What are you working on? (Game Making Thread)

[coyotecraft]

I did a bunch of variations on the arm swing and experimented with twisting the head a little. But when I posted them all here I realized the differences were too subtle. Just for fun I wanted to do something with more personality. Yeah baby.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE51qQ2Rb8c

 

[BizarreMonkey]

Sorry I have been so absent! Been busy! Very busy! And often despite being home-- VERY HOME! I do tend to forget some places, not here though! I had been monitoring this thread but I wanted to get some more things finished before I made a progress post.

So first off, epic sprite there Coyote. And yeah Kyoshi's base is one of many that were built from the MV sprites but turned into tall macksprites. Thread displaying all of those is here: https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/inde...body-character-templates-with-mv-heads.77002/ These are the bases we use for all of the sprites in this game.

Also I love how you already put together that Kyoshi is ripped as fuck.

Spoiler

Early storyboards depicting a scene where Kyoshi makes an appearance.

As well as a silly but pretty accurate guide on why Kyoshi is basically a winner.

I'll admit some of the flowing in previous sprites did look really absurd, but Xiie's grown immensely, and we've been working on idle sprites, too! or she has, i've just been nodding while trying not to spit my tea out in regards to how good they have been. Here's a good example of an animated one here...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdfc1ok_5ec
This also is great as it gives a good idea of Fantasia's story premise!

And here's something I may have mentioned earlier, the Gameplay trailer!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKhkAxevOhw
As you can see, this gameplay has taken some epic strides, also this is the first trailer where I've used the game's music instead of some third-party music under creative commons since the Intelligence 314th Clash trailers, do not be surprised if it is to happen again, as this game's sound track is coming along superbly!

Jake
Speaking of which, two new additions join the OST!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzPtcTrVYZMhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVFLrVf3kqs
And that is FAR from all.

Biz
Now, Tristy's fight felt awkward in many places, so I made some changes.

In Phase 1, it feels really slow, and there's nothing to make it feel less slow like adding more attacks to avoid! Not only have I added the blue screen wide boomerang phalanx (don't move, and blue attacks are harmless) but now I've also added a holybolt barrage that you can either dodge via clever use of a spatial tear, avoiding them by moving up when they streak past or the easiest way, just skedaddling though them. (Yellow attacks can only have their damage avoided by skedaddle)

And the second phase got a lot of changes, as it felt quite clunky. For one- all jump pads have been done away with, as well as all 'platforms' except those which house the crystals, and now the arena is a free-walk area that loops and has that same epic 'orbiting earth' look it did before. Tristy now simply imulacrums herself from platform to platform, flinging her boomerangs and a few red orb attacks playerward. I also fixed the previously buggy red crystal and a couple bugs with the wipe mechanic.

You can see both fights in their most modern iterations below!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkll-ZlZ0nYhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fLa_WH_k-8
And beyond just a SHIT TON of flavor text, that's been the majority of the work I and Jake have done on the game, as well as me finally making kara's Denui Damnation cinematic!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa76OEjwraY
Looks really cool, epic implementation if I may say! better yet, this FINALLY clears the milestone.

DISK 1 MAIN STORY CONTENT IS ALL DONE! All that's left is optional events and polish on my end.

But what about our artists? I hear you asking! That's definitely a thing you asked, even if you didn't aloud!

W E L L . . .

They went OFF and just made me a shit ton of stuff suddenly, off as in, went OVER THE EDGE or ABOVE THE LIMIT etc. and just did a heckton of work.

Pjcr
Hot diddilly damn did he get his act together! He sent me four brand new bases this week. M.F. Lazarus, The Exile Lyza, Pexepe and Highlord Naxon!

And I ofcourse, have been vigiliantly giving them all faces and such! Naxon only has two, but the rest have eight. The upside is for now, lazarus' can get away with not being animated beyond a particle effect.

I am sure you wish to see them in action, much like how CoyoteCraft already has somewhat, well- here you go! Four videos!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swuarx4rsaUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWea5RRQerw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv3CvNdQOh8http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5HMsYzja38
And now...

Xiie
My gosh didn't she go nuts! First off the press, Svoli and Svoli Hooded.

She also made a bunch of idle animations!

I'll admit some of these could use work, but I'll have her fix them up later!

This is it, the big last 2 month push towards Demo 2!

