A Day In Valhalla - A norse hack'n'slash rogue-lite

JackTurbo

Member


A Day In Valhalla is an upcoming hack-n-slash rogue lite for windows pc's. You play as a fallen viking warrior who is taken to Valhalla to train with Odin in preparation for Ragnarok. Each run represents one day of your training where you fight through randomly generated dungeons full of enemies taken from both pop-culture fantasy settings and traditional norse mythology in an effort to return to the Odin's great feasting hall of Valhalla in glory.






Animations


 
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JackTurbo

Member
Thanks man, super appreciate the encouragement.

Tried capturing some gameplay with obs, but it absolutely tanks my frame rate. Gonna see if shadowplay wants to work any better and hopefully post some basic gameplay gifs soon.
 

JackTurbo

Member
nice, what are the controls for the game?
Currently on keyboard: WASD to move and lmb to attack in the direction of the cursor, space to dodge roll and left shift to sprint.

On a pad: left stick to move, X to attack (in the direction your facing), left trigger to sprint and A to dodge roll.
 
Looking good! Looking forward to seeing more! =)

Edit: And how are you doing your shadows? Is that in-engine somehow, or are you just dropping big transparent sprites into your room? I want to start adding fancy shadows to my game, but I can't think of any way of doing it that isn't a huge pain in the ass. ):
 

JackTurbo

Member
Looking good! Looking forward to seeing more! =)

Edit: And how are you doing your shadows? Is that in-engine somehow, or are you just dropping big transparent sprites into your room? I want to start adding fancy shadows to my game, but I can't think of any way of doing it that isn't a huge pain in the ass. ):
You got me Rich, they're just a background layer over my tilelayer with a big gradient sprite. I reckon I can get away with that approach because 1. my game is super low resolution and 2. because the number of rooms in my game will only really be 3-4 dozen.

Thanks for the kind words every one :)
 
You got me Rich, they're just a background layer over my tilelayer with a big gradient sprite. I reckon I can get away with that approach because 1. my game is super low resolution and 2. because the number of rooms in my game will only really be 3-4 dozen.

Thanks for the kind words every one :)
Whatever works works! It looks great... it's just too much work for me to realistically do for my game. I've been thinking of how I'll do it for awhile now. :x
 

JackTurbo

Member
Playing around with my movement code. Added acceleration/deceleration and tied the sprite (walk or run) and the image_speed to the current speed rather than based off input.
Getting weird hitches in the animation, which I think is due to the irregular image_speed and the way gms rounds image_index to pick subimages to display.

Still, I think there is a real improvement here (albeit one that needs refining).

 

RangerX

Member
I like your project so far. The goblin spiking himself is gold !
However I have a comment about your character running. I think your camera behavior is wrong. The more you run, the less space you see in front of you. This might end up frustrating, it should be the opposite. The faster I run, the more the cam should space in front of me so I can actually react to what's coming.
 

JackTurbo

Member
I like your project so far. The goblin spiking himself is gold !
However I have a comment about your character running. I think your camera behavior is wrong. The more you run, the less space you see in front of you. This might end up frustrating, it should be the opposite. The faster I run, the more the cam should space in front of me so I can actually react to what's coming.
Glad you like it and good catch on the camera, rewriting my camera controller is on my agenda. :)
 

JackTurbo

Member
Glad you like it Snotwaffle (great name btw).

Games on hold ATM as I'm traveling round Asia, will 100% be resuming once I get back to my native UK though.

Im sat at a coffee place at a computer mall* in Bangkok right now as I might be buying a laptop. So who knows some more progress might be made in my downtime before my return.


*Yes you read that right, they have entire malls dedicated to computers and computer parts/accessories out here!
 

RangerX

Member
Glad you like it Snotwaffle (great name btw).

Games on hold ATM as I'm traveling round Asia, will 100% be resuming once I get back to my native UK though.

Im sat at a coffee place at a computer mall* in Bangkok right now as I might be buying a laptop. So who knows some more progress might be made in my downtime before my return.


