This looks really fun! I really love the artstyle
Thank you! Here’s update 3 on the grand stadium 
And a sketch for a possible loading screen:
(needs more work)
Making of the grand stadium level!
Also opened a discord for the game, feel free to pop in and idle or chat
Final on the Grand Stadium:
Also -
1 - Dat feel when you design a combat system that generates unplanned combos, like doing the right input for a twirl plus the right attack direction yields a faster attack and so a stronger hit! This actually works. And I never intended it to.
2 - Have a listen to one of the AMAZING tracks made for the game by my good friend Marius Schlichting Seriously. Listen. It’s amazing. This especially makes the game “real” for me. So good. Also enjoy the semi-dancing twirl gif to go with the music
https://soundcloud.com/…/whe-who-are-about-to-die-battle-tr…
PLEASE give some props to Marius. That track is so spot on with my vision for the combat music, I can barely believe it.
I redid the UI entirely. Here is the new career menu UI!
Feedback very welcome
Very nice. Love the look and feel of your game thus far.
Thank you ! 
Made a little training area for my game
Sparring arena and all!
Now to add functionality. The visuals are still rough but will be polished later.
The idea of this place is to provide consequence-free sparring whenever you want, and also act as a tutorial.
I need to still figure out how to do the tutorials. I’d like to involve the fighting dummies, like maybe have each one represent a “feature” of the combat or related tip.
Designing a tutorial that isn’t completely ■■■■■■, immersion breaking, and that not everyone will skip will be hard. I know I’m a tutorial skipper, for example. I make it a point to try to figure out the game without a tut, so I want to encourage that.
At the very least I will never force the player to do the tutorial at any time; I’ll just let them play the game immediately and have the tutorial level be available at any time.
Any ideas? What has been the best tutorial in a game in your experience, and why?
Basic dialog boxes with tips as the tutorial Super non-invasive and totally optional.
I also made the dummies targetable and hittable!
We who are about to Die has officially gone out of alpha and into beta. (aka alpha 1.0 or beta 0.0) This makes the exhausted game-dev happy. I split development into 4 major cycles/updates, 2 for alpha. 2 for beta. Now 2 are totally done and already parts of update 3! I would say the game is about 65% done.
Now comes a big playtesting round. I need dedicated playtesters who want to try a very unfinished game, can elaborate why they like or dislike parts of the game. Are willing to write about the experience and report bugs or try to break the game. Roguelike players, melee combat game players, game designers or developers or modders are encouraged but not a must. Hang out in the discord for more info in the following week or 2 weeks. I’m prepping the playtest build at the moment.
www.discord.gg/eCdUxht
Feel free to share this info if you wanna help out even more
The overall quality of the game is pretty hi, & pretty impressive for a “Captain America”(One man army). I should know as I am also Captain America. One major criticism I have, however, is the animations, which is not matching the quality to the rest of your work.
The motion is okay, but if you understand combat, & I have experience with it, having done unarm & rifle combat both in the military as well as Karate/Taekwondo, that it is not just about the motion, but the timing. If you can plot a graph of say a fist motion of a martial artist. the graph will not be smooth like a sine or delay curve. As the punching hand is pulled back, there will be a momentary pause.& as he swings his arm forward, the speed will be fairly constant, before a ‘jerk’ a fast acceleration of arm & body twist in the final 1/3.
You can test it yourself, Get in standing position, punch forward alternative between hand. Try swing as fast as possible from the moment you start the forward thrust motion. You will discover, no matter how fast you swing, something feels off, & the impact isn’t as high as expected.
Then try doing the same, but this time, at the final 1/3 of the way, give a huge grunt (breath out hard), & with all your might hit as fast as you can. You know you are doing it right if there is very sharp motion in your wrist, elbow, shoulder, & wist. That the ‘jerk’. The same principle for punching applies to weapons as well.
I provide video as a guide.
Thank you for the input! I really appreciate it Animation is definitely my weakest skill. I hope some day I can afford someone to go over all the important animations.
