What are you working on? (Game Making Thread)

[BizarreMonkey]

Hey Biz, where do you get your backgrounds from?

Varies.

The beach parralax up there is just something that was included with the preorder of MV, I resized and scaled it to work. The one with DANGER written was actually made for me well back in the day by Apoc while I was developing menagerie: Remastered, he liked it enough he did some edits, stating I may find them useful in the future, and so here we are, lel.

The other two are just mashups of RTP battle backgrounds with some photoshop applied.

Also is it epic battle time? I think it's epic battle time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLv-2vtzXMM
Not long now, friendos.

 

[BizarreMonkey]

Okay wew I've bee working solidly for the last 28 hours, there's no way I'm releasing this on 3/14, I am very close, but not close enough.

SO, plan is to delay until the 20th, that will give me time to get everything ready and in tip top shape, for the record- all my employees, artists, etc. they're done with their work. What I've gotta do is hand draw about 13 more maps and then just bugtest and polish to fuck.

Animated Portraits

New maps:

Next is The Loungeroom and then Kyoshi's room, then the dining area and hallway.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Good luck on the upcoming release Biz.

Meanwhile, I am nowhere near done. But I am inching closer to finishing chapter 1. Here's a preview of what's going to happen.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

And here's the next battle.

This was a pretty small map, but it took me about 3 days to make. I'm hoping that now that I know what I can do with these assets, I'll be able to make maps faster.

 

[BizarreMonkey]

That is looking really cool Nathan!

In case anyone missed it I posted Fantasia in game development subforum.

In other news, I also recently published our big five anniversary, with videos, wallpapers, and paraphonalia and shout-outs.
http://crazychimpcollective.blogspot.com.au/

I've also been working on tuning my singing voice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIiO0Ftq0Lk
Still a ways to go, though.

Huge upgrade to this though. Though i do prefer the lyrics in this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xka8PUAJRtU

 

[BizarreMonkey]

I'm already back into it. Not even after a month!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQgrONvNlHQ
I've also started working on the warp-pad interface.
--will show later, have to go r/n.--

 

[BizarreMonkey]

Forget the warp pad for the time being, it's working and functional but It's got some work to be done on it.

Besides, I just finished THIS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tynTi-Ge2wQ
A far more worthy show for your eyes and ears.

I also, as a fun thing, did this variation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPLkBc7VwqA

 

[Jason]

For the last few days, maybe a week, I've been tempted to start a small project, it'd be short and involve zero combat, but I'm wondering which maker I want to use... might try my hand at parallax mapping with VX Ace, although I'll need to find a script that lets me overlay a picture above the map and anchor it in place so it doesn't scroll with me... unless I just keep my maps to the standard size of 17x13. Hmm...

 

[LaDestitute]

Aaaaah, haven't been on here in weeks...have some work for the final alpha build of my gamekit/SDK before release. Yes, it's htat near.

 

[BizarreMonkey]

Sorry folks, it's been a while. I apologize if this post gains an unseemly HUGENESS ATTRIBUTE! I suppose it cannot be helped~

I've been implementing a lot of practical aids and new imagery to Fantasia.

One of the biggest of these being the defend Mechanic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI2hnFEztuM
You can skip to 4:20 if you wish to supersede the dialogue.

In that state the defend mechanic is too powerful, so now it drains 2 energy every 7 frames, or -2E/7.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05GYam81Lks
In this video the mechanic is taught and shows the energy drain. I'm also going to stop the energy regeneration during it. This can easily be done by adding a simple 'nothing' page to the energy regen event which triggers when the Defend-state switch is on.

As for the games artistic coherency, a lot is being done to rid it of the rtp entirely.

The biggest offenders of RTP usage were in the city, the moonlit mesa, and the world map. The Worldmap is now custom and hand drawn entirely.

I've also been adding backgrounds to the scrolling text poetry.

As an addition, some large cosmetic updates have come to the Usual Spot, the Backyard and such.

The game is becoming so cinematic and beautiful! <3

I'm looking forward to furthering it's plot- some of which I've done already.

A lot of the portraits in newer content such as Highlord Naxon, Esperia Frostwhisper, Kloe and Tiramisa are placeholders.

Some Areas in Disk 0 also still need some work, such as the Underground Lab.

 

[coyotecraft]

Could just be the warm weather and the spring air after sleeping with the windows open. But I'm all charged up to do something.
A thought floated into my mind to attempt an Ar Tonelico inspired game. Mainly the whole diving into a virtual mindscape. That's something I've always wanted to do but writing an original story was the biggest hurdle. I just don't care for making OCs, and I didn't know how to make them interact in a meaningful way. Which is the most important part if you're going to explore someone's psyche.

I've been studying Dramatica Theory and realized that I'm always thinking up an overall story with objectionable character roles i.e. knight rescuing a princess. And that I'd prefer steer away from the subjective story; the personal relationship of those 2 characters.
The subjective story always seemed arbitrary to me and I didn't want to put any importance on it, thinking it had little to do with the overall story and was only there for flavor. (I'm weird and like to eat my spaghetti plain.)

But Dramatica helped me see how the theme arises from the interplay of the Subjective Story and the Overall story. And there's a helpful chart that shows what elements pair best. I wish I could explain it more, but I can't summarize a book worth of concepts in a few paragraphs.
Anyways, using it's structural model I can figure out the subjective side of things and what the characters should be doing for the purpose of the story and completeness.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Hey Coyote, have you read up on Save the Cat? It's another guide to story structure.

