Rising Sun Academy [Online ActionRPG] [LF Testers for feedback round]

Fanatrick

Member

(work in progress, features and elements will change)

Info:
Name: Rising Sun Academy
Genre: 2D Action-RPG
Input: Keyboard / Gamepad, up to 4 players
Description: Rising Sun Academy is a samurai/ronin themed 2D Action-RPG, focusing on role-playing and intense combat mechanics. Unique ability system and precise controls enrich the action, while the vibrant art style blends the eras of video-game graphics - both old (pixel art) and new (shaders) - into a fast-paced, colorful samurai deathmatch.
Synopsis: Join an academy of fighters in a world threatened by a portent of cosmic calamities, in order to challenge the heavens for the survival of human kind.

Gameplay:
Stats/Equipment
There are 4 primary stats, each having 2 secondary stats. They're currently as follows:
  • STRength - How strong you are physically
    • IMPact - Force of your physical strikes
    • TENacity - How many hits you can take before dazed/knocked
  • VITality - How much damage you can endure
    • CONstitution - How much damage you negate
    • ENDurance - How much damage you take can be healed
  • DEXterity - How fast you are
    • Attack SPeed - Decreases the delay between your strikes
    • Movement SPeed - How fast you move
  • WISdom - How strong you are magically
    • INTelligence - Increases your MP regeneration
    • WIT - Increases your max MP and healing
There are 2 resource stats, Health Power and Magic Power. Traditionally, when a character's HP reaches 0 the character faints. MP is used to cast magic and use abilities.

There are 6 magic stats (masteries), Fire, Water, Current, Earth, Dark and Light. Increasing these allows you to cast increasingly powerful abilities. Some abilities require a combination of multiple types of magic.

Stats are affected by equipment. There are 6 equipment slots:
  • Head
  • Chest
  • Legs
  • Weapon
  • Off-Hand
  • Back

Movement/Swordplay
Movement is fast and precise with many ways of traversing the map and obstacles

Combat is heavily focused on timing, strategy and reflexes
You can block most attacks and projectiles. Blocking too much force results in a guard-break
Guard-breaking knocks the enemy in a rag-doll state
Countering leaves the enemy in a dazed state, giving you an opportunity to strike back. Some abilities have counter mechanics, the timing is crucial because missing a counter leaves you open for a short while.

Abilities/Chanting
While guarding, input a move combination much like in every fighting game. If the combination is correct, releasing guard button casts the corresponding ability if you have all the requirements (these can include MP, HP, stats, equipment, etc). There's currently over 70 abilities implemented

  • Character customization
  • Many different gear-sets
  • Academy profile with scores and grades
  • Calendar with important dates and events
  • Dynamic weather affecting the map
  • Day/night cycle, seasons and seasonal changes/events
  • Breathing world, NPCs follow a varying pattern, shops have shifts
  • Different combat play-styles and character builds
  • Personal dorm room
  • Companion system
  • Online networking

I'll write up more stuff as time passes. I'll reserve 2 extra posts below for development info and credits (also due to image limits...), etc. This was allowed by an admin, although a year ago when the project was in its very early phases, let me know if there's a problem with that :)

Contact
- Mail -
[email protected]
- Discord - fntrck#5203
- Twitter - @ichiban_dev


 
Last edited:

Fanatrick

Member
Tech:
Volumetric effects



Fluid effects

Lighting

Physics

And like dozen more things I'd rather write as a dev-post later :)
 
Last edited:

cidwel

Member
I'm amazed at the animations. Great artwork and pretty weird. The way shaders are joined with pixel art feels a bit weird for me. Surely it is made in a way to be unique!
I feel the combat too much fast for me, but it's a matter of preference.
As a curiosity. Is this made entirely by one man or a team?

Surely seems amazing to play anywhere in a Switch :)

For me it's pretty amazing to see here great initiatives out of nowhere
 

Fanatrick

Member
I'm amazed at the animations. Great artwork and pretty weird. The way shaders are joined with pixel art feels a bit weird for me. Surely it is made in a way to be unique!
I feel the combat too much fast for me, but it's a matter of preference.
As a curiosity. Is this made entirely by one man or a team?

Surely seems amazing to play anywhere in a Switch :)

For me it's pretty amazing to see here great initiatives out of nowhere
Thank you for your feedback! Some of the effects like smoke fluids need to be toned down a lot, hopefully that makes things less messy.

The combat in the gifs is my own over-tuned character, it can get pretty fast but the plan is to ease the player into it and slowly train him with the academy challenges for the climax. The combat at the start of the game is much slower.

