Hello dear friends!
We would like to touch an important and interesting topic for any player - ingame weapons. Let’s start from the swords, as the most classic and clear weapon to everyone.
According to the Warhold’d lore, before enslaving, people didn’t use swords due to their complexity and manufacturing cost . Most often they used hunting weapons or some tools in battles. Private soldier was armed with a spear or an axe. As a long-range weapons they used slings and bows.



Due to their physical weakness, Morh’s preferred to use melee weapons like daggers and spears, and for the distance battle they used magical powers.
Morh’s upgraded their defensive and offensive weapons by using humans as gladiators and fighters. Long two-edged sword with a wide blade became an innovation. It was good for wounding any enemy in the arena as well as in a local conflict between the Houses.



After the bloody rebellion and when Khadahs was defeated, people didn’t even think to give up such an effective weapon as a sword, and continued to improve it. By now humanity armed with a variety of species of bladed weapons, which have a common name - "sword", but often vary greatly in design.
Marauder’s sword - a fusion of humans smithing, secret knowledge and magic. Each death by the sword, dedicated to the chaotic deity Marlet, changes both the owner and the blade. You can easily determine how experienced Marauder, just make one look at his weapon.



Is it good when that fighter is on your side, yeh?

Hello and welcome to the 20th page of developer diary! As far as you know we have been actively improving our character models. The most important stem is animations improving . Our animator - Evgeny is ready to tell something about his work.

- Today I finished  assembling motion animations for improved Marauder model. Now he can move in eight sides with unique animations, copying the real man. Speed, legs trajectory movement, position of the head, hands and body tilt was picked up for each type of movement. The work was quite  painstaking, but it was worth it.

The process of working on an animation, you can see on the screenshots.



Of course, i will continue modifying motion animation of this character, because each version of the equipment requires own animation. It is important to do to avoid problems with physics and collisions, as well as to emphasize the individuality of the character.

I'm sure that I can please you soon with a new and great animation for all characters.

Hi! It's high time to open the veil of secrecy over another aspect of working on our project. Today, our game designer Herman will talk about the interface map and its implications for the future development of the game.

A lot of people may have an obvious question - why is it needed? According to the name, it serves to visually demonstrate the ways of the player's movement between different game interfaces, showing the scenario of the player's interaction with the game.

Working with the map allows you to optimize the speed of obtaining the information needed by the player in terms of its importance and frequency of use. Also it has a great value for the team. Each team member can understand the big picture (without going into the technical descriptions of different interfaces).

After the map will be finally formed, we can accurately say how the player will interact with the game world. It should be understood that the map will be optimized during game development. As a result, the player will be comfortable to interact with the inner world of the game.

In the screenshots you can see the interface map at the maximum distance and a few initial blocks.


Soon I will tell you new details about the preparation of gaming interfaces. In the meantime, I would like to ask the community - which games interfaces did you like the most?

During the "Slavery War", bows are appeared to be a real and not the most pleasant surprise for the Morkhs. A lot of arrows, fired from ambushes or from the backs of the infantry formation, found their targets. After defeating and enslavement, humans did not lose touch with their fearsome weapons. As slaves, many humans used bows for hunting, to entertain masters on the gladiator arenas or to destroy the competitors during the Great Houses battles.

In the years of the uprising and the ensuing war, human's archers proved to be harsh and ruthless fighters. Many of them stayed in the covers, giving precious time to the rebels, harassing the enemy, killing commanders and committing acts of sabotage. After the victory over Kadarkh, many archers have founded their own schools, where they developed a system for training the real elite among shooters - Snipers.
The training of snipers start at the four year of age. After twelve years of daily, rigorous training apprentice leaves the school as an unbeatable master of war. They can hit targets at a distance up to 400 meters, ambush, be a scouts and a saboteurs. Those who thought that it is easier to confront with Sniper in a close combat, are fertilizing the earth.


Snipers Bow has no price, because it is made individually for its owner.

Each Fatebender yearns to own one of the snipers, using it to solve the most difficult and dangerous tasks.

If you think that management of your Warhold is an easy task, then your neighbours, nature, thugs and coincidence are going to dissuade you from thinking so.

Recently we published the Marauder's sword story in the world of Warhold. Today, it will receive a rather unexpected continuation. Some time ago, our team decided to change the Marauder's gameplay, and, consequently, his weapons.
Yes, you heard right. Goodbye shield and sword, hello pair swords! Let's see how we searched the options for new weapons. As always, it all started with a dozen options, from the most banal to the absolutely futuristic. After that, four most interesting variants were chosen and on their basis six new models were created. The weapon should have been brutal enough to support the Marauder's image.



Since, weapon and armor shouldn't just go together but should multiply the visual effect from each other, it took us long to to find the right one. When we have chosen the most interesting option, several variants of this sword were created. Quite threatening and brutal, right?
And now the sword is already in color. Look how good it is! A real predator!


