Award winning computer games designer. Founder of one of the world's largest MMOGs. Now working on a powerful new game engine and an exciting new game.
I am very excited to finally announce my new game “Brighter Shores”. Check out the Steam link below, and please add it to your Steam wishlist to be notified when it is released! :)
This week, our artist Greg has been designing the "profession capes." Each cape has 4 sections, which are progressively unlocked as you level up. The final cape section is only for players who reach the top level. Here are some of our favorites.
Hi, As promised I made a video demonstrating how the world map in Brighter Shores works. I also tried something new and added a voice commentary to this video.
Quite a few people have been asking how the 'rooms' in Brighter Shores connect together, so I have a made a quick video of me running across a small section of Hopeport. You can see how easily you can move between rooms, and how the 'rooms' connect
The plan is the game will be labelled as ‘early access’ until PvP is added. i.e I want to let people start playing without having to wait even longer, but acknowledge its not quite finished at that point. There will NOT be a save reset at the end of early access.
Yes I know it's Q3. But that still gives us until the end of Sept until we are late. 😅 We are all working very hard on getting Brighter Shores finished. Here is a picture of a small part of the detective profession I have been working on this week. Can you work out who did it?
People often ask me when I started creating Brighter Shores. The answer is rather complex so I made a picture. P.S. Only 12 people have Steam keys to the alpha, most of them staff, so don't be upset that you don't have one :)
One of the many things we've worked on this week is some flame traps. If at first you don't succeed... I'm sure there must be a way of getting those artifacts!
#BrighterShores
Phew! The new graphics engine I first started way back on 30-jun-2017 is *finally* done and live today! Now I can focus my full attention on new game. I am bad at estimating how long things take, but never imagined it would take that long! Really happy with the result at least.
This week
@MrIanGower
has been working on the city of Crenopolis in episode 4 of Brighter Shores. Here are just some of the new locations created this week.
Progress update: We are still on track for a Q3 release of Brighter Shores. Hoping to finish implementing episode 3 in the next couple of weeks. Then we only have episode 4 to finish off before launch (and episode 4 is already well into production).
Yes, Brighter Shores will have (optional) PvP. It has been something I have had in mind since day 1, and been thinking about for years, and I have come up with some good ideas for how to make it work well.
For a feature this important I want to take the time to get it exactly
Progress update: We are planning on launching our big game with 4 episodes to start with. The first 3 episodes are very playable now and just need a bit more testing/tuning. I am working on episode 4 now. Planning to properly announce the game in January.
Progress update: Still working full time on the new game. A good chunk of the game is now playable. Getting close to the point where we “just” need to add more content, so I have recently been focussing on making it quicker/easier to add content.
Progress update: Still working hard on new game every day. It’s getting quite big now! 11.0GB, 24826 files, 3149 folders! (but dont worry we have some pretty good compression for the final build to keep the size down)
Progress update: Source folder for new game is now up to 13.7Gb and 26536 files. Also I thought you might like this ‘concept art’ which was produced whilst discussing how an animation in the game should work. Can you tell what it is? :P
Progress update: still working on my new game engine full time (40+ hours a week). New graphics engine is ‘done’. We are now integrating it in to our programming language, which involves making some pretty big upgrades to the language to support it. Taking time to get it right!
Progress update - I’m STILL working on the new graphics engine! Finally feels close to completion though. Hope to have it done (fully replacing the old one) by christmas. It’s taken way too long, so will be a massive relief! Then I can focus fully on secret new game.
Oops - Ignore the silly level on that middle character. That was just a test character made by someone who loves palendromic primes :) It doesn’t go that high.
Progess update - still working on my game engine full time (from home now). New graphics engine is finally integrated into the language! Next libraries and games need updating to use it instead of the old one. Currently improving font support (better kerning and nudging mostly).
Progress update: 1) compiler now excludes unused code much better. 2) also just done better support for unboxed lists. 3) next up is allowing better control of how the game behaves when not connected to the server, which will also allow the creation of offline singleplayer games.
@yakm69
@asianhomicide
I dont like mtx. So I am planning on making a huge chunk free and then selling an all-inclusive ‘premium pass’ to access the rest. The steam page has more info at the bottom.
@HeroInHelp
Completely different artists, but I have always liked: grid based games, point and click games, and a clean uncluttered aesthetic. I was going for a sort of table top RPG vibe, and a retro ‘isometric’ game vibe.
@Connor_Grott
1) Yes the number of players allowed in each room depends on the room, market place rooms are allow to get very crowded to aid trading, room with monsters allow less players at once so the monsters don’t get over contended, other rooms are between the two.
If a room is full it
hmm, the code I am writing at the moment seems to require a ‘boolean’ with 5 possible states: true, false, undecided, conflicted and missing. Feels kind of wrong!
@DCComicsz
Yes, this is something I have considered at length. I have tried to design the game from the ground up such that bots shouldnt ruin the economy / game.
Progress update: Still working on game engine full time. The list of critical tasks is slowly going down. We are currently making the compiler automatically exclude parts of the library not used by the developers game, so we can make the library bigger.
Fenforge is going well. We are still rewriting the graphics engine. Its taking a while but the new design is far more flexible and powerful. DirectX backend is done, now working on the Metal backend.
@UploaderPaul
I have no intention of selling it. I can’t see what I would gain from doing so, as I already have enough money. This is a passion project which I want to keep.
fenforge update: got a bit distracted and spent 3 months making our compiler (much!) faster, and 2 months improving our programming language. Finally back on the new graphics engine again now. Android support progressing well.
each time I think my graphics engine is nearly finished I think of another way of speeding it up. This is both good and very annoying at the same time! 😀☹️
@Connor_Grott
2) when in combat the exits to the room become ‘locked’ so you cant leave the room during combat without using an immunity spell first. (which takes time to cast). This gives a really nice balance between being able to move around tactically during combat, whilst not being able