Hey everyone, thank you all so much for over 10,000 subscribers it really means the world to me. The game now has a name and Steam page. Finally hehe. So if you would like to wishlist Lay of the Land head to: store.steampowered.com/app/2776090 I also wanted to announce that I now have a Patreon. So if you would like to financially support development and play the game early head to: www.patreon.com/Tooley1998 Once again thank you all for your support :)
Hey I just wanted to say that while basically everything looked amazing, i noticed that you could speed up the jump of the golem. It doesn't seem right that such a heavy golem floats down so slow. But again, amazing work!
Hey Amazing work here, just one thing that could use improving, the way the objects he throws at you act like they're made out of rubber, they should continue to roll towards you and hit instead of bouncing off of the ground, like seeing a heavy marble pillar bounce on wood seems silly, maybe adding different material properties would make it work idk, anyway this looks really good!
The game looks great! already on my wishlist. love the graphics, animations, everything! looks like a lot of hard work has gone into this amazing project. hope it releases soon!
I'm an experienced gamer with over 15 years in the video game community, and I see incredible potential in your game! Are you planning to translate your masterpiece into other languages? In the country where I live, thousands of players love fantasy adventure RPG games, but they are middle-aged, so they often don't know foreign languages (even English!).
IDK how far out you are from the release but I think you should add some particles when you melee him so it actually feels like you are doing something to him, rather than just watching a meter go down as you mindlessly hit him also, the melee animation itself just seems floaty but that may be remedied with the aforementioned particle idea and lastly (this might be too big of an idea but it's just a suggestion) maybe on some bigger bosses or enemies you could break off body parts and it changes how they move and fight. that seems like the perfect idea for a voxel game
Yeah I should really add some particles I was just thinking that when I was editing the video. Yeah the melee weapon animations are a bit floaty, particles will help but the animations are not final and I will be improving them in the future :)
Definitely agree with the floaty bit- I'd go as far as to say all the animations and movement feel floaty. Lerp functions or even hard snaps at points would go a long way for the feel- Like with your weapon example; Having the hammer 'stutter' on successful hit, or pause for a frame, would help alot with the feeling/weight of the impact.
Or play with the voxels so you actually, slowly destroy the golem dynamically. I think making its body and phases more dynamic could help a ton. Would mean dynamic animations, as the animations right now are slightly stodgy. But the first sentence isn't fully necessary, sentence is just a touch-up criticism. Awesome game so far@@Tooley1998
Hey its looking really good so far. I do think that you should add some more "weight" to items. They still seem very light. When the Golem throws a stone pillar it shouldn't bounce at all. It should slam into the ground and still hit you. I know this would be a ton of work and the game is still in early development but the environment should be more destructible in the fight. It's part of this game's charm. When the golem slams it should cause bigger cracks and when he throws items, the items themselves should crumble. If the golem throws a pillar at the wall, it should break the wall or start to break it. It would be cool to see the destructive features play more of a role in combat. Maybe you can knock down all the pillars to collapse the roof and deal a ton of damage to the golem? Lots of posiblities! I wish you luck in your development sir. I look forward to what's next.
Oh and how about a health bar to the objects, here me out, Minecraft does that too kinda, but what I'm saying is a health bar for the type of material the object is made out of, stuff like stone should not crumble in the hands of a flying plank of wood, it should crumble for harder material like you said, stone.
thats what metal gear rising revengeance failed to do, so i hope this guy will be able to involve environmental aspects into fights like what you just commented! (for background, during the development phases of MGR:R, because the main mechanic of the game is the ability to cut anything, the developers wanted to add physics as a way of damage against enemies (like falling cranes or containers) but they lacked budget so they cut it)
I really like the way the surfaces of the castle are broken up with the different layers. I will say I feel like the wooden planks should be kept flat though, and leave the stony textures broken up.
