Pale Meridian [Action RPG] (Gifs)

Thanks a lot man! I need to play secret of mana at some point; I've had a couple people say it reminds them of it.
They're wrong. Your game looks nothing at all like Secret of Mana, hahah!
Not that that's a bad thing, or that it should keep your from playing Secret of Mana. It's one of the best games ever! Play it with a friend or two, though. it's definitely meant to be a co-op experience. =D

Your game is reminding me more of Ultima and other oldschool western RPGs more than anything out of Japan, though. Which is very cool in its own way! Your dev process itself also feels super Western to me, starting from ridiculously solid tech and creating a game from it, instead of what seems to be the Japanese way of starting more with art and story and concepts and building the tech to support it.

....Basically, this is a very unique devlog, and I'm having a lot of fun watching you build this game. =)
 

lolslayer

Member
Why didn't I see this thread before?

I envy you RuJiK, for the amount of spare time you have to work on game development ;(

P.S. I wouldn't leave without complimenting, it's awesome what you did there, but how much data is needed to save a giant map as this?
 
P

Piece0pie

Guest
@Salvakiya Thanks for the follow, man. I'm not sure what you mean by "Dynamic" dialogue, but I already have a pretty sweet branching dialogue engine. Ahh, I might as well show it off. Here is what it looks like:

The coolest thing is it's simplicity. It doesn't take any code to make a huge conversation.

For a little while I had something AWFUL like:
Code:
msg = "I like money. Do you like money"
choice1 = "No";
choice2 = "Yes";
...
if choice_select == choice1 {go to next message...}
But hard-coding every message would have taken ages, so I made a string parser that does all the choices and formatting automatically. Below is the above gif's message written in notepad.

Code:
{n1_question} Hey, lets make this message [col:red]STOP! [|] I got a question. What's your favorite color? [col:red]red, [col:blue]blue, or [col:green]green?
   [|n1_red]Red
   [|n1_blue]Blue
   [|n1_green]Green
   [|com_buy]Buy Menu}

   {n1_red} You like red!}
   {n1_blue} You like Blue!}
   {n1_green} You like Green!}
   {com_buy} Want to buy something? [A_buy]Yes [A_none]No}
No if statements, no switches, no nothing! It's also super lax on formatting, so spaces and lines can be used as much or as little as needed.

So that's how I write huge branching conversations without ever leaving notepad.
This is awesome! I have been meaning to learn how to do input/output from text files and this looks like a great excuse to get my hands dirty.
 

RujiK

Member
Looks like secret of mana.... Looks like Ulitma...
Personally, I was aiming for Corey in da House meets Nintendogs. I've played a little Ultimata, but I haven't beaten any of them. I liked it.

@lolslayer Thanks man, and actually I wish I had more free time. I have a full time job and a wife so really I just have to make time. I would expect the whole game to be under 500 mb, with maybe 100-200 mb for map data. (Rough estimates)

@zminusone No music yet, but it will be awhile before I hire anyone. Thanks though.

@Piece0pie Strings are easy as long as you remember they start at 1 instead of 0!

Technical time How do roofs work?
Roofs have been implemented for awhile. First, I made a simple shader. It tints all colors black except for the selected color. Like so:


Then, I "Zoned" out the map with a new layer of colors. (This is not visible unless in debug mode)


And finally, I turn on the color layer and apply the shader when indoors to get this: (This image is in the first post)


This is without the shader:
The roof tiles themselves are held in a ds_list and faded in or out based on their roof ID and the current roof group the player should be in.

Fun Time Fast forward to today

About a year ago, when I first showed off my game, @RichHopelessComposer said it looked nice but it needed more "Verticality/height." Buildings would look boring if they were all just a few tiles tall or if they all looked like this:


So today I have finally added some z-action to tiles.

That's the same building as the above screenshot, but man it looks way more interesting with some tall walls. So hey, thanks for the good advice. It only took me a year to get around to it.

And yes, all buildings will have the seamless loading style of above. Personally I dislike the disconnected feel of the split second loading when you go in a house in most/many RPG's.
 
