Indie Call of Saregnar - a Betrayal at Krondor-inspired RPG

[Rhuantavan]

I'm deeply concerned by the prevalence of white skinned people in that photograph and screenshots showed so far.
None of those women look like they have a penis either, so I must wonder if Call of Saregnar actually plans to tackle the issue of misrepresented minorities in video games at all. I'm not gonna spend my hard earned dollars in supporting a project doomed from the very beginning by its retrograde leanings.

That's fine, in fact your words only strengthened my beliefs that I am going into the right direction!

On a serious note, the costumes look great, good work!
An actual concern based on that screenshot posted way above: no musician would ever place an instrument above a lighted fireplace (or any source of heat/cold for that matter), it'd completely wreak havoc amongst the gut strings and the soundboard.

Thank you! An astute observation about the lute, I must say! Will have to find a reason as to why that lute is up there, so dangerously exposed to heat!

 

[Wayward Son]

Will have to find a reason as to why that lute is up there, so dangerously exposed to heat!

Could be that it's an old family antique that no one plays anymore because it's all warped anyway?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Or you're cooking something inside it because you're too damn cheap to buy proper utensils.

 

[Rhuantavan]

Since I’ve got thousands of photos of actors now, I just thought to mock up the conversation system.

 

[Rhuantavan]

Here is another “lo-fi” variant of the original conversation mockup. The actor has a significantly reduced palette and has been pixelized somewhat to better fit the world's overall aesthetic.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Now this demands IPP with a CRT shader & scanlines!

 

[Rhuantavan]

Now this demands IPP with a CRT shader & scanlines!

Not out of the question.

 

[Rhuantavan]

The last one, probably how it will look in-game.

 

[AdolfSatan]

Absolutely incline. Pixelated versions look best to me, favouring by a slight edge the third.
A script locked to the in-game clock to vary the image's white balance from cool to warm might help the whole blending with the ambiance thing.

 

[Rhuantavan]

Absolutely incline. Pixelated versions look best to me, favouring by a slight edge the third.
A script locked to the in-game clock to vary the image's white balance from cool to warm might help the whole blending with the ambiance thing.

This isn’t in-engine yet, just a mockup. Sprites already get affected by lighting in-game, so that is handled out of the box.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I wonder if you used the GL code I sent you a long time ago to draw the sprites inside the inn as a reference? Or you've just placed the quads with the texture attached?

 

[Rhuantavan]

I wonder if you used the GL code I sent you a long time ago to draw the sprites inside the inn as a reference? Or you've just placed the quads with the texture attached?

I am using Unity sprites, actually.

 

[Rhuantavan]

Since I am spamming my twitter account, here is the same actor in an internal scene. Works much better than outdoors, since the lighting is plain wrong for sunlight. Will reshoot the portraits next time with more uniform lighting for external scenes.

 

[Mustawd]

Since I am spamming my twitter account, here is the same actor in an internal scene. Works much better than outdoors, since the lighting is plain wrong for sunlight. Will reshoot the portraits next time with more uniform lighting for external scenes.

Was about to type the exact same thing about the lighting. But wow man. I'm really impressed with what I see so far. D1P for me if it keeps going this well.

 

[Rhuantavan]

I'll just leave this here.

 

[AdolfSatan]

Can one move around the Inn, or is it a locked position? Asking merely out of curiosity, I reckon it'd be hellish to create rotating sprites, but perhaps you hate yourself and plan on doing shit like that.

Guard's weapon on the door appears and disappears randomly, seems the animations got mixed. There's also a weird shadow being cast on the wall near that door. And yes, I picked the Autistic Eye perk when I was rolling my attributes.

All that aside, it looks fantastic, ya nailed the mood.

 

[80s Stallone]

So is this game filled with Balkanites?

 

[Rhuantavan]

Can one move around the Inn, or is it a locked position? Asking merely out of curiosity, I reckon it'd be hellish to create rotating sprites, but perhaps you hate yourself and plan on doing shit like that.

Guard's weapon on the door appears and disappears randomly, seems the animations got mixed. There's also a weird shadow being cast on the wall near that door. And yes, I picked the Autistic Eye perk when I was rolling my attributes.

