3 - Development Update
If you’re here reading this, thank you for taking your time for this little blog of mine. This week on the agenda I’m going to be talking about how the development of my current project has been going, what I’m working on now, and where development will go next.
Before we begin, I’d like to announce that the project now has a name: Lumayn! This word was originally something that I thought I had come up with when I used it for the name of a continent in a DnD campaign that I have been running. I thought to myself, “Why not use it for the game name?”. So, I went about googling to see whether the name was in use and it wasn’t! But, what I also learnt was that it is already a word in use in the Somali language and translates to “lost”. Serendipity smiled on me when I chose this word; it’s the perfect word for my DnD campaign AND for this game!
Now, lets get into the breakdown.
The Problem Space
Like all things, Lumayn began as a concept. I thought to myself about some of my favourite games that I played growing up: Pokemon, Digimon, Monster Hunter, and what drew me to those game types, and what inevitably pushed me away from them. The draw of those games was simple: The games featured really cool monsters and you get to interact with them; I loved finding monsters whose designs I found fascinating.
No game is perfect though. For Pokemon specifically, it was things such as: being able to draw a parallel between the core mechanic and animal captivity, too many designs which results in some awful and lazy designs, and a lack of focus on the interacts with the monsters specifically that led to me finding it difficult to play the games past early iterations.
To fix the issues I have with the monster genre, I wanted to come up with an idea that focused more on the monsters themselves, their personalities, your relationship with them, and interacting with them.
Lumayn Concept
Lumayn is a 3D monster adventure game where the player’s interactions with their partner matters. Your partner has their own personality, and how you treat them will affect how they treat you back.
The player will work with their partner to learn abilities, evolve, fight powerful enemies, and restore their town.
Your relationship
The way you treat your partner will change how they react to your assistance. In combat, you will be able to suggest actions and provide help, however, if your partner does not respect you because of how you have treated them, they may ignore you entirely and refuse assistance.
Whiteboxing
I began development of the prototype by focusing on developing a sufficiently sophisticated AI for demonstration purposes. Using basic capsules in Unity, I used the Unity Navmesh system to develop a follow system
I then whiteboxed a basic start area, and what would be a combat arena. When the player collides with an enemy, they and their partner would be transported to participate in an intense fight with one or more enemies
Working on the AI
The AI that runs the monsters in Lumayn will be an extremely important part of the experience. Each monster will have a unique personality based on many different factors that change how they behave.
Monsters will have different likes and dislikes. For example, some monsters will like hot areas filled with lava and stone, while other will like forests filled with trees. In each of these areas, monsters will respond to stimuli like flowers, berries, and pretty stones depending on what they like.
Another facet of their personality will be how they choose to fight while in combat. For example, some monsters will be aggressive, taking the first move wherever they can, while some monsters will be passive and wait to react.
A basic version of the combat AI has been implemented, as well as the personality generator.
Making things prettier
Your partner can now walk around with you and fight on their own in combat, so it was time to make the prototype look a little prettier in order to better demonstrate the style of the game.
I took some time to experiment with various free assets to update the game visually. While I am happy for the time being with the way it looks, there will be a lot of work later to improve the visuals.
Modelling
Currently I am working on modelling and animating one of the monster ideas. Animations will make an immeasurable difference in the believability of the monsters and their personalities.
This is the current iteration of a creature species known as “Rex”. They are an adolescent level monster with an affinity for starting fires.
Next Up
Future development will involve giving the demo more personality, with better artwork, models, level design, and interactions. There's a lot of work to do to give the players a visually interesting game where they can fall in love with their monster partner!
Here's a peak at a design for the starting village!
Frog Time!
As always, here's a cool frog. An internet classic, the black rain frog!