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That castle looks great! *__*
I think the seamless loading style you're using here and the normal fading loading style both have their own strengths and weaknesses, though, and I think they could both be used together in one game. Out of curiosity have you played Link to the Past? I'm a little busy now, but I could give my thoughts on the different loading styles later today if you're interested.

Looking at that castle, though, maybe it'd be prudent of me not to, haha! X'D
 

Ninety

Member
Have you considered extending the verticality to the environment itself, via cliffs and stairs and such? Right now you have a bit of a chronic flatness going on. Not that it looks bad, mind.

Not sure if your engine supports that anyway, so if not carry on...
 

RujiK

Member
@Ninety Yes, I just added support for vertical cliffs and stairs about 2 posts back :p Cliffs are still pretty new though, so they're pretty rare at the moment. Here they are though:
@RichHopelessComposer I think I beat Link to the Past, or at least got close, but that was awhile ago. Any feedback on transitions, positive or negative, is good, so fire away!
 
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Piece0pie

Guest
Great work on those walls! They really give the building a more full body feel.
 
J

JCJ

Guest
Personally, I was aiming for Corey in da House meets Nintendogs. I've played a little Ultimata, but I haven't beaten any of them. I liked it.

@lolslayer Thanks man, and actually I wish I had more free time. I have a full time job and a wife so really I just have to make time. I would expect the whole game to be under 500 mb, with maybe 100-200 mb for map data. (Rough estimates)

@zminusone No music yet, but it will be awhile before I hire anyone. Thanks though.

@Piece0pie Strings are easy as long as you remember they start at 1 instead of 0!

Technical time How do roofs work?
Roofs have been implemented for awhile. First, I made a simple shader. It tints all colors black except for the selected color. Like so:


Then, I "Zoned" out the map with a new layer of colors. (This is not visible unless in debug mode)


And finally, I turn on the color layer and apply the shader when indoors to get this: (This image is in the first post)
The roof tiles themselves are held in a ds_list and faded in or out based on their roof ID and the current roof group the player should be in.

Fun Time Fast forward to today

About a year ago, when I first showed off my game, @RichHopelessComposer said it looked nice but it needed more "Verticality/height." Buildings would look boring if they were all just a few tiles tall or if they all looked like this:


So today I have finally added some z-action to tiles.

That's the same building as the above screenshot, but man it looks way more interesting with some tall walls. So hey, thanks for the good advice. It only took me a year to get around to it.

And yes, all buildings will have the seamless loading style of above. Personally I dislike the disconnected feel of the split second loading when you go in a house in most/many RPG's.
These screenshots and gifs are beautiful. I'm not a huge fan of RPGs anymore, but I like what I'm seeing here. It really reminds me of the snes RPGs I used to play.
 
I think I beat Link to the Past, or at least got close, but that was awhile ago. Any feedback on transitions, positive or negative, is good, so fire away!
Alright, figured anyone making an ARPG would vividly remember the likes of Secret of Mana and Link to the Past, but maybe not, haha! Maybe you really were more of a WRPG fan growing up? Out of curiosity, what RPGs do you admire? It'd be easier to give examples if I knew what your tastes were, heheh. ^ ^"

Anyway, you can watch a let's play if you don't remember the example I guess. Basically, at the very start of the game, you make your way through the rain into the castle. When you finally open the door, the game does that cartoon-esque circle fade out, and then back in. It takes a second or two - just long enough for the player to wonder "what's in store for me here?" - and then the castle's awesome theme music starts with an intimidating fanfare. "Oh snap," the player thinks, "💩💩💩💩 just got real." Moments like that can't happen with a seamless transition. Resident Evil also famously upped the tension between rooms with their door opening transitions. They added so much to the feel of the game, that a recent ad for the rerelease was just a video of the two hundred (or whatever) unique doors in the game opening. Basically, giving the player a split second to wonder what's next between areas can add a lot to a game. When a player enters a foreboding castle seamlessly, they feel "well, I can just turn around." When you add a little transition, they feel a bit more "trapped" in the new area, even though they could still just turn around.

It's not just for tense areas, either. Adding transitions let you more completely control the feel of any area in your game. Cozy houses feel much more cozy when the outside world is literally erased when you enter them. Caves feel deeper when you can't see the outside world peeking through. Etc, etc.

