I have been working on the loot system and how players receive items, and I have added a series of items into the game. Currently, there are three tiers of items for each "class." Although there is no class system, players will be able to use certain attacks depending on what they are wearing, so there is a set of items for each attack style. The attack types are divided into: Melee (crush, stab, slash attacks), Ranged (ranged attack), Elemental Magics (fire, air, earth, water magic spells), and Ancient Magics (blood, shadow, holy, and nature spells).

I have planned a perk system for when players level up. Every two levels, they will be able to choose a perk, making their character more specialized in the weapon they are using. Similar to the player housing perk system, perks will unlock other perks. For example, a player choosing a hammer specialization will be able to use more crushing attacks, eventually unlocking some AOE damage attacks. This system will apply to all attack styles, including magic and ranged.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I purchased and am using the RPG Human Characters asset from the Unity store. I'm using the armors included in the pack, and for the different magic sets, I changed the color of the magic sets so they are distinguishable. I downloaded a free Stylized Weapon pack from the Unity store for the weapons and modified them so that the lower tier 1 quiver is the same as the highest but with some parts missing. For the sprites, I spent around 600 tokens in the DALL-E Bing application to create them. Many of them required Photoshop editing to ensure everything fits together. You might notice that the sprites are somewhat different, but overall they look pretty good. It was quite challenging to make everything fit together, and a lot of time was spent modifying the free assets and AI-generated assets in Photoshop so that they look alike and appear to come from the same game, and that the sprites match the actual armor they represent.

I have mentioned this before, but art is not my strong suit. I prefer to code, add mechanics, fix bugs, and handle logic. Art is too tiresome and time-consuming for me, and after spending so much time trying to get the art done, I feel that something is missing. I really miss working with a team and an artist. However, everyone I showed my work to, including my friends, said it looks pretty impressive. Some even thought I commissioned the art to another artist. It’s amazing what can be achieved today as a solo developer in such a "short" time, even though it took me around three days to get everything done. For me, it felt like a long time, but real artists without AI assistance and old game studios would take much longer.

Regarding the armors, I posted all the sets in the screenshots you can see. All the sprites represent the armor players can equip their party members with. Items have different rarities: common items like armor will drop 40% of the time, uncommon items like weapons will drop 20% of the time, rare items like off-hands will drop 15% of the time, and ultra-rare items like jewelry will drop 10% of the time. Tier 1 items will drop from any monster in the world. After defeating a monster, you will have a chance to receive one item depending on the probability drops described. Tier 2 items will be obtainable from quests given by NPC buildings in the world. You will be able to see the kind of rarity item the quest will reward you with, depending on the quest difficulty, and receive one item of the previously stated rarity. Tier 3 items will be obtainable from dungeons and bosses with the same probabilities as monster drop rates.

The sets give only stats in the specific type they belong to. I want players to modify the armor and weapons in the shops or player outposts to add missing stats for each kind of task they want to complete, like PVP, world bosses, or dungeon exploring. You can see in old screenshots some characters dressed in sets that are not in the set screenshots. I was planning to create a specific set for each kind of style instead of making the attack types. So a fire mage would have a specific fire set, stabbing set, etc. My intention was to change the colors of the armors and work around it, but they felt too similar and some colors were unappealing. Also, for my mental sanity, creating the 102 items, all of them with a description, checking that I wrote the correct statistics on each item, and assigning IDs to each one of them was almost driving me crazy. I do not rule out creating more sets in the future, but after the game is released.

Between weapons, armor sets, off-hands, and jewelry, there are a total of 102 different items in the game to be obtained.

In conclusion, I'm quite happy with the results. As I said, I wish I was working with an artist so the sprites were more unique to the game and had more soul. But in the end, everything fits together pretty well. Playing, receiving loot, dressing your party members, and trying different weapon styles feels very good. I feel that this is the first core gameplay loop implemented. Before, it was just about trying different mechanics being implemented. Now, it feels like there is a game.

I have posted about player housing, and I feel that now I need to explain how buildings generated in the real world work. First of all, all the buildings in the world that are not player-created are real-life places. These places are obtained from the MapWorld API, which filters real-life places by categories such as Arts and Entertainment, Food, Nightlife, Outdoors and Recreation, Services, and Shops. Currently, I'm using Arts and Entertainment for churches, Food for taverns, and Shops for potion and armor/weapon shops. As I explained before, the shops get a persistent ID, and based on that, they will generate a different shop so all players can see the same type of shop at the same place.

If you are within the interaction area of a building, you can click on it and access its functions.

• CHURCHES:

Churches will have the ability to heal and resurrect party members. They will also provide specific types of missions related to faith. I have some ideas written down for the missions, but I haven't worked on them yet. I will make a post with detailed mission information later. Additionally, there is a button for outpost permits. I intended certain buildings to be available in your outpost only if you have a reputation and pay a fee to a church, but I'm reconsidering this as there are not many church spawns in the places I have tested.

• TAVERNS:

Taverns are places to rest. For a higher fee than a church, you can rest, revive, and heal your party members. Initially, only churches could revive party members while taverns could only heal non-dead party members. However, I found that churches are much harder to find than taverns, and I don't want to restrict players too much. So now, churches are cheaper to use than taverns, which are more common. Although I still find it appealing to require players to be well-prepared before leaving their outpost or needing to find a church to revive dead players, I'm still considering what to do.

