Soul Healer - Brave Caterpillar Music! :D

cidwel

Member
Cool stonehead, accurate shadows. Should be really tought to anim all the positions. At least these are the boring tasks for me :p We wanna see more updates!

Keep up the good work!
 
Thanks a lot, guys! =D
Stone head is almost done. It should be done already, but I got side tracked today because some new art supplies came in. X'3

I'll be doing more character art and painting from here out, too. I need to get both down pat so I can do promotional stuff for the Kickstarter (and later, so I can make a nice cover/manual for my game!)
 
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ChimaereJade

Guest
The stone head is cool.... The boss is AMAZING! I'm really hyped for you kickstarter after all the things you've shown about your game! :D
 
Thanks, guys!
Here's an update on the stone heads:


Besides lacking a few lighting effects, they're basically done! I'll be posting them again a bit later when I finish the other traps for the room. Hope you all like them. Was a real pain in the ass for me to get them roatating correctly, hahah! :')

I'm happy with how they came out though, and with the fire. More soon! =D

edit: also, this crazy gif is playing at like 1.5x speed for some reason. I don't know why, lol.
 
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Just a tiny suggestion; instead of regular black shadows, you might want to have the fire cast yellow or orange "highlights" on the ground.

You're obviously the pixel art expert here, but I thought I'd just throw in my two cents.
 
Thanks, guys!

@AlmyriganHero: It's counterintuitive, but fire does cast shadows if there's a brighter light source present. I was going for something like this with the shadows:


Of course, this kind of thing only happens with a very bright light casting onto the flames (and even in this example, the shadow has an orange tint, like you said)....I think my main problem here is that my caves look like there's a sun shining inside them, hahah! Caves full of light coming from nowhere are kind of a videogame staple nowadays though, so I dunno. X'D

I actually do have them casting orange light on the ground in my dark caves. I need to figure out what's wrong with my code for that, though. I thought I could cut holes out of a surface with subtractive blending, and I can, but I can only cut harsh holes through it...alpha is ignored. I might start a thread on it if I don't figure it out soon.
 

CMAllen

Member
I actually do have them casting orange light on the ground in my dark caves. I need to figure out what's wrong with my code for that, though. I thought I could cut holes out of a surface with subtractive blending, and I can, but I can only cut harsh holes through it...alpha is ignored. I might start a thread on it if I don't figure it out soon.
Check alpha blending and check alpha testing. When alpha behaves in unexpected ways, be sure you've properly reset those two values. Otherwise, you should be able to stencil things out of a surface. I do that exact thing for my lighting surface effects.
 

Joe Ellis

Member
I was gonna say, I think to subtractively cut holes in the surface's alpha you'd need a sprite with fading alpha, more opaque in the middle and fading outwards, like the opposite of the effect you want it to have, and the color channels should all be 0\black so they dont affect the colors at all, orr the opposite of the orangeness you want it to do, which i think you can just do on paint by inverting the colors
 
@Joe Ellis: Thanks. I already have sprites with fading alpha. That alpha is respected when I cut holes into the surface. The problem is I want to draw those sprites at a lower alpha toward the end of their life, so it looks like the flames are fading out. That's the part that's not working. ):

I'll look into it and maybe start a thread in a day or two.
 

CMAllen

Member
@Joe Ellis: Thanks. I already have sprites with fading alpha. That alpha is respected when I cut holes into the surface. The problem is I want to draw those sprites at a lower alpha toward the end of their life, so it looks like the flames are fading out. That's the part that's not working. ):

I'll look into it and maybe start a thread in a day or two.
Ahh! Blend modes, draw_alpha values, and alpha channels do not play well together. You have to control the way they interact.
 

CMAllen

Member
I noticed, hahah.
I'd have to go back and check the code I used for this. I believe I have luminance objects as a parent of a generic 'light source' object, which runs a script to collect all the light source objects in a given area into a list for a controller object (same object handles depth sorting). The controller then draws out the lights in bm_add directly to the application surface. So, instead of messing around with draw_alpha values, I use the draw_color, mixing the color with c_black to control the intensity of the light. But that approach may not work with your lighting methods.
 
