First up is the new maps. I didn’t comment on Mt. Larkmuir so I’ll be doing it here too. Because Act 1 of Misthalin Memories acts as a tutorial, it slowly introduces game features. I’ve tried to have the map designs incorporate this and slowly introduce things such as obstacles in dungeons and scale.  Mt. Larkmuir was my attempt at increasing the scale by having a larger map, largest one I’ve made so far, complete with a settlement, three dungeons and collectible items. I still want to push it further though. I want even bigger maps, but I’ll see how that goes. That’s why the settlements are in the fields in the first place, to be places to rest.

I’ve been stuck for a while now, what to make the main collectible items. The CRYSTAL Shards. What use would they be? I ended up using them to explain the technology in Misthalin, so they slowly lost their purpose.  They were still going to be used to resurrect Kuilimarth, a sixth generation being, but I didn’t know how. That’s when I thought of the “Memory Shard” idea. You can unlock new spells, techniques, areas, equipment, traits and other things through collecting Memory Shards. A pretty awesome replacement, if I do say so myself. What are memory shards? Essentially stored memories of course!

So that lead to my first dungeon to put them in. The Ancient Corridor in Mt. Larkmuir. It was to play around with switches, see what I could do with them. I think it was well done, but it feels empty and simple without obstacles to get to the switches. Do that, and I think I have a solid dungeon design.

With some obstacles set in stone, I decided to go back and re-design earlier dungeons. First was Nessver Mines. In the original design you had to figure out a switch was in the statue straight away, and I thought that wasn’t clear enough. This time I added in a switch to access that area, thus emphasizing it’s importance and showing the player how switches work. The room with the statue is practically empty and so the next thing to go through a player’s mind is, “check the statue”. It works, at least in theory. We’ll see how that goes, but that also introduces the idea of hidden rooms.

The next area to change was Kintyre Woods. This was where I started to play with the location name being displayed. When entering an area, the name of the area will be displayed. It’s an idea I’ve been playing with for a while. Locations are important, bounties hide amongst loads of other things. Considering the size of the game and the free roaming aspect, it’s important players can tell where they are.

After looking at Kintyre Woods, it’s too small for what I want. But I’ll keep it at a smaller scale for the Strathbryde region. Hopefully at a later point I can have four or five maps connected together, with a settlement and a couple of dungeons too. Really make a big scale, promote exploration. For what Act 1 promises, a smaller scale is fine, but when it comes to the full game I need larger areas. I mean, I need to hide bounties and hunts, have places for you to go for missions and quests, have places to explore!

Another addition to Kintyre Woods was the inclusion of Bandit’s Cove. Bandit’s Cove is a small dungeon, a hideout for the local bandit’s. I decided to use this dungeon as a means of introducing more obstacles, but to signify the dungeon I had to add a story.

The protagonist is traveling through the woods, when a bandit steals his purse. He must go get it back. A simple plot for Kintyre Woods, but a suitable one. I included a hidden passage as the first obstacle, but made it obvious by having the next room visible (which means the entrance and exit is visible). The next room showed that not all statues have switches, and some ordinary objects may have switches instead. This will give the player the idea that they must examine objects, use their mind and think about things. The next room had two switches (well, one is a lever) to access the next room. Unfortunately, one’s a fake and results in you being poisoned. This teaches that not everything is as it seems and you may be in danger. Examine the objects first.

You get the idea. I’ll be adding a sort of commentary on each map and feature and stuff as I release them, but they’ll be mentioned in the introduction. I’m not going to go too in depth here, this is just a general gist of everything new.

I understand that this post is extremely late, so I will be ending it here. For Misthalin Memories 1.06a I’ll release a better Blog Post on it’s information, so stay tuned! Version 1.06a is due out by Friday 25th.

I haven’t been on this blog for long, so I thought I’d post the demo link here.
Enjoy it!
Don’t forget to leave your feedback on the Konaku forums!

Part 1 of our first ever Let’s Play, Heavy Rain, is now up! Subscribe to http://www.youtube.com/user/SpoonyBardReviews to keep up to date with all our latest videos.

I would like to say that the first official demo of Kingdom of Warfare will be released this Friday, maybe Saturday. This demo is official, so expect glitches to be fixed, continuation of the story, more locations and content and generally a better experience.
You’ll be able to download it with a link provided on the forums.

So just sit and dwindle your thumbs whilst you wait for one hell of a ride!

By improving old areas I mean that I’m actually adding in new places to it. So far I’ve not had any information on how to improve them, everyone seems satisfied, so I’m just adding more to them. An example is that I’ve added a sewer area to Kintyre, although not entirely obvious unless you know it exists. There’ll be a lot more touches like that in future releases too as I strive for the best I can get from the current engine.

I won’t be adding anymore chests into this version. There will be some hidden passages though, my target is probably about seven to add more to exploration. The true use of the passages and their actual workings won’t be used until a future update when I begin to implement more game mechanics.

There will still be a lack of NPC’s (Non-player characters) but expect some more merchants to pop up for the time being. No new items will be included in this version.

