#World of J'ard

[jjeinn-tae]

I had my first shift back at work yesterday, video most of the way done. I agreed to pick up a shift today (in exchange for a different off day that is going to be a guaranteed day off from now on), but I wasn't nearly as much better as I'd thought. So, here I am at home.

It's kind of weird being officially disabled now. Like, I've known for years that I technically am, but like it being official is a different thing. Also, I really expected it to be about my joints that got me there, but apparently lungs first.

As a world-building exercise, a few days ago I started throwing together a magic the gathering set for J'ard. Basically just throwing things together for the cultures I have thought a lot on. So, the Dwürm, Lohr, Shora'adi, Domeri, Elves (YoShin, I'm unsure if I've ever said that) Yurchans and Yanjurians at the moment. I'm partially doing this to kind of force me to think up like, more actual individuals, because the amount of named characters that aren't from one mythology or another is exceedingly few. Although I'm talking about this because I've done two legendary creatures so far, and just find it hilarious that these two most prominent "named" characters literally do not have a name as a point. We have "The White Lady, Queen of Storms" and "The Unshackled One" so 3 epithets for 2 characters even! I hadn't realized it yet, but I've named absolutely no one relevant, beyond some (presumeably) dwarf guy named Kalbèn who founded a town and named it after himself.

Who are the Emperors of the Domeri, Yanju and Lohr? No idea, beyond Yanju is a neat guy. How about any of the royals in the elven dual-monarchy? No idea, despite probably being the culture with the most developed legal system at the moment.

I mean, part of it is that only the Dwürm really have a language far enough along to actually do significant amounts of naming, but I have sound inventories for every group I've mentioned at least. So the people who have "names" are just the people who can't be named. The Queen of Storms is basically a messianic figure for the Shora'adi and just never ended up getting a name. I mentioned it in the Shora'adi post, but since that was a long while ago that I've posted about J'ard... Humans in the setting when born on a leyline become imbued with that leyline's energies. The Shora'adi have two passing through their territory, and she was the exceedingly rare twice-imbued leychild. Immediately taken from her peasant parents by the cult that sprung up around her, which ended up usurping the previous monarchy.

And then the Unshackled One... I've not written on the Unshackled One yet. They had a name, a lifetime ago. They might remember it, but no one else does, surely. Also a religious leader (among the elves) although I'd compare them more to Buddha. You know, I'm going to do some more J'ard lore posts.

#World of J'ard #magic the gathering #mse #custom magic card #Shora'adi

[jjeinn-tae]

So, in my somewhat more-coherent-than-before illness, I decided to watch this video, and I find it interesting to think about. He talks about 3 games, Bioshock Infinite, Assassin's Creed 2, and Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

Each one, he compares something or another to another game in particular. With Bioshock, it's to Last of Us, Majora's Mask to Ocarina of Time, and Assassin's Creed just to its entire genre.

I've never played Infinite, so I don't really have an opinion on that part, but I have strong opinions on MM and AC2 here. He talks about recently replaying the N64 Zeldas, and being blown away by OoT, and since my mom gave me an N64 for Christmas/Birthday while I was in the hospital, I have played both of them again recently myself. To which, my opinions on them really haven't changed. I still really don't like OoT all that much (finally beating it for the first time though!) despite having some core memories from it when I was a kid, and MM is still one of my favorite games of all time.

AC2 though... He talks about with all the derivatives off of it in the genre, he misses back when it was the highlight of the genre for him, and like... I cannot agree there. I played it when it came out, and gameplay-wise was fun, but one of the big plot twists just killed the series for me as a whole. I was vaguely wondering about AC1 after this video, but like, AC1 has been retroactively ruined in plot by said AC2 plot twist... Like, given the games I've been dev-blogging about (even if it's still basically non-existent since getting hit by the truck) don't really have heavily involved plot in the game directly (although J'ard has stupid deep world lore) I wouldn't be surprised if there was an impression that I didn't find plot important in games, but no, it's a very key part for me in games that have it... Just, I'm also quite happy to spend unreasonable amounts of time in roguelikes. Xp

I don't exactly know why I'm posting this, honestly, but I do feel it's an interesting video, and there aren't really any plot spoilers for any of the games in there that I noticed.

#Youtube

[jjeinn-tae]

Welcome to J’ard

Hey and welcome!  I’m Jjeinn, and I’m making a real-time roguelike inspired by Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, Unexplored and From Soft in general.  Elden Ring might have beat me to the punch on a lot of ideas, but I still have my own improvements to the system to try out!

