Alpha IzoProject - Isometric Story Driven Boss Battle ARPG

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Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
BTW @YanBG , any of yours level is handcrafted ? Im really lost on how do it in the best way possible
 
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Deleted member 16767

Guest
I wouldn't include Diablo's name in the marketing sentence. Many small games does that but for something more ambitious could be even a deterrent.

The story is promising, keep up the good work!
Like video game journalists care about that. Every new game gets compared to Diablo. If you follow gaming news, you will see that this trend has not stopped. They even put in world of warcraft as a comparison for indie mmorpgs if it has pve in it. For old games that are not played anymore that much, they just label it classic.
 
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Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
Like video game journalists care about that. Every new game gets compared to Diablo. If you follow gaming news, you will see that this trend has not stopped. They even put in world of warcraft as a comparison for indie mmorpgs if it has pve in it. For old games that are not played anymore that much, they just label it classic.
I think both situations are valid.

But of course if you put a name on it, they will compare the said games for sure... and also try to find similarities to compare then too
 
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Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
So, I was able to produce a good handcraft map using some tools....

Now, let try to do it using the objects, lights, cameras, npcs and etc...

 
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ChimaereJade

Guest
Looks good so far, I really like the style and the combat shown in the video seems to be fast paced. Any news about your project? :)
 
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Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
Looks good so far, I really like the style and the combat shown in the video seems to be fast paced. Any news about your project? :)
Hey, thanks for the feedback!

Yes, the game was a roguelike ARPG twinstick "shooter". I wanted to pass the sensation of playing a RPG game but with the fast and dynamic gameplay of the arcade games.

The game is passing through a big refactor, taking out the roguelike elements(also the coop gameplay is something that I don't know if will be there anymore) to give it a more narrative focus (also to set better the definitions of scope, that was really getting of the roof), but the combat and gameplay style will continue the same.

Currently, I'm refactoring the level creation system (the part that took most problems to develop until now), taking all the knowledge that I got doing the project and cleaning up the house.

You can see some progress of the project here aswell : https://tree.taiga.io/project/feliperyba-izoproject/kanban

As I work as a scrum master during the day, so I use this to do agile iterations inside the project and keep me organized and aware of the phases of development.
This is not ALWAYS in the schedule because I'm really doing this when I can... And currently my life is a little bit of a mess with so many things to resolve at the same time.

But this will be released at some point for sure, hoping to do a single quest demo until the end of the year, with all the planned features and then see how it goes from there.
 
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YanBG

Member
Not sure how to feel about the narrative focus. Sure i like such RPGs(Torment, Pillars, Divinity etc) but after i play them once that's it. It could be hit or miss though, even more modest GM creations with a story were successful.

For being less time consuming i find the procedural generation better choice, actual level design/handcrafting is more work, no?

But it's your call, i really like to see more updates, so keep up the good work and post more! Real life can wait :D
 
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Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
Not sure how to feel about the narrative focus. Sure i like such RPGs(Torment, Pillars, Divinity etc) but after i play them once that's it. It could be hit or miss though, even more modest GM creations with a story were successful.

For being less time consuming i find the procedural generation better choice, actual level design/handcrafting is more work, no?

But it's your call, i really like to see more updates, so keep up the good work and post more! Real life can wait :D
Yeap, it´s not a easy choice, but to do GREAT procedural generated games that makes sense all the time does take time too... IT´s hard to do something procedural generated that pass that feeling of playing something new (and making sense) every time...
It´s even harder with GML. Not impossible.

Maybe with the narrative focus this took more time on design itself than code. This also taking GML in consideration.
I took some time to get the Tiled2Binary, but now I can make a handcraft map in minutes and plot just plug and play. This was the main thing in the refactoring, because if this process was very time consuming I would probably drop the project.

For sure this is a boss fight game and there is a "linear" path on it... But I have a friend that is writing a plot for me and we´re taking in consideration where conversations can change the path to the end.. For example, we have a boss where you can talk with him about some special information that only certain NPC can unlock to you. With that option, you find his emotional week spot and you can clear it without a fight.

But to tackle the situation of replayability, the arcade gameplay feeling will help with that. In the combat you have some sort of combo system that incentivate the player to kill and hit faster, I can put some challenges in local areas... Also, I´m thinking in some extra modes after you finish the game that is relative easy to implement. One example is a survivor tower with procedural difficult level

Also, I´ll not really toss out the code that I already have. I have a complete dungeon map generation system... I´ll use that in one of the bosses, where the area is a maze that always change paths.... never one player will have the same dungeon.

For now, I just want to refactor the project to be able to put content fast... this is the main priority. Izoproject as it is already is a playable roguelike experience, with all the systems there... I took notes on the bad and good parts and now I have a better view of what I want to achieve with this project ( with a good reality glasses on it)

So yes.... it will take time, but I´m still trying to make the game that I would like to play... I´m learning so much during this process that I´m really just aiming to release the game and say that I´m capable of it, with the best quality possible.
 
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Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
Did you had play-testing? I changed a lot after the first few people played my game.

Yes, since the game became "playable" I'm testing it every new feature or change.

For example, my girlfriend was the controls tester :D. She like play games a lot but dont really get controls very fast, but can play well after this. So my target was to set a control schema that even she could get fast enough... Still not 100%, but I'll tackle it in time.

For gameplay, the game in the beginning was set to be a generic Diablo II with twinstick controls. You can see that in early videos... I even coded a shield system (That nobody used... my heart was broken) that used the stamina system similar to dark souls to set how much he would handle with the block and how much he would be able to attack with each weapon.



Also, I realize that when my friends found the fireball skill or the Staff that shot magic, they would stick to then instead the melee weapons. So I decided to change all the gameplay to a more twinstick "shooter", giving different skills to each weapon that I already has in the game.




And this was the last iteration that was played since the refactor started



So I think those videos shows best the evolution and game design changes during the process... And still changing, keeping the essence and the good part of the main design.

What you think about those videos ?
 

YanBG

Member
I kinda like the shield block idea from the first video. If it's difficult for players to use it, maybe it can be automatic(%) ability for the melee class?

Magic attacks look good.
 
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Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
Hey, do you still wonder how to use trimmed spritesheets?
You mean like texture packer spritesheets ??? If i´m not mistaken I´ve found an asset or a tutorial about how to use it on gm these days.... I need to find it. I´ll pm you when I get it.
 

YanBG

Member
Yeah like from TexturePacker, i was told that it can create a txt file to be used as lookup table. Then in game you'll need a code to id and loop through the coordinates(x,y,width,height).
 
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Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
Yeah like from TexturePacker, i was told that it can create a txt file to be used as lookup table. Then in game you'll need a code to id and loop through the coordinates(x,y,width,height).
yes, is really more or less like that! But the asset/script generate a JSON with this information and also ANGLE of the current image, so you can plot it properly

I think this is the asset :
https://github.com/GameMakerDiscord/custom-sprite-framework/wiki
https://marketplace.yoyogames.com/assets/4543/custom-sprite-framework
https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.p...e-framework-memory-management-and-more.19168/
 
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