Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[curry]

shouldnt those rats have their legs under them and not sticking out of their sides?

 

[Freelance Henchman]

these are rare side-legged giant rats

 

[Excommunicator]

I rather like the overhead perspective, but I guess I may be in the minority with that. It gives a game a sort of chess-y feel I think.

I just think there's too much overhead.

these are rare side-legged giant rats

Just turn them into moles

You'll have to make sure we can pop them though.

 

[Mastermind]

NAZI strormtrooper fighting the good fight with his bros.

Spent the last couple of days working on troop and enemy AI. enemy was easy but troop was a bit of a pain since I had to implement indirect control. Works ok right now. Player can drop a rally flag which forces them to run to the flag while ignoring enemies or an attack flag to which they will also rush but fight enemies they run into along the way. Once I get around to the town building you'll be able to upgrade the flags (IE: troops move much faster when rallied and receive combat bonuses when fighting near the attack flag).

Speaking of moles, I will have enemies called Popamoles in the game. They will randomly pop out of the ground, shoot at you then disappear again.

 

[Abelian]

This was a game with overhead perspective I enjoyed. It's called Get Medieval and it's based on the old Gauntlet arcade game:

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

This was a game with overhead perspective I enjoyed. It's called Get Medieval and it's based on the old Gauntlet arcade game:

Ahh, old Monolith.

 

[Freelance Henchman]

Spent some time making a title picture:

 

[Abelian]

Lords of the Realm 2 was another great game that used top-down perspective for combat.

 

[Mastermind]

That's not entirely top down, you still have sprites for 8 directions which takes away one of the only two advantages of top down.

 

[Abelian]

Yeah, I see your point about the sprites. I should have mentioned GTA 1 & 2 (and the alternate perspective for 3) as better examples.

 

[Alchemist]

I don't mind the overhead perspective.

There's also Mageslayer as a top-down example:

 

[Destroid]

My entry for Ludum Dare 28

It's a sort of strategy survival roguelike where you scavenge resources, build bots, and escape to the next level.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

After playing around with this 'bloom effect' thingie, I tweaked it a little and turned it into... ah, fuck, forgot the right word for that (a trail in your eyesight that is left after looking at the sun/lightbulb/other shiny object).

 

[Zed]

I have loaded up my old rpg project again.

I'm considering removing mouse input for movement, but keeping it for the UI. So arrows/wasd for the 4 direction movement, and mouse for interface interactions.
Yeah... Fuck it, if people wanna eat an apple or wank or whatever while playing they'll just have to take a pause or grow a third arm or whatever.
I just want to get to drawing shit anyway, so yeah. Now it's decided!

I also fixed how the game loads sprites. Instead of always (every 2 millisec, I think?) importing a new sprite, it now does checks if sprite needs to be updated, and then updates if necessary.

edit: Inspired by playing broken sword 5, I also did some stuff on my adventure game but no more than polishing up my "test area". you can now walk around with pathing, interact, talk to people, show objects to people. also added portraits. the backdrop, interface/inventory and inventory item icon are placeholder.

 

[Zed]

I was afraid having the dialogue between PC and target NPC just "in the middle of the screen" would be terrible but I actually think it works rather well. There are also occasional "grunts" from NPCs. There are less pronounced and also color-coded (PC yellow, NPC blue)

A great thing about MMF2 are the plug-ins/Objects. These are essentially small ready-made pieces of logic that can be applied to whatever. For instance, in this adventure game, I'm using one object which takes the Y-value of all character objects and sorts them in order. This means the PC will be in front and behind NPCs depending on his position. I don't have to add a single line of code for that to work, just set up the object in an event. These objects can also help out with movement, pathing, loading objects, interface, system stuff and pretty much anything. The sorting object I mentioned is pretty extreme, but still these are very helpful tools.

Sadly, there is no such object for dialog or inventory. I made dialogue driven by triggers and values. Takes a really long time.

Here's a behind-the-scenes shot of the editor:

(note that the entire workarea is actually upscaled 200%. this is not some fakey "pixelized" bullshit :D)

 

[Angelo85]

Been looking at Unity myself since forever but only just yesterday finally found the time to really dive into it.
Did the first Tutorial where you create this rolling ball thingie and was quite surprised at how quickly you can achieve successes with the Engine. It Seems very powerful and pretty easy to use.
With no experience in C# I was a little afraid but thanks to rudimentary knowledge of PHP and MySQL stuffies I quickly got the hang of C#.

