm super happy with it so far, and I can't wait to just continue using and developing it and polishing all the rough edges so it can be easy for you to use and make content with.

So, with that being said I don't think there's much more for me to say today besides have a fantastic day, stay safe and healthy and keep following the project on https://www.skaldrpg.com/ or on twitter (or our Discord[discord.gg]).

Have a good one everyone, bye bye!

-Anders

 

[RNGsus]

This game will solve world hunger.

 

[Infinitron]

A copy of the recent stream with me and Fiona (media manager at Raw Fury)! We play the "old" Skald demo and talk about it and it's upcoming bigger brother.

 

[Jenkem]

what else has this dev worked on?

 

[Abu Antar]

what else has this dev worked on?

I don't know, but the demo was fun.

 

[Abu Antar]

https://www.skaldrpg.com/2022/03/skald-project-update-march-2022/

Skald Project Update March 2022

Hi there!

It’s time for another devlog update for “Skald: Against the Black Priory”!
These are busy and very exciting days. A lot of very important development is being done on the game and tools and we’re having a lot of very interesting talks regarding the long term perspective of the Skald brand both internally and with external partners. I can’t really say much yet but hopefully it will be worth the wait.

In terms of the game itself, the current priority has been on tool-development (the level editor), preparing content for the upcoming teaser and working on the redux version of the prologue (to be released this summer).

New Media Content
We’ve also been looking into more ways of communicating with the community and I’ve made a vlog update as well as a stream with Fiona Martin of Raw Fury. I’m still finding my footing on the technical side and I’ll be working on improving audio so sorry if the quality is a bit low for these two.

We’ll be doing more video content as we go and streams in particular are something we’ll be digging deeper on as they are easy to make and provide a way for you to communicate with us directly.

For upcoming streams we’ll be talking to some of the awesome people at my publisher, Raw Fury, to learn more about what they do and how the collaboration between developers and publishers look. I can guarantee you it’ll be worthwhile if you’re interested in the indiegame industry.

If you have suggestions for topics for either the stream or the video-blog, be sure to leave them in the Youtube comments of the vids above. I read everything.

Spoiler

Community Created Content
If you’ve been following my social media or the Discord, you know that I’ve become enamored with my new level editor (I talked about it in my first devlog of 2022).



The short of it, is that it’s turning out better than I hoped and I’m now super pumped to be able to offer it to the community so you can make content for Skald yourself.

And let me be clear here: The editor I’ll be releasing will be the exact same tools I’ve been using myself to make this game. You’ll be able to create (or edit) any asset in the game from maps to objects (items, characters and props), factions, quests, difficulty settings and on and on. EVERY aspect of the game.


A test I did with the Ultima 5 tileset. This took about 2 minutes to make, from importing the art asset to making the map.

Personally I think the true power of this isn’t creating more Skald content; it’s making your own awesome fan-projects. Ultima 5.5 fan-project anyone?

A Editor Road-Map
Our tentative plan for the editor, is to get it out there soon (meaning before the main game launches). I also don’t want the commitment of having to maintain another piece of commercial software so likely what we’ll do is release is as a free beta for the community to play around with.

Ideally this will allow for a community to grow up around it that could sustain itself while I’ll provide tech support, beginning tutorials and take feedback for updates.


Needs more trolls!

It certainly wouldn’t hurt if, by the launch of the main game, we could point to a vital modding community that already had a stack of awesome fan-made content ready for consumption.

Getting Yourself Involved
If you’re intersted in this aspect of the project, I’d love to hear from you! I’m setting up a discord sub-channel (FAN CONTENT on our Discord) for this discussion and I’d love for you to head on over and offer me your feedback on the following:

1. What are some case studies of INDIE games that have strong modding and fan-content communities? WHat are they doing right?
2. If a community springs up, where should it live? What platform works best for both providing a way to offer tech-support, asset sharing, project collaboration and perhaps even hosting of projects?
3. How can I support the community whilst still making is as independent and standalone as possible?
4. What are some cool projects you’d like to do? Share them in the #my_dream_projects channel!

See you there!

I hope to hear from as many of you as possible. Till then, have a fantastic weekend!

Keep following this devlog, my twitter and the Skald Discord to stay posted on our awesome quest to bring you more retro-RPG awesomeness!

Cheers,

AL