I mostly post about my game, and I’ve been trying to get some actual posts about the world of J’ard (which I’ve been working on for 5-ish years now, there are even some languages for it).  But occasionally some other things that I find important, or just art (my own, or others) finds it’s way here.

To help navigating my blog, I’m now instating some tags for searching.  Older posts are currently not implemented into this, so it’s only going to be things starting March 2022.

Feel free to ask whatever you feel like about my game or setting!  While a few things are presently secret, I love answering what I can!  :)

#World of J’ard -> posts about the worldbuilding.

#J’ardscape Under the Hood -> posts about the underlying mechanics of the game, or just programming things.

#J’ardscape Gameplan -> similar to under the hood, but more a general explanation of various gameplay mechanics, rather than a deep “how they work”.

#J’ardscape Graphics -> posts about making models and other visual assets for the game.

#J’ardscape Patch Notes -> posts about new completed versions of the game.

And then a quick project as an attempt to publish something before several more years, PulsonicDreams!  It has two tags.

#Pulsonic Dreams and #Pulsonic Dreams Patch Notes

And twitter @jjeinngamedev

#World of J'ard #J'ardscape Under the Hood #J'ardscape Graphics #J'ardscape Patch Notes #J'ardscape Gameplan #Pulsonic Dreams #Pulsonic Dreams Patch Notes

[jjeinn-tae]

So, I decided to use my nice new graph Notebooks for some rework of the Dwürmric writing system! Here is Dwürm script 2.0, in both the stone rune style (first) and the pen script. As you might notice, the runes are an alphabet, albeit with some syllable notation with how they overlap, while the pen writing is an abugida.

And here's the same passage in "pen"

"Jo dy ün dwav ot' gaf dalumèt." is the first line of the Dwürmric translation of "Diggy Diggy Hole" although it is more literally translated as "I am a Dwarf and hole digger" but that's also how they would say “hole digging.”

#J'ard #World of J'ard #worldbuilding #fictional world #conlang #conscript #neography #Dwürm #Dwürmric

[jjeinn-tae]

Quiet progress

Hey all!  I’ve not updated in a while, mostly because there’s not much to show despite me still working on it.  I changed a bit of the IK stuff with the model which has required reanimating some things, and like, now that I have the code where I want it to be for the root motion system, I’m taking more care with the animations than just “something that works so I can make the game work.”  I will probably have some big updates to post next week though!

I still want to give you guys something to look at, so um...  Here!  Some more messy Yanjurian calligraphy! (Under a bar because tumblr made this huge).

“I’m running over a mountain away from the spitting orc.”

#indie game #indie games #indie developer #indie dev #indie game dev #Indiegame #indiegamedev #indy games #indy game #indy dev #game development #gamedev #devlog #game dev #devblog #game design #J'ard #J'ardscape #World of J'ard #yanju #Yanjurian #progress report #Mini update #conlang #conscript #neography

[jjeinn-tae]

Dwarven Beards

So, I still have another day of work left to do, so I thought I’d drop a lore post!  Or, I guess maybe just a worldbuilding post, since I guess that might not technically be lore?  Regardless, I want to talk some Dwavin Physiology, that lack of r is not a typo, that’d be how they say it.

So, my dwarves are bigger than the typical fantasy dwarves, being a bit more than 5ft tall on average (they’re 160cm tall on average, which is a higher average than some countries on Earth!) not varying particularly heavily between sex, but dwarven men do still average slightly taller.  They have skin tones best described as stone-like, ranging from basalt, to slate, to granite to limestone.  Which yes, I realize that’s quite a gamut, but the important part is they are earthy toned regardless of anything else.  Like many other fantasy settings, my dwarves have broadish faces, have strongly defined brows, and kind of square-ish ears and noses.

But of course, the thing that everyone is always interested with when dwarves come up.  Do Dwarven women have beards?  And the answer is, sometimes!  But that’s also the answer for the men.  Pretty universally, dwarves can grow beards.  They have a strong culture about all hair, in that it must be kept perfectly.  The style is not particularly important, as long as it is clearly intentional, and well maintained, at least in theory.  There is of course fashion elitism abound.  So, there are definitely a great many a dwarf without the time to keep their beards in good condition, who opt to shave, or perhaps they work in a field that it gets in the way, or would be in danger, in those times they might also shave, or keep it quite short and trim.  