Thanks guys! Guess it wasn't much of a mystery, hahah! I can't finish it until next week because of some tech problems (no tablet), but I think it's going to look really cool. I'll just be cleaning up and refactoring code until then, but I'm really excited to show you guys the finished version. I'm proud of how accurate it's looking so far, and I still have a few good things I want to add to it. View the full size image for those awesome snes looking artifacts! :')



More soon! =D
 
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kupo15

Member
Thanks guys! Guess it wasn't much of a mystery, hahah! I can't finish it until next week because of some tech problems (no tablet), but I think it's going to look really cool. I'll just be cleaning up and refactoring code until then, but I'm really excited to show you guys the finished version. I'm proud of how accurate it's looking so far, and I still have a few good things I want to add to it. View the full size image for those awesome snes looking artifacts! :')



More soon! =D
Looks really cool! You are getting really good with learning graphical skills and emulating early games's looks and putting your own spin on it. Its awesome! :)
 
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Ode Imaginations

Guest
Oh, man! I was just about to gush how good this game looks and then I realized there are 4 more pages in this topic and each page gives more reason to fall in love. The more I see visuals from the game the more I love it! Your animations and visual details are fantastic. Do you have a percentage meter somewhere showing how far along completion your game is? I'd really like to buy it, or at least test it.
 
Really COOL!!
Also I'm glad that finally seems you are going to create the feel of a really vast open world!
Yes, the world map is something I've been wanting to add for a long time. It's starting to feel like a real RPG to me now, hahah! =)

It reminds me of demon's crest, looks really cool!
Thanks, Joe! That's high praise! =D

Looks really cool! You are getting really good with learning graphical skills and emulating early games's looks and putting your own spin on it. Its awesome! :)
Thank you, kupo! Still more to do. I've been lazy.

You never cease to mind-blow, Rich. Every time I think I've seen even a lot of what's up your sleeve, You emerge with stone heads and bosses and big freaking maps.
I'm trying, even though I'm super slow. Thanks, Bearman! ^ ^

What are these islands? Flame effects are great!
The islands are for the world map, YanBG! They're just test islands, technically, but I'm sure I'll use them for something. The house alone on a small island is interesting to me. =D

Oh, man! I was just about to gush how good this game looks and then I realized there are 4 more pages in this topic and each page gives more reason to fall in love. The more I see visuals from the game the more I love it! Your animations and visual details are fantastic. Do you have a percentage meter somewhere showing how far along completion your game is? I'd really like to buy it, or at least test it.
Thank you so much, Ode! Welcome to the thread! =D
No percentage meter, but I'll finish the game sooner or later. I'd guess I'm about thirty percent done, if I had to. Most of the main engine has been complete for a long time, and I've been stockpiling a lot of content slowly. There's still tons to do, though!

Thanks for the support, everyone! Sorry I've been slow. I've been having a lot of trouble concentrating. I'm going to see a doctor this week, because I've been suspecting I have ADHD for a long time. Hopefully after that's solved, I'll be able to focus ten times better, hahah. I'm working about fifty hours this week, so I probably won't do much at all, but I have a week's vacation next week, so I'll have plenty of time. Hopefully I'll be a new person with laser-focus by then, too! Excited, hahah!
 
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Thanks, Felipe!

Close up of a castle wall with a blue torch. I made this a long time ago, but I've never shown it in detail:


It took awhile to animate all the shadows and flickering and stuff. I like how it came out, though!
I'm porting my game over to GMS2 right now, and rewriting large chunks of code, because there've been some things about my engine I've been wanting to fix for a long time now, so I won't be updating for another week or so. Working on rebuilding the foundation of my game though, so that's good! =D
 

cidwel

Member
If that animation is made by hand, it's completly awesome! if it's a kind of shader, it's completly awesome as well!
Great job! Wanna see more of the ambientation!

Good luck with that refactor!
 
@JCJ , @melerski: Thanks a lot, guys! Appreciate it! =)

The image actually did pretty well over on Reddit, too!:



After I posted, a few people there asked if there was any other way to keep up with my game besides my art postings over there. Because of that, I figured I'd give a mailing list another try: https://mailchi.mp/5230ff02f121/hidejico
A decent number of you guys signed up for a mailing from me last year, and I updated it.....one time, maybe. I promise I'll update this one more! I was going to just continue using the same mailing list as last year, but for whatever reason (inactivity?), I can't access it anymore. I'll still be mostly posting here, but I figured I'd put the mailing list here too, in case anybody cares. I'll probably do more developer type stuff in the mailer than I do here. I dunno. Anyway. More updates soon. Still trying to fix my broken old code, hahah.
 
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seanm

Guest
This is starting to look really impressive! Seems like it'll be a project you can really be proud of when its finished, I'm looking forward to it. :)
 
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