It’s been a while since the last update, and as the team has been hard at work completely revamping the gameplay, we wanted to offer an update on our progress.

Because of this, we’re introducing our monthly developer blog, which will serve as a recurring update, providing insights into our team’s advancements across various fronts, including Narrative, Art, Design, and Development.

This blog will be a bit on the longer side, so we can cover as much as possible to get everyone up to speed. Here’s a brief overview of what we’ll be covering:

Narrative

• Creation of various questing systems and NPCs. (Faction leaders, anyone?)
• Custom-made 3D assets to complement the environment.

Art

• Revamp of key UI for seamless navigation and core mechanics.
• New landmarks and Venari animations.

Design

• New core gameplay mechanics.
• Tactical combat system.
• Removal of the existing energy system.

Dev

• Complete rehaul of the underlying technology.
• Custom game engine to build the world.

Let’s dive straight into it.

Narrative: Worldbuilding

By Mr. Stidz

During the past few months, we’ve been hard at work ensuring that players can feel immersed while interacting with the narrative elements in Caerras as we piece together character sheets for faction leaders, antagonists, and other supporting NPCs, among other things.

Narratively, we’re laying down the foundation for the journeys players will be taking. We’ve got the initial drafts for the main questlines, and they’re shaping up quite nicely. We’ve also been creating various lore articles for everyone to delve deeper into Caerras’ history.

Alongside the various characters and storytelling, we’ve also been putting together custom-made 3D assets to add additional depth to the environment and worldbuilding. These assets tie into our new quest system, where we’ll ensure players have some engaging challenges awaiting them in Caerras. We’ve also established rules for rewriting new Venari and Location descriptions, which allows us to be more consistent and work toward immersive worldbuilding.

Not only that, but we’re also revisiting various locations and expanding on the world of Caerras. With the goal of providing players with a unique experience as they explore, we cannot wait to see what you guys think about the story, characters, and more.

Art: User Interface

By ArthurRGB [UI], and Lenopix [general art updates]

For the user interface (UI), we’ve been fully reworking it to make it as simple as possible for onboarding purposes. Every screen has been completely revamped for the new gameplay, including the navigation within the game menus, minimizing the number of steps a user has to take before they tame their first Venari.

As our initial community update from the UI side, I deemed it fit to have a brief timeline of the past UI that we worked on and refined together with feedback from the community, compared to the new direction for the game.

We decided that the best way to improve the game was to revamp the navigation of the pages and features. As a result, we refined the UI aesthetic to achieve a clean visual and keep players immersed while playing. The inventory icon at the bottom-right contains the most essential actions based on the new gameplay, and on the sidebar, we have the other UI tabs.

The earlier profile UI concept is on the left, and the new gameplay inventory UI screen and general UI components (map and buttons) are on the right.

The earlier UI iteration of the minigame is on the left, and the new gameplay UI is on the right.

Apart from the UI improvements, we also created various other elements to complement the world, such as:

• New landmarks adding depth to the environment. (Did someone say the Glowing Forest?)

Glowing Forest’ giant tree landmark concept art.

• The main hub of Tecta Horizons for players to start their journeys.

Tecta Horizons main hub structure.

• The complete reimagination of player characters.

Female player character running concept and player character posing with Jin’Hu.

Male and female player character outfits and models.

• Various NPCs for encounters in Caerras.
• Seven animations per Venari.
• And much more!

We have many more UI updates to show, and we have refined a lot of the overall gaming experience as we experiment with different approaches that we hope you’ll enjoy. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on these latest updates in order to create a better experience for players exploring Caerras.

Design: Shaping the Gameplay

By Ardoyn

Our primary goal during the development of the new gameplay was to foster meaningful interaction between players and Venari. This led us to a comprehensive overhaul of the Alpha and Beta seasons, resulting in the expansive world becoming the foundation of core gameplay mechanics that influence each other.

Furthermore, we sought to introduce another gameplay layer by allowing players to equip themselves and their Venari with essential items and abilities prior to exploring. The hub is crucial in the preparation phase, facilitating resource trading and strategic Venari management decisions, influencing a player’s experience within Caerras.

For the exploratory portion, our aim was to empower players with various items, incentivizing them to pursue diverse Venari, quests, and NPC encounters, among other things. Players will discover consumable items designed to aid their journey that serve as a limited resource per expedition.

Combat within the game has been designed as a tactical battler to create room for players to showcase their skills. Players can select a roster of three Venari, each with unique abilities, fulfilling a specialized role in combat. With a range of Venari abilities at hand, players can create distinct team compositions with interesting mechanics to explore.

After some discussions with the design team, we chose to transition away from the existing energy system. Our vision extends beyond the conventional mechanics, as seen in genres like gacha games, limiting players’ playtime by time-based energy regeneration. In line with this change, we are moving towards a resource-based limitation where resources acquired during the exploration phase will be capped. In future iterations, we will be introducing a crafting system that will enhance the exploration gameplay, ensuring that players have a clear aim to obtain select resources on every expedition.

Dev: Structural Improvements

By Architect

The past month has been pivotal for us as we began a new development cycle, where we’ll be regularly releasing updates and features. This cycle, our focus was to make it easier to transition from a traditional web application to an actual game. The new gameplay was initially built using our legacy development systems that worked well for smaller-scale projects. However, this approach met challenges, notably when making sure that everything runs smoothly, users have good connections with the server, and the display of graphics.

We completely overhauled the underlying technology to navigate these challenges, optimizing player interaction and interface. Transitioning from our previous systems, we built our proprietary custom game engine designed to support our grander vision of a feature-rich grid-based multiplayer game. To be more specific, we’ve now fully migrated from React Three Fiber, which helps combine React (a popular web development library) with three.js (a library for creating 3D graphics on the browser), to our own custom ECS-based game engine with a vanilla three.js renderer. This game engine uses the architecture called Entity Component System (ECS), which is a way to structure code for managing game objects and their behaviors in a game engine.

With our revamped infrastructure, we’ve streamlined our development process and paved the way to create game systems that can support a wide range of game features. Now, working on smooth, instant gameplay is where our priorities lie. On top of that, we’ve finished updating almost all of our previous game elements, like environments, Venari, and particles. Our new systems allow us to create a more lively and dynamic game world.

This not only elevates the visual aesthetics of the world, but it also allows us to create a more realistic movement and collision system. Imagine Venari, avatars, and the environment interacting with lifelike precision in a way that feels natural, contributing to our immersive world.

And finally, we’ve implemented a series of additions that allow players to interact with each other (friends tab and chat), a compass and minimap, items, various NPCs, the central hub area, and much more.

These new features and improvements ultimately allow us to ensure seamless gameplay where players can explore the world of Caerras, tame and battle Venari, and return to the hub to repeat that flow.

Concluding this developer blog, we want to thank everyone in the community who has been supporting and playing LoV to this day. Before continuing, it's essential to note that while we're making significant progress, the new gameplay isn't ready to go live just yet. We’re thrilled about the progress we’ve made and can’t wait to share some of the new core features we’ve been working on in our upcoming developer blogs and playtests during the next Vocari hangout. So, stay tuned, and until next time!

Stay up-to-date with all the latest happenings in Caerras by exploring our comprehensive Notion introduction, filled with community tutorials and resources.

Additionally, make sure to stay connected with us on our social media channels to keep up with the latest updates.