You can also recruit new party members from the tavern. Taverns will have a limited number of party members to recruit per day. The recruits will be randomly generated based on the day, month, year, and tavern name, so all players will see the same randomly generated party members to recruit. My idea is that players go on daily "party member hunts." For example, if your friend needs a fire mage and you find a great fire mage in a tavern, you can tell your friend, and you can go together to that place so your friend can recruit the party member you found. Lastly, you can accept certain types of missions inside a tavern that are only available in taverns.

• SHOPS:

Shops are where you buy items. Following the same logic as tavern recruitment, you will have a limited number of items to buy per day, consistent for all players. There are two types of shops: armor/weapons and potion shops. In the armor/weapon shop, you will be able to buy armor and weapons. You can see in the screenshots there is a reinforcement button in the armor shop. I'm planning an upgrade system for the armor using processed minerals from your player outpost. I will update more on that in another post. In the potion shop, you can buy boosting items, potions, food, and all kinds of items that help you in battle. You can also create weapon enchants for your weapons. Similar to the armor reinforcement system, I will post about that another day. Lastly, I am planning a type of mission in the shops that will yield resources. This way, players in big cities where natural resources do not spawn will have the option to gather resources by doing trade quests.

You can build all these kinds of buildings in your player outpost and even improve them. There will also be special kinds of buildings with other purposes. While these are not buildings generated in the world from real-life places, all players will be able to access them. Improve your outpost so it becomes a recognizable point of interest similar to a real-life place!

Over the past few days, I have been working on the player outpost gameplay mechanic. Players can claim a point in the world, visible and usable by all other players, who may collaborate or disrupt your outpost. This outpost will have an influence area around it that increases as you level up your outpost, affecting buildings and the surrounding world in various ways. Upgrading your outpost will require the use of gathered and processed resources. Low-level outposts will require raw materials, while high-level outposts will require processed materials. Inside your outpost, you can build different buildings that will be very helpful for your adventure. The higher the level of your outpost, the more buildings you will be able to construct.

At each level, you will be able to choose a perk. Each perk will unlock different bonuses and constructions for your outpost. Further perks will require previous perks, so you will need to choose carefully to get your desired perk. As you can see in the image above, I have created a chart with all the available perks and what other perks they unlock.

As you level up your outpost, its appearance will change. In the progression perk image in the background, you can see the UI art displayed for each outpost level, both for the interior and exterior images. Its outside appearance will also change, as shown in the screenshots below, progressing from a tent to a glorious castle.

Each perk has a different value: Military value, Trading value, and Resources value. Every time you choose a perk, you increase the value assigned to that perk. These values are transformed into three different passive buffs. You can focus your outpost fully on military to get all three military passive bonuses, or you can create a defended market with trading value, assigning one point to military value to get the first two market value passive bonuses and the first military passive bonus.

Higher-level outpost perks will affect buildings and the world around you. Additionally, the higher your outpost level, the larger the influence zone, which will prevent other players from building around your outpost. Be aware that some players may not like how your outpost affects the world and may siege your buildings. It’s not finished yet, but here is a brief summary of what I wrote in my design document: I want to achieve a mechanic similar to Pokémon Go, where you can leave your party defending your outpost. Other players will be able to fight your party in a PvE battle. If they defeat your party, they can choose to damage a building, starting a timer during which your outpost cannot be sieged again. If the timer expires without repairs, they can attack other buildings. Losing all your buildings will reduce the outpost level, and ultimately, your outpost can be destroyed.

I am really happy with the result and how everything feels when I do a demo test build on my phone. I want players to create outposts according to their needs and world location. I am really looking forward to releasing a beta to get feedback and rebalance things so there are many meta outposts and not just a few dominant ones. Also, depending on your outpost values and level, your outpost will have a different name. I wrote many, and I hope you find them all!

Now I want to start finishing the fighting game logic. There is a basic version now, but I intend to improve it a little with camera changes, particle effects, and sound effects during battle.

Here's another new enemy for EternalWalk: a canine with a scorpion tail. It's fluffy but venomous and prefers to hunt at night, so you'll spot it more often then. Although not very strong, this creature likes to roam in packs, so beware! I'm focusing on the code and game mechanics, so art takes up a lot of time from what I really enjoy doing. However, AI is helping me a lot with the designs. I'm following the same pipeline for the art assets: the design is created by AI, then I model and animate it in Blender. Please visit my TwitterX post to watch the cool animated GIF of this monster in-game.

I present to you a new enemy for EternalWalk: the baby dragon! This cute creature roams the world, and despite its adorable appearance and young age, its flames are quite dangerous! I designed this monster using AI. As you can see, the first image is the initial prompt result from the AI. The gifs show the creature after I modeled and animated it in Blender and then imported it into Unity. The shader I'm using is the Simple Toon Shader from the Unity Asset Store. I'm happy with the result, and the creature looks goofy and fun. I hope you have as much fun fighting these as I had creating them. Watch the animated GIFs I uploaded to TwitterX.

Step into the captivating realm of "Eternal Walk" through our recently unveiled video trailer. Experience the transformation of everyday locations into magical landscapes, showcasing mythical creatures and offering a glimpse into an unfolding epic journey. Anticipate the official launch where you'll delve into exploration, level up your skills, and engage in collaborative adventures with other players in this uniquely immersive gaming experience.