Released Erin: The Last Aos Sí

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DanielFranko

Guest
Hi guys,
I've been working on my first game for quite some time now and it's finally in somewhat presentable state. The goal was to create a mobile game that can be played in short bursts, that would make a good use of touch input and require at least two brain cells.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.



EDIT (04/04/2017):
!!!GAME FINALLY RELEASED!!!

GET FINAL VERSION AT http://www.danielfranko.com/erin.html
CHECK OUT A SHORT MAKING OF VIDEO







A bit more info also available here.


Hope you'll like it...



 
Last edited by a moderator:
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FROGANUS

Guest
"Pond 5"
I tried the PC version which I guess is not the true version as intended, and furthermore, I have to confess i'm not a fan of phone games in general, especially the sort of swipey, turn-based linear sort of things I see a lot of in this avenue.
That said, the graphics are nice and stand out as original so I had to try it. The HUD and menus are very functional, characters are nicely animated, lots of good pixels! The intro movie is surprisingly pro (like wtf did you hire a video person & actor? or maybe video is one of your things?). Tho it soooorta doesn't go with the pixel art being live action. I know it has the same res but its a little mismatched. Maybe you could consider some shading effect to the characters to make them a little bit more live-action? Will there be other cutscenes? Is there much story or is it basically like Celtic Fairy battles monsters to defeat final monster?

I only beat 3 levels.. I know that's basically just the tutorial, I can imagine it gets more strategic with different spells, enemies, and allies or whatever, but like I mentioned, not really my fav. type of game.

How complete is the development?

A couple comments about the overworld map.. Maybe its not done yet, but I feel its worth it to have it really fleshed out since player will be gazing at it after grinding on some monsters and you want to reinforce that nice rewarding feeling.
- The clouds move really fast. If they moved really slow I think it would be more effective.
- You can only move one space at a time? if its not hard, I'd have it so player can click ahead multiple spaces.

But yeah, all and all its an impressive project. Once you finish all the loose ends and especially if there is more narrative to offer, I think this could be a solid little game!

Cheers!
 
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DanielFranko

Guest
"Pond 5"
I tried the PC version which I guess is not the true version as intended, and furthermore, I have to confess i'm not a fan of phone games in general, especially the sort of swipey, turn-based linear sort of things I see a lot of in this avenue.
That said, the graphics are nice and stand out as original so I had to try it. The HUD and menus are very functional, characters are nicely animated, lots of good pixels! The intro movie is surprisingly pro (like wtf did you hire a video person & actor? or maybe video is one of your things?). Tho it soooorta doesn't go with the pixel art being live action. I know it has the same res but its a little mismatched. Maybe you could consider some shading effect to the characters to make them a little bit more live-action? Will there be other cutscenes? Is there much story or is it basically like Celtic Fairy battles monsters to defeat final monster?

I only beat 3 levels.. I know that's basically just the tutorial, I can imagine it gets more strategic with different spells, enemies, and allies or whatever, but like I mentioned, not really my fav. type of game.

How complete is the development?

A couple comments about the overworld map.. Maybe its not done yet, but I feel its worth it to have it really fleshed out since player will be gazing at it after grinding on some monsters and you want to reinforce that nice rewarding feeling.
- The clouds move really fast. If they moved really slow I think it would be more effective.
- You can only move one space at a time? if its not hard, I'd have it so player can click ahead multiple spaces.

But yeah, all and all its an impressive project. Once you finish all the loose ends and especially if there is more narrative to offer, I think this could be a solid little game!

Cheers!
Pond 5 indeed ;)

Thanks a lot for playing! Well, then there are two of us who don't really prefer mobile games, that is why I tried to do something a bit different. The turn-based gameplay fits the platform well though. Thanks for mentioning the intro :). It's just something we've shot with my gf over one rainy day in woods (and over a week in Premiere, After Effects and 3ds Max). You are right that there is a mismatch between the look of the game and the video, I'll look into that. I already applied some filters to the video but the small resolution does not show that well.

There is only a final cut scene planned at the moment. Mostly because videos in Game Maker are rubbish and make the game file huge.

In the first 3 levels you have experienced just a bit of the gameplay, I'm trying to introduce new mechanics throughout the whole game (new spells, new effects, some enemies can block some of the runes, etc.).

How far in the dev... All of the logic is now in Game Maker, I have over 70 enemy types, 50 spells and about 18 environment types. Now I'm working on the pacing of the game and introduction of new game mechanics. I also want to update the GUI, menus and the overworld map needs a lot of work. You are right that the clouds feel weird and I'm currently working on implementing the Dijkstra's algorithm to allow moving over multiple level "nodes". Oh and then I'll have to write all of the enemy descriptions, the research is done but it will still take some time :)

Anyway, thanks again for the feedback!
 
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DippLeskine

Guest
That is some nice looking art!! I will download it now!
 
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MEITdev

Guest
Hi there!

I have recorded a short "honest first impressions" feedback video for your game.

The reason WHY is explained HERE

The purpose of this video is for you as a developer to see how players play your game, what are their expressions as well as some likes and dislikes.
Basically the personal feedback is something that is hard to get, so I am hoping to help you just a little bit with this video.