That said, the seamless method has strengths, too. Basically, it'll give the exact opposite feel of the transition method. I'll be using it in my game for things like houses that aren't supposed to feel safe, or for burned out castles open to the elements, or for small connecting caves.

Anyway, my awesome advice, lol. Remember that everything you do should add to the atmosphere you're trying to build for your game. Even something as seemingly inconsequential as how you handle moving into buildings will have a huge impact on how your game feels to people. =)

Excuse my 💩💩💩💩ty writing, too. Posting from my phone, lol.
 
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RujiK

Member
@JJcupcake Thanks man, and thanks for the zillion likes!

@RichHopelessComposer

RPG's I finished, or almost finished, and admire:
  • Dragon Warrior Monster I & II
  • Dragon Warrior I & II (Boring story and very grindy. Admire only for nostalgia)
  • Earthbound
  • Shadowrun
  • Pokemon Blue
  • Harvest Moon
  • Link's Awakening, Link to the Past
  • Final Fantasy 7 & 8 (Leaving pixel territory)
  • Chrono Cross
  • Baldur's Gate II
Transitions definitely have pros, but the resident evil transitions annoyed me to no end. The sense of wonder behind a door only happened on very special hard to open doors, for me it was "C'mon!!! Let's go!!!" for probably 90% of those transitions. Maybe I'm just impatient.

With a seamless world it's very easy to add a quick cutscene/cinematic to build suspense if needed. And since the cutscene will probably will only play once, it won't get irksome to the player having to watch it every time they enter/exit.

Cozy houses I agree with, this game won't have that super safe feel of other games.

Mini update: I've been working on portraits trying to get them up to par.

Older ones:


Newer


Hopefully there is a noticeable improvement. I need a new waifu for my avatar.
 
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RujiK

Member
Update #6: NPC Basic Movement


First, here is a visual explanation on how pathfinding works (Pathfinding algorithim is grid-based A*)



Every NPC has two major variables for BASIC movement: run_speed and turn_speed.

Here are two NPC's with the SAME turn_speed. Even with the same turn speed, red makes wider turns due to his increased run speed. (Kinda like two cars turning at 60 mph vs 10 mph. Turn will be wider even if they technically turn the same number of degrees per second.)


And finally, here are two super fast rabbits that have the same run_speed, but very different turn speeds.

The white rabbit looks very chaotic due to his very slow turning.

And the cool thing is that ALL of these rabbits are identical except for only TWO variables! Lots of possibilities with variety.
 
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Ah, thought I responded to this a long time ago. :x
You have good tastes in games! Out of those you listed, how many use seamless transitions versus conventional transitions? Cutscenes can add flavor to a scene, but they're a completely different animal than transitions, and won't have the same feel at all. ;>

Well, you can see how it goes, anyway. Looking forward to updates as always!
 
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Dave Martinez

Guest
Looks amazing, wish I was on your knowledge level! o_O
I mean my AI skills are coming along great, but this is just pixel by pixel greatness.
 
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JacobV

Member
This looks awesome so far! The art is great, the technical stuff is mindboggling and the scale is really impressive. This is the caliber of game I wish I could make. I'm definitely following this project!
 

RujiK

Member
Thanks for all the compliments guys!

Today, the basic weapon system:

Sword and shield mode is just about done, but dual wielding has me completely stumped gameplay wise.


As you'll notice, the second sword currently doesn't do anything when you attack. It's purely cosmetic. So my current ideas are:
  • Dual wielding just does more damage automatically
  • Second weapon attacks slightly behind the first weapon
  • After finishing your attack with the first, you immediately attack with the second
  • Second weapon can only be thrown
Does anyone have a better idea? These all seem kinda lame to me...

TL: DR : ANY IDEAS HOW FOR DUAL WIELDING GAMEPLAY??
 

JacobV

Member
You could have it so each sword can attack independently; a separate button for each hand? This could allow the player to either attack faster by alternating key presses, or double their damage by swinging both at once.
 

RujiK

Member
@JacobV ...
Sometimes I overthink things...

I swear there was a reason I decided that wouldn't work but now I can't remember why... Expect an update soon. Thanks!
 