 

[coyotecraft]

Hate this time of year. Thunder storms knocking out power every other night. It comes back in a few hours but it's still disruptive.

I'll try typing some more tonight.

Was reading something interesting by this irish poet Yeats, who created this proto-psychology and automatic writing system. At a glance it's crazy occult stuff about the pattern of human behavior and history.
But when it comes to what he calls the 4 faculties: will, creative mind, body of fate, and mask; I think he was on to something.

Kinda like how it's difficult or impossible to type one thing while talking about another thing. You only have 1 communication center.

Yeats says that the faculties, the creative mind and body of fate are opposed. The creative mind being a constructive ability, body of fate being the awareness of a environment. Physical, social, emotional.

I interpret that as analysis paralysis. Ask a centipede how it walks with so many legs, and it'll trip over itself. Becoming concious of an unconcious thing, the meaning of the fable.
You can't utilize your creativity mind to be constructive while simultaneously deconstructing why and how you're doing it, basically. It's probably the same region of the brain. Idk, I'm not a neurologist and Yeats was a poet.
Basically im shooting myself in the foot by analyzing my own performance while I'm trying to perform. Which I already kinda know, but...

Speaking of GIMP, lol, I just read an article that suggested v3.0 might be renamed "Glimpse" to drop the slur. I don't think I've ever heard the word used in a malicious tone, just in pitty.

 

[Xilef]

Speaking of GIMP, lol, I just read an article that suggested v3.0 might be renamed "Glimpse" to drop the slur. I don't think I've ever heard the word used in a malicious tone, just in pitty.

From what I've read, Glimpse is a community fork of GIMP that plans to frequently rebase with GIMP's master branch.
In the UK (maybe everywhere else?) for something to be "gimped" means it is crippled, it originates as a derogatory term for the disabled.
The motivation behind Glimpse comes from advocates of GIMP sharing stories of education institutes rejecting adoption of GIMP because of the sexual connotation of the name.

The GIMP developers do not want to change the name as it has over 20 years of history and a re-branding at this point could cause a lot of confusion - I don't 100% agree on this reasoning as GIMP is a specialist piece of software, it's not within the general domain of regular computer users (unlike Photoshop which has become synonymous with editing photos), so the only people using the GIMP are those who actively seek and download it, the website just needs to advertise a name change for a bit so everyone is prepared for a name change. I remember Azureus renaming to Vuze going rather smoothly, everyone who wanted Azureus would see that it was renamed Vuze and would just accept it.

It's more likely the developers just want to be stubborn and would rather bet on the word "gimp" becoming neutered at some point in western culture than bend and rename their 20+ year old software.

EDIT: I'm working on some Android C++ stuff that will be open-sourced at some point.

 

[coyotecraft]

I was considering using Yeat's 4 faculties as story motifs. Like like how the Persona games used Jungian concepts like Persona and Shadows and what not. A kind of sub-plot of the dream they're in.

Yeat's also got this thing with gyers. Spiraling cones. Which could lend itself to a drill, or spear. I keep asking myself if Sven had a weapon, what would it be? But I mean, Pep can use just about any weapon, and his Alter Ego can shoot lightning. The Cookiedoe's devil gene manifesting makings them a "Lightning Anomaly"
Although Sven could just as easily have inherited an angel gene, like his mother. I'm kinda of teasing the idea that Sven in an alternate timeline has activated his angel gene. Making him a catalyst for this story. But because I don't know what Biz is doing with Sven in Fantasia, I'm leaving it open ended. IMO the best fanfic is one that could pass for canon.

Something else I came across, there's this Norse rune called a Svefnthorn. Sven. Svefn. Literally a sleep thorn. Kinda of a handy connection if I were to use it. It's been suggested that the rune actually represents a spindle and possibly connected to the origins of Sleeping Beauty. I can see a loose connection between spinning yarn and counting sheep to fall asleep.
Someone stuck with a sleepthorn will stay asleep until it's plucked out. Oh man, the older telling of Sleeping Beauty is messed up. Like, the prince's kiss doesn't wake her up. He knocks her up and leaves. Nine months later a baby pops out and sucks the sleep thorn out of her finger, waking her up.

