Hello! I've been working on a little game called Pearl. It's a classic-style roguelike using the DawnLike tileset. The Tower has been standing for who knows how long, the horrors lurking within sealed for generations. However, the seal has been weakening, and fiends are beginning to slip out and wreak havoc in the world. A worldwide call for adventure and war has been sent out, a simple set of directions: "Travel to the island of Sargoza. Be armed, be ready, and have a will written". Thus, the warriors of the world descend on the foreboding Tower... Right now, the game has a little bit of (almost) every feature I'd like to implement. From here on out, it's mostly going to be creating new content for a while. I'd be happy to get any constructive criticisms or feedback, especially regarding balance. I've included the older alphas for posterity, but the most current version is Alpha 3. Thank you! Previous Versions: Alpha 1: First compiled version Alpha 2: More user-friendly, first instance of the Welcome Screen and in-game Changelog Alpha 3: Might and Magic. Lots of combat-related balancing Gallery: War profiteering! The best inns are run by dogs. It's scientific fact! Our motley crew. "Other shopkeepers are just wimps." Sometimes, you just have to let the demon out...
I noticed the Dawnlike tileset! Looks mostly good here, except for the aspect ratio stretching. Lots of distortion on the fonts especially. Will there be an option to keep the aspect ratio at default instead of stretching it?
I will look into that. I need to learnt o do aspect ratios correctly. It doesn't help that I started this project on a 1920x1080 screen, then moved to a 1600x900...but that's no excuse. So yes, next update will probably include some aspect ratio options
Thank you very much! If you want, keep an eye on this thread! Like I said, there's more meaningful content to come, just wanted a solid base to start with.
It's more of a pixel stretching issue. DawnLike tileset is 16x16px, the sprites themselves look scaled to 16x9, which looks poor unless you enable bilinear filtering/"Interpolate colors between pixels", which appears to have been turned off. I highly recommend Pixelated_Pope's YouTube tutorial series. It's a great starting point for learning the basics of resolution/aspect scaling in Game Maker! I just played the demo and WOW! You've got quite a bit done so far! It's very playable. I got to the first sand level then got swarmed and murdered by spiders. The only real issue I have is that the numpad doesn't move the cursor in some menus. It's annoying to have to go from the numpad to the arrow keys every time you need to use an item. Keep up the good work!
Alright, one last little teaser before the next update... I want to differentiate later-game equipment by giving them special properties, not just bigger numbers. I've already practiced with a few other items, but it's fun coming up with different ideas for weapons with procs and other effects in mind. As one last little thing, I have a few ideas for what the next update will focus on. My three main ideas are: -Elite Emissaries: Monsters can spawn as Elite versions of themselves, gaining powers like increased damage, health regen, speed, magic reflect, and maybe even some other effects. This would involve mostly updated enemies, maybe a few more enemy types added per area, and general balancing. -Tower Gourmet: More food items would be added, and many food items will be given different buffs to help differentiate them more. There would also be more potions added into the mix, making a chance to flesh out food, potions, and buffs/debuffs in one fell swoop. -Tower Topper: As it stands, the Final Area exists, but there has yet to be an enemy pool implemented for it. I want to put some thought into the theme for the final area, as (surprise!) there is a plot to this game, it just doesn't exist outside of some clandestine design docs. And not to spoil too much, but I want it to reveal the true nature of the Tower without needing to tell the player with words. That all being said, I could get it implemented and live with the twist getting out early. Not that there's a twist. Probably. Alright, with all that babble out of the way, what would you all like to see next? Keeping in mind that, with this update, 4/5 areas in the game are playable, with a decent smattering of loot to keep progression semi-stable. Also keep in mind that these are not mutually exclusive; it'll all be implemented eventually. To close that wall of text out, here's a Meatshroom Shrine. Tonda gossa!
I live. And I stream. And will be streaming some development chunks at twitch.tv/blackcoatdalov (more info on that later) Sorry about the silence. I got a new job soon after the last post, so I've been trying to acclimate to that and take care of some other things in life. I've also got a new gaming laptop, which'll make development a little quicker. With that, I have two announcements: Alpha 4 is nearly done. I just need to add in a couple of bosses for the later areas, and it'll be shippable. 'The End' will not be accessible yet; reaching the end of the fourth area will allow you to loop back to the beginning of the Tower. There are no gameplay changes from doing so, however. ...yet. So far, I added a few bells and whistles to get back in the swing of things, and also added in elite enemies ahead of schedule. Here's a nice little teaser image: All elites have increased HP, but also have a higher chance to drop loot and give more XP on death. As of now, elite enemies can be Aggressive (double DMG), Thieving (steals gold on hit), Vengeful (20% of DMG done to enemy returned to player, up to a max of 10% of player's max HP per hit), Nurtured (health regen), or Hearty (another double max HP). There are also little item notifications, because I will admit to getting absorbed into Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and I love the little notifications in the bottom left when you pick things up.The elite nameplates (seen above) and item notifications, however, can be turned off in the Options menu if that's not your style. Second announcement: I will be streaming chunks of my game development time on Twitch! I can't guarantee every chunk of development progress will be made on stream (for instance, the entirety of the endgame will be developed by me offline). However, I figured it could be a good way to both show people what game design is like, and carve out some more concrete time to spend on developing Pearl. Feel free to stop by, talk in chat, suggest features, and decry my latest questionable design choice I probably made on a whim. Be on the lookout for an Alpha 4 Release post soon!
