Hello everyone!

My friends and I are a part of Rendered World, a fledgling indie game company. We are creating our first game in Java called Dungeons of Daggerhelm. It is an ARPG similar to Diablo and Realm of the Mad God except with loads of interesting twists of our own. If you have ever played either of these games, you'll have a basic idea of what DoD is all about: 4 unique playable classes (Paladin, Battle-Mage, Sorcerer, Ranger), lootable armors and weapons, dozens of enemies, bosses with unique and challenging abilities, multiple randomized maps with environment themes (snow, mountains, caves, Hell, heaven-like area), a leveling system to keep track of your character progress, and lastly, 4 player cooperative play. More content will be added along the lines of this, such as more classes, more enemies, in-depth environments and more dynamic bosses.

Currently, the game is pre-prototype stage. We currently have several important elements of the game already in place:

-mob animation logic

-player animations with cross-class animation logic

-player sprites for the Ranger, Paladin and Sorcerer

-particle spawners for explosions, collisions, blood and magic

-high definition spawn area sprites (grass, brick, mossy brick, wooden floor, which were recently updated)

Planned elements to be added to the game in the future include:

-enemy AI and sprites

-map portals

-randomized maps

-bosses

-main menu options

These will be a part of an active prototype.

If you want to follow Dungeons of Daggerhelm's progress, you can check our game profile out here on IndieDB. That is where all of the latest news, images, screen shots and videos will appear.

We are always interested in hearing constructive comments from our viewers as to what features the community would like to see in our game. The basic framework of our game is how we want it to be; however, we take all suggestions very seriously and we make sure to have plenty of interaction with the community of gamers interested in our game. Any suggestions for the direction of DoD is greatly appreciated.

Again, we're in very early stages of development and things are highly likely to change in appearance and operation. The community will have a large influence on those changes. We realize that there is not much to go on as far as visible content, but hopefully within the next few months we will be able to introduce interactive media to help you see where we're trying to go with DoD.

Thank you for reading this far and we hope to hear from you soon!

The Rendered World Team

Hello everyone!

We've added new features to Dungeons of Daggerhelm! Take a look below:

- Game launcher with options

- Paladin-class NPC with randomized AI

- Ranger-class NPC with randomized AI

Future updates:

- Player health logic

- Neutral NPC named Holly who sells potions!

- User interface: inventory, Life, Mana

Please visit our IndieDB profile for more!

Hello everyone!

We're back with more updates! Take a look below:

- HUD user interace: inventory, Life and Mana

- Designated portal area

- Portals and teleporting

- Promotional video (YouTube)!

Future updates:

- Player health logic

- Enemies and damage

- Neutral NPC named Holly who will (eventually) sell potions!

Hello again, everyone!

We're busy churning out important updates! Here are some we've been working on:

- Non-random persistent first map area

- Text box for NPC interaction and lore

- Animated blood

- Killable enemies

Future updates:

- Player health logic

- Neutral NPC named Holly who will (eventually) sell potions!

- First boss of the game

- NPC text-based dialogue

- Lootable chests with starter gear for Ranger!

Also! Also! We will be selectively distributing our developed game prototype of Dungeons of Daggerhelm on or before February 25th! Please send us a message to find out how you can join in on private testing!

Hello everyone!

We're back with an important update: the Dungeons of Daggerhelm prototype is HERE!

Here you go! The prototype download for Dungeons of Daggerhelm!

Here's what you need to know to get started:

1. The file is small, so the .jar can just fit right on your desktop after download.

2. Double click the desktop icon, and hit "Play".

3. You're in!

Before you can get started, there are a few things we'd like you to know:

1. Most of what you see in-game is subject to change.

2. If you see any game-breaking bugs, such as crashes or animation bugs, please notify us immediately.

3. Some features of the game have not been added yet: there is no prototype boss (-major sadface-), the spawn map bounds are not set, so do not wander off too far (the stones in the environment should be an indicator; if they disappear, turn around and walk the other way), and Holly the potion vendor has nothing to say right now (her dog ate her script).

That's all! Please enjoy!

Hello everyone!

First off, the prototype game of Dungeons of Daggerhelm went far better than we anticipated. 18 downloads in three days! Wow!

We're excited that the game got some exposure because of this. The only issue is that the prototype returned a lot of bugs and problems that made the game incredibly hard to play. We're going to list them now and perhaps you might agree with some of them:

Enemies shoot too fast!
We know, we know. Unfortunately for the first players who downloaded the game, an issue arose where the enemies had the same fire rate as the player. This issue was a known factor in the game but we did not fully determine whether it would be difficult for players to successfully kill the enemies. What did we do about it? In the code, we nerfed enemy fire rate to around once every 2 seconds, instead of 4 times every second (ish). We also buffed the enemy's range so that they will shoot from farther away, making them more difficult to target. The player's fire rate was also buffed slightly. A give and take of difficulty.

I killed an NPC by accident! -sadface-
This was a bug we didn't exactly catch until a tester noted that "while I was clicking on Holly the potion vendor to talk to her, she died." This was something that was hidden in the code somewhere, and we eventually rooted it out. What did we do about it? Instead of making NPCs... well... not die, we instead increased their health by 1000% to around 1000 life. They take more hits to kill, so don't fool around anymore, people!

I reached a blue ocean-thing and now I'm lost.
This was a known issue. The map did not cut players off from viewing what we call "void tiles" which are non-graphic tiles of a specific color that make up the rest of the map you can't see.... well, aren't supposed to see. What did we do about it? We hand-drew walls around the entire map that the player should be able to access, and determined bounds for where the player could walk. This contains both the player and the enemies so they don't go wandering off in the unrendered wilderness.

I hate waiting for this textbox to end. I want to play the game!
Well, we couldn't outright remove the textbox, but the speed at which the text scrolls was, indeed, a minor problem. We just wanted you players to get the necessary info, y'know? What did we do about it? Fortunately, our programmer included a method that increases the scroll speed of the text, so if you're reading it for the second time, it goes by about 3x as fast now.

This map is monotonous. There's nothing to see!
This "issue" was known the whole time. Yes, the map looks dull with just walls and grass and rocks. What did we do about it? The sprite designer fixed the flower tiles we had before, and made them look like a part of the level. Now the map sports some nice flora everywhere! There's even a grove of flowers near the bottom-right of the map!

All of the changes we've made are in the new prototype file located in the same place you found the first one. just re-download it for the newest update, fixing 99% of these issues.

http://www.indiedb.com/games/dungeons-of-daggerhelm/downloads/dungeons-of-daggerhelm-prototype

Hello everyone!

We're here with a new graphic update on the Paladin animation!

Check it out: