Whoa, thanks for the advice, kind words, and likes, everyone! Woke up to a
lot of notifications this morning. Really encouraging, so thank you very much! ^ ^
Responses to a few posts:
The procedural generation of cave that you've worked on(I thought I have seen it), is it also implemented in this game?
No, not yet. It's still its own separate test project. It will be in the final game though, as a kind of "cave of ordeals" thing, where you can explore an infinite dungeon for extra exp and stuff. The game isn't a roguelike at all, though - the whole game is being hand made. Any proc-gen stuff will be strictly bonus stuff, mostly as end game content. =)
Game is still looking nasty. However, can it be played with only one player, or two players? Is it local or online cooperative?
One to three players. Only couch right now, but I'll be adding online play, too. I think a lot of people would miss out on the co-op otherwise. Couch co-op is so much better, though. I hope people who can gather around for it actually do.
3-player? I don't have that many friends.
Me either! That's why I'll giving people a few options:
1.)Play with friends! (aren't you cool. >: \ )
2.)Play with AI characters in place of your friends
3.)Play solo, and absorb the AI partners powers. I'll have to balance this, but since the game is being designed around having three characters on the screen, I'm thinking about boosting your stats by 20% or something if you're playing solo. I'll have to mess around with it to get a good balance, but I don't think it'll be hard. =)
Looks great! The style def strikes that feeling of good old 'golden' 90s rpgs.
There's something magic in an adventure game, when you can have a group of people interested enough to participate and get invested in the story and/or some puzzles or whatever.. and good coop was always missing from so many of these classic adventure-rpgs, so I'm def wondering how you'll implement it.. there's a lot you could do!
about portraits- i feel like the portrait approach can save you time to show some character detail, and easily reinforce dialogue with emotion, but if your character sprites look good on screen (which they do so far) maybe you don't need close ups? (maybe there are close ups in other cutscenes, i dunno) and maybe you can use some actual character animations to help convey emotion (imagining simple dramatic pauses, characters walking to certain points, striking certain pose, etc). comes down to whatever you're comfortable using.
keep it up!
Thanks, Froganus! I have the same feelings on portraits, kind of. I think they do help to convey emotions in the scenes, and can definitely make some scenes better. On the other hand, I think they're kind of distracting, and can make games worse....I want to have characters walk around and emote and stuff during cutscenes....it feels like it's kind of distracting looking at the character's portrait while looking at their sprite. Splits the attention a little, I think. ):
That said, it seems every RPG nowadays has portraits, and it seems like a lot of people like them, so I guess I'll be adding them. No harm in seeing how I like them, I guess, besides maybe wasting some time, hahah.
Good art as always and cool rock spell! That looks like a lot of animating.
...
To be honest I think your trailer (Not game) is pretty terrible.
90% (ish) of your trailer is either white text on black screen or slow-paced walking with little to no action. Are there other people in the games? Are there towns? Why not show some talking to NPC's? Why not show the cool cast of characters I can meet? Why not show that cool fire effect you had? Why not show some of your sweet spell animations? Why not show your bone fish, or that big boss you were making?
I get the impression you are really holding back the goods, but since this is a trailer, I don't think that will have a positive effect. So my advice is definitely make a new trailer before your kickstarter! This one is not doing your game justice!
Heheh, thanks for the honest advice, RujiK. I'll be honest, too - I made this trailer for a very small group of people. For me and my team, a trailer like this where the focus is on the scenery and beautiful music is fantastic. Fish under the ice on a gloomy Winter day? To Debussy in the background? *chef kiss* instant buy! :'D
That said, I told my team that people like us were probably pretty rare and that I wouldn't be surprised if most people didn't respond to it. Of course, if people like it, I'll be happy, but if people don't respond to this particular trailer, then that's fine. Like you said, I've showed more exciting stuff before - I'll be showing more action again soon, and the KS trailer itself is 80% fighting, magic, bosses, and explosions. (still 20% white text on black screens though, heheh. X'D ) My trailers from now onward will have something for everybody, instead of just for art nerds like me, hahah.
I'll be posting more here soon, so stay tuned! Thanks again for the advice, RujiK! =)
stunning as ever
!
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In your RPGs, do you prefer your dialog boxes to show portraits, or to go without?
Depends totally on the game. For mine i'm going to implement animated portraits like the ones in shinning force I & II. If you want to add a dark atmosphere i would just add dialog boxes without faces. If you are going to add long conversations with a more moodly relaxed and cartoonish dialogs, use them
pd: waiting for the kickstarter trailler!
Yeah, that's what I'm worried about. People like portraits for fun dialog, and I think they work well there. My game is going to have a lot of serious scenes though, and I'm worried that pure writing would carry those scenes much better than cycling through Player_SadFace1.gif, Player_SadFace2.gif, Player_Concerned1.gif would. I was thinking about just having still portraits like some of the Castlevania games do, but basically everyone in this thread has said that's the absolute
worst option, so I dunno what I want to do now. :'D
Thanks again for the comments and support, everybody. Really appreciate ya! I'll be back with more stuff soon! =D