Bro, this already looks crazy, but your game made me think how amazing it would be if every monster had a voxel destructibility system. So that each monster could be shot off with limbs, wounded by destroying voxels of their skin, and thereby inflict bleeding. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to implement something like this, but I know for sure that it would simply be a breakthrough sandbox. Imagine. A huge bestiary of creatures. Each has its own weaknesses and way of killing. And everyone is trying to kill you in their own way, also using different methods of destroying voxels of your flesh. It’s like one monster just cuts, another scatters objects and thereby causes crushing damage to your voxels, and still others eat you with their poison, like those scorpions that you already showed. This would be incredible, and I simply guarantee that this would become the main selling feature of the game, because of which it would go viral all over the world. Plus, I would make the gameplay a little faster, now your movements and the movements of the monsters feel to-o-o-o-o-o-o-o slow
That's more or less already done in a rough form in the game Paint the Town Red. But that's basically the entire point of the game, it'd be awesome to have a game like this with that system
If you're looking for damage in the form of knocking off limbs like how he harvests trees, it is possible. But the time requirement for a system like that would be tremendous, because animated meshes are fundamentally unlike static meshes. When he regenerates the voxels on a tree trunk, or a fallen branch.. It's just the voxels. He doesn't have to worry about bone weights for animation. Not to mention, no engine freely supports modifying skeletal meshes at runtime by default. It's technically an entirely possible endeavor, but would be a trade off as many optimizations used in animation couldn't be used with procedurally generated skinned meshes. I could think up a handful of workarounds and hacks to make it work a bit easier. But I'm not really a fan of half made systems, personally. Just sharing my perspective one what you're asking for as a game developer myself.
If he publishes and makes enough money to support the project long-term, however.. I wouldn't say that destructible skinned meshes are entirely unrealistic. But I doubt you'll be seeing them while he's developing on his own funds.
Agreed. I feel like a destructible environment would go a long way too. Not fully, but some better cosmetic damage to reflect the impacts of a big ass, several ton stone golem.
I'm loving how this game is turning out so far! I think the broken up stone on the castle walls looks really good, But the wooden floors look kind of ehh i think it would look a bit better if instead of all over it was more centralized like a floor board is broken or slightly cracked. instead of just mystery lines which don't seem to make sense? It'd be kind of neat if spiders could leave/add cobwebs occasionally to make it feel even more older / haven't been touched in awhile.
I think if the things the boss throw breaks would be really good, also he may need more height when jumping and some particle when getting hit. Good work
Yeah! I was just checking on your channel yesterday, this is awesome! Some feedback: -The slowness of some of the attacks is a bit out of proportion with the damage they cause. -For the hammer, it feels too slow to actually do any damage, but for the size it is and the damage it causes to the environment, I feel like it should do more melee damage, especially to the golem. So, faster swing, maybe higher damage? -The golem's slam speed is actually pretty good, although I do think the particles could be more realistic in terms of spread and velocity. The golem's jump speed is super slow, and although that may just be the lower gravity, it looks super easy to dodge. -It would probably be a lot of work, but physically simulating the golem as well (as a very tough stone material) would be awesome. Imagine detaching limbs or blowing its body to pieces. Heck, maybe melting stuff off of it with a fire spell. If that's something you'd like to do, I think the golem's health should be measured physically as well, based on how much physical damage it takes. If this is out of scope, that's fine, but I really think it would integrate this boss into the world a lot more and make it a very unique fight. -The golem picking up objects is super cool, but it feels rigid and weightless most of the time because of the slow movements and there not being any environmental damage. -Also, from this video, I wasn't able to tell what the dart weapon is. Is it a blowgun? Other ideas I had :P -Tower dungeon. Very tall, and you need to use the environment to scale it, e.g. knocking over a pillar to get across a gap. Evil chandelier boss??? -Per-material damage propagation. Like, maybe cracks appear along the apparent "seams" in the materials. Wood splinters, stone crumbles, etc.
I've been watching your progress for almost 2 years now and it's amazing how much you've improved this game, so many new features and cool things! I hope it just gets better from here!!!