Anyways, back to the Svefnthorn. There's variations of it. Some people describe them as "harpoons". Which considering Svoli's light spears would be - what's a good word, conducive? I'm pretty sure they're spindles though. Working needles into Sven's design wouldn't be too hard. My early musing imagined something special about his whiskers. And even as a "lightning anomaly" I can see him replacing his cigarette with a pick. Some inspiration is coming from Larxene from KH. In the original GBA version of Chain of Memories I always thought her weapons were needles. But they're actually throwing knives.

-------------------

I think I've got my opening sequence more or less finalized. I'm breaking a lot of my own writing rules to accomplish it. I'm going to work on the title card tonight.

 

[Ellie]

Amazing that it has absolutely no connection to the number seven.

 

[coyotecraft]

Lol, nope I checked. Svefn like sleep'n. Although the name Sven also probably permutates to Stephen. In the same sense that a name like Jerod could be a variation of Gerald.
In Old Norse, Sven means young man or young warrior. In Swedish Sven mean Squire. I'm not actually going to draw attention to any of that in-game. But I do have a crimson knight in a dream calling Sven "squire".
Like, that's a joke or misunderstanding.

While Stephen meaning "to encircle, crown" but that's more of a greek origin. Names from different regions that coincidentally sound the same. Steven is associated with martyred saints. And the biggest martyr of all was Jesus, who wore a crown of thorns.
I know, that's really far removed from "Svefnthorn". But since I'm working off the Hanged Man Tarot, which symbolizes attachment and self-sacrifice. I'm looking into this stuff. But imo, Saints are so distant and have no personality.
Odin on the other hand has more character. I'm kinda modeling this Crimson Knight dream character after Odin which is suppose to rub off onto Sven.

 

[coyotecraft]

Pep and Sven's grandmother is Lady Tiramisa. But it's a secret as to who their grandfather is. In a flashback Tiramisa is talking to the other royalty about her plan to produce heirs strong enough to overthrow Naxon's Empire. I like to think Sven manifested that destiny without realizing it.

The only other cat in that flashback is a one-eyed guard. He enter from the left. Tiramisa tells him and the others to retreat. He turns around, and briefly we can see his one good eye is blue. Sped, Pep and Sven's father, is blindfolded because Esperia plucked his eyes out. But it's mention in passing that Sped had blue eyes.
Is that reaching? Maybe I'm giving Biz too much credit.

I'm not sure where they got the last name Cookiedoe from.
I googled Tiramisa to see what's in the name. But got Tiramisu, a "cheer me up" dessert from tirami su di morale. It's made with cookies or "Savoiardi".
I'm looking for a good name. Just Tirami translates to "pull me". I want to derive a romantic complimentary name. Maybe "hold me back" "Hold me" Reggimi. Or something sweet like "Yours forever" tuo per sempre; Tuoper? Tupper? Tupperware.
That'd be cute. Preserve the queen!
No. That's not right. Whoever he is potentially took her cherry.
Jack of Hearts stole her tarts. Hmm, I had this card motif going in my original draft. Not really a motif, more of a lead into sexual innuendo.

Did you know the playing-card face cards are named after historical figures? King of Diamonds is Julius Caesar, 'cause his back is turned. Looks like the Jack of Hearts is La Hire, aka Étienne de Vignolles from the Hundred Year War. His nick name, La Hire, could be from Hedgehog hérisson, he was a prick I guess. Nah.
Ooo, but Jack of Diamonds is Hector from the Trojan war. Hector meaning "to hold fast". Yesss, that fits into my theme.
Mmm, I love correspondences. Thank you wikipedia. Not exactly a "hanged man" but when he was defeated they pulled him behind a chariot by the heels. Even though he was dead the gods had preserved Hector's body. And he never gave up fighting even though he knew Troy and his house was doomed.

Sven never meets Tiramisa or learns about his secret lineage. But because this story exists in a dream blended with Esperia's memories, I could make Tiramisa actual Tiramisu, in an ice cream candy kingdom that's being devoured by dread pigs. Wait no, not dread. Spread. I could probably transition from cards spread to food spread somehow.

 

[BizarreMonkey]

Yeat's also got this thing with gyers. Spiraling cones. Which could lend itself to a drill, or spear. I keep asking myself if Sven had a weapon, what would it be? But I mean, Pep can use just about any weapon, and his Alter Ego can shoot lightning. The Cookiedoe's devil gene manifesting makings them a "Lightning Anomaly"
Although Sven could just as easily have inherited an angel gene, like his mother. I'm kinda of teasing the idea that Sven in an alternate timeline has activated his angel gene. Making him a catalyst for this story. But because I don't know what Biz is doing with Sven in Fantasia, I'm leaving it open ended. IMO the best fanfic is one that could pass for canon.

