Dungeon Crusade - Book I: Genesis of Evil

More monsters, close to final hero card, special ability and more!
over 7 years ago – Sun, Nov 06, 2016 at 11:17:33 PM

A good evening to all crusaders out there! :) Rodger here, and I hope as always everyone is doing great this evening, or day depending on your location in Avalon, err, I mean the real world. Man, I gotta get out of the game zone sometimes....;)

I sometimes think, "This update is not going to be this big." And it turns out to be a pretty great lengthy update. So let's get on with it and see what we have this weekend!

Let's get our legend up for the warfare icons on the monster cards so we know what is what. And yes, new monsters! :)

NEW MONSTER CARDS:

So as you guys know, there are 3 division of monsters in Dungeon Crusade. Minions, champions and guardians. We will be looking at champion monsters this week, and do remember, there are 2 different versions of the champion monsters. Normal versions and elite versions. 

Normal champion monsters have the origin stories I wrote for them, while the elite champion monsters have some nasty special abilities. So when you see one or the other, remember there is another version of that monster.

Let's start with the Orc Berserker. A level 2 champion monster, and both versions for you to take a look at.

First the normal version....

 And now the elite version....

 Here are a few more for your viewing pleasure.....

 So for you guys that were here last week remember we have been discussing the warfare icons on the monster cards. An awesome artist named Tom Feldmann has been creating these icons for us. 

If you notice, he has added that white outline to the icons. They are really defined now. I would like to hear your guys 2 cents on it. Do you like it with or without the white outline?

Well, here is my 2 cents, and I'm going to be 100% avow about it. I like the ones without the white outlines. I mean I greatly thanked Tom for doing these, and they do look very nice. It has nothing to do with that at all. I think without the white outline it looks simply more attractive to me.

And closing out this section I must give Jesse Hansen, Joseph Arnold and Freddy Lopez from Cornerstone Creative Studios  a huge THANK YOU and an outstanding job award for their talent, creativity and imagination on the monster designs. They just look epicly awesome! :) 

I know they have a bunch of new monsters, creatures and heroes on the way. 

A CLOSE TO FINAL HERO CARD DESIGN:

The incredible artist Shaun Ellis and myself have been really hammering out the hero card design, and a few days ago Shaun sent me a very close draft of the final hero card design.  

I believe he did an outstanding job on capturing a great retro vibe for this, as that is what I'm truly striving for to give fellow gamer's with Dungeon Crusade. Here is a promo poster I put together for it, along with the hero card itself....

 I think Shaun just knocked the ball outta the park with this design! There are just a few very slight things wanted him to change on the card. 

At the very bottom by the essence track, notice the purple color around it. I asked if we could change that to a color that isn't associated with any of the hero colors. I suggested a stone color, like on the shield directly above.

So there are a few tweaks in order, but I thought you guys would like to see Shaun's work! :)

And as always, Shaun has his weekly stream show on Twitch Friday's at 4P.M. EST. You can sit in on the session, chat and watch him create Dungeon Crusade loot right before your eyes! Here is the link for you >>> https://www.twitch.tv/shmaba

THE HEROES SPECIAL ABILITY CARDS AND ICONS:

So Tom is also creating the icons for all the heroes special ability cards. I made a little behind the scenes video for you guys. I personally love seeing how things come together, so I thought I'd share with you the sketches Tom supplied me with. 

I think it will be pretty cool to see these evolve over time. Here is a link for the video... 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKOa7COG424&feature=youtu.be

So if you remember, Kez created the special ability cards for the heroes, but they were devoid of the icons. Tom had gotten the knights special ability icon "Charge" completed a few days ago, so I put together a pretty close to final special ability card for you guys to take a look at....

Knowing Tom, I believe he is going to have the other icons done by the end of next week, and I will share more of them with you guys. But all in all, Tom is just so creative and imaginative to come up with all of those icons you saw in the video. 