The dwarven beard, however, is a great resource to the dwarves.  It is a garden of microbes, that the dwarves are...  almost aware of.  There are certain methods of care that they have come into that helps this microbiome flourish, and in some ways, a well kept beard is as much of a pet as a look.  And while like most pets, it provides a certain joy and satisfaction, it also works to help filter the air that the dwarves breathe.  This trait is well known among the dwarves, and all miners, mushroom hunters, woodworkers, and other professions that might involve inhaling a lot of dust or similarly nasty stuff have magnificent beards, regardless of sex.

This filter is one of two major things that the dwarves have over us to avoid illness.

#J'ard #J'ardscape #worldbuilding #fictional world #World of J'ard

[jjeinn-tae]

More game design during work

So, I think I’m finally recovered to actually start implementing some things that I’ve been planning out while working.  I think I have about 2 hours worth of coding to do with what I’ve written out, and I hope to have it, and attacking again by the end of tomorrow, which might be a bit of a tight timeline, but we’ll see!

But, in my wanting to do more lore posts, I was wanting to be able to have a map with the nations written how they would write, but I have a problem there...  I can’t really work on Shora’adi until I at least do some preliminary work on Yanjurian, as Yanjurian supplied the writing system for a lot of the continent.  And without Shora’adi, I can’t really work on Vishtallar, as that’s kind of a creole between Shora’adi and Dwürm.  I’ve made a few attempts at writing systems for Yanjurian, but nothing has quite clicked.  Until tonight!  I had inspiration for numbers, after thinking of what Yanju must actually mean in their language (it’s the name of the ruling dynasty.  Like how we call China “China” because of the Qing dynasty, and never updated really).  Yanju means “3 Hills” I’ve decided, which gave me how their number system works, and then I did some geographic characters, as well as their character for “person” which is a rather exclusive term in their language, actually.

But yeah, in what I am currently thinking for their characters, here is the name of “The Heavenly Kingdom of Yanju”

DēnGōnYŏuYānJù

I know I haven’t really spoken much about Yanju beyond that they’re a vague China analogue, and they’re not exactly friendly with the Dwürm, and I’m not planning on really changing that just yet, but I hope my aliased script is interesting at least.  I really like this direction, and I think more complex characters will have some really neat aesthetic when I start doing them.

#indie games #indie game #indie developer #indie dev #indie game dev #Indiegame #indiegamedev #indy games #indy game #indy dev #game development #gamedev #devlog #game dev #devblog #game design #J'ard #J'ardscape #World of J'ard #worldbuilding #fictional world #Yanju #progress report #Mini update

[jjeinn-tae]

I feel like this is the nicest I’ll ever write this character, and want to preserve it.  I’m getting kind of decent at Yanjurian writing now, a bit more coherent than a Yanjurian doctor writes a prescription.  Xp

That means “ear” by the way.  It looks vaguely like a halfling ear if you squint enough.  Or, I guess since I know what they call themselves now, a...  Oh wait, what do I romanize that consonant as...  Um, they are the çén then?  I guess I don’t have a romanization for this sound yet, and while I thought the IPA had a symbol for this sound, I can’t find it.  I’m basically pinning my tongue between my molars on both sides and doing an SH sound.

ramble ramble ramble, I should be asleep.

#worldbuilding #fictional world #World of J'ard #yanju #conlang #conscript #neography #devblog

[jjeinn-tae]

Animations and animations

So, I have started just throwing a few animations that are just the root movement out to get my blend tree going.  Here’s my combat movement one currently.

While quite possibly not the best way to go about things, this is an expansion of my old system for directional animations for walking in combat, with the animation speed changing added in on top of that, which makes this look stupid complicated.  Xp  It’s probably not the best way to do this, but it’s a way I found on google, and clearly google knows best.  I’ve already thought of a better way, but I’m not implementing it yet.

I was going to test running around with exclusively root motion movement then, but in turning that off, speedPercent became 8 something, which is technically only a range from 0 to 1, so that was weird.  But constant running sure makes it difficult to test out walking.  I’ll have to deal with it tomorrow, as it’s too late to fix that when I work tomorrow.