I can help out here. Sven doesn't really excel anymore in Fantasia, as the story doesn't really focus on him. He; happy to just smoke while everyone else does the work. He's not a fighter. As for what weapon he'd use- I typically give people with no fighting prowess but a kind or helpful spirit a book, much alike how scholars work in FFXIV. This could factor in well since Scholars have a minion, and Sven's bat friend you're inventing could certainly tie that together. If i did have to choose a weapon though it'd likely be a rapier or a more elegant weapon, Sven isn't the sort who'd like using a gun.

He alike Pep (same litter) would possess both an angel and devil gene, he seldom uses them, in fact it's likely he never unlocked them- but he does definitely take more after his mother, his fur isn't the atrociously bright red his brother and father's is, he seldom drinks red cordial (only enough to get a partial hue) and alike Svoli, he's quite patient, smart and observant, while Pep and Sped are like powerhouses of reckless energy. His name is also very similar to his mothers, starting with the same 'Sv' hers and her grandmother Svana does.

Svoli is a russian blue like her mother, while Sven is a mix of Russian Blue and Silver Tabby. (what Pep and his father are.)

Something else I came across, there's this Norse rune called a Svefnthorn. Sven. Svefn. Literally a sleep thorn. Kinda of a handy connection if I were to use it. It's been suggested that the rune actually represents a spindle and possibly connected to the origins of Sleeping Beauty. I can see a loose connection between spinning yarn and counting sheep to fall asleep.
Someone stuck with a sleepthorn will stay asleep until it's plucked out. Oh man, the older telling of Sleeping Beauty is messed up. Like, the prince's kiss doesn't wake her up. He knocks her up and leaves. Nine months later a baby pops out and sucks the sleep thorn out of her finger, waking her up.

My my, that is dark, but it leeds well to the dream metaphor you're working on.

Anyways, back to the Svefnthorn. There's variations of it. Some people describe them as "harpoons". Which considering Svoli's light spears would be - what's a good word, conducive? I'm pretty sure they're spindles though. Working needles into Sven's design wouldn't be too hard. My early musing imagined something special about his whiskers. And even as a "lightning anomaly" I can see him replacing his cigarette with a pick. Some inspiration is coming from Larxene from KH. In the original GBA version of Chain of Memories I always thought her weapons were needles. But they're actually throwing knives.

Ah yes, it's a pretty common weapon in japanese fiction, the finger-spaced throwing knifes. Sakuya (Touhou project) and several other characters use them.

This does bring to mind Esperia's needlegun she used in her life as "The Widowmaker", she'd kill men doing indecent things, and due to her background of engineering, bio-engineering and chemistry, she had a needle gun hidden under her sleeve that would fire with a twitch of her thumb- a needle into the target coated in a paralysis poison which would render the target unable to move for 10 minutes after which they would die due to their organs not being able to function and their heart stops beating.

But that as an aside- it's a sound idea.

Pep and Sven's grandmother is Lady Tiramisa. But it's a secret as to who their grandfather is. In a flashback Tiramisa is talking to the other royalty about her plan to produce heirs strong enough to overthrow Naxon's Empire. I like to think Sven manifested that destiny without realizing it.

The only other cat in that flashback is a one-eyed guard. He enter from the left. Tiramisa tells him and the others to retreat. He turns around, and briefly we can see his one good eye is blue. Sped, Pep and Sven's father, is blindfolded because Esperia plucked his eyes out. But it's mention in passing that Sped had blue eyes.
Is that reaching? Maybe I'm giving Biz too much credit.

Nah, he's no one. Nothing. Tiramisa doesn't like to talk about her late partner, if you recall Tiramisa mentioned that if one with a devil gene procreates with one who doesn't, they will die. (something she had to learn the hard way) Sped and Svoli were lucky as one had a devil gene and the other an angel gene. Tiramisa's late spouse wasn't so lucky. Only Tiramisa knows who it was, and she'd never tell. I myself don't even know.

I'm not sure where they got the last name Cookiedoe from.