And yeah, so far this has been a single man endeavor :)
 
Last edited:
R

Red_Wing

Guest
Dude the fact that you did this all yourself is inspiring. Your game looks sick. The combat looks great and love the rpg elements. I'm making a similar game actually, but yours has way more polish.

Keep going man.
 
This looks incredible. So many amazing effects.

How long have you been working on it may I ask, and how well optimized is it, I mean does it need a newer PC to run smoothly?
 

Fanatrick

Member
Thank you

How long have you been working on it may I ask, and how well optimized is it, I mean does it need a newer PC to run smoothly?
Around year and a half with the iteration in question. The engine and all the necessary systems I've been fiddling with for quite a while, hard to say but my best guess would be the last 3 years of college. It's been carefree so far, with a few all-nighters every now and then while juggling work and freelancing, so not a high amount of pure man-hours.

As for optimization, different versions of the game been tested on around 6 or 7 machines running it smoothly so far. I'm aware this means absolutely nothing though, as both the versions and the specs have changed as time went on.
I've started the project on a medium-end laptop that I got back in 2014. While it's still running smoothly on that poor thing there's still a lot of room for potential improvements. Graphics quality options also exist. but so far never had to downgrade any of the map sizes or anything in order to gain performance. I'm very happy with how the lighting engine performs.
 
Last edited:
F

Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
man, this is really sick... You´re doing this on 1.4? and all alone even the art?
 

Fanatrick

Member
man, this is really sick... You´re doing this on 1.4? and all alone even the art?
Thanks :)

Yes, this has been done entirely in GM:Studio 1.4 and glsl. I'm also doing the art completely alone, although I'm looking for help in that department since a real artist could come up with much better stuff in far less time than I ever could.

EDIT: Due to some minor demand I created a discord server. It's barren atm but will grow as the development progresses. Don't want to bump the topic to just state that one thing :)
It's here btw https://discord.gg/mHp7yB9

EDIT: Game was ported to GM:Studio 2 early in June.
 
Last edited:

Slyddar

Member
Wow! The effects you've achieved here are inspiring. I'm assuming most of the funky stuff is done with shaders? The water is some of the best I've seen in GM. Congrats mate, would love to see where this project goes.
 

Fanatrick

Member
Wow! The effects you've achieved here are inspiring. I'm assuming most of the funky stuff is done with shaders? The water is some of the best I've seen in GM. Congrats mate, would love to see where this project goes.
Yeah almost all the funky stuff is done by shaders, water included :)
 
M

Misty

Guest
What the heck is this? This is a game maker game? This is the best looking game maker game I've ever seen lol
 

Fanatrick

Member
What the heck is this? This is a game maker game? This is the best looking game maker game I've ever seen lol
Thanks a bunch! :)

I've been working on a short video showcasing some of the fire abilities currently in the game:

Let me know what you think, most of the abilities have different parameters, I'll do my best to explain each of them if need be.
 
M

Misty

Guest
Looks cool. I'd buy if it had local play or online that did not lag like Smash Wii U.
 

Fanatrick

Member
Looks cool. I'd buy if it had local play or online that did not lag like Smash Wii U.
Local play as in couch multi-player is supported. There's also already a fair bit of peer-to-peer networking, but it's not a primary focus at the moment.
 

Fanatrick

Member
Some electric abilities I'd like to share.

Each of these puts a stack of [static] debuff on the target. These stacks are to be manipulated with other abilities in advantageous ways like nuking someone who's really stacked, transfering stacks between units, consuming your own static stacks for stat buffs, etc.

The most basic one, gives your next slash [stun] and [unblockable] properties.


Advanced version of above, applies to next 3 slashes but is put on a huge cooldown afterwards


An electric gtfo spell for mages and intelligence builds


Heavencrack is a fast nuke that can only be cast when there's a unit (friend, foe or self) having at least 10 stacks of [static] . It targets the person with most stacks, if it's a tie - the unit that's the highest on the map will get struck.

Heavencrack expends 10 stacks of [static] on the first foe it hits, but can also hit multiple times. After the first hit, the damage is halved until hitting the minimum of 10% of the first hit's damage. It also expends 5 stacks instead of 10. This persists until there are no units with 5 or more [static] stacks or the caster gets interrupted.
 
Last edited:

sylvain_l

Member
<3 the shadow/light effect when the cloud pass in front of the sun in the first image. Same for the shockwave effect :)

to be honest the sinwave on the trees for the wind, is a bit to repetitive or IDK, but something feel just a bit off. (but I'm nitpicking here :p; perhaps it's because the 2 trees are just clones)
 

Gravedust

Member
Woooow, extremely impressive. :) Not just the visuals but the obvious thought that has gone into the combat system. I think if as much attention is paid to the story and plot as has been the visuals and mechanics, you'll have something really special on your hands.