#indie games #indie game #indie developer #indie dev #indie game dev #Indiegame #indiegamedev #indy games #indy game #indy dev #game development #gamedev #devlog #game dev #devblog #game design #J'ard #J'ardscape #World of J'ard #progress report #Mini update #unity #Unity3D

[jjeinn-tae]

Rough Elven Earring Sketch

This was one of the three earrings worn by the elf in my skit, it happens to be the first, like, major religious symbol for the Elves that I’ve come up with that I’ve actually liked.  They’ve always had a fondness for double-helixes in my mind (and actually have a crazy type of sword that utilizes them, kind of) but this, while rough, really feels to mesh well as iconography for YoäShin beliefs.

I also need to stop working on this one now or else I’ll actually go and make it perfect, and that’ll take hours.  Xp

#J'ard #World of J'ard #worldbuilding #fictional world #sketch

[jjeinn-tae]

Cultural Attraction

At the end of my shift, I had a random little scene pop into my head of a hypothetical modern-setting J’ard (which I think about a decent bit, I feel it’s a good idea to have which direction the societies are heading in addition to where they came from) that just kind of solidified a few things.  Namely, the Dwürm find “strong foreheads” alluring, and some details about traditional elven religious jewelry (At least, YoäShin elves, the primary culture).  And a few geography things because of that (which were accidentally true on the old map anyways!).  

Basically four friends are sitting at a booth in Dwürmland-equivalent of Starbucks.  On the left is a dwarven woman, and an elven man.  On the right, an orc woman, and honestly while I know there is a fourth, they are entirely unimportant to the little scene.

Dwarven lady, idly gazing across the table at her girlfriend: I love your forehead.

Elf dude: Her...  Forehead?

Dwarf: Yeah!  She could dust my bones with that thing!

The elf squints at the orc through his big glasses, neurons are clearly working overtime in his head, yet he seems to fail to understand.

I kind of really want to draw this.

#J'ard #World of J'ard #random musings #worldbuilding #fictional world

[jjeinn-tae]

Shora’ad

You know that “Ah-ah-ah, No!” sort of sound?  That’s what the a’a is.  Also, if you’ve been following along, you might have noticed I keep referring to these guys interchangeably between “The Shora’adi” and “Shora’ad.”  Partially it’s because that’s like the difference of saying “The Germans” and “Berlin, but referring to the German government” as I have a capitol for this nation, but no name currently.  Back in the D&D days this was the “Shora’adi Reach” though.

As previous post, this is an old map that needs redrawing, but it’s standing in for now.  You also hopefully see two hastily-drawn lines!  The blue travelling mostly east-west is the Leyline of Water, and the yellow traveling mostly north-south is the Leyline of Lightning (the south pole is like, right in the dwarves’ territory).  These are important to us here as the Shora’adi are a human civilization, and humans in J’ard, if born along a leyline become infused with the element of that leyline, usually only one, but the current queen (epithet “The White Lady”) is one of those 1-in-a-billion that got both, and got installed via coup as sort of a prophet queen.  She is rapidly changing things among the Shora’adi.  Some for the better, but she has a primary historical inspiration of Queen Isabella I of Spain, and thus we have our other colonizer, and one that brings “the true faith.”

Bullet points!

·         Races: Humans and Leyfolk.  There are smatterings of the “halflings” and Dwürm races (dwarves, goblins and orcs).  Then there are a variety of races in their colonies as well, but they’re considered “below” the Shora’adi.

·         Religion: The Shora’adi worship the native Rùa and lingta (Dragon Turtles and Great Toads) as ancient guardians of wisdom.  Through these they were taught the words of creation, and their queen is seen as an avatar of sorts for the words.

·         Magic: Through the words of creation, all is possible.  Speak and so it shall be.

·         Inspiration: Culturally, the Shora’adi were initially thought of as a “mix of Vietnam, the Middle East and Spain” as my stand-in before they evolved, and in D&D they were where the spirit folk were, but I’ve since just decided to make them human with the Leyfolk mechanic that I’d thought of for Domer.  I mention this though, as they have not had the time to flourish as their own culture nearly as much as the Dwürm yet.  I mean, currently J’ardscape is set in the FDB so it’s been my focus.

So now, I want to talk about one of the most fun cultural tangents that I’ve had in world building, not a happy one in-universe, but it was fun to just follow this train of thought as it happened.  Most of this continent is asian-themed, even the Dwürm in their isolation has a bit of that influence, particularly notable in their music currently.  I decided I wanted to have cultural dress for the cultures here inspired by Asia, so like qipao and áo dài inspired.  But, despite being vaguely medieval Vietnam in initial inspiration, the intent was always to be its own distinct culture as it evolved, so I didn’t want to just use an áo dài.  And thus, my idea not only started one of the big pillars of their culture (their service culture) it also created one of the major points of contention between the Shora’adi and  Dwürm!