Tiramisa had a habit of eating cookies before they were cooked when she was young, and when she made her plans she had to change her last name, and recalling that, she chose that as a surname, changing 'dough' to 'doe' to avoid it looking fake. Tiramisa's royal name has been lost to time and she is the only one who knows it beyond her original complacency.

I googled Tiramisa to see what's in the name. But got Tiramisu, a "cheer me up" dessert from tirami su di morale. It's made with cookies or "Savoiardi".
I'm looking for a good name. Just Tirami translates to "pull me". I want to derive a romantic complimentary name. Maybe "hold me back" "Hold me" Reggimi. Or something sweet like "Yours forever" tuo per sempre; Tuoper? Tupper? Tupperware.
That'd be cute. Preserve the queen!

I mean to be fair, being Tiramisu Cake mix essentially is also cute. Tiramisa is also generally not much of a romantic. She is defined by her independence.

Just for the cute factor, here's Tiramisa eating Tiramisu (it was a fan request)

No. That's not right. Whoever he is potentially took her cherry.
Jack of Hearts stole her tarts. Hmm, I had this card motif going in my original draft. Not really a motif, more of a lead into sexual innuendo.

Trust you to go try and sexualize cats. :P (to be fair I do this as well, albeit at only a mildly suggestive level.)

Did you know the playing-card face cards are named after historical figures? King of Diamonds is Julius Caesar, 'cause his back is turned. Looks like the Jack of Hearts is La Hire, aka Étienne de Vignolles from the Hundred Year War. His nick name, La Hire, could be from Hedgehog hérisson, he was a prick I guess. Nah.
Ooo, but Jack of Diamonds is Hector from the Trojan war. Hector meaning "to hold fast". Yesss, that fits into my theme.

I think you're being even more autistic about these things than I am. Though interestingly if you look at the OST some characters are a suit and rank. Kara is the King of Clubs, Svoli is the Ace of Hearts, Sven is the Jack of Diamonds and Nola is the Queen of Spades. Pep is the Joker and Sped is a Wildcard.

Mmm, I love correspondences. Thank you wikipedia. Not exactly a "hanged man" but when he was defeated they pulled him behind a chariot by the heels. Even though he was dead the gods had preserved Hector's body. And he never gave up fighting even though he knew Troy and his house was doomed.

How fitting that Sven who is in canon the Jack of Diamonds, have such a fitting historical figure attribution.

Sven never meets Tiramisa or learns about his secret lineage. But because this story exists in a dream blended with Esperia's memories, I could make Tiramisa actual Tiramisu, in an ice cream candy kingdom that's being devoured by dread pigs. Wait no, not dread. Spread. I could probably transition from cards spread to food spread somehow.

Lmao go nuts. Dread comes in many forms. You've got the weird eldritch pig monsters, the dread thanes, the dreadcasters, the dreadromancers, etc. There's also a bunch of other 'dread' beings which were planned but didn't make the cut. See this document for a bunch of silly shit me and my brainstorming colleagues contributed.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1670UssqdCwW2arUBAQxJ7q0Lu61hhhO1tcgyHyHJGs0/edit?usp=sharing
And here's where I explain the different enemy types.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1kxxZ2svdCVCM1A3byL86J8sy9COV-JDvW9qtzSImn3M/edit?usp=sharing
Most of this was proposed for unity, though admittedly would still be possible in RPGmaker, I'd just have to hire a really competent coder.

Progress report, you ask? Very well!

Biz
I haven't done a whole lot, seeing as most of my work is done until I get more resources. HOWEVER, I did make some dope promotional posters.

As you can glean from this image. the release date for Demo 2 is 10/10/19, a little over a month from now. Story trailer coming soon.

Xiie
The final Sprite is complete!

M.F. Lazarus takes stage.

Xiie has also been working on some of the unique poses. For example: Kara kneeling.

Making kara's spriteset entirely complete.

We also have Svoli launching her spear. She hasn't finished this yet but here's a WIP.

The prior version she forgot to add the hood, WOOPS!

I'm currently cutting down on the massive amounts of dialogue. Making use of the maximum 20-dialogue boxes per scene rule you discovered, Coyote. And fixing up a few disconcerting time-flawed discoveries.

 

[coyotecraft]

It's crunch. Well, usually when people talk about fluff vs crunch in RPGs they means stuff like
Werewolfs see better in the dark | +2 Accuracy during night time.
Crunch in that sense are the rules that make a game a different experience every time.