Working on item pick up & dropping! Inspired by one of my fav games, Titan Quest
You don’t think I’d make a gladiator game without the audience launching random weapons and items into the arena sometimes, right? (Especially now that item picking up & dropping is in the game)
So I wrote a little “launcher” script!
Making great progress the last few days
Now that you can pick up and drop any weapon/shield in the game, SHOWER ME WITH GEAR YASSS
Deathscreen animation with score, rank and stats! Let me know your rank ideas (stuff like larvae, sewer rat, pit slave, … , lord of the arena, grand champion, demigod)
Content sprint part 1 & 2!
Did 4 armor sets total, they are actually all textured already and 1 already working in-game, but I’ll show the process step by step in parts This is the second model I made. Tomorrow I’ll post the other 2 models and the basic colour block in.
Content sprint part 4! Oh hey, it’s 2 of the 4 armors textured. Pretty happy with these considering how much corner-cutting stuff I did to save tons of time
I modelled and UV wrapped, textured (incl normal map) AND skinned them all in 3 days total. The skinning (for those who know and hate that) especially is very specific to my game so that gets even more technical and time consuming. So 3 days is pretty good imo.
Content sprint 5! More armors! Textured
And look, some complimentary new weapons. Made wooden and copper variations too.
I named the sword “type” Daka’s and Kromo’s. Can you guess which design is which name? I’m trying to go with a gut feeling kinda name that “fits”
Leaving for the ardennes tomorrow so no posts for a while.
There’s so much I haven’t shown of the development of my game… Need to get back onto showing stuff off Hopefully with your interest & support.
Here’s the fully customisable/modular random unit generator (easy to harder units in this case)
I recently also added randomisation of the humans themselves - no more clones after so long! There are 11 different character skins now with 7 beard types.
The tougher and more experienced the enemy, the more chance they have a beard. Of course.
Let me know what you think!
Hey @jordylakiere!
So much stuff going on since the last time I checked! Big props and GG to you! Much hard work, it clearly shows.
It’s inspirational!
I think your loading screen idea is pretty good. And I really liked the mockup
Seeing your new level makes me wonder if you wouldn’t need more “differences” between your level ambiances.
Pretty much like biomes, like a snowy arena, oasis arena, ruined arena etc. If it’s too much work in terms of producing I think you can generate the same kind of feeling by using just several hero props (props that stand out as unique) in your different arenas.
I’m saying this because I felt like the new level was just “an arena” and not “the grand stadium”, and I did not see what was different from the other things we’ve seen.
As a player, you should be able to tell in what arena you are, at any moment in the game. Even when your camera is not nearby the boundaries of the arena.
This means the elements composing the level design (inside the arena) should belong to their biome and be identifiable as such. The most simple example of this is using different outlining color for pillar edges.
I really loved the emergent gameplay you mentioned about your combo system. Players will love to have a sense of discovery. And it’s always fun as a developer to be like “watafuk, my program created something”.
It’s really good that you have a tutorial! But I’ve seen a huge wall of text! I think you should consider breaking this down to several smaller text indication.
The UI looks pretty good to me with a high respect to your game’s theme. Nice work!
Being able to customize its hero is formidable! I hope there is color swapping as well.
Picking up any weapon and being thrown weapons down from the bleachers is a formidable idea.
That’s pretty much it for my feedback.
I hope you’re doing well, keep it up! Hard work pays off.
GG, GL and HF
I fully agree the grand stadium looks pretty similar to the previous tier with the sandy stuff. It uses the same assets.
I hope closer to launch I can differentiate more. The other arena tiers are very different though and I’m confident I can make some arenas that looks super different
The “real” tutorial (with animated images) is next on the list. The wall of text stuff was a placeholder, fortunately. hehe
Thank you so much for the input! Being able to pick colours is something I didn’t consider yet, it would be nice, I’ll have to see if I can fit it in somewhere.
