Hello everyone!
It has been 4 weeks since the end of our awesome Kickstarter campaign and we are so happy today to share the first Dev Blog Insight with you ! So without further ado: Let’s get into it!
How to create a Foundation for awesome Content
When we started the Kickstarter, we had a playable single-player Alpha with most of the basic core functionalities already in place. Of course, some functionalities were not implemented yet (for example the graphical user interface) or just roughly implemented.
But now, that we have received such amazing support from you – our community – we can develop DFD to its fullest potential! That’s why we are designing DFD to be something that can be built upon and extended with a TON of awesome content, even after release! So we want to make extra sure, that the foundation of everything and the core mechanics are perfect.
That means that we are redesigning and rewriting some of our old code, to make sure that DFDs foundation meets our high standards and requirements. Be assured, we are working hard to finish this up as fast as possible, but please be patient if we might need some extra time in the beginning. Having said that, we are sooo excited to share now with you some insight into our Multiplayer progress, as well as the miniature controls!
Multiplayer
One of the most fun parts about playing tabletop is the ability to play together with our friends. So it is only natural that this was one of the first things we wanted to tackle!
Having said that, there are many different approaches to multiplayer, that we all had to consider when designing DFD. Apart from decisions on software, servers, and tools to use, there are also conceptual questions, like do we support only Peer-to-Peer or maybe add a dedicated server architecture?
We are still debating some of those points and of course, we are also eagerly awaiting your feedback during the Beta (planned for this fall, so you still have to be patient ;)).
Luckily, we have are also very proud to announce that we are receiving some support from the already experienced, also german developer team @ Alpha Blend Interactive. They are the creators of ChilloutVR, a social VR & Desktop solution with a ton of amazing features. These guys are awesome, so feel free to check out their game here!
Together with them we have already made great progress since the Kickstarter and are happy to share it here with you.
So how does one “make” a Multiplayer?
Just like game development itself, it’s not a simple task. The trick is to start with small steps and build up from there. So we think that starting and experimenting with a simple prototype is the best way to go.
This prototype can be as simple as the following game scene:
Based on this first Prototype you can test different variations and implement more features until you get the complete character movements implemented:
From there it was a lot of improving, fixing, and optimizing to get the feeling just right. After that was completed we went to stage 3: Trying out our multiplayer inside an actual game environment:
As you can see we already had tons of fun goofing around inside DFD with the Multiplayer basics in place. Of course, we are still tweaking stuff here and there before we can say that we are completely satisfied but it’s definitely a good foundation for even more fun interactions in the future.
Miniature Control
One of the most unique features in DFD is the ability to swap into your miniature, but how exactly does this work?
One general topic was the overall scaling of the miniatures: How tall is a miniature in real life? How tall does it need to be inside DFD? We tried different sizes back then and found gameplay the most enjoyable with the current 1:20 ratio.
As for the actual controls, the swap is triggered by pressing a button. This feature was already implemented for our game (as you could saw in the Kickstarter Alpha Gameplay). But now, after we exchanged with you – the community- a lot of you asked about the ability to swap not only into one miniature but also for the GM to be able to swap into multiple, different miniatures. Therefore we put some thought into this and we came up with a cool solution, that we implemented right away. So that you can now not only control one mini but swap in between multiple of them.
Phew, if you are still with us after this wall of text 😉
We are happy if you enjoyed reading our DEV blog. And thank you all again for making this possible, thanks to YOU we are able to create DFD. Creating such an awesome game would simply not be possible without you! Your support is what makes DFD better every day.
So as there is not much space left for us to finish this blog post, we will wrap it up for now:
Stay tuned for the DEV blog next month, so that we can share all the other awesome features with you, that we are currently silently working on in the background.
And as always
We are looking forward to seeing you inside DFD soon!
~Tom and Khang
P.S. If you haven’t already, feel free to fill out your Backerkit reward survey to claim your Discord role! If you are unable to find your reward survey & want to request a new reward e-mail or if you want to preorder DFD you can do so here: https://dfd.backerkit.com/