But the terms are also used in writing groups in regards to reader engagement. Correspondences are very crunchy. Color assignments. Zodiacs. Tarot cards. It's called crunch because you're not going to get it all in one bite, You have to chew it.
The crunchiest game I've ever played was Xenosaga. It had characters named after the stages of the Alchemic magnum opus. Biblical references. Unus Mundus. Lots of things.
Of course, lots of games borrow from mythologies in obvious ways. But there are subtler ways of doing things too. For example C.s. Lewis taught Medieval Literature, so he was very familiar with their understanding of astrology and geocentric cosmology. It's pretty much agreed on that each of the 7 Narnia books corresponded to the 7 heavens. The Lion witch and wardrobe = Jupiter. The silver chair = moon. The Last Battle = Saturn. But that went unnoticed for like 50 years.
It does require a familiarity with the subjects to appreciate their meaning and usage.

Kingdom Hearts visits a bunch of Disney Worlds.
Dante's Inferno had lots of famous dead people.
And it's not just that they're there. It's not like, the 100th RPG featuring the sword "Excalibur". They use them in an appropriate manner.

I almost started a topic about this the other day. But then I got side track talking about Tolkien. He supposedly didn't like the narnia books because they were a hodge-podge of mythologies. Santa Clause. Greek Satyrs. The Garden of Eden. I guess it is sorta tacky.

 

[BizarreMonkey]

It's crunch. Well, usually when people talk about fluff vs crunch in RPGs they means stuff like
Werewolfs see better in the dark | +2 Accuracy during night time.
Crunch in that sense are the rules that make a game a different experience every time.

But the terms are also used in writing groups in regards to reader engagement. Correspondences are very crunchy. Color assignments. Zodiacs. Tarot cards. It's called crunch because you're not going to get it all in one bite, You have to chew it.
The crunchiest game I've ever played was Xenosaga. It had characters named after the stages of the Alchemic magnum opus. Biblical references. Unus Mundus. Lots of things.
Of course, lots of games borrow from mythologies in obvious ways. But there are subtler ways of doing things too. For example C.s. Lewis taught Medieval Literature, so he was very familiar with their understanding of astrology and geocentric cosmology. It's pretty much agreed on that each of the 7 Narnia books corresponded to the 7 heavens. The Lion witch and wardrobe = Jupiter. The silver chair = moon. The Last Battle = Saturn. But that went unnoticed for like 50 years.
It does require a familiarity with the subjects to appreciate their meaning and usage.

Kingdom Hearts visits a bunch of Disney Worlds.
Dante's Inferno had lots of famous dead people.
And it's not just that they're there. It's not like, the 100th RPG featuring the sword "Excalibur". They use them in an appropriate manner.

I almost started a topic about this the other day. But then I got side track talking about Tolkien. He supposedly didn't like the narnia books because they were a hodge-podge of mythologies. Santa Clause. Greek Satyrs. The Garden of Eden. I guess it is sorta tacky.

My games are incredibly stringent with symbology and typically have biblical and satanic themes. One thing i can't seem to resist is making a game about freeing the underdogs from a tyrannical power far greater than them. This is the plot for Intelligence, for Perseverance, and yes- for Fantasia. Menagerie is the only real escape from the mold, as the game comes under the pretese that the empire is the big bad, but then it turns out a rebel of the Galaxion empire becomes the actual big bad.

Usually instead of an empire its one or two ultimate beings.

Intelligence: Origin/Niirgo
Perseverance: Naxon and Esperia
Fantasia: The Twins.

I'm looking forward to working on Crowfeast, a game where you play a megalomaniac with villainous tendencies. It will be what i work on after Fantasia is finished.

Now, speaking of Fantasia- my my~ Where do we... begin?

Xiie
She has been without internet, so she hasn't been able to send much, but she will be getting it tomorrow, and she's in her report, claimed to have finished all of the remaining unique sprite poses and is now working on idles.

Pjcr
He has gotten me three bases rather than the nine he boasted, not by his design, a fever hit him hard which prevented him from working a good portion of the fortnight. He finished the portrait bases for Kara, Sped and Sven (cue Coyote screeching)

And like usual, I made a heckton of faces, and implemented them in game with three frames of animation per.