*Yes you read that right, they have entire malls dedicated to computers and computer parts/accessories out here!
Well, tks to keep us posted. I hope you resume with the game soon :)
 

JackTurbo

Member
Hey all, thanks for the kind words. I'm back in my native UK now and am getting settled back in. Having to focus a bit on paid commission work for a bit to get my finances in order but will be returning to Day in Valhalla development soon :)
 

JackTurbo

Member
Hi all,

So I'm back to work on ADIV. Having played it a bunch over the last week I've decided that my combat is just not up to scratch. It feels clunky and a bit meh. So I'm focusing on making what I have actually feel good and fun for a bit before getting wrapped up in adding additional features or content.

What does this mean? - well I guess firstly that I wont have much tangible new stuff to show for a while. However I thought the process might be worth talking about as it might have some game design decisions that people find interesting, but also talking about it makes me get my thoughts a bit more ordered.

My first point is that designing a good melee combat system is an iterative process. This means lots of playing, tweaking values of things and then more play testing. So making any values easily edited is super important, we dont want a bunch of hardcoded values for things like knock back etc. So I'm making use of variables for all values I think I'll want to tweak. Today I'm actually setting up a simple system where you can easily alter these value in game, I'm hoping this will save me tons of time as I wont need to be recompiling over and over.

The biggest thing that I've changed so far that have made it feel way better is how I handle attack canceling.

How much you make a player commit to an action is obviously a pretty big game design decision that doesn't have a definitive right/wrong approach. It effects how the combat feels, but also the balance. I know I want the player facing off against many enemies in ADIV so I've decided I want to be a bit more forgiving on this. So whats changed?

Dodge roll will now cancel out of any basic action at any point. On most attacks this even means you can cancel before the hit box has been applied. Previously it would queue this command and wait to fire it until after a certain point in the attack animation. I want the dodge roll mechanic your "oh 💩💩💩💩!!?!" button, to bail you out of a bad situation.

I've also increased the window for when movement input (without a follow up attack queued) will cancel out the tail end of an attack animation and also increased the number of frames that can be canceled off the end this way.

Not strictly attack canceling, but I have also increased the duration of the window in which the player is able to change direction mid-combo.

These changes have really made the combat feel much more lively and fun already but I've still got a bunch of stuff I want to change both mechanics wise and juice wise
 
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JackTurbo

Member
Development is ongoing on ADiV. Its just been a bit slow going while I've been getting settled into a new job and a bunch of life stuff.

Implementing a dash attack at the moment. Roughed out the base motion this morning. Bit more tidying up to be done before I go back over it all adding details.



This is how all my animations start btw. I always rough out motion using block colours for parts of the sprite first. This allows me to concentrate on getting the movements how I want without getting bogged down in specific details.
 

Xer0botXer0

Senpai
Is it true that for animations you first create the main images, like start and end or start action action end. then draw the inbetween frames ?
 

JackTurbo

Member
The two main techniques for frame based animating are: pose to pose and straight ahead.

What you're describing is pose to pose. Where you start with the key frames, these are the strongest poses in a motion. Usually the start and the finish and any other important point in the middle.

For example if you were animating a punch then the key frames would likely be the anticipation at the start, the follow through at the end and the point of impact in the middle. You would then fill out the in-betweens starting with the point in the middle of each key frame, then moving on to the point between each key frame and each of the last frames you drew. And so on until the animation is complete.

Straight Aheading however is kinda self explanatory really. That is when you start at the first frame and then do frame 2, then 3 ... Etc.

Pose to Pose is generally preferable in my opinion. Especially with game art. It gives you more/easier control over timing and allows you to get to the core of the motion faster.

Straight aheading does have its place though as it can be easier to get fluid motion with it, however it can also encourage superfluous frames in my experience.

Honestly I tend to use a mix of both. I'll pose to pose for rough animations (like the dash attack above). Then when I'm happy with the rough motion and the timings I'll do another pass where I add the details. This stage I'll often straight ahead and add things like the characters cloak and hair
 
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