Introduciiiiing Frimp! Frimp is the latest monster we’re implementing into the game, with over half of his animation completed. Once he’s done we’ll be moving on from the monster phase, at least for Beta. We have some exciting developments right around the corner! Pretty soon we’ll have a forum set up as a place to talk with backers and, eventually, to get feedback from beta testing. The game has really shaped up in the past few weeks, so I’m excited to share what we’ve accomplished! Well, it’s been a while since we’ve done one of these, isn’t it? While John and Severin have been working on Dungeon Panic I’ve mostly been off in the corner adding bits and pieces to Princess Panic. I’m still pretty confident it will be a thing someday. Enjoy this little bit of Brittany, whose character I recently started working on. -Josh  Hello! This is Severin, checking in with progress from Dungeon Panic. We’re currently digging our way through character animation, a process accurately depicted by Default Dude above. Thousands of precautions have been taken to keep this complicated process organized and efficient. At this point I’m seeing pixels in my SLEEP.
The weird creature above is a monster known as a Dragling! Dragling is big, but he’s not quite a dragon. He waddles around dungeons, bashing things with his head whenever the mood fits him, which is often. The animation for Dragling was done by the multi-faceted Matt Bixler! 
Octavio requested I draw his OCs as character classes from the game, and they came out pretty cute! Hehe, 6 Dungeon Panic commissions finished, 4 to go… Status Update 2013/03/01Good day, followers and backers alike! Developer John here for another progress update. Last time I showed you a little of what was cooking with the Auroran Overworld. We’ve added quite a bit of polish since then, and found just the right tune for the generator. The world looks quite excellent now and as ever will be different for everyone who plays.
The world will be quite large too, giving us plenty of opportunity to fill it with Stuff as time goes on. And even in the wilderness things won’t be boring by any means; time passes, day turns to evening and then night. You might find something hidden away in a deep forest, and you may just find that things aren’t as safe above-ground as you might expect… Not everything is Out There, though! While the Town might not be as mortally dangerous as the wilds, there will be plenty to explore and experience at home. We’ve been designing and creating a bevy of domiciles and storefronts and all the little embellishments that really make a place come alive.
Right now we have a Game. Town, Overworld, and Dungeons. It’s early days yet, though. The amazing success of the Kickstarter has fueled us to fill the initial release with as much awesome as we can and still produce a product in a reasonable amount of time. We’re chugging away at it! We’ll keep updating as we get further and further. Who likes techincals? I love technicals, so my last offering in this update is a little bit about how we’re doing character customization. While enemies and Special NPCs have one fixed set of animations, the player and generated party members are done a little differently.
The final image here is our Default Test Guy sprite sheet. We’re using it to debug and fine-tune the palette-swapping mechanism and character drawing. Each character is built up from individual pieces and then each piece is color-mapped when rendering. The character sprites you see on the world and town screens above are rendered from these pieces and the GPU does the color-correction. The player will be able to create a character from a myriad selection of pieces and colors, and NPCs are generated randomly in the same way. Neat, eh? See you next time! Hello Dear Followers! These past many weeks have been very quiet on the development front because we have been, well, developing! Things are progressing as these things do; fortunes and setbacks abound. Some of those setbacks can be interesting, though, and we thought you’d like to see one of our fun bugs. This week I’ve been working on the overworld generator, which involves a lot of tweaking and tuning. One experiment resulted in the first picture you see above. Where’s all the grass? It’s a forested land of trees, rocks, and pools. Traversable, but not really what we’re going for. Still, I quite like it, and it’s been a while since we’ve shared anything in-game. The second image shows more what things will look like, for comparison. The land is just filled with dungeons to be found, somewhere out there! Do keep in mind that these are in-development screenshots! We’re still working out the design of things, especially UI, and there are glitches and imperfections that will absolutely get stomped out in the days between now and release. That said, expect more from us as we get closer and closer to a finished product. Till next time! -Developer John  This is the first of the commissions, completed for Cho Amador! I met Cho in the trenches of Access Control, staffing for Anime Expo two years ago. My legs are still sore from patrolling the hallways. -Sev We got some more Kickstarter goodies to show! These are the sticker sheets for the princesses, which many of you will be getting. It includes sticker versions of some of my earlier PrinPan art (with a bit of cleanup and added colors) as well as some new drawings by Severin. Put them on your laptop. It’ll be a great way to make friends!  NOW PLAYING - the Dungeon Panic backer comic! As y’all may recall, all backers get access to this, even the ones who pledged a buck! Right now we’ll be finishing and posting a page weekly as a series of Backer-only Kickstarter updates, located right over here. Once it’s over, we’ll create a PDF version and send a link in a message to all the backers. Since we promised an extra page for every $500 pledged after the goal, the total size of the comic will be 20 pages! This means that with the deadlines we’ve made, the game should be out before the comic ends. If you’d like to see the comic, but didn’t get a chance to back the project, we’re considering a few things, like making the PDF available for a few bucks on Gumroad once it’s done and selling print versions at cons. Hope everyone had a good holiday. We’ll be back pretty soon!  Hello everybody! The holiday rush is starting to die down and work is beginning to pick back up. We’ll have more to say in the very near future, and of course surveys and such for our Kickstarter backers. I just thought I’d give a little Friday update. Our iOS development hardware is just about here. We won’t be able to dig right into it, of course, but we will be able to get thing set up and work on it piecemeal over the coming months. After the Android/OUYA release, we’ll focus on iOS in earnest. Speaking of the OUYA, that photo? That’s the OUYA launcher software running on my Nexus 7. Our dev hardware has shipped, and the software dev kit has already landed. I’m spending a little time today getting my hands dirty with it. It’s very exciting. That’s about it for today. We’re already seeing the results of the Kickstarter campaign, and we’re in for a pretty wild couple of months once full production ramps up next week. Stay tuned! -Developer John A’s Basement, next: Borealis?!