He asked me not to describe what the special abilities did, he just wanted to see the names of them, and create what he envisioned. And as I have said from the outset, that's what I truly want the artists to do in cases like this, inject their talent, imagination and creativity into Dungeon Crusade. :)

OTHER STUFF GOING ON:  

David Shearer is hard at work on 3 of the card backings still. I believe he is maybe close to finishing the loot card backing. I'm really dying to see what he has come up with this! He gave me a very lite idea, and it sounds awesome! We've seen his work in the past...so I think we are all in for a real treat with what he cooks up.

Kez of course is still working on the treasure chest cards, Shaun is adding the lighting for the Origins dungeon board. I am really waiting for this to shoot the new playthough video. I want to have as much completed and show it off in the video for you guys. But I still have a few things I need to do on some of the cards. But it is coming, I promise! ;) 

Jesse Hansen of Cornerstone Creative Studios is working on the affliction icons for the affliction cards. I believe I'll have some of those to show you guys next week. 

And a few things on the side I have been doing is still getting the design docs done for the level 4 champion monsters, and starting the layout for the reverse side of the origins dungeon board, "The Tomb of Kaladar". I am SUPER amped up for this dungeon!!! This is the only dungeon that will have traps and a trap deck associated to it. 

I mean, I'm sure you guys will be finding ways on using these on all of the other dungeon boards, but The Tomb of Kaladar is going to play slightly different than the others, and have sort of a different look. I'll touch more on this as we get more closer to showing this off. 

But trust me, I'm drawing upon a few of my favorite things in life for this...my all time favorite game the 1980's Dungeonquest, Lord of the Rings and a few other things I'm fond of. I'm so looking forward to getting on task with this. 

Oh, LOL...and the little surprise I have in store for you guys is coming along nicely. ;) 

OK guys, I hope you enjoyed this update, and I know I will be hearing from you  on a few things, as I really enjoy our pow-wows about the game. I will be in the update comment section to hang out for the next few days. I sometimes get busy, but i shall be there!

Have a great evening/day everyone, and of course thank you again for EVERYTHING! You guys are the best...talk to you soon...Rodger :)

Monster cards! Warfare icons! Updated map of Avalon!
over 7 years ago – Mon, Oct 31, 2016 at 12:50:08 AM

A very good evening Crusaders of Avalon!!! :) Rodger here, and I hope everyone is having a great Halloween weekend, and having fun! I got some great update stuff for you, plus alot of awesome stuff on the horizon for all of us. 

So let's get to it! :)

WARFARE ICONS FOR MONSTER CARDS:

OK, you guys know we have been discussing this for awhile now. The skulls and symbols on the monster cards for letting a player know what 3 warfares this monster is versed in. It was OK a best, but there was something better out there.

I got in contact with an incredibly awesome artist by the name of Tom Feldmann. Tom is just one of the nicest guys and is so very talented. We hit it off immediately, and we started working on the warfare icons you are about to see. 

I told him I wanted something simple, a little detail, only 2 colors and some shading. After a few days, Tom just nailed it! So let's take a look at a small legend I made for you guys to see these awesome icons that Tom created....

 So now we have a great system for the monster cards, denoting the 3 warfares a monster is versed in. In addition, we have solved the issue with some gamer's that struggle with color blindness. I hope you guys like these! I think they go on the monster cards perfectly, and they add to the look, balance and just enhances the monster cards very nicely  

Here is a promo poster I put together to see a monster card and backing together. Please note, some of the fonts will change a bit....

4 MONSTER CARDS:

Without hesitation, let's take a look at 4 monster cards I put together for you guys! Enjoy! :)

Notice there is a normal champion monster in there with the elites, (the Vampiric Assassin). So in all of the champion monster decks you will be getting a normal and elite version of that monster. There is 7 unique monsters in each of the champion decks, but with these 2 versions that brings it to a total of 14. Champion monsters go up to level 4, so 14 x 4 is 56! There you go crusaders...56 monsters just in the champion monster decks, and don't forget! 18 minions, (6 unique) and 8 guardians, for a total of 82 monsters in ALL editions of Dungeon Crusade.