After the concept artist finished his part of the work, it was the turn of our 3D-artist. The main difficulty was in creating "Corruption" on the sword. I had to redo the work several times to make it look organic and realistic. Even with a quick look, the weapons turned out to be quite menacing! We hope that you will like it!

Hello! Today's diary will be short, but as informative as possible.

First of all our team actively preparing the project for the next open alpha test.

Several internal client and server tests were performed and we have revealed some problems. Now programmers and game designers are actively fixing bugs.

The next stage of game maps optimization is completed.

We are actively working on game characters. We are constantly improving animations, and working on new skills and abilities.

Concept-artists continue their work on improving the appearance of characters, as well as new buildings for the city.

More good news - soon! Stay with us!

Hello, dear friends! It's time to tell you more about ongoing work on the Marauder and short-term plans to improve the character.
Let's start with the reason of changing the concept of the hero. All fantasy games have three or four variants of the main weapon and a set of rather trivial skills. Our game designers do their best to avoid it. Soberly assessing the competitiveness of our characters, we decided to focus on really unique game mechanics, tied to the personal ability of players to control the character. How is this possible? Let's take a look on it!

To get started, after weighing all the pros and cons, the game designers decided to take away shield and sword, because there's already another character, armed in the same way. The question was - how we can arm a fighter who is fighting in the middle of the battle? Two-handed sword? Maybe but it's pretty corny. So we have chosen paired weapon ! The choice fell on swords of the type falchion (European bladed weapons with blade that expands towards the end with unilateral sharpening). Of course, serious reworking and styling of weapons was needed. At that moment our artists looked attentively at the working tools of the butchers. The final result surpassed our expectations.

Of course, this style of combat require certain class of armor. A lot of hours were spent by the artists to find the right forms and masses, which will make it visually wider and heavier. It was also necessary to exclude details which could raise doubts and make the character cartoonish or could adversely affect on the animation of the character. And, of course, the worst headache was imparting of insect feeling to the Marauder's appearance, and it was necessary to exclude similarity to a typical demon.
So, we have a well-protected and armed fighter. It looks like that we have everything and we should be happy, but it is not as simple as it looks like. Like any tank, the Marauder is not able to develop a significant speed. His weapons do serious damage, but fast characters will have a chance to dodge, block the attack or just run away. You can say that it is a target No, it's not so simple!

One of the main Marauder's feature is the ability to restore his life at the cost of the enemy's blood. A kind of vampirism, but without pale skin, black raincoat, fangs and bites. Instead of them, scary swords and puddles of blood on the ground. Yes, you got it right. The marauder is able to regenerate his health by absorbing the blood scattered over the surface of the battlefield. Very convenient, especially when you rush into the middle of battle.



If you decide that the improved Marauder is a typical solo character, then you are mistaken. He is very valuable for teamplay. One of his skills redirects some of the damage from the allies to the Marauder. Can it embarrass you when, literally under the feet, the sea of blood is poured to restore health?
Work on new game mechanics for the Marauder continues. We have a lot of ideas how to make this character very interesting, both for solo players, and for fans of team play.

Stay with us!

Hello everyone! Today we are going to show sketches and concept arts of the jeweler's workshop. The building will be available in the city.


On sketches, you can see that the process of finding a form for a new building was quite complicated. However, Maria perfectly finished her task.


As you guessed it, in this building lives master who will be responsible for the jewelry that affects the gameplay. A little later we will describe as much details as possible the possibilities provided by this building.


See you soon on our diary!

Welcome to our 26th Developers Diary pages! Today we will return to the topic of improving the Marauder, and specifically to animation.

As you could see in a lot of games, if the characters have a meager animations, then the game itself does not cause that storm of emotions that could be. We understand it perfectly, so our animators are working hard to revive the characters.

Today Marauder got animations of walking, running, jumping, stopping and idleness. Yes, yes! Idleness animation is also present. It gives soul to Marauder, makes him not just a plastic dummy. It makes character interesting and alive.



Of course, not without modifications. Upon the request of the game designers, the Marauder lost his hunched ness and some unnecessary sharpness in his movements. Also, the "weight" of the weapon was increased, making the attacks look more impressive.

Our readers were interested in where the animators get their inspiration. How did you come up with a motion for fictional heroes? The answer lies on the surface - games, movies and sometimes cartoons or anime. Our Marauder received many of his movements due to Uruk-Hai from the movie "The Lord of the Rings"



Most of the time now we spent on fine-tuning the animation and smoothing the joints of different states of the hero. But this process will soon be optimized, which will greatly accelerate the acquisition of new animations by characters!

See you soon on the pages of our diary!