PS: Sorry for my face being so small, you can still see my expressions, and maybe it is a good thing that my ugly head is so small after all ~_^


Keep up the great work! Looking forward to future updates ;)
 
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DanielFranko

Guest
Hi there!

I have recorded a short "honest first impressions" feedback video for your game.

The reason WHY is explained HERE

The purpose of this video is for you as a developer to see how players play your game, what are their expressions as well as some likes and dislikes.
Basically the personal feedback is something that is hard to get, so I am hoping to help you just a little bit with this video.

PS: Sorry for my face being so small, you can still see my expressions, and maybe it is a good thing that my ugly head is so small after all ~_^


Keep up the great work! Looking forward to future updates ;)
I love the format of your feedback videos, hope you'll make a bunch more! Thanks for giving my game a quick look as any feedback is extremely helpful and have the option to see your immediate reactions is priceless. You managed to identify the weakest points of my design and fill my task backlog :)

Some highlights worth mentioning - may be helpful to someone:

Font is hard to read
Yeah, well never make a 1:1 (meaning no up-scaling of assets) pixel art game if you want to show a lot of text. I've spent quite a lot of time on a pixel perfect scaler that adapts to any device resolution but I forgot that I'll probably need a lot more pixels to display a sharp text. I'll be smarter next time.

Video in Game Maker
Just in case anyone was wondering how it works, here is a short summary:
- render video in 12 FPS as png sequence
- implement detla time into your game (e.g. https://marketplace.yoyogames.com/assets/1149/steady-delta-time)
- play video using the delta timing
- ... now the problem is that unless you can keep a steady framerate you cannot just play the sprite. Game maker will most probably divide your video into multiple texture pages and will slow down the game when it switches from one page to another. This is how I solved it ... let me know if anyone has a better idea.
- start playing any soundtrack at the beginning of the video
- every second use the audio_sound_get_track_position and compare the current frame of video with the expected frame of video. Based on this comparison speed up or slowdown the video and check the frames next second.
 
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DanielFranko

Guest
Sooooo, I thought I would share my progress with Balena.

New version available here:
- Android
- Windows


I wanted to focus on three main areas:
1) Incorporate MEITdev's comments -
. Thank you again, kind sir!
2) Finalize all of the graphics including all animations, menus and overworld map
3) Fix existing bugs and start properly balancing the game's difficulty and pacing


Ad 1) MEITdev's comments
If you haven't already, you should definitively check out his channel. His contribution to (not only) GameMaker community is extremely helpful and his videos are a lot of fun (my fav is this one). MEITdev's reactions gave me a better understanding of what could players find confusing and what is the expected behavior. Some new tutorials were created, some removed, a real pause functionality was implemented and some confusing aspects were removed from the game. I could immediately see better test results after my friends tested the new build of the game.


Ad 2) Finalize graphics
This took most of the time. There is a LOT of pixels and the placeholder images (especially in menus, GUI and overworld map) had to be replaced. Here are some updates I made, let me know what you think:


I also played around with some animations. This is my "Level evaluation screen":



Ad 3) Fixing bugs and balancing the gameplay
All of the known issues were fixed but new are popping up daily :). Balancing the game turned out to be the most difficult part of the project. There are many variables that are being evaluated every time the player casts a spell or the enemy hits the player and find the right values for every action is time consuming as hell. I am getting there though.


What's next:
Balancing existing levels and building remaining levels (around 200) is going to be on my plate from now on. The look and feel of the game is more or less final, including the sound track. There are few minor things missing like tutorials, enemy and spell descriptions but those should be done fairly easily.

Any help with beta test would be GREATLY appreciated as well as any feedback!
 
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DanielFranko

Guest
Long time no see... I've spent the last two months finishing and playtesting my game and I am almooooost ready to release it. While I'm waiting for review from Apple and Microsoft I put together a trailer and now finishing a short "making of" video.

You can check the trailer here
And the current version of my game here http://www.danielfranko.com/erin.html
 
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DanielFranko

Guest
Hey guys, I'm really happy to announce that I have finished the game and (after multiple rejections from Apple) released the game on all planned platforms - iOS, Google Play, Amazon and Windows Phone. Even though the discussion in this thread was not necessarily extremely active (if you have any tips on how to improve this, let me know) I would like to thank the whole GM community for their support.

I would like to specifically mention RangerX and Jon for their amazing posts about pixel perfect scaling (https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/how-to-properly-scale-your-game.995/) and Amazon IAP (https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/has-anyone-used-amazon-iap-from-gamemaker.823/). I would struggle for days without your helpful tips, THANKS!


Feel free to check the game out at http://www.danielfranko.com/erin.html.


This was my first game and I thought it would be neat to summarize my journey, this is what I came up with:


Feel free to follow my future activities on Twitter - https://twitter.com/daniel__franko
 
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Spike

Guest
Pretty fun, tried it out on iPhone. It's like Elite Beat Agents mixed with Another World with a dash of RPG. Keep up the hard work man!
 
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DanielFranko

Guest
Pretty fun, tried it out on iPhone. It's like Elite Beat Agents mixed with Another World with a dash of RPG. Keep up the hard work man!
Thanks a lot Spike! BTW you are the first who mentioned Elite Beat Agents that were in fact one of my sources of inspiration :)
 
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