As I said in another update, my goal was to give players a ton of monsters to enjoy fighting, and always be surprised what monster shows up next in a game.

 OK let's get a list of people who made all of this possible for us to enjoy. First off from Cornerstone Creative Studios, Joseph Arnold for penciling the monsters, Jesse Hansen for the inking process, Freddy Lopez for the coloring job.

Camron Browne for the assets on the monster card side, (treasure chest, evade symbol, card design, green lifeforce gem, heart for health.)

Tom Feldmann for the warfare icons on the monster card.

David Shearer for the monster card backing.

These guys just did an outstanding job on everything. It's really incredible how all of this is coming together.

In closing, Jesse has shown me sketches and inked monsters waiting to be colored by Freddy. From what I have seen thus far...you've seen nothing yet...some awesome stuff is on the way for sure. ;)

UPDATE ON THE AVALON MAP FOR THE AVALON ADVENTURE BOARD GAME:

So Damien Mammoliti is of course doing the map of Avalon for the adventure board game. And he emailed me a few days ago with a pretty huge update to the map.

Let me explain what he did. He took my little buildings/dungeons off my map I designed for now and placed them on the final map for you to see some locations. But these will be removed, as he is creating fresh art in the form of buildings, crypts, dungeons, villages, etc for the final map, and of course will have little name tags for all the locations across the map.

So take a look at this incredible creation of Damien's. I was just blown away by this. I included my original under it for you to reference between his and see a comparison. LOL, yes...I openly admit he destroys mine! ;) 

 Next posting of the map will be the completed version. 

OTHER STUFF GOING ON:

Shaun is almost done with the hero card design! He sent me a very close to final version, He is adding in the attribute icons and then I will be of course showing them to you guys.

Also, Shaun sent me a VERY updated version of the full origins dungeon board! WOWSA! It looks really epic! He is adding in the lighting, and some small details and I will be more than happy to share it with you guys in a video for sure. I would like you guys to see every inch of it and chat with you about it. Hopefully in the next week or 2 I should have it.

And of course Shaun has his weekly stream show on Twitch Friday's at 4P.M. EST. You can sit in on the session, chat and watch him create Dungeon Crusade loot right before your eyes! Here is the link for you >>> https://www.twitch.tv/shmaba

I spoke to Kez earlier this week. She is assisting Shaun in the loot creation, but she is also in charge of creating the art for the treasure chest cards. She has shown me a great deal of work that she has been doing on them. The cards look amazing! If you didn't know, Kez does art for Pazio, and I believe alot of art for the Pathfinder game. Some serious talent and crazy creativity Kez has, and she really has injected that into Dungeon Crusade.

I have been speaking to David Shearer on the next card backings he will be creating. He will be doing 3 at a time for now on. The 3 he is working on now are:

--- Loot card backing
--- Mining card backing
--- Blessing card backing

He has some great ideas and designs for these cards. I would take a guess in a few weeks i should have something to show you guys. 

In closing, I have been working with Jesse on the affliction icons, (which we finished tonight) and with Tom on the heroes special ability icons. So we have these to look forward to.

Also in the month of November, I think I'm going to do another workshop video. I'm going to be ordering the Reaper minis from the list I made for everyone, and I think I know which ones I would like for my custom collection. So I will be doing a VERY basic painting video, then we will put them on the dungeon board and see how they look. 

I'm hoping we have the new origins dungeon board to show these off on. 

So in all honesty, the game is really coming along nicely. Everything is getting done at a really good pace I believe. I will try to get into the update comments tomorrow with you guys to hang out for a bit and answer any questions you may have.