I went “What if they had like a furisode sort of thing (those long dangly sleeves on kimono) but both sleeves were the same piece of fabric.”  So they’d have this neat and elegant loop in front of them.  But, I immediately get to thinking about “OK, so how long would they need that loop to be.” and *boom* service culture.  Because what does shortening that loop restricting your movement imply?  You are rich enough that you don’t need to do it yourself.  Thus, the shorter your little furisode loop, the higher your status is implied to be, and you can make an especially big showing of your status by having your loop be behind your back.  The rich employ many “servants” and are almost always attended by them.  The servants themselves are...  Um, kind of slaves?  Like, not in the American-style chattel slavery, but like more Roman style I guess?  They have rights, can own things and have days off, but typically they aren’t free to leave, and even if the initial agreement didn’t preclude leaving whenever, typically they get paid in “living necessities” and don’t really have an option anyways.

So yeah, the Dwürm don’t exactly like them either.  Not only for the slavery thing, but like, they preach being a meritocracy, and the Shora’adi are all about being lazy as far as they’re concerned.

But this also lead to one of the cute things about the culture, I think.  While the poor need to do things themselves, sometimes as a romantic gesture, one person will have their partner wear a restricted robe, and just treat them to a nice night like a rich person gets.  Not that it’s like, worth the slavery, but..  Again, I’m going to say that this setting doesn’t have utopias, though this is probably one of the more dystopian civilizations.

To her credit though, “The White Lady” (she’s also, like, literally white, like not real person white, she is white, like a whiteboard.)  personally doesn’t do the servant thing.  She at least publicly wears a robe with the loop burnt off.  But with her little holy order protecting her since she was an infant, how much of that is a publicity stunt or not is definitely a question I haven’t answered.

And that’s how a pretty loop in a robe lead to slavery.  Next one is going to be a lighter mood guys, I promise!

#J'ard #World of J'ard #worldbuilding #fictional world #Shora'adi

[jjeinn-tae]

The Union of Dwürmric Clans

Or, Fèrkalürn Dwürm Brafèrwèrds in the native Dwürmric.  Here’s their vague location in the old map.

When I get to redrawing, they are definitely getting some contiguous forest, although you can imagine most of the mountains are at least somewhat forested.  Also, I’ve only marked the nations I specifically called out in the previous post on this continent (aside for Yurcha which is probably on this map a bit above Yanju), there’s probably at least 4 other states here (and Visthallar in my modern reckoning is definitely smaller).

But yeah, that’s enough about outdated geography!  Time for some quick bullet points.

·         Races: Primarily the Dwürm (Dwarves, Goblins, Orcs); with some Humans, Leyfolk and “Halflings” from neighboring regions, and a few from the colonial regions (particularly more humans/leyfolk, drakelings and gnomes).

·         Religion: Ancestor Veneration (Ylkt’alfar Elkadet) as a soft state religion.

·         Government: Council of the constituent clans, ruled by an elected “High King”.

·         Magic:  Fèr’o, which is assuming the “mantle” of the honored ancestors, gaining traits and abilities of whichever tale you’re embodying at the time.  A sub-art of rune magic is also practiced.

I think possibly the thing that might catch the most eyes are the mention of Leyfolk, but I’ll leave that to when I get to Shora’ad.  As I mentioned in the previous post, the F.D.B. do not get along with any other nation on the continent particularly well, with the exception of probably some near-puppet border states, and somewhat icy relations with the Visthallar Ma’am.  They have sea capability however, and have begun colonizing, with special ships able to cut through the polar ice (fire runes on the bow).  While they kind of occupy a sort of position of an early Great Britain, their colonial doctrine is inspired more off of France (CONGRATULATIONS, YOU ARE NOW DWÜRM, THE SUPERIOR PEOPLE.  WELCOME.) where the colonized peoples are in theory welcomed, provided they throw away their silly primitive old ways.  Did I mention that this setting doesn’t have any utopias?

Their primary agriculture is “Olm” a type of “barley” that grows through rocky terrain, which they have created vertical farms for, and their main domesticated animal, the géza, a sort of mountain goat with many different breeds, used as a beast of burden, source of dairy and meat, and wool.  They supplement their food with mosses, fungus, chicken, “skvader” (winged rabbits, also domesticated, they’re very smart and often kept as pets), seafood, and a bunch of other plants I’ve not thought out yet.  A lot of their food is near-curry in consistency, and often ate with flatbread which they use as a scoop.