By "objectionable," you don't mean that you object (oppose) to those roles, right? You're talking about the characters being objects in a story? I think I would have used objective, but I'm not familiar with the Dramatica vocabulary. Or maybe I'm totally misunderstanding.

Is overall story the fact of "Frodo leaves the Shire, Frodo meets Aragorn, Frodo goes off on his own, Frodo throws ring into lava"? And the subjective story would be the changing interpersonal relationships while the overall story progresses?

Save the Cat is more formulaic. It does discuss two plots unfolding at the same time, but they're the A and B plots. At the end of Act 2, the hero should be at his low point. Then at the start of Act 3, the B plot intersects with the A plot, and the hero finds a new way of dealing with the problems, then goes out and overcomes them. The B plot is often a love story, but there are tons of other options.

 

[coyotecraft]

You're right, that was a typo. I meant Objective not Objectionable.

I've heard of "Save the Cat" as the thing the main character needs to do in Act 1 to make the audience like him. The MC is late for work, but he rescues a cat from the tree and makes a bunch of other stops along the way, establishing him as a likable selfless person.

The A plot B plot is definitely a facet of dramatica in regards to the Overall Story and the Subjective story. But it goes further to say that the two need to be dynamically opposed on this model that has 4 quadrants which breaks up into smaller variations and elements.
[Situational] [Activity]
[Manipulation] [Fixed Attituded]

So you might arrange your throughlines like this

[Overall Story] [Impact Character]
[Main Character] [Subjective story]

It's like solving for proportions. 3/7 6/?
If you already have an Overall Story in mind, Main Character and Impact Character too, Dramatica Theory shows you what what the character relationship in the subjective story needs to be in order to connect the characters to the story. Just cross multiply and divide.
?=14

Of course Dramatic has it's limitations. It makes a distinction between a story and a tale. A tale being a lone character doing something by themselves, no impact character and therefore no subjective story.

One of the ideas behind Dramatica is that a complete story covers 4 perspectives. (I/Me)(You)(Us) and (That). In reality we don't have the (you) perspective and that's something we normally have to solve for to know the truth. With storytelling the author gets to decided what that truth is and covers those 4 perspectives so that the audience arrive at that truth too. And reaching that truth, even though it's predetermined by the author, is what makes stories so compelling.

 

[coyotecraft]

Oh man. I want to try writing a brand new story. But I also want to try applying dramatica to some of my older stuff that I didn't know where to go with. But also I want to apply it to terrible commercial games to see what it should have done differently. But I also want to apply it to cancelled manga series for a clue to know what a satisfying ending would have been.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Well, just do something. What exactly you do isn't nearly as important as just doing something.

I watched a GDC talk recently on the VFX of Diablo 3. I realized that I knew how to do everything he talked about. There was one interesting technique that I hadn't thought of that I just went back and added to a couple of my game's effects.

One of the big takeaways for me was that your effects should be interesting to look at--at least as interesting as a campfire. And you can really get into watching a campfire. The way the Diablo team did that was with a lot of movement in their effects. And staying away from flipbooks. I redid one of my fire effects using a main texture, a repeating noisy color pattern, and a repeating distortion noise. Just by panning the color and the distortion, I was able to make a much more interesting fire than my old flipbook fire. Now I want to go back and replace a lot more.

 

[BizarreMonkey]

Been enhancing battle start animations with an animated VERSUS screen and also i began on a new boss fight finally.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFpVBjtRKZY
It's a work in progress currently.

 

[Xilef]

Well, just do something. What exactly you do isn't nearly as important as just doing something.

I watched a GDC talk recently on the VFX of Diablo 3. I realized that I knew how to do everything he talked about. There was one interesting technique that I hadn't thought of that I just went back and added to a couple of my game's effects.

One of the big takeaways for me was that your effects should be interesting to look at--at least as interesting as a campfire. And you can really get into watching a campfire. The way the Diablo team did that was with a lot of movement in their effects. And staying away from flipbooks. I redid one of my fire effects using a main texture, a repeating noisy color pattern, and a repeating distortion noise. Just by panning the color and the distortion, I was able to make a much more interesting fire than my old flipbook fire. Now I want to go back and replace a lot more.

You might enjoy reading this blog if you haven't already found it: https://simonschreibt.de/game-art-tricks/

There's an entry about Diablo III specifically (and another about Diablo II's perspective mode). My favourite entry is the Wind Waker effects analysis.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Thanks! I had come across it accidentally in Reddit a long time ago when someone posted about RIME's water, but then I never found the site again. This time, I'm going to bookmark it.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Oh, and I don't think I've posted this here. Here's what I finished up recently:

That's a new enemy in my game. It was pretty easy to make because I already have human templates and I just had to paint a pumpkin over their heads.

Edit: Now that I'm looking at it, I really ought to give the eye cutouts more jagged lines like the mouth.

 

[BizarreMonkey]

Been a while without a report, allow me to correct that.

Firstly, Universal Travel is underway, and it shall have a fair bit more dpeth and sense of openness than the other games where it's been present. The Universal Map will have three layers, the one to follow in the Video, the Universal Layer, than the Galactic Layer, then the systemic layer. From the Universal Layer you may go warp to a Galaxy, from the Galactic Layer you can select a system, and on the systemic layer you can choose from planets to orbit, you an then beam down using a deploy pad on board the ship itself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6D0MeVGbKU

On the note of gameplay, I also finished the first Phase of the Pep Boss Fight...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC8wKfHfgwM

And I've made the transition into phase 2, please note a LOT of the art this far in is placeholder.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WycUwu_CcgE
Progress has been good.