Have a great day guys, I'm off for a much needed sleep! Talk to you soon...Rodger :)

A SURPRISE AT THE END!:

LOL! Yes! A surprise! Enjoy a new monster that Cornerstone Creative Studios provided me a few days ago...Tenderfoot Warlock! A level 1 champion monster! Outstanding work guys! :)

Treasure Chest card backing, some potions for you and the web site!
over 7 years ago – Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 12:05:41 AM

Hello everyone! :) Rodger here and I hope you guys had a great weekend and doing good. So this might be a very brief, but pretty cool update for us. To be honest, it was just a scattered kind of week working on the many different parts of the game. So let's see what's going on!

POTION BOTTLES:

One thing I nailed down was the potions for the game, or rather the design of the bottles. I threw together a little promo poster for you guys and the Dungeon Crusade facebook page. One slight thing that has changed with these potion bottles are the very top. We changed out the top to be clear, instead of the stained look at the top. 

So have a look at the 4 potions that will be available to your heroes! Side note, next update I'll have the tokens for you to check out.

 NEW ICONS FOR THE MONSTER CARD:

Great news on this front. I have been working with an artist for fresh new icons for the monster cards. Remember the colored skulls? They are gone. What I came up with are small, chunky styled icons in the form of weapons for all 6 warfare types, and in the appropriate color for each one. 

Those will be done in the next few days, and next update we will see these upon more monster cards I would like to share with you. I will try to have quite a few for you to check out. 

These new icons will truly do the trick for making the monster cards look even more appealing, and assist those people with color blindness.

On the topic of color blindness, I would like to be 100% avow with everyone about this. We are going to do everything in our power to make Dungeon Crusade accessible to gamer's with color blindness. But we have to consider the time and resources involved if it leads to an overhaul of certain aspects of the game that rely on colors for a game mechanic. 

One big thing is the patrol route system. That is something I was working on this past week, and trying to implement something that wouldn't be so heavily reliant on colors. I'm going to try this symbol system, and show people close to the project and get their thoughts. I will of course keep everyone posted on this as we look at certain aspects of the game and see if it's doable or not.

TREASURE CHEST CARD BACKING: 

If you have been following the card backings as they are developed by David Shearer, you have seen how incredible they look. This one might just take the cake however. Earlier in the week we were discussing what this backing should be. He asked me what did I have on the prototype card, and I sent him this.

LOL, forgive the crudeness of this card. It was very early on in development when I came up with this design, and I wasn't as acclimated as I am now at graphic design...

 I explained to him when I designed this backing, I wanted to show a skeleton representing something bad could happen from opening a chest, and on the other side a cool sword meaning a hero could find riches or loot inside of a chest.   

So that sparked his imagination and he came up with this....I just have to say WOW! first, I love this backing, and truly fits the Dungeon Crusade vibe, and my "risk & reward" motto about a hero opening an ancient treasure chest....

  I wish I could get these promo posters bigger for you, but kickstarter always crops them down to be smaller. If you would like to see it full size, feel free to go to the Dungeon Crusade facebook page as it is right at the top of the page right now.  https://www.facebook.com/DungeonCrusade/

 Let's take a look at a bigger pic of this card....

  First off, that is not the final font upon this card. I placed that on there to show David a cool font, and get his thoughts on it. Plus there is more of the background behind that. The final card will be transparent there, with just the words "TREASURE CHEST" there. 

I love all the backings so far he has created, but I personally think this is pretty epic.
Many more card backings to come, and of course you will see them here. :)

 THE DUNGEON CRUSADE WEB SITE:

And yes! The Dungeon Crusade web site is being built up! I believe I mentioned before that Jesse Hansen from Cornerstone Creative Studios is not only a master artist, but a webpage wiz to boot. Jesse will be creating, maintaining and getting the site spruced up for everyone. Forums and all! ;)

I'm going to of course be doing some work on the page and providing some promo posters, some ideas for images and much of the lore to Dungeon Crusade. We worked on this for a good part of the past week. But it is done, and Jesse and myself are proceeding to get it ready.

