My online presence has been non-existent these last few months due to the majority of my 2023 having been spent incredibly ill. Since the stat of the year, I have been admitted to the hospital twice and came terrifyingly close to death at one point. It's been a long road back, but I am finally feeling back to normal, and this week has seen my first days spent in my home office in quite some time. I've never been big on sharing details of my personal life online, so I'll leave it at that and get right to the work.

I've spent these last few days finishing up what I had started working on for Runiq Online before this all happened. At the time I was unaware of the health issues that would plague me for 9+ weeks and I was feeling that I needed to take a bit of a break from my zombie shooter project before the final push to get the Alpha release out. Had I known what was to come I likely would not have worked on Runiq at all but given that things were close to being finished when I fell ill, I figured it would be best to get it wrapped up and published before diving back into RIZN - something I am incredibly anxious to do.

There's been a lot added to Runiq with this latest update, including a complete overhaul of the character creation system which has allowed me to add the first pieces of equipment. Quests now offer armor as rewards and these pieces of armor can be equipped to your character. Weapons can now be equipped as well, and there are also two equipment slots for accessories that will provide a bonus to stats.

The character creation process now offers several customization options, including options for hair, hair color, facial hair, face paint/scars, etc.  I had originally planned to create icons for all of these options but given the course my life took these last two months, I decided to go with the simplified version that is included in this update and will generate icons for a later release. Regardless, you can now customize your character as you see fit.

On top of the addition of equipment, players can now use the newly added refining stations to convert harvested resources into ingredients for crafting (which will be added in a later update). There are three stations near the starting area; one for refining minerals, one for wood, and finally one for stone. 

Less notable, some quests now offer rewards that you can select, providing 1-3 options and the ability to choose which you prefer when completing the quest. All NPC icons have been updated to more accurately represent the NPCs as well, and I've also fixed several bugs with the quest system that had existed in the previous release. The ability to track quests has been added as well, so clicking the tack button in the journal will add an overlay to in-game maps to make completing the quests a bit easier.

On top of all that, I've also built a work-in-progress admin system to make working with the database that controls all of this a much simpler process. You can see in the screenshots below that I have created a UI that allows me to easily update quests and items, and while it took some time to put all of this in place, it will save me a lot of time going forward given how time-consuming it can be to navigate the database manually. I can now easily add/remove/change the rewards for any quest, update the stats for any equipment items, and create new items with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Once I've made some much-needed progress with RIZN in the coming weeks, I will likely take a short break and return to Runiq to wrap one other addition that I opted to exclude from this release: the expansion of the world itself. I had purchased the Fantasy Kingdom package from the Asset Store (by Synty) back in the fall and have been setting up prefabs to be used in a new area of the world. The majority of the technical requirements for expanding the world are in place, I'll just need to eventually put more time into getting these prefabs prepped and then focus on actually the designing the layout for what is to be added. Depending on my freelance schedule, I expect to be able to get to this in late spring or early summer, but we'll see how things go.

The demo for Runiq online is completely free so you're more than welcome to login as a guest and explore. Keep in mind that this project was started as an example to potential clients of the work I am able to produce, but I have been adding to it from time to time over the years and will continue to do so for as long as I am able. This spring/summer I am much more focused on getting the Alpha release for RIZN in the hands of players, and I'll be covering what to expect with that project later this month - I just need to open up the project for the first time this year and find my bearings before I can make any assessment.

Rest assured that I am (finally) in good health and seemingly managed to escape any long-term complications from my "experience", and after having spent the last few days working on Runiq without any unexpected speed bumps, I can confidently say that I am back in the saddle and ready to get back to work. I am overdue for a zombie-killing session, and that is exactly what I plan to spend my evening doing now that these updates are live.