Hello everyone! Today in our diary we will show the progress of the FX's for the Marauder's skills.

We have already told earlier that the Marauder will be able to actively restore his health by absorbing the blood of opponents. It is enough to come closer and the blood itself will literally jump to the Marauder and will be absorbed by him. How fortunate that the enemy will lose blood during a fight with you.

https://vk.com/doc72621050_444986839?hash=e8bedd9cc301bfd77a&dl=7bdef08a028b8907a3

But defense tactic is the best way to lose the game. When the enemy is strong enough and prepared, the Marauder uses blood as a weapon. A slight effort of will and blood gathers into a clot, that can cause serious damage to any enemy.

https://vk.com/doc72621050_444986837?hash=618769c79daba9cdee&dl=ad5c3f6107c354fbf3

Be careful! Marauder master of unexpected and dangerous attacks.

Hello! It's high time to share the latest news!
First, the Reaper lost his shield and kama (battle sickle) and now have a battle scythe. And now the character became more dangerous in close combat, especially for groups of opponents. One powerful swing and their souls will go to the Reaper's personal collection.


Secondly, we're actively working on the animation of this character. Running, walking, idle state was given to animators without difficulty, but there are really difficult moments. The character is armed with a rather unusual weapon, and animators should be very carefully with control of scythe's movements in space. For example, when Reaper uses his skills - the scythe remains in one hand, while the second commits an action. From the outside it seems simple, but in fact it is rather complicated process!



And thirdly, our FX specialist started working on effects for the Reaper's skills. It promises to be interesting! We will definitely devote a separate chapter of the diary to this topic.



See you soon on the pages of our diary!

Today, our diary will be overviewed, as the team is busy in completing of main tasks, which we have already talked about.

But let's start in order. As always, the first will be game designers. These guys work hard. They test combat mechanics, as well as the initial tuning of the city quarters. There are a lot of things to do, but they are doing their best.


Of course, in close cooperation with game designers, our programmers doing their job. Warhold, like any serious and complex project, has its own bugs, but in the same time programmers must implement the features specified in the plan. They sit up late in the evening, so that the new build should be released in the morning.
The department of level design and game environment with maniacal perseverance optimize the city, making it more and more attractive.

Our artists are working hard to prepare sketches for a citizen's generator. Honestly, the job now is hellish, but the guys are confidently going to finish it, soon we will tell you interesting details about it.

Animators continue their work on the Reaper. Yes, it's a tough nut to crack with a magnificent scythe, but animation for it is a real challenge!

More news - soon! See ya next time!

Hello! Today we will talk with our UI designer. Say hello to Vladimir - our UI designer.

- And the first question. How complex will interfaces be in the game? What players should be prepared for?

- Since we have rather complex mix of crafting and battles in the game, interfaces should be as convenient and flexible as possible. We do not want to bury a player under a hundreds of menus. My main goal is that the player should always understands where he is, what tasks can be solved using the interface, and also what he should expect from it. This process is really complicated, so the interfaces development looks like a spiral.. Initially we laid the possibility of upgrading and improving the interface during creating our project.

We must highlight the cornerstones that laid in the visualization of interfaces - its purity, intuition and speed of information perception. Separately, id like to mention that the interface style itself is minimalist and flat. We took into account the experience of our colleagues, the tradition of creating interfaces that are understandable and close to the players, but we tried to avoid excessive old-schooling. We already have experience for interesting innovations in interfaces and gradually we will introduce them into the game.
Take a look at one of our interfaces.


- Ok, we deal with it. Tell me about the icons, most often they mislead the players.

- As I mentioned above, the style is going to be minimalistic, with elements of flavectronic graphics, like the games philosophy itself, which includes mix-technologies. The size of the icons is very large and they carry a large information load - there are both advantages and disadvantages, or rather complications. On the one hand, the icons are a very compact element, close to the ancient Egyptian writing. One element has image, character and the necessary information. On the other hand icons interpretation and understanding, especially when there are dozens or hundreds of them.


We are trying to make the icons informative, but in the same time simple as a traffic light. Ideally, if players could intuitively understand or feel what each icon stands for, without being distracted from the gameplay.

- Thank you for your time, we are looking forward to new interfaces and icons!

Hello, dear readers!
In today's diary, we would like to say a few words about the icons in our game, as well as to conduct a small experiment.

But all in order. Vector graphics became the basis for the technology of drawing interfaces and icons for the game. This process is very laborious, but it allows to prepare high quality resources with the possibility of flexible scaling. Why is it so important? In the conditions of conducting a project in a spiral, we can quickly and effectively make the necessary changes almost without loss of time and quality. Well, now let's go to the experiment!


We removed the name of skills for several icons and now we want to hear from you how I can name the skills "encrypted" under these icons. Do not be shy in your assumptions, by this you will be able to greatly help the project!