 EVERYTHING ELSE ON WHAT'S GOING ON:

Besides all of the stuff I have been doing, I have been trying to get the level 4 champion monster design docs done for Jesse and crew. I know Freddy has been busy for awhile, but I do believe he is getting some coloring done on some new monsters this week. Next update, I will hopefully be showing you guys some of that.

Everyone else is still working on their tasks for the game, and everything is going smoothly on all fronts. 

And lastly...LOL, we all love surprises right? Well, I have a little surprise for you guys. I have been working with a couple of truly awesome people on a secret little something for you. It has been been in the works for some time now, but I believe we are getting close to debuting it for you.

And you know the Groovus Games Unlimited style, we are going to do this up in a very cool trailer to show you! I always feel like I want to do something more for you guys. It's just that I think the world of you for believing in Dungeon Crusade, so this gift is from me, the people who have helped me to do this, and I think you are going to really enjoy this. And the best part? It's free for you guys! :) If we can pull this together, I will be debuting it for you next update. I totally assure you, it's pretty rad!

OK guys, that's about it for this week. I will get into the update comments if you guys want to chat a bit about some stuff. I hope everyone has a great day, and I will be talking to you soon...take care, Rodger :)

p.s. Don't ask for hints about the surprise!!! ;) I wasn't going to tell you about the surprise, but it's so cool, I had to say something! Hey, it's something to look forward to right?  

THIS JUST IN:

What do you know, David Shearer just sent me this treasure chest card backing with a different font, and now you can see what I mean that you can see the background in top left perfectly clear now. 

Afflictions, Harvest Bread & Elderberry Juice, Monster card design, Website!
over 7 years ago – Sun, Oct 16, 2016 at 11:54:16 PM

A huge HELLO to everyone out here! :) Rodger here and I hope everyone is doing great and enjoying their weekend in whatever you may be doing. 

I have been really busy on the design/layout for various cards this past week as you will see in this update. So forgive me for not being in the comment section for the few past days. But when i get on the game, I'm in the "DC Zone". ;) 

I always look forward to these weekend updates with you guys, and show you what I have been up to as well as the rest of the team on Dungeon Crusade. So let's get on with this!

VILLAGERS GIFTS ON CELEBRATION DAY:

So when your heroes emerge from the dungeon after clearing a quest table, it's time to head to the village for celebration day. The villagers will give the heroes various gifts to show their appreciation in the form of a simple "Thank you!"...(I know...not that snazzy after you just saved their village right?). Of they could be feeling very generous and give the heroes gold or valuable loot.

A couple of unique things they can give the heroes is Harvest Bread and Elderberry Juice. Let's take a look at this pic and see what these tokens will look like....

 So if the villagers give the heroes one of these gifts, each hero will take the appropriate token. For example if the villagers gave the heroes Elderberry Juice, each hero would take a Elderberry Juice token and put it in their backpack.

When they return to the dungeon, they can consume it in their time of need to regain the health and essence shown on the token! Harvest Bread and Elderberry Juice tokens can be shared between heroes of course. :) 

THE AFFLICTIONS:

Besides taking damage from monster and creature attacks, encounter events and traps, the heroes must worry about the different afflictions that they can contract. Let's take a look at the 12 different types of afflictions that a hero can be stricken with, then discuss it a bit...

 The final icons that will be upon the affliction cards are being completed in the next week, so I will be sharing those with you guys upon completion. Also I will be adding in the small descriptions on the cards what will occur if a hero is stricken with an affliction.

Don't worry! There will be only a few lines, and these are super easy to understand and process. We will see an affliction later in this update.

Afflictions can be contracted from monsters, creatures, certain encounters and traps in the dungeon. There are 2 different types for each class, and come in the form of 1st degree and 2nd degree afflictions.

Afflictions can have detrimental effects on a hero. They can affect their body, vision, mind, thought process or movement. The only way a hero can purge an affliction from their body is to consume an elixir potion. Elixir potions can be purchased from the bazaar in the middle of the village for a cost of 200 gold. Highly recommended to have a few on hand crusaders! ;) 

Let's take a look at an affliction, and at the same time check out a possible final design of the monster card layout I put together....