All that aside, it looks fantastic, ya nailed the mood.

No, the camera angle is locked once you enter a certain place, like this inn for example. You get a context-sensitive mouse cursor to explore the place though.

About the guard, I simply took too few frames of animation, so there's that... it was from the first test photoshoot, rookie mistake. That weird shadow is actually cast from the only dynamic light in the room - the grid in front of the fireplace.

So is this game filled with Balkanites?

Correction: The actors are all Italians, if that makes you feel any better.

 

[Mustawd]

No, the camera angle is locked once you enter a certain place, like this inn for example. You get a context-sensitive mouse cursor to explore the place though.

The reminds me of the Wing Commander series where you'd get a background and pick who you wanted to talk to using the cursor.

 

[Reinar]

Everyone's fapping to the live actors, so I thought I might give a different opinion. I don't like it. Never liked it in games. Personally, I'd go the M&M way - drawn portraits with mostly static, non-interactive background.
This doesn't stop me from being interested in the game though.

 

[Rhuantavan]

Everyone's fapping to the live actors, so I thought I might give a different opinion. I don't like it. Never liked it in games. Personally, I'd go the M&M way - drawn portraits with mostly static, non-interactive background.
This doesn't stop me from being interested in the game though.

And I thought only the RPGWatch folks disliked it (https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1061490799&posted=1#post1061490799)

Like I explained in that thread, I couldn’t possibly afford creating/buying drawn NPCs, portraits and the like. The combat animations alone will take approximately 8k frames of animation per character, so taking photos is actually the quickest way to achieve my vision. That’s only if you look at it from a production perspective, but I actually LOVE this approach, so I am not budging a millimeter.

 

[Reinar]

Everyone's fapping to the live actors, so I thought I might give a different opinion. I don't like it. Never liked it in games. Personally, I'd go the M&M way - drawn portraits with mostly static, non-interactive background.
This doesn't stop me from being interested in the game though.

And I thought only the RPGWatch folks disliked it (https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1061490799&posted=1#post1061490799)

Like I explained in that thread, I couldn’t possibly afford creating/buying drawn NPCs, portraits and the like. The combat animations alone will take approximately 8k frames of animation per character, so taking photos is actually the quickest way to achieve my vision. That’s only if you look at it from a production perspective, but I actually LOVE this approach, so I am not budging a millimeter.

I understand the complications of drawing hundreds of sprites and what that means for independent developer, I walk those shoes for some years as well. The customer doesn't care though. Only the result is important.
Anyway, with the environment graphics fidelity being as it is, I don't think too many frames per animation are needed. 8 sides × 10 frames = 80 frames per animation. That might be enough. Idle, walk, attack, hit, death, use/cast... what else? You'd be at ~500 frames per character (having only one armor and weapon set). M&M VI had 6 frames per animation per side and it looked good.
The portraits can be "cartoonized" photos. Again, M&M 6 did that. I think it was worse than M&M VII/VIII portraits, but it worked.

 

[Rhuantavan]

I understand the complications of drawing hundreds of sprites and what that means for independent developer, I walk those shoes for some years as well. The customer doesn't care though. Only the result is important.

But I love the results.

Anyway, with the environment graphics fidelity being as it is, I don't think too many frames per animation are needed. 8 sides × 10 frames = 80 frames per animation. That might be enough. Idle, walk, attack, hit, death, use/cast... what else? You'd be at ~500 frames per character (having only one armor and weapon set). M&M VI had 6 frames per animation per side and it looked good.

You are quite right there! Damn! I was all but excelling at excel, so mine was a terrible miscalculation. Still, it is about 600 frames per character, true.

The portraits can be "cartoonized" photos. Again, M&M 6 did that. I think it was worse than M&M VII/VIII portraits, but it worked.

But I don't like that.

 

[Reinar]

But I love the results.

...

But I don't like that.

And that's good. Your game, your rules. Basically, I just wanted to say you also have fan(s) who dislike the photographic characters.

 

[ProphetSword]

If you’re building the game you want to build, you’re on the right track. Don’t let others kill your passion with their suggestions. I speak from experience.