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I am still alive. :)

If you don't mind, I will give more of an explanation.

I am indeed alive.  I am well.  I do still work on games, but my time has been incredibly short for creative efforts.  And, admittedly, I haven't just been able to be creative for a very long time.

If you follow me on Itch, you probably still notice I release games.  It's mostly game jam style games, very short (or even unfinished!) projects that are created in a short time frame.  That's been the best I've been able to do in a long while.

I don't want to bore or bring you down with all the circumstances of my life, and why I haven't been very creative for a while.  (We'll just say it involves losing people very dear to me, getting married then divorced, COVID, situations that nearly put me on the street, etc.)  Besides I am a private person and I don't like sharing details, so you will just have to take my word when I say it's been a really rough last 7 years for me.

Along with all that, I've always been a very depressive person and it is something I fight with daily.  It's been a rough uphill battle for me to take care of myself in the short term, and so my long-term projects (such as the sequel/remake of Kalevala) have had to take a break.  But I am trying to be more productive and in fact, this is what I want to talk about next.

First, Relic of Kalevala was being written in Unity but after some changes at UT that I wasn't too happy with, I decided to abandon that port back in 2017 and migrate it to Godot, which is an open source game engine.  (Considering what UT has been up to in the last few years, am I glad I made that choice!)

The Godot version has been a blast to work on and I love the game engine.  It also significantly improves the game in a lot of areas, both from its visual style and its responsiveness.  I've also added a lot of new game mechanics, like swappable weapons, inventory management and crafting, and an unfinished rogue-like battle mode.

All that is missing is content.  I still have a lot of levels to finish and only one out of the six planned boss fights are implemented.  So it's still a way from being finished.  But, it's doable, and if I can get myself back on track I could probably have it done within a year.

You can see the state of the game in 2021 in my Godot Show Reel submission from that year.  (Relic didn't make it into the final show Reel, but I was up against a lot of really polished, great looking games!  So nice to see people really using Godot.)

This isn't even the "final form" of the game -- I've added a lot of visual effects since 2021 and I've revamped how the player moves and feels, making the game feel a lot more dynamic.

Now, in the intern, I've been thinking about re-releasing the original Flash game.  I knew there was a Flash emulator out there, but I had no idea it works so well!  You can even play the original Flash game in it, albeit not as well.  It has some issues, such as lack of music and a general slowness.

But I believe I can fix those.  After all I still have all the original source code, and I tested my compile tools -- I can still make the original game compile and run.

So I am considering making a "redux" version which will be mostly the original game but with some minor enhancements.  I haven't worked out all yet what they will be, but I would guarantee at least these:

• The game would work 100%, fixing bugs/problems that are now present in the Flash version being run under the emulator such as lack of music.
• Add the ability to re-map keys and use joysticks/gamepads for buttons.
• Finish and add in the expansion that I promised so long ago, so you can finally see what is behind that locked door. :)
• Address some of the slowness issues with the emulation.
  
  • The game originally ran at a fixed 30 FPS, but I've noticed under emulation it can drop to ~15.
  • I haven't done a deep analysis of the problem but I believe I can fix this by doing some optimization of the game.

I would then sell the release for Windows (and possibly Linux) for a nominal fee.

I hope speaking about all of this candidly will help fans of the original game understand what I've been up to and where the sequel is at.

-David (aka ChainedLupine)

That was a bug.  But I left it in because I thought it was funny!  I was going to make it a game-play element (gotta use a roadrunner to get over a hazard) but I'd need to have made some pathing for the roadrunner and just didn't have time to implement.

I was personally thinking of the eagles from Ninja Gaiden, but Ghosts and Goblins is another good source of frustration!  Haha!

As for the bug:  I might have pushed a version that left the override spawn (I used for testing) enabled.  Hopefully it's fixed now;  I will verify it later when I get a chance.  Thanks for playing!

Doesn't seem like it runs at 64x64?  In the browser everything is cut off and cropped heavily.  Good try though!

Very nice!  This shaped up into a very unique little game from your initial reveal.  The music turned out very nice, too, sort of reminded me of Warsong on the Genesis.

Haha I am glad you think so!  I will be posting it here shortly.  It's been up for a week but I have been busy. :)

This is great, I love it!  I haven't had time to play with it but I think I am going to have a lot fun with it.  This reminds me of a Lisp (?) based GUI tool for sound generation, used to tinker with it and make bizarre sounds for my games!

I'm so glad people are still interested, thank you!

I bet my niece would love that game, I'll be sure to show it to her. :)

The game does take themes from the Kalevala, but one thing I felt I really dropped the ball on was explaining how it tied in with the story.  It's something I will definitely be resolving for the new release.

As for social media, I've never been one for that.  You can find my account on Twitter but I haven't updated it in a long time. :)   Kickstarters and other crowd funding, I have considered.  But I was unsure if there was enough interest to even warrant asking for that.

I'm really bad at advertising and I work on my games alone when I have free time/ability to commit, which tends to make my release schedule very slow.  (Legend was released in 2012, and before that my last big game was released back in 2005!)  I would like to expand that effort but it's only been until recently I've been entertaining such an idea.

I'm glad you enjoyed the original and are looking forward to Legacy, though.  That means a lot to me;  Honestly, I make these games for my enjoyment, really, but it also makes me feel so good to realize that others enjoy them just as much (if not more).

Hello!

I apologize for not getting out an update sooner, but things have been -- well, chaotic is sort of an understatement.

First up, the bad news.  I said in my last dev blog that LoK would be coming out around March of this year.  As you might have suspected, that is not going to happen.  I am still trying to target a 2020 release but right now I do not have an actual date set in stone.  More on that once it becomes more clear how things are progressing!

Sadly, I was unable to work on the game for three months (the last two of 2019 and January of 2020), which set the schedule I had planned for quite a ways back.  I'm working hard to make up for that lost time.

I had intended to showcase the game for the Godot 2020 Showreel video but I was unable to get my submission in time.  But I intend to release video of the game as soon as I can, which will demonstrate some of the new features and expanded world I've been working on.

I ask you be patient and I will have some exciting news soon!

Here's a preview of something that is already done:

Thanks and be safe,

Awesome!  I am always glad to hear when people are inspired by the things I create.  I get the same inspiration for others, and it's great to hear that the web of inspiration continues...  Hopefully forever!

I still need to talk to the musician.  He's given me implicit carte-blanche before on what to do with the music, but the game engine I am using cannot directly play his original music format.  I would love to re-use the music but first I need to figure out a way to get it to work as originally intended -- I don't want to just transcribe it to a streaming format, but it might be necessary, and I want to make sure the original musician is OK with this.

I just posted a devlog which will hopefully answer those questions. :)

Hello all!  I apologize for the slowness of replies.  Life has been very chaotic as of late, but has finally settled down into a routine.  I am still working on Legacy.

I'm hoping to have more stuff to show for it soon!

I'm still working on getting the first milestone completed, which is an alpha version.  Once I am done with that, I will be able to give you a better idea.

Y up, I'm still here.  *checks pulse*  And breathing, too!

Hello and welcome to the Legacy of Kalevala message board!

I am Chainedlupine, the developer of the original flash game.  If you have any questions, feel free to ask away!