How the boss interacts with the environment is just insane, you already heard about particles, but I'd also like to see some sound design to make things more intense and to help players recognize what is happening. Something like a growl that gets louder when he's jumping up and a GRAAAHh when he lands. A growl when he's lunging something at you etc etc. This game looks extremely promising and I hope to play it some day
If you are looking for a composer or sound designer I would love to team up with you. I've been watching and enjoy how much you have improved the sounds since the start!
ths is honestly really incredible, and i feel like a good way of showing how much damage youre damaging him would be to slowly chip away at his stone, doesn't really have to be dinamically like with world-voxels (i assume that would be waaay harder), just some preset bits of him coming off as you damage him would already be really cool
Everything I'm seeing so far about Lay of the Land is extremely good. The soundscapes and effects are really immersive, and the core physics / building mechanic is amazing. You got some actual gold on your hands with this, treat it well! The combat is looking better and better, too, really reminds me of classic RPG's. I 100% wishlisted. Looking through the comments, you've already been getting some pretty solid feedback. I'd like one that's a little more abstract; make sure the player always has a choice in combat, so they have to adjust their tactics to their own loadout and the situation at hand. For example, the golem's basic melee attack looks very hard to dodge entirely. In this case, it's almost always better to kite it at range to not get hit, but that takes way longer, and you'll end up in a grindy battle where you only deal chip damage. Chip damage itself is great, but it helps when there are clear, temporary oppertunities where the player can deal a lot of damage (either critical hit points, or getting in melee), without a guaranteed damage to yourself. Designing and creating this ebb and flow, a back and forth, makes for an engaging combat encounter. It allows players to recognize moments to strike, having to choose when to attack or evade. It's a minor point of critism, really. I'm definitely hooked on the progress so far. As others have said, this has the potential to be the next great indie creative adventure game. Now, that might be my nostalgia talking, but I can't remember the last time I was this impressed by a random youtube recommendation. Good luck!!
Was gonna say the same. Also, I feel like the golem either needs more moves in its moveset (either from a second phase or just more in general), or its health needs to be reduced drastically, since the fight looks like it would become pretty stale pretty quickly.
I love how the Stone Golem picks up objects in the environment. I was totally surprised by that the first time. I am excited to play this when you release!
Something I highly recommend for the animations is to make them less linear. Organic objects in nature move in a sort of bell curve of motion. They accelerate from a stop, then slow down more gradually as we position them. If you want a really good example of this pick up something off your desk. Also something you can do is to introduce minor variations in end position. For situations like walking these variations are fine to keep, for grabbing something you can introduce some error during the deceleration that then moves to the finals spot. These types of animation techniques are great because they can be implemented algorithmically. The first is as simply as changing you animation speed based on a curve, and the second is a random number generator tied to key frame position. If you need to bake the random movements into the animation, you could just generate a handful for each movement and have it randomly pick one each time. There are more complex techniques for making more 'realistic' or less mechanical looking motion. However these will go a long way. Already wishlisted on steam. Can't want to give this game a try!
For me its such a good view to see all the progress u do with every video u upload. For u it must be 100 times more pleasant to look. Keep the good work it's amazing
I just saw a 2yo video of your crafting system that looked really cool and wow the project has developed since. I was gonna post a suggestion about item pickups, basically that instead of vanishing, there was some animation when you pick something up from the natural terrain, like the item quickly disintegrating or the voxels turning blue and vanishing top to bottom, to make it more engaging, it was the thing i felt missing the most out of the experience, I don't know if that has changed since but hey, there you go, game is looking AMAZING man, great job damn, I aspire to this
this game is so facinating to see get made, for the combat id love to see some more movement options as well as amybe making it a bit more fast paced but thats just personal prefrence, looks amazing forsure.