I'd get some enemies in there and see how combat feels. The sword attacks don't look very satisfying to me right now. Check out Nuclear Throne or Link Between Worlds. They both had pretty good 360 melee attacks.

As for dual wielding...what would you do if you had two swords? Just make him do that! If I were making this sort of game, I'd have different sorts of combos for single and dual swords. For single swords, I'd do like two weak attacks followed up with a strong attack with a step forward. For dual swords, I'd actually make the attacks slower and heavier, with a step forward after every attack, ending with an extra heavy attack and larger step forward at the end. There are lots of options, though. Get a few plastic swords and act it out. Good gameplay is all about feeling tactile and satisfying. Right now your guy just looks like he's bored and sweeping the area in front of him - he's even looking left and right while attacking! Act out your animations. Find moitons and poses that make you feel cool, and then exaggerate!
 
M

mccheesy

Guest
There are Almost no tiles or objects, I use surfaces. The "room size" is only like 64x64 but you can go outside the room forever almost. Currently it runs at about 300-600 fps in 2x zoom and 100-300 fps in 1x zoom at 1600x900 resolution.
Forgive my ignorance as I'm just learning Game maker, but can you provide a little more detail as to how you're using surfaces? I've been feeling frustrated with the rooms system and I think I've been trying to come up with a system similar to yours. Are you using multiple surfaces and layering them or just one surface drawing it around the player as they move? You mentioned just starting a z-axis thing recently....

Also, love the color coded tilemap system. Great idea!
 
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Cpaz

Member
  • Dual wielding just does more damage automatically
  • Second weapon can only be thrown
Eh. These don't sound particularly engaging for a dual weapon system. Especially the first option, you could just upgrade the first weapon to begin with.
The second option would make sense if the other weapons was, say, a dagger or something of the like. Throwing a sword doesn't sound very effective :p

  • After finishing your attack with the first, you immediately attack with the second
  • Second weapon attacks slightly behind the first weapon
These sound much more desirable. I would actually suggest that the second weapon essentially act as an attack speed upgrade, with each weapon having their own values (strength, durability, or whatever they will have.)
I would suggest dual wielding have a drawback, so it isn't just having two weapons at all times because it's just better. Something along the lines of a sort of cool down. Say you only swing one sword because you missed, the player could be stationary momentarily because he/she missed.

Just a few suggestions. Looking great so far!
 
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RujiK

Member
@mccheesy Currently one surface for all terrain. The z-axis is faked, so it's still a single surface. And yes, I shift it around with the view.
@RangerX Someday! Thanks

@RichHopelessComposer The combo system is a great idea, but my issue is the animations. At the beginning-ish of the game dev cycle, I made a decisions I would rather have changeable armor/clothes and a bunch of weapons than nice animations. So the animation-style will be similar to Terraria. Lot's of weapons and armors, but really the same rigid few animations for everything.

Because of this reason, the sword combat will probably be closer to a 2d budget Mount&Blade than Zelda's Left-Right-Down combos.

@YanBG I think so. I implemented @JacobV 's suggestion.

@Cpaz Your post is pretty close to my thoughts. The current combat engine is similar to your suggestion.

(Also I liked how @Cpaz says Dual should be faster and @RichHopelessComposer says dual should be slower :p)

Currently what I have:

Both weapons are entirely independent of each other. I set freedom to the max and ended up with this. Quick re-filling stamina use and possibly speed will be the key to balance between single and dual wield. I may add some dual-restrictions depending on feedback, but currently it's just single wielding in two hands.

Is it realistic? Heck no.
Does it look wonky? Probably.
Is it fun? I think so.

There are a few suggestions about swing speed up there. Different weapons have different speed, "rev-up time", knock-back, stamina use, and damage, so there will hopefully be a weapon for everyone's play style. Dual-wielding two high knock-back weapons won't be as effective as two low knock-back weapons.

Here's a super fast katana


Dual-weilding had LOADS of issues with layering and almost everything else, so here is the weirdest glitch of the lot. (Dual-weilding was almost a solid week of game dev time.)



Finally, here is the new inventory screen. But first, here is the old one(s), so you will appreciate how far its come.