The traditional Dwürmric family unit is kind of a non-existent thing.  While they are monogomous in romantic relationship, that doesn’t really have anything to do with reproduction for them.  Children that arise between partners, or the common casual relations typically get raised collectively in a nursery, they often don’t know their direct parents.  Culturally speaking, everyone from the previous generation is collectively your ancestor (and are to be respected as such).  The clans sometimes break this tradition, raising your own children is kind of a privilege.

But yeah, the clans!  They are large direct “families” that also are kind of like guilds on top of that (or companies as it’s trending towards).  Sometimes they’ll adopt children from the nursery, but more often you apply through your education to a clan, and they might accept you.  Each clan themselves has a lot of leeway in how they govern their territories, and the clan as a whole gets a single vote on any issue in government.  Whether that vote is cast by the head of the clan, or a council within the clan, varies between them.

Um...  I could go on and on about these guys, I have at least 20 pages of material, a conlang (with two separate writing systems) some amature literature in that...  Part of their holy book and origin myths...  I welcome specific questions, and I’ll do another big post about some more Dwürm information soon, but I want to do a similar post about the Shora’adi tomorrow.

#J'ard #World of J'ard #worldbuilding #fictional world

[jjeinn-tae]

The World of J’ard

Pronounced like “yard” but “coughing” between the y and the rest of the syllable.  Just call it yard, it’s not like anyone actually speaks Dwürmric.

This world originated as a home campaign setting for D&D 3.5.  Like, a bit into the life of 5E, trying to incorporate everything from 3.5, as well as a bit of homebrew I was fond of.  As that campaign long-since never happened, I had the basis of this world that kept growing in my mind, so it’s become one of the game world settings for my video game ideas, and the one that I’m actually working on making a game for presently.  Here is the map I drew in the D&D days though (I am planning on doing a redraw of this with some changes at some point).

Notably, this is centered around the south pole, the edges of the map are vaguely past the equator at most, I’m undecided if there’s more land past this.  Also, my strategy for making these cultures is taking a vague inspiration from one or more (related or not) cultures as a starting point, and then developing them beyond that.  

But anyways, the main continent I’ve been working on is the big one on the left side.  It has the two nations that are colonizing, and nearing becoming the first global powers in the world.  The “Fèrkalürn Dwürm Brafèrwèrds” (The Union of  Dwürmric Clans) in that little backwards Scandinavia-looking bit; and the Shora’adi (I haven’t given their country a “real” name yet as Shora’adi is not nearly a language yet) on the “bottom left” of that continent.  They do not get along (although really, few get along with the FDB, our location in J’ardscape).  

There are 3 other nations that I’ve bothered at least partially naming on that continent.  The Vishtallar Ma’am (the entirely forested peninsula on the right) which is a transitional culture between the  Dwürm and the Shora’adi (leaning more Shora’ad).  The Yanju (most of the continent) and the Yurcha (The steppes upper left on the continent).  And don’t worry if you are entirely reasonably unsatisfied with the amount of information here on any of these, I have many, many pages of material written down on everything so I’m going to be doing many more posts focusing on individual nations.

5 of the other continents I have nations for as well.  We have the Lohr on the bottom end of that weird South America (They are where I put my stolen Rito from Zelda, as I always do in D&D settings) they’ve become more distince from the WW inspiration of them, but that kind of made them more BotW Rito.  Oops.  They’re still not literally Rito though.  You don’t have a monopoly on bird people Nintendo!  *shakes fist*.

That big island between the Lohr-land and the Dwürm-land has the elves.  Which I actually kind of want to keep them a bit secret for now, because they are neat.  There’s kind of two major elven cultures in holy war though.

Dragon island has a few, including my most interesting race, the Vau.  This continent also has a race/culture made by a friend of mine.  And also the Drakelings, which started their conceptual existence as D&D Kobolds but have become something more.

the Bottom right continent has the Imperix Domeri, which is hyper-paranoid bordering the “Empire of Masks” (as I’ve been calling it until I name it for real) which is lead by shapeshifters.  They also won a war with the FDB in response to colonialization via magical wasting plague.  It was terrible, and completely annihilated a neighboring country in collateral.