 OK...let's hit the brakes for a second before we discuss the affliction. Let's talk about this monster card design for a few.

Simply put, I REALLY like this design, and I took into account what you guys had to say, and designed it so everything that was a concern is no more. I greatly THANK YOU guys for bringing up that when I posted that other monster card quite a few updates ago.

So this design above. As I said, I really like this. Everything on the card is laid out really well I believe. One of the big concerns before was the warfare icons. If you remember, I was using the actual warfare icons and placing the warfare values right on top. It was messy, hard to read and basically YUCK!

I went back to my original design from the prototype game. I had an artist create a skull, then added the 6 warfare colors to them and a shadowing effect placed on top of the skulls. The shadowing effect is very subtle, but it really added a nice look to them. I then simply placed the warfare values on the top part of the skull. The end result totally fits the Dungeon Crusade vibe, reads very well and looks pretty classy I believe. 

In the info box below the warfare icons, I reworked that as well. All values for the various icons reside right beside them, and now read perfectly clear. Before the values were on top of the icons and was very messy and hard to read.

If you remember on the other monster card, I placed a dungeon background in back of the monster pictured. And from the heart, I still like that design. However on the new layout I placed a background with the color that represents the level of the monster the heroes are combating, then placed the monster on that background. It certainly makes the monster art POP! really nicely I think.  

There were a few other small things I worked on, but I truly feel this layout works incredibly well for the game. It looks quite striking, it's very concise and just has a great unique vibe to it. I hope you guys like it, and as always let's chat it up a bit! :)

So now...onto the affliction and we will be using our new Skeletal Archer for this demo. So let's start of with a few basics. We can tell by the silver frame of the card, we are dealing with a champion monster. Also, if you notice at the top left corner there is a gold star signifying we have encountered an elite version of this champion monster! Normal champion monsters are denoted by a silver star.

Elite champion monsters always have a nasty special ability. Case in point, our Skeletal Archer has a special ability called "Serrated Arrow". Before any combat will take place, our heroes must get through this special ability of the Skeletal Archer.

Side not, any time you see "Before Combat", this ONLY happens ONE TIME before combat begins.

 We see each hero must test agility 18. Let's take a look at our Knight heroes card and consult his agility.

 We see our Knight has an agility of 2. What the knight hero must do is roll the D20, and add his agility to the result. He must meet or exceed 18 in order to dodge the Serrated Arrow! 

The Knight rolls, and the result is 14! OUCH! Even adding 2 we have a total of 16. Our knight must take 2 damage and now must test his physical resistance. Consulting the Skeletal Archers monster card, we see he needs a 17 or higher to withstand a physical affliction. Let's look at his card again....

 Notice the physical warfare icon is circled. This value has a few meanings. For one, you may add this to any physical warfare roll during combat. The other meaning is for testing physical resistance. So we must now roll the D20 again, and we may add that +4 to the roll since this is a physical resistance check. Let's hope for the best!

The D20 is rolled, and the result is a 9! Even adding the +4 gives us a result of only 13. Not enough to beat the 17 on the Skeletal Archers monster card.

Unfortunately our knight hero has suffered a 1st degree physical affliction. Let's take a look at the affliction card he must take...

 We can tell this is a 1st degree affliction by the "I" in the top right corner in the colored diamond. The card reads very clear and concise, (which I truly strive for) on how this affliction is processed. 

And how would out hero cure himself from an affliction?.....I think I heard someone say it ;)...Consume an elixir potion! Elixir potions will cure ALL afflictions a hero is plagued with.

We will be talking much more about afflictions in the coming months, but for now I hope you enjoyed learning more about Dungeon Crusade. :)

 A COOL LOOK AT A MONSTER BEFORE THE COLORING PROCESS:

So Jesse from Cornerstone Creative Studios provided me with a inked version on one of the monsters in Dungeon Crusade, a Blackhand Defiler. This is a level 3 champion monster, and of course part of the Blackhand Army led by a guardian monster, Lord Blackhand.