And the new one:


It's still WIP (Especially the stats) but the main idea is there. Thanks for all the comments!
 
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@RichHopelessComposer The combo system is a great idea, but my issue is the animations. At the beginning-ish of the game dev cycle, I made a decisions I would rather have changeable armor/clothes and a bunch of weapons than nice animations. So the animation-style will be similar to Terraria. Lot's of weapons and armors, but really the same rigid few animations for everything.
That's up to you! You need to decide how much having this ease of animation is hurting combat (or if it is, at all!), and whether or not it's worth it for your game. =)
For something of a hybrid system, check out the Metroidvania games (Symphony of the Night and onward) - those games have a mountain of weapons, and then have a few base animations for almost all of them, just changing the sprites. That always struck me as a good compromise. Secret of Mana also has a lot of weapons, but uses the same animation for each "class," to save on a bunch of work. Basically, they did the animation for a sword swing, and then just all the sword animations in the game match up to the character's hand. Not a lot of work, but still a lot of variety. Actually, they just palette swapped to change weapons. Even less work, hahah! Just some thoughts. The new gifs look a bit better already, so I'm sure you'll get something great by development's end. There's always time to tweak and change things as you go along, so no need to "finish" any one system right away. =D

(Also I liked how @Cpaz says Dual should be faster and @RichHopelessComposer says dual should be slower :p)
I chuckled at that, too. Made me think "this is why game development is great!" Everyone has their own valid ideas! =)

Also, I like the new inventory menu. Looks pretty slick! Feeling more and more like a WRPG, which is cool, since the tilesets look pretty JRPG! Interesting!
 

Shut

Member
The game looks really great judging by what I've seen here so far, it seems like you've put a lot of work in the small details as well. Are you working on this all by yourself or is it a team project? :)
 
M

MEITdev

Guest
Awesome looking game! Can't wait for official release. Do you have any time table, schedule or deadlines for release / close beta / greenlight etc? :)

Great work, keep it up for all of us!
 

RujiK

Member
@RichHopelessComposer A few base animations for all weapons isn't a bad idea. I'll keep that in mind, thanks.
@Shut Thanks man. It's a lone man project. Art, code, everything.
@YanBG @MEITdev Thanks guys. No idea on timeline. Not even a vague idea.

Something new I finally got around to:

All that art for the buildings and their interiors took forever.


I have a decision I'd love some advice on. Look at this screenshot of Zelda and notice the red square in the middle.


The square roughly (320x240?) represents the original SNES viewport. With that SMALL viewport, the city seemed large, interesting, and worth exploring. BUT with the full screenshot resolution as seen above, the need to explore is greatly diminished since everything is seen instantly. "Yup, there it is. The whole town... Time to move on."


Since my game's viewport will be 1600x900+, should I add a fog-of-war to unexplored areas to compensate? It would work similarily to Baldur's Gate II, where everything is black until explored and then remains visible.



TL;DR: Should I add Fog-of-War similar to Baldur's Gate II? Is there a better solution?
 

JacobV

Member
Honestly, I think adding something like what you showed in the Baldur's Gate picture would take away a lot from your game's visuals. All that great pixelart, it'd be a shame to cover a whole bunch of it up, and it also might take away from the atmosphere and immersion. I think the best option would be to make the city either larger, or very detailed, or interestingly designed. This way the city is actually large or interesting to explore, instead of simply having the appearance of being so.
 
Didn't I mention your game's resolution as a problem a long time ago? If not, I've been thinking it, at least....
I don't think fog of war is a good solution. I think the only solutions are either making huge pixel art buildings, or lowering your games resolution. Fog of war is going to kill the atmosphere, I think.
This is what I was talking about when I said every little seemingly innocuous thing will have a huge effect on your game - if you'd allow me to brag just this once, I picked my game's resolution based on the problem you're discovering now before I even drew my first tileset., hahah! ;P

I'm glad you're addressing this problem now, though. Better late than never! Things like this are why you should try to think as far as possible about your game's feel and atmosphere in advance, though. I probably spent two or three hard days deciding on my game's perfect resolution before I finally made up my mind.

