Rise of Valhalla, a Viking Invasion RTS-MOBA Hybrid

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Hello All,

Today is our first dev log for Rise of Valhalla. Any and all feedback is welcome!

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RoV is an attack/defense, multiplayer-only RTS-MOBA hybrid being developed for PC. Players will choose between the fierce Anglo-Saxons (defenders) or the mighty Vikings (attackers). They will have 15-25 minutes in a single match to fight for victory. Over the course of the battle, players will level-up, allowing them to upgrade their units and heroes, as well as increase the size of their army.

In todayā€™s dev log, we are going to look at the melee unit for the Vikings: the Vikingr Warrior.

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ā€¢ Vikingr Warriors:

Mighty foot-soldiers, who utilize strength and skill at arms to crush their opponents

Abilities:
ļ‚§ Leap Attack (target unit or ground, 15 second cooldown):
All Vikingr leap ahead (11 m) to close distance and strike fiercely.
They critically strike for 200% dmg with their weapons if they are within range of an enemy unit.
ļ¶ Any units not within range will leap but not attack.
ļ¶ Ability can target either a unit or ground.

Equipment: Hand-axe, round shield, light armor (furs and leather) & defensive charms (runes, animal teeth).
Strengths: Ample health, speed and damage, and magic resistance.
Weaknesses: Little armor, high point cost, short range melee.

The Vikingr are fast and brutal. They can close the distance on high-damage, ranged units with their leap ability (which can be upgraded to snare targets). They have roughly twice the health and damage of a single Anglo-Saxon Footman (the standard melee unit for the defenders), and they can kill low-armored targets within seconds.

Please check out our website at: http://www.riseofvalhalla.com

If you liked our artist Danielā€™s work and want some freelance stuff done, here is his Freelancer Profile

Cheers,

Dunamis Studios

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Hey Dunamis, the quality of your artistā€™s work is very nice.
The first thing that stood out to me was the facial hair on the first image looks like a fake beard. Not fake like itā€™s 3D fake, instead fake like the character is wearing a disguise to hide his identity. I donā€™t have a suggestion how to make the hair look more natural because I donā€™t use zbrush. But Max and Maya have good hair FX tools that create believable natural looking hair.

One other thing, how close is the camera going to be able to zoom into the environment? How close is the camera going to be able to get to the characters?
This looks like a considerable amount of upfront work for each character if the zoom level doesnā€™t get close enough where one character would occupy at least one third of the frame or more. Just my opinion.
I would think generating normals from a tone map or diffuse map would result in the same quality level you will ultimately get from high resolution sculpts, and would also speed up efficiency on the art side by reducing the need to generate high resolution sculpts for characters that will ultimately be seen from a distance in a RTS style game.

Just a suggestion.

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Thank you for your feedback! I will pass that along to our artist. He has been generating high resolution sculpts for art and future cgi purposes in ZBrush. He then goes through the process of retopologizing the unit down to about 2700 polys (as stated in the dev.).

Thanks again for the comments. Cheers.

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Dev Log #2

Last week we outlined the art that went into the Vikingr Warrior unit. Rather than take you through the whole process of polychopping, weā€™d just like to show you the ā€œfinishedā€ product. Keep in mind this will be viewed in game from an RTS perspective, so the views here are much closer than in-game camera will show.

The final model stands at 2700 polygons (including armor and such):

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Viking angry!

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Mean mugginā€™.

As always, please let us know what you think. Any and all feedback is helpful and welcome.

Please check us out at: www.riseofvalhalla.com
Follow us on Twitter
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All the art was done by Daniel Merticariu.

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Dev Log #3: Vikingr Warrior Animations

While Daniel was crafting the Viking details, our animator Kieran Williams, has been hard at work on giving him an appropriately belligerent personality.

Keep in mind the videos posted here are GIFs. If you want to see the full animation, we have posted the YouTube links below the images.

Vikingr Warrior Run:

YouTube Run Animation

Viking Warrior Attack:

YouTube Attack Animation

Viking Warrior Block:

YouTube Block Animation

OK, for the idle animation, we wanted to show you how it came together.

First, the breathing:

Then, the axe throw:

And finally, the Idle Animation:

YouTube Idle Animation

Thanks for giving our dev log a read. Please let us know what you think; any and all feedback is welcome.

Please check us out at: www.riseofvalhalla.com
Follow us on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
All the animations were done by Kieran Williams. Please check out his Portfolio

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Hey Dunamis looks like your team is progressing well.

Just a couple minor things I see I thought Iā€™d point out.

  1. The beard on the warrior still looks like a ā€˜fakeā€™ beard prop an actor would wear when heā€™s pretending to hide his identity on a comical skit - like Saturday Night Live or any other similar comedic skit show. Sorry if thatā€™s a harsh comparison but thatā€™s truly the first thing that comes to mind when seeing the beard.
    I did a quick a dirty paint over to show how this could be improved. Excuse the rough photoshopping. Blending the skin into the beard mesh on the low poly character will give the visual effect of the beard growing from the vikings face instead of looking pasted on.

  2. At the exact point when the viking catches the axe his wrist is bent in a weak and unnatural angle. This is a simple fix as the wrist just needs to be in a stronger angle (straighter) at the point when he makes contact with the axe handle. Then perform the follow through motion which is the same arch the wrist performs, but animate the wrist bending down through this arch.
    You can test this easily if youā€™d like by twirling a hammer just like the viking twirls the axe. If you were to catch the hammer with your wrist at the same angle as the vikings wrist youā€™d probably risk either dropping the hammer or hurting your wrist.