But I thought you guys would like to take a look at a few behind the scenes. The penciling phase was done by the incredible Joseph Arnold, and the inking process done by Jesse himself. Without further ado...the Blackhand Defiler champion monster!

 I thought this would be cool to show you guys, then after Freddy colors it I'll put it into an update to see the final result. There is alot of monsters that are inked and ready to be colored, so we all have much to look forward to.

And I have said this before, I think you will be astounded at the amount of monsters in Dungeon Crusade. Minions, champions and the boss like guardians. Just prepare thyself to be overwhelmed with MONSTERS!

But seriously, when I set out to do Dungeon Crusade I wanted just a ton of monsters in the game so it feels like you are always seeing something new. And trust me...I have many more I would like to place in the world of Avalon, but let's get this game done first! ;)  

THE DUNGEON CRUSADE OFFICIAL WEBSITE:

And yes! This is coming together! Myself and Jesse are working out the details right now to get this live for everyone. Let me show you a early screenshot of what Jesse Hansen put together. Besides being a master at art, he builds web sites and designs them. This will of course change, but even in this early stage, I think it looks GREAT! KUDOS to Jesse! :)

 We have ALOT in store for the web site. And of course there will be a forum section for all of us to chat it up. There are a few very important things i want this site to have. A gallery section to show the art of the game, and a lore section where I can really cut lose and talk about the land of Avalon, the characters, the heroes, the monsters and just about everything Dungeon Crusade!

So we will keep you up to date when this will launch. However, I believe talking to Jesse, it will be up VERY soon. 

SHAUN'S WEEKLY DUNGEON CRUSADE STREAM:

Remember on every Friday Shaun does his stream where he is creating the loot for Dungeon Crusade. I always try to catch that, and check it out while I'm working on the game. This past Friday he created some INCREDIBLE pieces of loot.  A chaos weapon called "Reaper of Souls". An axe that just looked nuts! And a mythical weapon called "Outlaw Blade". A dagger that looked deadly as all get out. 

Here is the link for you guys to check it out next Friday >>> https://www.twitch.tv/shmaba

I think if you go there now, you can see the video and the loot I'm speaking of. 

 IN CLOSING:

Well you see what I'm up to. Much of the revised content is complete for the new playthrough video. I've got some loose ends I have to tie up this week, some design docs and a few other things. I'm going to be working on more of the fine tuning of the stats for the heroes and monsters, and creating templates for the monster cards. Once those are fully in place, it's a matter of placing monster art on them and adding in the various values. Very quick work indeed.

Other than that all of the artists are working on various parts of the game. Hopefully I'll have more to show you guys next week.

As always, I'll try to be in the comments with you to chat a bit for the next few days. I hope everyone has a great evening tonight, and have a great week coming up! Wishing you guys the best, talk to you soon...Rodger :)

p.s. I wanted to sneak this in real quick. Here is the promo poster I put together of the Skeletal Archer above. A cool little origins story I wrote for this monster. :)

Hero card design, encounter card backing and video! :)
over 7 years ago – Mon, Oct 10, 2016 at 12:47:05 AM

Good day everyone! Rodger here and first things first...

For any of our backers in Florida, I truly hope you and your family are OK after the hurricane Matthew event. I have watching the news here and there, and my heart goes out to anyone affected by this.

We have a few artists working on Dungeon Crusade that reside in Florida, I sent out a few messages before all this wishing them the best. Above all, I hope everyone is safe from this tragedy.  

So this is a fairly light update but a couple of very cool things in store for sure.

ENCOUNTER CARDS:

As you may know, the artist David Shearer is doing a great deal of the backings for cards in the game. We have went back and forth on a few designs for the encounter card, and the end result is truly pretty awesome!  