My first thought on how to tackle this particular problem is to simply zoom the camera in when you enter a town. Make the "resolution" half as big by pulling the camera closer to the character. Even better would be to fade to black when entering a town, with the camera being zoomed in when we fade back in.

Good luck!

Edit: Also, I think you did a great job on that city tileset. I've been struggling with my town tileset for awhile now, so I have to give you a lot of credit here. I think it looks really good! =D
What program are you using for your pixel art, if you don't mind me asking? It seems like you're using additive blending layers and crap for some of the effects you're pulling off, and maybe even some color tinting layers?

Edit edit: Oh my God, Link to the Past's graphics are so perfect. X'D
 
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RangerX

Member
I honestly prefer smaller resolution and smaller view. Fog of war is a wierd videogame thing I never liked, even in exploration/RTS games.
Its just bad.
 

RujiK

Member
@RangerX @JacobV Thanks for the input. Just to be clear, it would remain visible forever once explored. Also I do plan to have zoom 1x, 2x, 3x options, so in the higher zooms/lower resolutions fog-of-war wouldn't even be visible. So really it would be a high resolution only thing.

@RichHopelessComposer Pretty sure you mentioned resolution a long time ago, or at least SOME one did anyway.. The zoom effect isn't a bad idea, but it's not just towns that will be an issue. Dungeons, forests, islands, everything really, will seem small at really large resolutions. Also I'm still using GM's default art program. I've tried a bunch of programs, but I guess I'm just used to it.


The only other option I can think of (besides fog-of-war) is to have a maximum resolution divided by zoom, so if it's like 2048x2048 then 2x zoomed or higher must be used.
Currently a 4k monitor would pretty much break the game without either a forced zoom or a fog of war.

Technical post: Bone-men

Bonemen are a new enemy that use ranged attacks. They chase after the player but only close enough to throw bones. If the player gets too close, they retreat. Observe:


I wanted LOTS of bonemen possible on screen, like 50-100, but after about 30, things started getting clogged. To prevent lag, pathfinding (Which can be VERY intense) is only done so many times per frame. As a result, if you tell 50 units to move at once, it looks like this:

Old Method: Single file


In combat, it's almost like a lame fight scene where the enemies come at you one at a time since pathfinding can take so long. Since pathfinding is already about as optimized as it can get, I made so NPC's can now share pathing information. If two (Or more) NPC's are near eachother and are headed to the same destination, they just share the same path. This can change 100 path calculations to 10 or so.

New Method: Share paths


Also I made a blood splat. Is this better than a flashing sprite, or too violent?



Overall, the AI was really fun to work with. It needed almost a complete rewrite but now it's much faster and also easier to change. I'm hoping to have battles with 100 units, but I'm not sure if that will be possible without pushing the requirements too high.


So in conclusion:
1. is Fog-of-War ONLY for the higher resolutions any better?
2. Blood-splat or traditional sprite flash?
 
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Blood splatter vs flashing: they'll both change how your game feels. Both are fine, though. The blood splatter is cool looking, but wouldn't fit my game, for example. It's not clashing with your art.

I love your tech posts. You're running into a lot of problems I don't need to solve for the most part, since you're making a game that feels more western and maybe more "modern" than mine (I probably won't need more than five enemies on the screen at a time, for example), but it's really cool seeing your clever solutions to these problems.

I like your skeletons! My next enemy is actually kind of the same AI. The annoying keep-away enemy type, haha! =)
 
Q

Qarak

Guest
I will hold all my feedback until I can play a demo
This looks awesome to be honest, good luck
 
F

FROGANUS

Guest
Wow nice to catch up with your regular doses of amazeballz work. Those skellis are rad.

The sword swinging is super rad, at least from the waist up.. The arms are magic looking! The way they overlap and twist.
If the legs were in a wider stance ready position for when armed, it would be completely convincing. (and maybe limit dualies to short swords/daggers - swinging those large blades at that speed is kinda absurd).