Will be looking forward to the next update. :)
 

kupo15

Member
Wow the tech looks unbelievable! Looks really great so far as well! :) How did you do the waterfalls? Is that a texture? shader? if so...how? what?

Impressive stuff man! :D

@RichHopefulComposer
 
Last edited:

Fanatrick

Member
Woooow, extremely impressive. :) Not just the visuals but the obvious thought that has gone into the combat system. I think if as much attention is paid to the story and plot as has been the visuals and mechanics, you'll have something really special on your hands.

Will be looking forward to the next update. :)
Means a lot, thanks :)

Wow the tech looks unbelievable! Looks really great so far as well! :) How did you do the waterfalls? Is that a texture? shader? if so...how? what?

Impressive stuff man! :D
Yes, it's a shader that samples 2 cuts of a waterfall texture with 2 channels. That's used as a mask for a sampler2D of application_surface texture that gets distorted by the result of 2 channels in the mask.

I'd like to follow up with few dark spells I've been tuning lately. Mainly ones in regards to shadow clone summoning.

Shadow clones are a big part of dark caster archetype, they are basically 1HP units you can interact with in combat. They are very useful as a distraction tool, but can also be utilized effectively in comboes. The user can manipulate these clones in many ways like swapping their positions, increasing their duration or granting them abilities. Usually these abilities also cost HP, while leaving the healable portion intact. Shadow clone summoning abilities share their cooldown.



Considering shadow clone abilities also cost HP, it's a good idea to have healing abilities. Dark Harvest is an advanced dark ability that sacrifices your clones, resets your shadow clone cooldown and also heals you scaling by the number of clones sacrificed.



As long as you hold a [book] type item in the offhand slot that gives you at least +2 to Dark mastery, your character can cast Necromancy. Necromancy is a long cooldown spell that resets your shadow clone cooldown every time you don't have a friendly shadow clone on the map for the next 20 seconds. Basically it allows you to constantly combo your clone summoning abilities as long as your MP suffices.

 
Last edited:

Fanatrick

Member
Showcasing the dialogue thing. I've also been finalizing the cutscene system which allows me to script in-game events really quickly. These affect everything from shopkeepers to story cutscenes, dialogue and even a big portion of other misc. content like cooking etc.

 
This game looks really beautiful and this is coming from someone who isn't generally a fan of games with this sort of look to it. Only concern I have is whether the game will remain stable with all the effects you've got going on at once.
 

Fanatrick

Member
This game looks really beautiful and this is coming from someone who isn't generally a fan of games with this sort of look to it. Only concern I have is whether the game will remain stable with all the effects you've got going on at once.
Thanks for the feedback. I'm keeping an eye on performance as I'm adding stuff in, if an effect or an algorithm performs badly I generally end up shelving it for future reference or improve on it until it performs well. Older iterations of liquid and smoke shaders don't even compare to what I currently have. I'm very happy with how it currently performs.

That being said, I still am figuring out ways to further improve the system, mainly in terms of eliminating redundant texture swapping. As of now there are around 20 different equipment pieces that all rely on a spritesheet inside a texture page. Two different equipment pieces, let's say head and body gear, generally end up on two different texture pages which means every time they do a texture swap is prompted.
 
Last edited:

Fanatrick

Member
Worked on both combat and rpg mechanics these past few weeks. I'd like to highlight the new wall-bounce mechanic.


Stats are always at play and this interaction is hard to abuse, mostly it's just a combo extension that occurs every now and then if the enemy frontally collides with the terrain at high speed (limbs can effectively amortize the impact velocity). It doesn't just interact with walls, as it can also knock other units it comes in contact with in a chain reaction manner.


This adds an another layer of complexity in combat, especially since the player has to be ready to execute if the opponent gets bound by a wall-bounce.

 
Last edited:

Fanatrick

Member
Bit of a follow-up. Flying bodies can hit other units in their path, starting a possible chain reaction.


It can become a little crazy, but this isn't the usual situation in the first place (1v6)

 

Gunner

Member
Very nice. May I ask what do you do for a living? These can't possibly be made by some random game dev hobbyist in his spare time alone..
 

Fanatrick

Member
Very nice. May I ask what do you do for a living? These can't possibly be made by some random game dev hobbyist in his spare time alone..
I've been an indie game developer for quite some time now. There's always more to learn which keeps me going, but unfortunately I can't provide anything but spare time to this project at the moment. I do tend to go an extra mile every couple of nights or so and the development has been consistent so far. In hindsight, I do spend most of my spare time working on this project.
 

