I'm actively postponing writing the series that goes in depth on the vial items and then the game so figured I'd take the time to write an update on what's been going on lately from my perspective.
Things we're working on with the website:
We're renovating the inventory section to remove the outdated creature section and improve them with new graphics that'll be quite interactive based on your inventory.
For instance, this is what it looks like right now:
We'll be switching it in a way where the creatures are listed nicely tied together. While the alpha is ongoing, both closed and open, all creatures will show the images, names, serial ID # and type logo, but as we move onto the beta, they'll mostly be grayed out to the point where you'll only see the serial ID #. This is because it'll be interactive based on your experience, if you've never encountered a creature you don't "know" about it thus it won't give you any info in your inventory, thus it'll also be personalized for each account.
Excuse my MSPaint editing skills, but to give you an idea of what it'll look like, here's Wrackdoom listed down:
So a few things to note here.
The number 8 stands for its serial number, this will be visible at all times for the #8 on the list, even if you haven't encountered a Wrackdoom in PvP yet (since this creature won't be capturable, only evolve from Wrackoo which will be obtainable from Alpha Vials).
The image of the creature will remain hidden in beta until you encounter one or your own Wrackoo evolves into Wrackdoom.
The name will also remain hidden until encountered.
The borders will reflect on the highest rarity you own of that creature, in this case Wrackdoom has an average Legendary rarity thus the orange colored borders.
The type icon will also be hidden until you have more info on the creature in that spot.
Next up, to the right, will be the card you have encaptured the creature in, we'll be enabling both a "animated" version of this, and a flat png version. There's different graphics for the cards but since I already showed a sneak peek on the water type alpha card, I included it here.
Upon clicking on a creature border on the list, it'll show the alpha designed card to the right if you own that creature. There'll be some more info for each creature aside from what fits in the card, such as move points and current HP based on total HP and you'll be able to scroll through all of the same creatures you may have in your inventory with the highest rarity always being first. The creature will of course also be visible inside the frame and showcase if it is a radiant version or if at max stats it'll have the holo-hue attached to its skin.
The buttons that are currently gray will display the exact stats the creature has and be on top of colored buttons that are on the cards to indicate the rarity range of the stat for the creature, the heart icon is HP, the lower left "sword" icon is Attack, the "shield" icon in the middle is Defense and the "movement" icon on the lower right is Agility. Based on all rarities of the 4 stats you'll get your average rarity which will be displayed as a colored button on the upper right along with a number that represents the creatures current level.
So just to make it clear, the Wrackdoom's listed above will all be unique creatures ranked by their serial number, the grass-type card art will also not be blue, I'm just using this as an example to showcase what the updated inventory will look like and to give some newcomers an idea of how things will work.
The inventory update will be a nice have as we move onto opening of vials. We will also be adding an item inventory section so you can take a quick look at which items you have, how many of them and of which rarity. Upon opening the creatures and items should go to your inventory and reflect the correct amounts, rarities, etc. The item inventory section will be a bit more compact than the creature section as we won't need to display them in card-form.
Updates on the game
As we're inching closer to our closed alpha, we recently added buffs and debuffs section to the game. This will be a nice "must have" feature so players don't always have to read the combat log to keep track of things and to not forget what buffs/debuffs may still be active. This section will exist on both friendly and enemy creatures and will showcase unique icons with a turn countdown timer, upon mouse-over they will also give you details on what the buff/debuff does.
We've been quite reluctant to show any sneak peeks of the game in its current form as there's still a lot to be done in terms of 3d creation with only creatures currently 3d'd and not healers + environment, so there won't be any screenshots or examples in this case as above with the inventory. We hope you understand that we wouldn't wanna share something in this case too soon as it may tarnish first impressions of the game, we are hoping that during closed alpha we can finish up at least a couple healers and our own environment rather than having to rely on temporary unity assets for testing before we show some sneak peeks.
Either way, in the game there'll often be different buffs and debuffs, most buffs will come from healer abilities, as we've mentioned some of them in the past - "Sacred Shield" from the Light healer, "Thorn Shield" from the Nature healer and "Healing Rain" from the Ocean healer. There may even be buffs coming from foods and elixirs, restricted to PvE that'll have their own icon on the Buff bar. So to give you an example:
If a Light Healer does "Sacred Shield" on a friendly creature, the buff icon for Sacred Shield will be placed on the creature, this icon does however not have a set amount of turns as the ability works like this: "Places a shield on a friendly creature that will absorb 150 damage and heal the creature if the shield remains active at the end of the turn for 50 health". Meaning if the enemy creature isn't able to do more than 150 dmg that one turn, the buff icon of sacred shield will continue to show on the friendly creature and it'll heal it for 50 HP at turn end.
For the Ocean healer however, if they use "Healing Rain" which has the description: "Heal a friendly creature for 50 HP per turn for 3-5 turns, the heal happens at the start of the turn before creatures make their moves and while active it will also heal any other creature that may replace current friendly creature." So this one is quite unique as you can imagine, you can switch creature and it will continue to heal the other creature at the start of the turn but for how many turns it will remain active will be randomly picked when the heal is cast, so if it ends up healing for 5 turns, the buff icon will show a "5 t" underneath.
As for debuffs, an example we could use is the normal-type move called "Blind", this has an 80% chance to affect enemy creatures and upon hit it'll reduce their hit chance by 30% for 1-3 turns. Thus we'll have another unique icon that represents blind and show amount of turns the creature will remain affected by it in the Debuff section.
Update on 3d
Lastly, we unfortunately had to switch 3d artist and have been on the lookout this time for a team that can complete the creatures, healers and environment for the game. We are currently sampling 2 different teams to see the outcome and to pick which one we'll go with, needless to say this has been the most expensive part of our game and it will most likely overshadow all other costs combined for a short period of time moving forward.
We are awaiting results and will be picking one of the teams currently in sampling to finish 3d creation and we hope that we'll get the project some continuous funding for this case so we can have all our 3d needs met before the beta launch of the game.
For alpha, we will be working with temporary 3d models for healers and even some creatures, their 2d images will be shown next to their health and stats bar to avoid confusion, we will most likely pick Miu to be the "stand-in" 3d model for the missing ones so we can move ahead and work on balancing creatures and healers for the open alpha. There we will then do more of a "stress-test" to see if we need to upgrade our servers and if there's bugs that our closed alpha testers weren't able to find. We have some plans for achievements for closed and open alpha testers in a similar fashion as our other achievements so we hope as many as possible will be able to test the open alpha once we're there.
Anyway, that's it for now, thought a small "unofficial" update was due as we'll reserve the @holozing posts for more concrete info on things we are certain about may not change. We have a couple posts for the account in the making, one will be to officially announce the already released Holozing "cakeday" achievement for users that have registered over a year ago along with a couple new creature reveals. The next post will go in depth on pull-rates and rarity odds for the alpha vials as we move closer to the opening becoming available.
Exciting times! Thanks for reading and supporting the project!