And here's Kara and Sven in a neat interaction together, where some of these are shown.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcPn3OY6oW8
As for Sped, he doesn't have a video, mostly because he's one of the quietest characters in the game, usually having one-three lines of dialogue in any conversation. He's in quite a lot of conversations, but very dismissively. To be fair, I don't know how I'd grow him any further. He's just Pep in retirement. The end result is- there's no place in the game where he dominates on dialogue.

Jake
He's finished... with these final two tracks, all that's left are optional tracks that he may perform at his leisure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWDUd20FeEwhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aPaQtaAJ1I
Lady Tiramisa's Character theme and Tristy Heals' more somber character theme, Agent of the Existential is pretty intense.

Biz
A lot has been done lately. I've altered the early game encounters, since there has been quite a lot, I'm going to do a list format.

The Bat Fanged Carson is now respectably challenging, her avoidance AI is now some of the best, and she also serves as a tutorial for Red Attacks now.

Captain Nelson's four-directional attack now has far greater range, in addition- it's damage has been doubled (from 10 to 20).

Active event tutorials have been added in place of dialogue box Tutorials, both for button presses and for color mechanics, the one exception being Ennui Empowerment... but that will likely change in the future. If you still aren't sure, tutorials are unlocked as you progress throughout the game.

A new "boss" was added between the recruitment of Pep and going to investigate Splode's, this will give players a chance to test out Sacreblu in a controlled environment and announce the addition of her as a "second wind" style party member. Beyond that, I will say no more. This is a boss I've decided will be a surprise and not something I post everywhere.

One new very interesting scene.

I rewrote and cut down some dialogue where possible. Especially in the early game.

A pre-release build for demo 2 has been uploaded for specialized testing, I have my testers on it right now.

 

[coyotecraft]

tackling a bug involving MV's movie playback.
Users have reported issues with it since 1.3.
It's apparently random. An event will play a video just fine one moment. Then other times it'll freeze during playback.
It makes debugging challenging because you can change things and not know if you fixed it until it happens again.

I believe it's related to overlaping audio. But just when I think I've found a way to reproduce it reliably, the behavior changes.
I also think it might be something related to Steam. It happens when playtesting through the editor, but not running through the game.exe

 

[BizarreMonkey]

tackling a bug involving MV's movie playback.
Users have reported issues with it since 1.3.
It's apparently random. An event will play a video just fine one moment. Then other times it'll freeze during playback.
It makes debugging challenging because you can change things and not know if you fixed it until it happens again.

I believe it's related to overlaping audio. But just when I think I've found a way to reproduce it reliably, the behavior changes.
I also think it might be something related to Steam. It happens when playtesting through the editor, but not running through the game.exe

Hmmm, I've only experienced this bug in builds 1.6 and beyond. 1.5 and earlier seems to not have any issues playing movies. I'm using 1.5.1 with Yanfly's patch and it;s never come up. And it surely would have by now, seeing as i have about 20 cinematics in my game.

I myself haven't done any work, due to awaiting feedback from pre-release testers-

Xiie
however, has submitted some new files.

Svoli downpose.

and Nola sad pose

So that's neat... WAIT- I ALMOST FORGOT!

Pep raising the roof (essentially the animation for when he throws his hourglasses all over the place.)

I'm very close to being able to make a full blown official trailer with the release date on it. After all~

Phoenix Astra
The voice of both Yi Hellrider and Lilac Grave, has gotten me some new lines for just such a trailer!

 

[coyotecraft]

Bizmonkey, I sent you feedback. So you know. In your dev thread.

It's funny, I'm seeing that a year ago I did something similar for Meta Revelations: Ring Spirits.
It's apparently "complete" now. I'll have to check and see if they took anything I said to heart. Or if they used any of the sprite revisions I sent them.

Of course when it's story related, I can't blame people for not wanting to write new scenes. Although when they've been sitting on 2/3rds of a game forever I get the impression that they don't know how to write the last part. But like, I can see a pattern and I see how it could be completed. People don't share my taste in correspondence and parallel structure though. Where I'm like "hey, you could totally make a theme out what you got if you do this and go there". The Ring Spirit's dev probably through I was high as a kite when I started rambled about the significance of constellations.

But when it's like - they have sprites with stray pixels and misaligned frames. It's like a half-minute fix for me, and a drag'n drop step for them. I'm going to feel pretty disappointed if they change nothing.