Fanatrick

Member
Over the course of a month I've been working on online multiplayer support. I'm currently very happy with how it performs and would say that efforts have already paid off greatly. No longer do I need to test ability interactions while controlling both characters myself :D

While I am relatively experienced in terms of networking in online games, this whole update felt like such an ordeal to undertake. To summarize:
  • Most of my experience was limited to TCP protocol and slower, non-action genres of gameplay
    • TCP was a no-go from the start, as decent network performance is what I made sure to aim for since the beginning of development
  • UDP protocol was used instead
    • Required a lobby/matchmaking server to be deployed to an open location
    • Packet sorting and data tracking had to be implemented
    • UDP hole-punching solution was utilized to remove the necessity of port-forwarding for most players
  • Action games are quite demanding in terms of network performance, the host usually sweeps the floor anyways, there's input lag, and boy let's not mention rubber banding
    • Peer-to-peer updates halve the trip time, and there's no host privilege
    • Matches still have the host appointed to synchronize the match when necessary
      • Having more peers improves game-state precision, when network health is optimal the game uses a majority vote to establish consensus
      • Otherwise the host title is shuffled and validated between the players
    • Efforts were made in terms of optimization, projectile dead reckoning, state prediction, hit registration, and gameplay determinism to achieve very satisfying results on up to 150-180 ms of latency
  • There were multiple gameplay changes needed to be introduced to satisfy the needs of the system
    • One of the main ones was the introduction of hit-stop during melee combat which was a no-brainer since it enriches the combat even without networking in mind
    • Abilities can no longer be aimed until the end of cast-time, instead every aimed ability now has a short wind-out time
    • Physics system was reworked to be more precise and truly deterministic. Ragdolls were very wrong at times which is no longer the case
    • Buff/Debuff/Status system had to be remade from scratch to allow for optimal synchronization
There's still lots of tweaks to be made, but from all the testing I've done for the last couple of days I'm very satisfied with how the system I have in place performs at this moment. The lobby is still one of the things that need additional attention but so far it's fulfilling it's purpose:



I've enjoyed online multiplayer games ever since I started exploring the web. Seeing the project flourish in that regard, I can't help but reminisce of my old time favorites like "Little Fighter II", "Soldat" and "Lemmingball Z" to name just a few.



Overall, this is a huge step forward for the project.
Expect updates soon.
 

Fanatrick

Member
Few things added to tech (original tech post reached max number of images):







The dynamic normal-mapped lighting is now also applied to all the necessary entities including units. This wraps up the rendering, at this point I'm satisfied with what the game can visually achieve.

 

Fanatrick

Member
Realized I never showcased any equipment/items at all.

Weapon/Offhand/Back slots:
Head/Chest/Legs slots:
Items:

Half of these icons are placeholders which I'm looking forward to replacing. The ones I'm showcasing have their mechanics fully implemented. Loving these "Set Bonuses" on certain equipment and what can be done with those :)
 

Fanatrick

Member
Physics updates!

Ragdolls
- Added buoyancy to the solver, creates some very interesting situations during combat around water ponds
- Fixed ragdolls sometimes not being serialized for networking
- Fixed over-extension of limb
Cloth/Hair
- Added "wet" physics for hair and [Back] slot items with "Cloth" tag
- Added support for multiple "pins"
Water ponds
- Added stitching for when world surface texture data goes out of bounds

 

Fanatrick

Member
I actually really love the skills you've put in here.
Awesome :D! Which ones in particular do you find most interesting? There's a "card-master" class I'm currently fiddling with that I wish to showcase soon.

In other news...
This wraps up the rendering, at this point I'm satisfied with what the game can visually achieve.
I lied...


In my defense, old cloud shaders were a pet peeve of mine ever since I wrote them and looked very bad at times. This looks miles better than before and allows me more freedom in customizing the atmosphere of each level. Still playing with colors and gradients but my jimmies have been tingled enough... For now :)
 
T

trentallain

Guest
Awesome :D! Which ones in particular do you find most interesting? There's a "card-master" class I'm currently fiddling with that I wish to showcase soon.

In other news...

I lied...


In my defense, old cloud shaders were a pet peeve of mine ever since I wrote them and looked very bad at times. This looks miles better than before and allows me more freedom in customizing the atmosphere of each level. Still playing with colors and gradients but my jimmies have been tingled enough... For now :)
Amazing!
 

Lhargo

Member
Awesome :D! Which ones in particular do you find most interesting? There's a "card-master" class I'm currently fiddling with that I wish to showcase soon.

In other news...

I lied...


In my defense, old cloud shaders were a pet peeve of mine ever since I wrote them and looked very bad at times. This looks miles better than before and allows me more freedom in customizing the atmosphere of each level. Still playing with colors and gradients but my jimmies have been tingled enough... For now :)
Icarus dive and shotgun flame thing
 
Top