The City of Wakusta, Village of Blanefield, Town of Portblane, and Village of Nevis will now include interiors. I’m gonna work on making towns more important too, maybe by removing some buildings from Villages or including more in Towns. Cities will contain almost everything, however, with some variety determined by their own history, development and purpose (such as Kintyre for Shipbuilding and Wakusta for Tourism).

I’m going to include the first step in public travel, the ferry. This will result in easy travel between Kintyre and Portblane. It will also allow access to the Town of Maudhorn and Town of Nessver. The south end of the City of Kintyre will not be accessable though, and train travel is also currently not running. I’m going to be cheap with the ferry though, and not actually show it. I’ll work on that a bit later on. The Capital of Balerdour will become accessable in this version, as well as Mt. Nevis; however, Balerdour View (tower) will not be accessable.

This version will be the second last episode in the protagonist’s story. Depending on your previous actions you may regain his memory which results in an extra plot. Don’t ask what it is, I’ve not decided yet. As I’ve said before, I’m developing it as I write it just for linking maps together.

Remember that cave situated west of Kintyre? Yeah. That’s still not accessable. I’m thinking of straying from the actual story of the game and having the alpha protagonist’s story end in there, but we’ll see.

I’m gonna start adding in more hidden things to find as well, pieces of the character’s identity so look out for them too. Might wanna comb every inch of the game. The maps are at least starting to turn out how I wanted – giving freedom for exploration and finding hidden things or obscure things.

A new field may be included, between Campbell Village and Maudhorn, but with the amount I’m adding I may leave that for the next update.

Well that’s that. This is the second last level design update. After the next one, I’ll be going onto the menu system. See ya around!

Well I’ve finally gotten work on the next maps to release for testing and finalization. I done it all today, because I’ve had quite the busy week. So what have I added to 1.04a?

Well because it was a quick update; not too much. I’ve changed the test plains chipset so it’s getting better and better. Won’t be long before it’s the chipset for plains, I must say. New additions to it is a grassy wall, to replace the old rocky one, of course they’ll be returning too. I’ve also added buildings to it, so I can now get in actual towns using it.

On the other side, the story does not progress much further if at all. Two new settlements have been included, the City of Wakusta and Village of Blanefield. I’ve also added in two new fields, Blanefield and Stromsay Bridge. Blanefield contains the village, a dungeon (complete with a chest and hidden chamber) and two areas; North and South.

I’ve decided to start making maps a bit bigger now, while not too big. Because the tutorial (Act 1) is nearing it’s end, the gameplay is also opening up more and I’d like to show that in the map designs. Blanefield is the first to show this, mainly because it takes a lot of work.

Most other designs are slightly lazy but can be touched up later, as always feedback on how to improve them would be great. Hit me up on konaku@hotmail.co.uk (I think, try .com as well, I’ll have a look later) and/or post it on the Konaku Forums here.

Hey. I’ve just started making youtube videos. Right now they aren’t very good but they probably will improve as my creativity rises. I have many plans if this pans out. So check it out, subscribe!

For no apparent reason, we’ve decided to participate in a Let’s Play of Heavy Rain. We’ve done eighteen parts so far, each part is ten minutes long. Heavy Rain is a Playstation 3 exclusive game about a series of murders committed by the “Origami Killer”. You play as four people involved in some way with the killings.

Our let’s play is an unprofessional mess where we get distracted, insult each other, insult the game, eat and touch each other. There are few breaks in the actual game however, and these go on during the gameplay. Take what you want from it yourself, but instead of re-doing it we’re gonna leave it as is. When we next make another let’s play, we’ll make it a good one.

Also, don’t listen to JasonEatsCake and… Kieran? I wasn’t really doing anything with Charlie that shouldn’t be done in public, they just exaggerate the motion of having your arm around the girl you’re dating.

Well, I’ll post the first one up on youtube shortly and link it on here and SpoonyBard Reviews.

Right, currently I’ve gotten to the stage of Act 1 on Misthalin Memories that I am now implementing the map designs; however, I want your say in it!

As I design new maps, I release new update packs containing said maps. Your task is to download them, play them and give feedback.

Details will be given here.

The Alpha game currently contains solely just map designs and a poorly crafted story with dialogue decided on the spot – plot twists included. Please note that the story contains a lot of vulgar language.

More details on each map and pack will be added here as well.

Well recently I wondered why I was doing Misthalin Memories in four parts. I’d realised that the other three protagonists hadn’t had much detail in story and only had a few key events. They have an important role in the whole story, so I couldn’t really write them out that easily either. Instead I opted to add them back into the one game again, and make Misthalin Memories complete.

The reason for the multiple parts was because I figured, “they won’t all fit” so I split the four protagonists into their own games. Well after some thought, I realised their plots were incredibly short compared to Katraal’s. With a little thinking, I decided I could include them in Katraal’s tale as a series of flashbacks after you complete Contracts and Acts. With that set, Misthalin Memories: Fragment 1 – The Legend became simply Misthalin Memories.

This resulted in a few changes to the forum and website, of course, as they had been designed around four games under the one name amongst other things. The website has been slightly changed, but more changes are in order as well as more information on the products in work.

The forum layout will be getting changed too, smaller sections and a neater layout. Just figuring that out now.

So yeah, with that said, expect changes and touches here and there among the website and forum.