Introduction

Hello everyone, welcome back to another devlog on the indie MMO project, Blood Lines. Over the last four weeks, I've worked on game design, a new approach to replication, and most importantly, my own character models.

Character Models

When I started the project, I thought of something toony and stylised. I enjoy games that look and feel good, and find stylised graphics are a good way to express oneself, and it starts with the characters. But since I had no experience designing characters, I opted for using pixel-art assets throughout. While they don't look bad, they never matched my vision for the project. However, I found a very helpful tutorial, and after some practice, I think it's time to change style. It's not perfect, and still has work to do.

A great advantage of this approach is the ability to recolour in-engine. Each mesh (such as the base, shirt and hair) have their own shader which can be recoloured. The shader also alpha-blends the face texture onto the skin.

What matters even more than the appearance of the characters are the customisation options. Because I'm now making the characters, I can make the clothes and accessories needed for the project.

Replication

One of the hardest things to deal with has been replicating data. Taking characters as an example, there are three distinct problems:

• Character models in 3D.
• Character data sent over the network.
  
• Character data stored in the database.

An obvious approach is to use one object for everything. Unfortunately, this makes it difficult to serialise/replicate the object, because Godot has its own properties for nodes. Additionally, some objects (such as account data) aren't 3D, but still need to be stored and sent, creating inconsistency.

Eventually, I settled for separating concerns into two objects: Entities and Records. Entities manage the character locally, such as playing animations and handling collisions. Records are collections of data to be sent over the network or stored in the database. Record properties stored in the database but not sent over the network (and vice versa) are annotated as such.

It's definitely not perfect, mainly because it features two objects with mostly the same properties. But the important thing is not going down the perfect solution rabbit hole... there isn't one.

Game Design

The design document for Blood Lines has changed more times than Kazuya's love interest in Rent a Girlfriend. But seriously, it takes a lot of experimenting with ideas to make things work.

Lore-wise, the game will take place on an island called Ryusei Island. The substance from the sinkhole has led to blood moons and the formation of charms, rare gems with power. The more charms you collect, the more powerful your character gets, without limit. I don't see why players with many charms shouldn't be near-immortal. However, if you're defeated, players can loot your charms for as many as they have on them. This creates an incentive to carry charms and work together to obtain them.

Charms are alternatively used to become a Tsuki. They're a special race with eyes resembling charms, that act as the arbiters of the game world. They give up their ability to hold charms in exchange for powers to serve others.

Discord

You're welcome to join our Discord Server for updates!