Thursday Update #3: Setting, Lore and Music

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Thursday Update #3.

I’m still working on the logo for the game. It’s proving to be more time consuming than I first thought, mostly because I’m learning a new way to do art that I’m unfamiliar with. Any of you that have ever used the Pen tool knows what I’m talking about. For those of you that haven’t and are curious, the Pen tool uses vectors instead of pixels for art. What does that mean? Well, if I can explain it in terms of physical art, think of a canvas for painting that’s made up of a grid. When you paint across the canvas, the paint fills the squares in the grid of different hues, values, and saturations of exactly one precise color per square. That’s basically what a pixel is. This is great and works fine, until you get really close to it and can see the individual squares of solid color. This means that your painting doesn’t scale very well, which is why images get blurry when you zoom in. So, if you were to change the size of your image, it loses its crispness. This is pretty common knowledge that most of you already know, but now imagine instead of painting on the canvas you take very precise measurements. You lay out a map of what you’re trying to paint before you start painting, that is essentially just dots and guides for lines. This map exists outside of your canvas, as if you were using tracing paper, and this would be what vectors are (in this context). If you need the image bigger, well, you have your map to repaint what it is your painting. There won’t be pixilation, because the image is created from your map every time. Your map can scale infinitely because it’s only dots and guides for lines, not actual lines. And now you know how vector art works.

So, anyway, I’m learning how to do this. And it’s getting a lot easier the more I use it, but it definitely takes some getting used to. Simple shapes can be knocked out very quickly, but I never do anything the simple way so it’s taking a while.

Last week, I said I was going to talk about some lore and setting things so let’s move onto that.

First, setting: I’ve already mentioned that this is a fantasy setting. I prefer high fantasy, so expect monsters, magic, and fantastical items. I also like Lovecraftian things, so expect some enemies to be horror abominations. It’ll be a fun time. The game, I’m pretty sure, will take place in the country of Xordrim. I don’t think that this will matter much because I’m going to keep the story fairly light. I want the game to feel like an old platformer, like an arcade game or similar. I’ll probably include some lore pickups in-game if you want to learn about Xordrim and the surrounding countries, but it won’t be a forced, “You must look at this!” I find that to be annoying in games, so it’ll be there if you want. If you don’t, that’s fine too.

Now, what is a Blackwarden? Blackwardens are a special type of person, very loyal and trustworthy to their homeland. Usually the knight type, with unusually high willpower. Blackwardens exist to safeguard powerful magical artifacts too dangerous to keep around. Why would something be so dangerous, but you couldn’t just lock it away somewhere? Well, sentient items with a corrupting influence for one. Think The One Ring from Lord of the Rings. And I suppose you could lock it up and put it away, but there’s always gonna be That Guy™ that’s going to touch the thing that says in big bold letters, “DO NOT TOUCH.” You could guard it with that same person who is the Blackwarden, but with powerful magic users around if they stay in one area they’re going to be a sitting duck for a, “You’re dead, now,” spell. So, the best thing to do is to send them away, preferably to another country, so that when they eventually die and the artifact is rediscovered it’s someone else’s problem. The most common type of item to be safeguarded by a Blackwarden is what’s called a, “Felblade,” in my world.

Becoming a Blackwarden is a huge honor, and a great service to one’s country. The title of Blackwarden allows for nearly anything they want, but also means that they will most likely live the rest of their lives in self-exile far away from home. It’s a rough job, but someone has to do it.

This wraps up the Thursday Update. This week for show-and-tell I have a music track. This should be the music for the first levels, working title, “Run.” The title and track may change by the time of release, but hopefully it’s fun to listen to. It does loop on itself, and is designed that way. I believe this was the second track I finished, right after it’s paired boss music, so be gentle with the criticism. Maybe I’ll share that one, too, before release if people are interested.

Thanks for reading, see you next Thursday!