You could set some voxels of the golem as destructible, so that when hit, a small amount of them around the area of the attack come flying off. Maybe also set the lower layer of the golem a different color, and textured in a destroyed way, so that you can easily visually tell when its been damaged, and where
Estoy siguiendo tu DevLog desde hace poco, cuando descubrí tu trabajo me quedé maravillado. Es por eso que en esta ocasión decidí ser parte de la historia proporcionando "Feedback". Mis espectativas como jugador es llegar al Boss y encontrarme en peligro, que mi adrenalina suba... Por ello te regalo algunas ideas para tu primer BossFight: -Deterioro de los voxels del Golem acorde a su vida. -Mejorar sonido del impacto de los objetos lanzados (quizás también su física). -Agregar ataques de corta duración. -Más destrucción. Muy buen trabajo, el motor de tu juego se ve prometedor, espero jugar la release algún día.
If it picks up a tree, can you make the tree catch fire in it's hand to cause slight passive damage while the tree is on fire? It'd be a unique tidbit to add, especially if the tree becomes a bigger hazard. Perhaps the same could be done with the thrones too.
Thank god I found this again, you might remember me commenting on your earlier videos as Noah Bonecat. This looks so genuinely good. I don't know you, but I'm proud!
At the moment, it feels less like a boss fight and more like a mini boss. I think thats because the golem lacks at weakness to its moveset that you can exploit. One idea might be to get the golem to jump into one of the pillars, causing the rubble from the ceiling above to crash down on it to stun and inflict damage.
Great work! If I could give my humble opinion, I would suggest adding more options to the combat. It looks a bit floaty. Maybe adding a charged attack and a block could go a long way. Maybe even a dark souls roll. Truly impressive what you have been able to accomplish so far
Besides the robot-like, floating animations, and that you can't really see any damage done to you or the enemy, I'd recommend that the outside needs to be much brighter. It's daylight outside, and inside there are candles of equal brightness? God rays would be awesome ofc (but also complex to program), shadows of sun-light may already do the trick, and then add a little bloom.
I am so glad youtube recommended one of your vids awhile ago, this is one of the best voxel games cooking up i've ever seen. Wish you luck with development.
Would be a cool addition if you could use timed spells on the pillars and make the castle or the room implode when you are out in order to kill or do heavy damage to the boss
I have the unearthly urge to be a tester on this game just so I can get my hands on it as soon as possible. It's so beautiful, and so well made. This puts everything Minecraft has done in the last decade to shame.
During his jumps, it would be cool if he destroyed buildings, for example, in this way there would be a challenge to kill the boss while preserving the castle room as much as possible
It looks cool. Maybe you could add some color changes where you hit the boss, or even chip a couple of voxels off just to add some visual feedback to you hitting and damaging it. The jump could be less like it's on the moon too.
The combat itself could be improved 10 folds probably, but I know that you’ll work on it a looot before release. Great start, and the rest looks absolutely stunning. When you shoot the bow, the cursor briefly turns into a hand. Is it because the game things you can pick up the flying arrow ? ^^
Looks amazing. I love game with similar abandoned structures since I'm always curios about them. As in, who build them? What for? How long ago? Some clues here and there about what was the purpose of the structure and how the life in it was conducted goes a long way. The best kind of structures in open world games are not just there to fill it up but to build it, explain it, tell a story. Minecraft does it in an amazing way regarding ancient cities specifically. A weird portal-looking totem in the middle with unknown purpose, statues/altars spread around without a clear purpose and unlike anything else in any other structure, and most importantly, a research laboratory clearly indicating high intelligence, organized work, and purpose. Yet it is empty, barren, not even hostile mobs dare to enter the city. What happened to those who built it? Why did none of them survive? What was their purpose? Igloos have a similar yet simpler story to tell. Someone was clearly trying to cure the zombie disease and they seem to be on the right track or maybe have found the cure already. Who was it? Why did they abandon their outpost? Are they still alive? I really hope you can take some inspiration from those and similar examples of world building and incorporate similar concepts into your game. I think things like this are what elevates good games to great games, because at this point they become something more than just a fun tool to play around with. It has narrative, it personal stories, and a history it tries so desperately to share but it cannot, for no one is left to retell it. I feel like similar narratives fit the aesthetic of your game very well.