Not sure if I should do the second tutorial or just continue to improve the ball game, since I actually did write about 2 pages worth of ideas for such a game before going to sleep :D
Then again holiday will be over soon and then it's time to say goodbye to any awesome Indie Space RPG dreams I might have and back to slaving away at the office desk.

PS: here's what I did in Unity as absolute beginner in one day (1st Level was basically the Tutorial and the 2nd Level was me trying stuff out like the terrain editor for hills and brushes).
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/32714073/Builds.html

 

[Angelo85]

Being Christmas and all I haven't found much time to devote to Unity today, yet I made some significant progress regardless.
Cleaned up major parts of the code (oh what a newfag I was just yesterday!) and had my nephew have a go at the game.

After an extensive QA session I managed to gather vital feedback from major parts of my target audience, and acted accordingly:

As you can see I bloated the interface up somewhat with the controls on screen as my target audience apparently forgot which key to press in order to reset a level... oh and I color coded the major Gameplay elements for easier recognition and association. I know usually red makes you go fasta but this game is not aimed at nerds like us!

Keep an eye out for the inevitable Kickstarter, 50,000 Dollars should be enough to finish the game within a reasonable time frame of roughly 2 years supporting a small but dedicated Dev team. The formal notice of termination to my (former) Boss is already in the mail. Stretchgoals will be adding a fifth Dimension to the game, competetive play with Online Matchmaking ELO System and regional rankings as well as tourneys, ball customization options (DLC! *cha-ching*) to make the play experience truly emerging and unique for every player and add to replayability. Final Stretchgoal maybe - that's only a maybe - some real textures if a couple bucks can be spared after these essential features are implemented and our yet-to-be-hired consultant firm deems it technologically feasible.

And now back to the Christmas tree island, I really hope the Kickstarter works out because this yacht... ehm I mean game prototype was expensive.

 

[Freelance Henchman]

It being Christmas I have nothing else to do, so I did some interface implementation as well. The toolbar on the left will hold various buttons (currently only the Examine one) and info boxes (like the Location info at the top which changes to "You see: Giant rat" when something in the map is selected). Quick flavor texts and such can be displayed inside the map view.

 

[Angelo85]

Looking good Mr. Henchman

I also did some more work on my little casual ball Project

The most obvious thing is probably the Timer in the top center of the Screen. Just to give the player some sense of urgency. I actually thought about tying the timer into different difficulty modes as well, easy = no timer at all, medium = lenient timer, hard = very strict timer not allowing any or very few mistakes at most. Another idea for difficulties I had was placing Pickups on harder difficulties in more "inconvenient" places. Still have to think about how I want to handle difficulty. The timer thing obviously would be the least time consuming.

The ball now changes color when rolling over and/or hitting terrain that modifies behavior (green for speed, blue for sliding, orange for bouncing), I'm wondering though if too much color changing on the ball might get too distracting, especially since there will be several other colors coming for additional behaviors too.

The graphics stuff aside (also fiddled around with the stand-in textures to make them render a little clearer) I also wrote some more code that prevents most of the status texts from overlapping, barring one or two combinations that are unlikely to be encountered during normal play but still, want to clean those "freak" occurrences up over the weekend too. The perfectionist in me demands it :D

By the way if anyone wants to give the game a go, the link posted above is still up-to-date (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/32714073/Builds.html). It's 3 Levels so far with only about 2 minutes of Gameplay ^^ all Tutorial levels pretty much, gradually introducing the different Game Mechanics (Level 1 moving around, Level 2 bounce and speed, Level 3 slide and bounce vertically). Don't want to throw too much at once at the Casual gamer.

 

[r3jonwah85]

My first try at some more advanced enemy modeling, I really need to increase my 3D skills since a lot of work will have to be done sometime. Got this after a couple of hours, will continue to improve proportions and details, it is still a work in progress.

Feedback goes here:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...a-design-discussion-and-feedback.86069/page-4

 

[r3jonwah85]

And another one:

Feedback goes here:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...a-design-discussion-and-feedback.86069/page-4

 

[r3jonwah85]

I will just keep these coming if that is ok:

Feedback goes here:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...a-design-discussion-and-feedback.86069/page-4

 

[Zed]

big ogre needs more armpit
satyr-horse could use a little more forehead

 

[Hoaxmetal]

So, yeah, first time doing pixel art. Finally started project that has been in my mind for quite some time.

Edit: Enough for today.

 

[Excidium]

I dig the enviroment. The dude looks like somebody dressed up a gingerbread cookie.

Just noticed the floor tiles p. badly.