Hope these small critiques help.

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ANMATOR2b,

Thank you so much for the helpful critiques. These sorts of comments are what help games to be great! We look forward to crafting the ā€œbeard of the agesā€.

Cheers!

1 Like
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Dev. Log #4: Viking Leap

Hey All,

Today we wanted to feature the Vikingr Warriorā€™s Leap ability. Please let us know what you think!

Abilities:
ļ‚§ Leap Attack (target unit or ground, 15 second cooldown):
All Vikingr leap ahead (11 m) to close distance and strike fiercely.
They critically strike for 200% dmg with their weapons if they are within range of an enemy unit.
ļ¶ Any units not within range will leap but not attack.
ļ¶ Ability can target either a unit or ground

Since Rise of Valhalla is an asymmetrical RTS and the Vikings are the attackers, they need to have quick-striking offensive abilities. Leap helps the Vikingr Warriors to quickly close the distance between themselves and pesky ranged units so that they can deal out death quickly and brutally.

Here is our basic Leap Animation:

YouTube Basic Leap

Notice this version does not show the Vikingr leaping very far and thereā€™s a bit of a slow-mo effect. That is because in-game the leap will be of variable length.

This is a bit closer to what the Leap would look like in-game:

YouTube Leap Attack

As always, we appreciate your feedback.

Cheers.

Please check us out at: www.riseofvalhalla.com
Follow us on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
All the animations were done by Kieran Williams.

1 Like
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Good job!
I think the landing needs a little bit more power into it as this is an attack, right now it feels like he is just jumping ( at least to me), when you are leaping forward to land lower or at the same height as you are, you usually propel your body forward rather than backwards, with a body position backwards you jump on higher platforms or something you donā€™t know if you will reach. Also his overall stand feels closed and doesnā€™t come out as much as agressive as he should be, maybe try a more extreme pose for the attack and landing. The jump is a bit too long also for him to cover that distance directly from standing but if you are not going for a realistic approach on this then itā€™s ok.

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Thanks for the feedback! You guys are great.

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Your characters are looking good. Keep it up.

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Dev Log #5: Weapon Effects

Hey All,

So, our high-res model of the Footman unit is about done. Before we give him a reveal, we thought it would be fun to post a teaser of an early version of our map as well as some shots of our WIP weapon upgrades.

Each unit has an upgrade tree so that through the match you can specialize them. Here are some previews of our Fiery Axe and Frost Axe upgrades for the VW.

Fiery Axe:

ā€¢ Attacks may set opponents aflame (burning DoT and reduced chance to block)

Frost Axe:

ā€¢ Chance on hit to chill enemy, reducing movement speed

Let us know what you think! Feedback is always welcome.

Particles were created using Particle Playground 2. Used Medieval Environment Asset for our test map.

Check us out: Rise of Valhalla

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Dev Log # 6: Anglo-Saxon Footman

Hey All,

As promised, here is the Anglo-Saxon Footman, the bread-and-butter unit for the defenders. Enjoy!

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Footmen

Well-equipped soldiers who rely on discipline and coordination to pummel the enemy

Abilities:
Dashing Shield Bash (min. range 4 meters, max range 15 meters target ally or enemy squad, 20 second cooldown)

  • Dash to the enemy and stun for 2.5 seconds.
  • Any enemies encountered will be knocked to the side and slowed to 60% movement for 2 seconds

Equipment: short sword, kite shield, and medium armor
Strengths: low cost; effective in large numbers; high armor; can overwhelm other lightly armored targets
Weaknesses: low damage individually; low health; slow movespeed

And for the final render:

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As always, thanks for the feedback. We look forward to showing you some sweet footman animations and, in a couple of weeks, a Vikingr vs. Footman showdown.

Cheers.

If you like Danielā€™s work, check out his portfolio

Check us out at our website

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Hey All,

Itā€™s been awhile and we have been deep in development. We wanted to show you a bit of what weā€™ve been working on. Here are some animations for the Anglo-Saxon footman unit (see above).

Footman Idle

Footman Dashing Shield Bash

Footman Attack

As always, weā€™d love your feedback. Thanks for the support!

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Our artist, Daniel, and our animator, Kieran, have also be hard at work on the Anglo-Saxon caster unit, the Bishop.

Bishop:

Devout men of faith who use holy forces to heal their allies and hinder their enemies

Abilities:

  • Core of Light (no target, channeling, 6 duration, 25 sec cooldown):

    • Blind enemies within 15 m of bishop with inner light, reducing chance to hit by 90% for 6 seconds; channeling ability.

  • See Upgrade Tree for more abilities.

  • Equipment: blessed robes, holy staff

  • Strengths: magic damage, passive magic resistance, strong healing and support.

  • Weaknesses: No physical armor, little health.

Bishop Attack

Bishop Holy Shield Ability

Bishop Healing Ability

As always, weā€™d love to know what you think. Thanks all!

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Rise of Valhalla is currently looking to add another programmer to our team. Please message us if you are interested; be sure to include programming experience and other pertinent information.

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Hey Dunamis - the footman attack looks a little weak I think. Kind of like heā€™s not sure if he wants to attack or not but does so anyway, reluctantly. I think as a common soldier with a light weapon it may look better if he puts a little more effort into the swing. Not an out of control swing because he is a well disciplined soldier, but put a little more weight and force into the swing with his body to ā€˜attackā€™ with that weapon. He kinda looks like heā€™s attacking reservedly, like he doesnā€™t want to.

Bishop looks real nice.

Keep it up!

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