And finally, the bottom left has the gnomes, and one of the most successful colonies of the FDB.  Their native religion has kind of been mixing with the Allfather veneration of the FDB, particularly among the orcs.

I’m off the next two days, I’m going to do at least a FDB post (with their current vague location pointed out) and hopefully a Shora’adi post as well before I go back to work.

#J'ard #J'ardscape #World of J'ard #worldbuilding #fictional world

[jjeinn-tae]

Worldbuilding!

So, I’m working on editing that video.  I have decided that I don’t like video editing.  Xp  I’m also working on Lock-On mechanics as the video will show, combat *really* doesn’t function without them!  Also the AI get very confused about not being able to back up without running away.

But, I just love how sometimes I’ll realize something about my world (or a language in it!) that I didn’t realize before. Like, yeah, I write things, but sometimes it’s just “Ohh!  That’s neat, I didn’t know that!” when I just idly think of how things I’ve already done interact.  Be prepared for loose, vaguely coherent ramblings as most of my lore posts.

So, my discovery of the day is a deep cultural conflict between the Dwürm, (The dwarves, orcs and goblins, like the only one that I’ve publicly said anything about here) and the Shora’adi (The other major colonizer of the world, a human nation vaguely bordering the Dwürm but really there’s a few countries in between).  So, the Dwürm have a big deal about hygiene, especially when it comes to hair (on top of the head, facial, body).  Like, they don’t really care *how* you do it, just that it is clean, tidy and *intentional*.  Like, clean shaven face?  Yeah awesome.  Huge beard that goes past your ankles?  As long as you keep it like trim and not different lengths in random spots that’s great!  They *do* have a different idea of clean than us, as there are microbiome things going on there.  But showing you have time for that is a good showing of status, being and upstanding member of society, caring about the community, and other things that just get further and further away from really making sense to us.

The Dwürm wouldn’t dream of letting someone else manage their hair unless it’s like a very close relationship.  Barbers don’t *really* exist outside of like, medical fields for people who can’t do that.

The Shora’adi however are almost on the opposite side of things.  As the continent is vaguely Asian themed (as in, 3 of the 4 major cultures are loosely inspired by various Asian cultures in real life) I wanted to give every culture their own formal traditional dress, although no one directly has a qi pao or kimono or anything, they have their own.  So, the Shora’adi have a showing of status in that the more well off you are, the more you have “people to do that for you.”  Their dress (unnamed currently, I haven’t developed their language enough yet) has the ends of their sleeves by their hands, both being made from the same bolt of fabric, linking their wrists together.  The vast majority of the population are able to function just fine in it, they have enough room that it essentially doesn’t hamper you unless you’re doing some really weird motion, but the wealthier you are, the the shorter that length of fabric between your wrists, and especially wearing it so your hands are behind your back is really showing that “I have so much status, I don’t need to do *anything* my servants will feed me.”  Either that or you really trust your spouse to take care of you, as some less well-off people might represent by also doing a shorter link.

*So,* that diametric opposition of idea definitely manifests in the Dwürm finding the Shora’adi very lazy, and the Shora’adi finding the Dwürm to be pointlessly hoarding their wealth for wealth’s sake.  They already didn’t get along particularly well, but it’s neat to see how these animosities can appear organically, if just thinking about things.  There’s also the meltingpot nation of Vishtallar between the two (although definitely more aligned to the Shora’adi) that I *might* have mentioned here before.  I think there’s definitely going to be barbers there, keeping dwarven beards entirely immaculate, much to the chagrin of the “Dwürm proper.”

#J'ard #J'ardscape #devblog #indy games #indy dev #game development #game design #gamedev #game dev #game dev update #worldbuilding #fictional world #background lore #Dwürm #Shora'adi #Vishtallar

[jjeinn-tae]

Wow, it’s been tough times, but I return to working on the game.  Still nothing more of actual game substance to show (I want to be a bit less obvious pre-pre-alpha) but here’s a flag for the dwarves that I threw together in about 20 minutes.

It’s not a nice flag, but that’s kind of by design.  I wanted it to be the sort of flag that looks like it means something, and maybe in a few centuries it’ll inspire something actually nice looking for them, but like for now it’s just some unfortunate 1500′s flag.  The writing says “FDB” which is short for “United Dwarven Clans” [ Fèrkalürn Dwürm Brafèrwèrds ].

#indy games #game development #devblog #worldbuilding #fictional world #J'ard #J'ardscape #vexillology