Oh gosh! We are less than 24 hours from campaign end and we have just now crossed the $12,000 mark. Princess A’s Basement will now be a part of the game! We still have many hours to go, though, and the vaunted $15,000 “Unlock Borealis” stretch goal beckons with hamburgery might! What would that mean? I’ll tell you! Borealis is home to Princess B, and is a darker, creepier, and perhaps more dangerous place than Aurora. Where Aurora is notable for its cute critters and inhabitants, Borealis is known for its badass beasts and extra-rough citizens. Caverns are monster mosh-pits, towns are neon-lit dives. Princess B wouldn’t have it any other way! So, the run-down:
Does that sound cool? I think it does, yes ma’am. As I write this, we still have a few of the limited tiers left. There are several of the $35 print tiers still available (for both prints). There is one $60 art tier and there are two $70 “Name a monster” tier slots left as well. If you were holding off, now’s the time to grab or upgrade! Also, if you are at one of the lower tiers, don’t forget that the $8, $11 and $15 tiers, and all above them, include Kickstarter-exclusive goodies. The $18 tier includes all the goodies PLUS all three sticker packs of Princess A, Princess B, and the Fairies. The $25 tier includes ALL of that and a digital art book that will feature DunPan and some PrinPan concept artwork. It’s a pretty good deal! And, just to reiterate, any bonuses you acquire through the Kickstarter will always be available to you, no matter what system you are playing Dungeon Panic on in the future. While I’m mentioning that, let’s go over all the stretch goals that have so far been unlocked. The First Goal was $4500, which unlocked an OUYA port! The Second Goal was $5500, which means we bring DunPan to iOS! The Third Goal was $6500, which unlocks Item and NPC trading over Internet or NFC! The Fourth Goal was $7500, and unlocked “cloud saving,” which allows you to pick up and play the same game on any device, no matter the device, so long as you have an Internet connection. The Fifth Goal was $8000, which unlocked Kicky, a special town NPC available to everyone. The Sixth Goal was $10000, unlocking extra unique quests on top of the standard generated quests the game will have. The Seventh Goal was $12000, just unlocked, which means we implement a special challenge dungeon, A’s Basement! And the Eighth Goal is $15000, Unlocking Borealis! Can we do it?! From the entire Dungeon Panic team, thank you for your support. We are in awe over the reception our little idea has recieved, and we are anxious to get to full production mode. See you soon! -Developer John  Coming up for the $12000 stretch goal: Princess A’s Castle Basement Dungeon Extravaganza! Princess A herself has invited you for a visit. Apparently there have been… noises coming up from below the castle, and Princess A wants you to investigate! Someone… or someTHING has been busy down here, creating legions of undead junk food minions. Help Princess A clean them out, and discover the source of this high-calorie conundrum. Only 23 hours left on the clock, can you help push us over the edge so we get to design this dungeon disaster? Now’s your last chance to back Dungeon Panic! -Severin  Introducing Countess Croissant! Not too long ago, on the Dungeon Panic Kickstarter, we passed the $10,000 stretch goal (thank you for that!), which means that we intend to include some special quests and missions in the game! What kinds of quests? Quests involving Countess Croissant, for starters! Her Countessness is an ambitious lady with schemes to match. She seeks power, which doesn’t come easily in kingdom run by royalty. To fulfill her plans, she needs help from an adventurer who doesn’t ask too many questions. Do you choose to help her?
For one such mission, the Countess needs help sneaking some overdue books back into the library so she can avoid a fine. That doesn’t sound too bad, right? Except she insists on entering the library through the sewer… A little in-progress treat!Developer John checking in! Who likes screenshots? I know I do! Please, feast your eyes on our first in-engine development preview. This is a direct screenshot from my current test build running on my Nexus 7.
This is no Photoshop mockup, this is an actual frame from the engine. As you can see, we will have fancy, dynamic lighting. Torches will flicker and waver; spells will light up things dramatically; evil beasties’ eyes will glow with dark intent from the shadows. The room and corridors are generated and tiled dynamically, too. We are still in early development, fine-tuning the look of everything, and a lot needs to be done on the final design, but work progresses steadily. We’re down to 8 days! We want to hit those stretch goals as much as you, so get the word out, tell random passersby about us, post subversive fliers around your college campuses, help us get there! -John |
