Alrighty, so I have all but one king/boss done for Legion of Devagog. Here they are:

The names are just something I can up with on the fly, so they may or may not change. One is a dwarf king, the one that is missing will be a black knight type king/queen, the only one where a face is not visible most likely. After each level a dialog will come up with the face of one of the kings and tell the player a bit more of the story and maybe a little of the next area; they will also thank the player for freeing them from dark magic.

I also added a piece to my portfolio that I did for fun and to increase my skills, a void knight type character: http://dracon852001.wix.com/csinclairportfolio#!2d-art/albumphotos4=0

That's all for this week, look forward to doing the last king and maybe some more random concepts for the coming week.

Last week I said I would be doing some game art, but there was a death in the family and the service was a couple days ago. So art kind of got put on hold, sorry readers. I did update one of my portfolio pieces though, defined the edges better and just improved the entire thing in my opinion. Check her out at http://dracon852001.wix.com/csinclairportfolio#!2d-art/albumphotos4=3
She is my favorite character from a game called League of Legends, so they get credit for the original idea, but I decided to create my own work with her midway between her human and dragon form.

Hopefully I will feel up to doing some more work next week. I have decided to pay more attention to my art skills due to a presentation I watched from Westwood. They had examples of what should be done (yes) and what isn't good enough (no). I kind of thought my art fell into the maybe pile, I think it is good, but with some more attention my art could become awesome. Got to stop spending so much time watching netflix and gaming haha.

So, I have all the levels finished. My final two levels are Lavascars and Devagog's Castle. The shrine levels are all relatively the same setup though I was hoping to have the troops at each shrine have certain effects on them possibly.

Lavascars:

For Lavascars I want to have environmental hazards. The lava will come up at random intervals making troop movement more complicated. The player will have to time when to move troops into battle, and possibly even draw enemy troops into traps to progress. The ultimate goal still being to storm the castle of course.


Devagog's Castle:

For the final battle I want it to be the biggest army seen yet stationed outside the castle (so it starts sort of like a shrine battle). The player will have to engage this first, and after a set time reinforcements would start spawning like they do on normal maps. Every troop should count, each choice carefully considered. Also I was thinking about adding shrine power-ups to help beat the level. For example the player could call upon the sword shrine to strengthen an attack for short time, or combine all shrine power-ups to make a smaller force much more effective etc. There will be no obstacles on this map, just two mighty forces clashing on an open field.

That's all for this week. Next week I am thinking about making some portraits for the kings of each land to go with some end text. Just trying to keep busy and add more to the game.

I have managed to work through 5 level concepts so far. I will skip the first, since that is pretty much already setup.

Level2: Rivera.

In this level I was going for a slightly different setup with diagonal castles. There will be two paths of attack for both the enemy and the player. I hope to introduce collisions (troops can not go through the river, only across bridges) and different battle strategies with this map.

Level3: Sword Shrine

This level is sort of an arena combat type level, there are three shrines (levels 3, 5, and 7) to help a player defeat Devagog with certain powers. These sorts of levels might be a bit easier due to the fact a player can select counters from the start. Once all troops have been placed a sort of melee erupts. If a player has balanced their forces correctly they should prevail and thus win the map. Certain shrines may give the enemy an advantage; once the players gold supply runs out there is no more on these maps. They are sort of sink or swim maps.

Level4: Highpeak

With Highpeak I was going for a sort of maze type setup. Troops will be funneled through the mountains and emerge at various points making defense difficult. The obstacles could also be used for ambushes though. Other than the obstacles it is similar to the first level, just a melee and kill the enemy castle sort of setup.

That is all for this week. I plan to continue working on levels and graphics as time goes on and at least finishing the graphic side of things. I need one more terrain type and some lava pits for lava scars and a special castle graphic for Devagog's castle.

I said I would be more optimistic and pro-active when it came to creating game assets so here is the result: A complete game map for Legion of Devagog!

Ideally this would be displayed as a level transition with players starting at Foresta and an icon moving clockwise as they progress through the game. The finished game will have eight levels if you include shrine battles. Currently we only have Foresta close to finished, but it is nice to have the rest of the game mapped out. I figure my part is just to make some textures and a couple extra graphics. The programmer will need to hammer out collisions and a couple extra battle conditions in addition to map transitions. She is still currently working on unit control and other details at this time though. Once that is done the extra levels shouldn't be too hard from what I have heard from the programmer.

I really appreciate having Kelsey to do the programming side of things, and look forward to making this dream of mine a reality (or giving it our best shot anyways!).

I have returned from vacation and look forward to working on the two projects I have going at the moment. I think I will take a more pro-active approach and start working on stuff we will use if everything goes well rather than waiting for the programmer to catch up (since it is now definite the LoD programmer has returned to the project).

As for the vacation itself; I took a trip with my family to Disneyland, Sea world, and Knott's soak city. We stayed at a time share in Palm Springs. 3 kids around 9 years old, a teenager, myself, and my parents. The kids were pretty annoying, ranging from whiny to shooting people with squirt guns lol. Only one of the kids accompanied me and Tyler (teenage nephew) on roller coasters. We stayed at Disneyland until 1 am in the morning, which was exhausting. I had 6 blisters on my feet, a sunburn from yesterday, and being a gamer/computer nerd I am not in the best physical shape. Still I suppose it was all worth it and everyone had a good time.