Super excited for Lay of the Land! I think you should add some shading beneath the name of the boss in the boss bar, since it has low contrast with the walls sometimes.
the game looks awesome and I cannot wait to play it. I personally would love to see where the magic system goes and how it ends up working. I would love to see Noita style spell customization. or something similar like the Ars Nouvou Mod for minecraft.
Nice to finally see a name! And a very fitting one! Wishlisted it right away. :) Edit after watching: Truly amazing how far the game has come! Also, the boss picking up objects from the environment and throwing at you! :o
Very good progress, but add some more destructibility to blocks by boss and when you hit it with hammer the stone chunks on its body should break piece by piece and we should be able to reach solid skeleton core.
The music makes this game not make me feel alone unlike the other update videos, And lastly maybe make his hit/throw animation less smooth to show how hard he is hitting/throwing
I think the golem's health bar should be directly above it and attached to its movements like in other games. Because having it at the top of the screen was not noticeable at first. Also I think it has way too much health unless it's a super high level but then it's not something you should be attacking with those weapons. Also can you use a sword and shield in this game? A shield would be very good for these kind of bosses perhaps. Maybe you could add spears and throwing javelins for boss fights like this. The long range spear would massively help. Also I feel like the hammer should do more damage then that especially if used a heavy attack.
Looks great, I like how it interacts with its environment btw is your original 4-legged monster still in the game, or did it get replaced by the 2-legged variant?
It would be cool if when you hit the boss it breaks some of the voxels on him to give you feedback, and you'd know how low his health is by how damaged he looks and how many cracks he has.
Hey Mate, What you're working on looks really promising, I'm loving the way this is looking. A lot of the combat however is missing that impact because the golem isn't getting that reaction from your attacks. Usually in animation, you want some sort of reaction from the original action. If there was no health bar on the top of the screen I wouldn't have realized that there's damage being done. The Particle system can help supplement this but perhaps seeing some form of knockback from an attack such as the golem being hit by the character's melee weapon can help. The character's movement feels slow in a way due to the users movement, which thus dulls the intensity of the battle. Maybe giving the players option to dash or dodge from attacks rather than directly looking away and sprinting could make the combat feel much more visceral and exciting? Not too sure however if that's very fitting with your style and genre of game you are going for. Either way your art direction is awesome as well as your overall game design from what I'm seeing. Just curious is the assets mainly developed in Blender, or are you using Maya or some other 3D software package to produce all the assets? Are you Utilizing any procedural such as Blender Geo Nodes or any HDAs created in Houdini?
i wishlisted it faster then the add had played😂 btw can you make the trees get destroyed when the enemy is throwing them I think it would add alot the the "epicness"(dont know if thats a real word) of the fight
I think you should add an explosion spell and increase the damage from the hammer on it, as it will be like breaking off pieces from it well, explosion spells will also cause increased damage, for reasons already justified (MORE EXPLOSIONS) (I used Google translator, sorry for the mistakes)
The sound design of the magic is absolutely splendid! Definitely got a new wishlist game on steam :) keep it up! edit: random thought, what if you had a camera ragdoll to the floor or something similar when you die?
I think im finally gonna learn music so i can makw you and other people cool music! Also wouls be cool if there were other spells, like spells that can be used in certain ammount with a special paper or something until every one of it in your inv ia used or/and the ones with cooldowns, weapon abilities would be cool too! Also i feel like the movement is kind of.. slow. It takes a while to land from a jump. Cool game tho.
Just saw a video of this in my recommended, id love to see MP servers and the like for this (self hosted dedicated servers), tons of work, i know, but being able to play this with a few buddies would be awesome
I would love if units would have a resistance to certain type of damage. For example a stone golem could only be defeated with blunt weapons, and you can only learn about things like this from an NPC or by actually reading a book or somerhing.
