We at Lost Pilgrims will always remember 2018 as the year when it all began to come together, the year when everything changed for us. It was the year when development on Vagrus got out of the preparation phase and into hardcore production.
Now that this crucial year is done and over with, we felt it would behoove us to recount how 2018 went for those of you interested (and for posterity!).
Vagrus - The Riven Realms is a game rich in storylines and quests, and most of these appear in the form of what we call Events: text based interactions where your choices guide the story. There are a lot (and I mean a LOT) of these Events and due to their nature, writing for the game involves quite complex scripting and a non-linear narrative design angle. But what does this mean in practice and what does it involve?
Time to talk about the Journal. Even though I don't think most gamers are super-excited about the details of in-game journals or quest logs, it is still extremely important to get them right in a game as complex and as full of storylines, tasks, quests, and objectives as Vagrus, and gamers do appreciate quest logs that work well and aid them when they need information.
Time for another project update! Seventy-seven days have passed by and even though it was summer - supposedly calmer times - it felt pretty frantic. In the good sense.
A huge Thank You! and wishing all the best to Marci
As your might remember, our previous post started with the news of Marci joining the team to complete his summer internship with us for his degree in software development. Marci has been instrumental to the progress we made on the Codex & Journal functionality and UI, as well as to catching up on our design documents. Now that he has returned to his studies, we wish him all the very best for his goal of finishing his Bachelor's degree. We're pleased to see that he is on the right track to become a great game developer!
As a strategy-RPG hybrid, Vagrus is pretty heavy on UI, so a lot of our effort goes into designing a functional and appealing UI for various elements of the game. Today, we'll take a look at our progress with the 'main UI', which is on the campaign map. This is what the player will see the most of and it's UI has to be a gateway to several key game elements.