Projects

Game

Since August 2022 I have been working towards a so called vertical slice demo. This is a short demo, yet one that will showcase most of the features within the game. This can give potential players a good feel whether or not they will like the end product, allows me to gather valuable feedback, and also to start making estimates towards potential release dates.

Book

Since 2015 I have been writing a fantasy book series called “Erios”. Most of my writings for Erios are still unpublished to this date, but once I become satisfied and gather the confidence, I will publish them. For further information about the books, check the Lore Section for more information

Meet the Developer

Lithrun profile picture

Fun fact: I use “Lithrun” as my online name, because he’s one of my favorite characters from Erios!

Hi, my online name is Lithrun and my offline name is Nick, and I’m a (current year - May 1998) year old software developer from the Netherlands. Developing Erios has been a childhood dream, and since 2022 I have been working towards a demo of the game. Being able to re-create the concepts from the book and ideas in my mind, within a game is awesome!

I write code

I learned programming all the way back in 2013 by creating LUA scripts for a game called MTA:SA. Haven’t played it since 2017, but it was a lot of fun! Lots of inspiration for the Erios LUA mod support originates from my years of creating LUA scripts experience. During high school I was also able to take programming classes where I learned to create very basic HTML + PHP websites. Yeah, back in those days PHP was still considered as “acceptable”… Anyways, here I decided that I wanted to become a software developer! Studied at university from 2016-2020, did my graduation thesis in New Zealand and voila, now I got a bachelor degree in software development! During my daily life I work as a full-stack software developer at a company based in the Netherlands, where I have been employed since 2018. C# is my favorite programming language!

I write my book

I don’t really have much to say about my experience in regards of writing, as Erios is the first book I am writing, and given the scope of the whole project, it will also be the last one I am writing given that it’s going to take decades to finish everything. But I don’t mind! Life is an adventure, and Erios is a life long adventure for me. Further expending upon the fictional world by writing more, or to extend the game with new features, the more time progresses, the larger and more detailed it becomes.

I do game development

In regards of game development experience, I have been the lead developer of an open-source game called AoTTG2 from 2020 till 2023. I’m still involved within AoTTG2, although my role is more as an advisor rather than actively leading the development. It was a lot of fun, but because it was to create a sequel for an already existing game, creative freedom was extremely limited, and the main focus was on creating a worthy successor. With Erios however, I don’t have to face these problems! Creative freedom is all my own, and I can add whatever I want to the game. The ideas that are within my head, I am the one who can actually make these become a reality, whether by book or by game. A new island west of Weldanar? Boom, voila, tada, ジャーン, now it exists. One could see it as a dangerous thing to have a world that’s never finished by design, as new things can get added and added, but I think that it’s a great thing. As the further things progress, the more detailed and rich the world becomes. This mindset reflects both the game and the book, as Erios is a project I will work on for the rest of my life.

I work on Erios

How much time I will be able to dedicate towards the game or book will mostly depend on how well it does financially. Being able to work on your own projects fulltime is a dream many have, yet life is pretty expensive so I still require an income to be able to sustain myself. I don’t want to become rich, I just want to earn enough to work on this project without having to worry about financial concerns.

Wow… Now I wrote a lot. I’m not good at introductions or first impressions, but nice to meet you too! Feel free to message me within the community!

Contact me

If you dare…

Project History

October 2015

It was October 2015, and I’m not sure how or why, but I wanted to create a game. I’ve been playing games for my whole life, especially Zelda games are my favorites! I came up with a concept of creating a game in RPG maker, it was called “The Hunters: Battle of the Clans”. It had a simple plot about a war between 5 clans: The Hunters, The Ruby Rangers, The Azure Company, The Army of … (It was never given a name in this version) and the Desert Clan.

A game was never realized due to my inexperience in both game development and programming at the time.

“Army of …” later became The Kingdom of the Silver Forge, a major faction within the lore. The Hunters, Ruby Rangers and Azure company still exist. The Desert Clan became later known as the Kingdoms of Dorolin.

2017

Finishing high school, getting started with university, yet the vision from October 2015 about this game has always stuck with me. Now that I have gained more experience with programming, I wanted to give it another go. Yet there wasn’t enough lore behind the concept for the game I had. So I decided to write a fantasy book called “Erios”. I wrote out a complete act, which is now known as “Chapter I: The Silver Kings. Act II: The Sons of Duilin”.

2019

During my university days, I kept writing and writing about Erios. Coming up with new ideas and concepts, and adding them into the lore. Every month the story got more and more detailed, and so did its fantasy world grow in scale. By this time I had written 268 pages of story (115k words), but also expanded upon the story by adding two prequels. Each prequal would explain the background behind the two major factions, and why they are in conflict within the main story.

These are known as:

  • Erios: Lone Wolf
  • Erios: The Silver Sword

Although both of these prequels have been finished since 2019, they have never been published.

Adding further to the story, I also organized it as Chapters and Acts. Each Chapter consists of multiple acts, and each Act is roughly 40-50 pages in size. At the end of that year, I also finished most of the story behind “Chapter I: The Silver Kings. Act I: Weldanar”. The story of the game will primarily take place during the events that occur within this act.

2020

In this year, I already had 4 years of experience in programming, and a full year of working within a software development company. I was doing my graduation internship in New Zealand, and with having a lot of free time available, I focused more on Erios. The story was really starting to get in a good shape, and I wanted to create a game based on Chapter I: The Silver Kings. Act I: Weldanar. I decided that I could create this game within the Unity Engine, given my experience as a fullstack software developer with C#.

I did however not have the required game developer experience, as I was only experienced with desktop applications & web development. So I needed to gain experience before I could take on the task of finally creating my own game, so I created a project called AoTTG2. AoTTG2 is an open-source continuation of the popular game called AoTTG2. To this day, it is still under development by the community.

August 2022

Time flew by during the corona pandemic. Just not much interesting had happened for the progression of Erios, I mainly stayed indoors due to all of the lockdowns. During my solo trip to France, I could finally clear my mind again and explore the world. And found my passion again for Erios. I started writing again, and during my trip in France I decided that now it is time to work on Erios as a game.

I created a detailed game design document, and when I came back after my trip in France I started to prototype in my free-time.

2023

To this day, I am still prototyping Erios. I want to test out each system and concept within the game design document, and see how well it cooperates with the other systems. As designing something is one thing, best way to see if it actually works is to just implement it. In March I moved to Japan, and during my stay there I have had lots of free time to continue prototyping and testing out ideas.

September 2023

After a year of prototyping, a decision was made to switch to a different game engine. Previously I used the Unity Engine, yet due to an announcement from Unity by wanting to charge a so called runtime fee and to include installation trackers, I’ve decided to switch game engines. I’ve decided to use the Godot game engine. The work I’ve done on the past year on the demo isn’t lost, as I can move over a lot of my work from Unity to Godot. It doesn’t take as much time as starting from scratch, but it will still take some months for me to get used to the new game engine.

What’s next?

To this day, I am still actively developing a demo for Erios. To stay up to date with the latest news, see here and join the community!