And here is just the encounter card backing...

I put together a encounter card for you guys to check out. The font, background and wording may change just a bit for final release....

 One of my most FAVORITE things to create for Dungeon Crusade was the encounter deck. I mean I truly just loved to create, write and imagine things that could possibly happen to our valiant heroes in the dungeon.

But all encounters are not bad! There could be challenges a hero could take on to gain gold or a piece of loot. Such as testing their agility to jump over a chasm to reach a pouch of gold, and see what could be inside. LOL, of course if they fail, they will have some negative things happen. ;)

I created about 120 encounters, and picked the best 85 out of them for the final game. As you probably know, I also commissioned the incredible Camron Brown to create unique art for every single card I created. I just could not imagine just having text. I want to immerse players in Dungeon Crusade, and give them a visual of what I wrote about.

David takes full credit for the encounter card backing design. He started off with creating just the entrance and the ground around it. I went back and asked him if he could add a beat and battered dungeon door, and some props around the entrance.

  The visual of the encounter card says everything you need to know about the card. It's a very unsure and uncertain thing what awaits inside of the entrance.

HERO CARD DESIGN: 

This layout/design really took some creative thought, trial & error and drive to hammer this thing out.

So a few months ago, I sent Shaun the hero card we have been using. I asked him what he could do to come up with a hero card design. A few days went by and he sent this design to me.

 This of course is a very rough draft, but I really loved where he was going with it. Now Shaun really has his hands full with other parts of the project. Loot card design, dungeons plus the weekly stream. I was really inspired by his hero card design. I knew what I wanted it to look like after I saw his work. If this makes any sense, I wanted 3 things from it, that I had in mind...
1) I wanted it to somehow look like it could have come from an old PC RPG game.
2) I wanted it to possibly resemble a hero card from an old board game.
3) I wanted a dash of modernization to it.

It took me awhile to get this design down to where I knew in my heart this was going to be the hero card for Dungeon Crusade. Now of course, these hero cards will be recreated professionally for the final release, but I really like this design, and like a few other things in the game, it really says "Dungeon Crusade" to me.

 I wanted icons instead of text on the hero cards. They look way more attractive and fun to me. Plus you can look at many of the icons and pretty much guess what they are. I hope you like this design/layout also. And of course, as soon as we get one recreated professionally, I'll be sharing that with you guys.

The archer art shown below was a very early concept from Joseph Arnold and Jesse Hansen from Cornerstone Creative Studios. I changed some of the colors on her and came up with this for the time being for playtesting.

 There is a brand new archer hero they have created however, and she looks phenomenal! Very fantasy based. I believe that piece is awaiting to be colored by Freddy.

OTHER THINGS GOING ON: 

Really, everything else is going along smoothly. I anticipate next week a few more monsters will be ready to show.

I know Kez is still hammering away at the treasure chest cards. Damien is working on the Avalon map, and David Shearer is working on the treasure card backing.

Me personally, I have been working on the hero cards, and tweaking the attribute stats. I have to finish up some design docs for the level 4 champion monsters for Cornerstone Creative Studios. I really want to see these come to life! Queen of the Blackhand, Death Knights, Beast of the Faith, Ancient Horror plus more! After I knock these out, I am tweaking the values of all the monsters.

I'm truly trying to get to the playthrough video for all of us.

So in closing I hope you enjoyed this update and like the video I put together. And I do apologize for the late update. But I did squeak it in still on weekend time though! ;) As always I will be in the comment section for the next few days to hang out with you guys a bit, and see what everyone has to say.

OK guys, I'm out for now. Have a good day, and a great Monday! I will be talking to you soon...take care...Rodger :)

UPDATE CHAT VIDEO:

If you like, I created a 10 minute video where I talk about some of the stuff in the video. So if you got the time, hang out with me for a few and see some more in depth stuff. :) LOL...I recorded off screen...so prepare thyself heroes! ;) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIJMOBvcisQ&feature=youtu.be