Blood- Seems unrealistically excessive, though is it realistic to expect to encounter such a large horde of skellis at once in game? (I think still a little excessive)

Fog of War- Um again, I think you need more to gauge this by. Zelda isn't a fair comparison, I'd expect your towns to be a little more spacious?
I wouldn't rule it out though. I'm sure you could do something tasteful like in the vein of your map editor tinkering to have, not 💩💩💩💩ty dark black, but maybe a version of the map that doesn't reveal enemies and details right away, because you have to immerse the player into the player- I don't think you're looking for an omniscient perspective on this are you? Just eyeing everything from far, especially enemies could take away the suspense of exploration.

keep it up- these updates are pretty intriguing and inspiring!
 

RangerX

Member
The blood splatter looks dumb and excessive. Save that for mobs that are throwing spinning circular saw blades. :)
I think the animation is also important. I don't feel the hit at all in the gif up there. There need to some movement, some "receiving the hit" animation maybe, adding a screen shake, anything that will feel FEELING the hit. That's what I think will make your game feel good and fun, blood splatters or not.
 
adding a screen shake
Ugh, please no. Screen shake is so annoying and overplayed thanks to Vlambeer and their "ADD SCREENSHAKE TO EVERYTHING!!!" advice they give to any indie that asks. Blech. XP
....That said, I do agree the character should react more than he is now. Good advice!
 

Bingdom

Googledom
Wow, this game looks great.

My main fear would be the gameplay. Make sure to add lots of features and freedom! :D
I don't play many RPG games much, so I can't really give much advice.

You got over 40 likes in 1 post... damn...
 

RujiK

Member
@RichHopelessComposer Glad you like the tech posts! Actually I thought they were a little boring so I've been skipping over a lot of the techinal stuff. I'll remember that next time

@Bingdom @cloud9 Thanks guys! Also it's open world so I'm trying to provide as much freedom as possible. (40 likes and counting :) )

@Qarak Thanks man! Even if there's no demo, general art/whatever feedback is always appreciated.

@RangerX Damage/blood is still a work in progress! It will have more "OOMPH" too it in the end, but I wanted to show off the blood early. I agree it's currently excessive for getting hit with a bone. Also I'm planning for blood/violence to be disable-able in the options.

@FROGANUS Thanks for the long reply. Unfortunately, player animations are probably going to be the weakest part of the game due to being able to change clothes and my abilities. They will probably be similar to Terraria on a budget. Servicable, but nothing special. Also thanks for the fog of war ideas. Still not sure what I'm going to do, but it looks like no one wants black screens.



ART POST

Incase you somehow haven't noticed, pretty much every texture in the game is 16x16. Like this:


The repetition is pretty obvious, so I changed the most common textures to much larger sizes.

Here is a breakdown of a few attempts:




And of course, it's all automated. Here is a before and after image.


All in all, I'd say it's a modest increase in visual appeal. The repetition is much harder to see on the light grass especially.
 

RujiK

Member
More Enemies. I added spiders and tried to make them move unpredictably creepy like actual spiders. They're also kind of bi-polar. They may attack on sight or they may just sit and watch. They have a swift pounce and are pretty deadly.



Another new enemy is the rat. It's cowardly alone, but will attack in groups. Notice how first the rats run away but then attack when they realize they have companions to help. They're pretty weak.

I think I have pretty much every generic RPG enemy in the game besides a slime now. Anyone have an enemy they think would be cool?

In the art department I have been working on woods and forests. Previously woods have been looking like a weird hedge maze thing.


And although it has a simplistic charm to me, it needed an update. So I started looking at SNES games for inspiration and saw these:



So I started to mimic what I saw, and made this:


Essentially I was making a bunch of corridors with trees for walls since that's what pretty much every SNES game does. I didn't even question it; I just copied what I saw. After a bit of corridor work, I remembered something. I'm making an OPEN WORLD game. Do I really want the woods to be treed-in hallways?

So I changed the woods to be more open and it currently looks like this:

Hopefully that looks much better? It has some newer art assets though so I'm kind of bribing you to like it better :p

Finally I found a weird bug that was placing half a door behind every tree. Sneaky floating door.


(That was a long post)
 
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cdgamedev

Member
From what I've seen, this looks like a really good game; I like the art style, the character that you game has (like the feeel of it) and just the whole thing! Really can't wait for the demo - does it have an ETA or is it just like "It'll come when it comes" haha! Great job so far!
 
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