Rise Of The Jemhaji Devlog #3

This is the 3rd devlog for our game, Rise Of The Jemhaji. In the last one we discussed our design process and the documents that we’re using to keep the project organised. In this one, we want to give you an update on where we are with the development of the game.

We are on the way to completing the first playable version of the game, and our artists are making great progress with the assets for it, from environments to NPCs to enemies.

Current State Of Development

Development is being solely completed by Lauren, and as the Founder of Dyak she’s also been at the helm of all things social media and hiring. Despite this, good progress has been made and she’s pretty happy with this progress. Tasks that have been completed include:

Artwork Changes: As you can tell, there have been some updates to the artwork from our combat prototype to now. A majority is still placeholder assets however as and when we get the artwork from our Artists, Lauren will be porting them into Unity.

Before...

After!

Player Ability Refactoring: Lauren decided that the combat system in the prototype needed to be refactored as it didn’t allow for easy creation of abilities, and each ability was the cast button, rather than the cast button calling an ability’s Cast function on a separate object. To fix this, Lauren used a combination of OOP, ScriptableObjects (SOs) and lists (oh, so many lists) to make each ability type easier to create and cast. This has led to having scripts for each type of ability; single-hit, AOE, DOT and AOE-DOT attacks, which makes creating player abilities a lot easier. Each of these scripts then takes in an SO with the base stats and uses those to deal damage in the appropriate way. Healing and other buff abilities need to be added, but now that the base is down that’ll be much easier to do.

Our Ability ScriptableObject

Parent Class for all Ability Behaviours

AOE DOT Ability Behaviour

UI Setup: A majority of the UI has now been set up so you can navigate between screens. While there is no functionality just yet, implementing this navigation will save a lot of work so we can just focus on what each screen will represent. Some of the fancy and new UI we have set up is:

The Main Menu

Area Map UI

UI Screens (this is the current state of our Inventory UI)

Next on the to-do list is the inventory, questing and save systems. When these are complete, the game will be ready for some pre-alpha playtests.

Artwork Updates

As you know, in November we started the process of bringing freelance artists into the team to create some assets for us. After a gruelling review process, we now have 4 talented people working with us to help bring Rise Of The Jemhaji to life! They are:

• Zoe: Character Artist working on our main antagonists, The Dravu
• Chrome: Character Artist working on important NPCs which you’ll meet during the questline
• Aha!: Character Artist working on some smaller creature enemies which you’ll be fighting across Eridani
• Alexis: Map/Environment Artist working on the locations you’ll be able to explore, starting with the Salangnu System

We also have now officially welcomed Eloise to the team. She was helping us out with some social media posts back in August and September, but after some discussions she agreed to join us as a UI designer to help create UI assets to replace our current placeholders.

They’ve all been doing some awesome work so far, and we’re very happy with what we’ve seen from them. Below are some WIPs of their work.

Tapir by Aha!

Map Mockup by Alexis

Dravu WIP Sketch by Zoe

UI Asset by Eloise

UI Asset by Eloise

Over the coming months, we’ll be formally introducing Zoe, Chrome, Aha! and Alexis to you via our Meet The Tribe series, where you can learn a little bit more about the team. In the meantime, remember to follow us on our socials to see more updates on our progress with Rise Of The Jemhaji, as well as more WIPs from our brilliant team of Artists. In the next devlog we’ll be going over our progress with the inventory, questing and save systems.