Well, it looks like they've released a free version on Steam. But I'm worried because reading the reviews it looks like they didn't fix any of the problem areas. Probably for the best that I didn't get involved with it any deeper. I offered to do a lot more then what I should have.
Hmm, I'm not credited. Not sure what they would have listed me as. "Event & Script Consultant" hah, I didn't do anything major related to graphics. But I did build a thing just for him to demonstrate Script Calls related to coordinates. This was in XP which didn't have Map regions.

Mainly they had a giant map with like 50 monsters set to walk randomly. And they were all parallel processes reading and writing the player's coordinates to the same variable simultaneously. So it ran at like 2fps. Besides the coordinate script call that I'm always showing everyone, I showed them how they could turn them off depending on what tiles you were standing on. I also made some pretty fabulous move routes for Harpies and bats that chase the player around.
I got a feeling...they didn't use any of it.

Did I ever post that stuff here? I remember putting together an XP project file to demonstrate some event systems for this exact reason. Unique monster behaviors. 'Cause everyone just plops monster events onto a map and set them to walk random. But you could have a red slime and a blue slime collide and make a purple slime. Aesthetically pleasing birds that land and fly off when the player runs through them. Seagulls riding thermals. Easy ice sliding floors. Lots of things that make maps different from each other.
I might have forgotten about it because I got a new laptop at the beginning of the year.
I think I called one a pet system. Because it was a dog that had a range of behaviors like sniffing out treasure.
But another application would be the illusion of fauna. Instead of filling a map with a bunch of butterflies, birds, and stuff. You'd just have 1 or 2 events that teleport near the player and transform using different event pages based on the tiles. So the player had the illusion of always being surrounded by wildlife that all behaved differently.

 

[BizarreMonkey]

Bizmonkey, I sent you feedback. So you know. In your dev thread.

It's funny, I'm seeing that a year ago I did something similar for Meta Revelations: Ring Spirits.
It's apparently "complete" now. I'll have to check and see if they took anything I said to heart. Or if they used any of the sprite revisions I sent them.

Of course when it's story related, I can't blame people for not wanting to write new scenes. Although when they've been sitting on 2/3rds of a game forever I get the impression that they don't know how to write the last part. But like, I can see a pattern and I see how it could be completed. People don't share my taste in correspondence and parallel structure though. Where I'm like "hey, you could totally make a theme out what you got if you do this and go there". The Ring Spirit's dev probably through I was high as a kite when I started rambled about the significance of constellations.

But when it's like - they have sprites with stray pixels and misaligned frames. It's like a half-minute fix for me, and a drag'n drop step for them. I'm going to feel pretty disappointed if they change nothing.

Well, it looks like they've released a free version on Steam. But I'm worried because reading the reviews it looks like they didn't fix any of the problem areas. Probably for the best that I didn't get involved with it any deeper. I offered to do a lot more then what I should have.
Hmm, I'm not credited. Not sure what they would have listed me as. "Event & Script Consultant" hah, I didn't do anything major related to graphics. But I did build a thing just for him to demonstrate Script Calls related to coordinates. This was in XP which didn't have Map regions.

Mainly they had a giant map with like 50 monsters set to walk randomly. And they were all parallel processes reading and writing the player's coordinates to the same variable simultaneously. So it ran at like 2fps. Besides the coordinate script call that I'm always showing everyone, I showed them how they could turn them off depending on what tiles you were standing on. I also made some pretty fabulous move routes for Harpies and bats that chase the player around.
I got a feeling...they didn't use any of it.

Did I ever post that stuff here? I remember putting together an XP project file to demonstrate some event systems for this exact reason. Unique monster behaviors. 'Cause everyone just plops monster events onto a map and set them to walk random. But you could have a red slime and a blue slime collide and make a purple slime. Aesthetically pleasing birds that land and fly off when the player runs through them. Seagulls riding thermals. Easy ice sliding floors. Lots of things that make maps different from each other.
I might have forgotten about it because I got a new laptop at the beginning of the year.
I think I called one a pet system. Because it was a dog that had a range of behaviors like sniffing out treasure.
But another application would be the illusion of fauna. Instead of filling a map with a bunch of butterflies, birds, and stuff. You'd just have 1 or 2 events that teleport near the player and transform using different event pages based on the tiles. So the player had the illusion of always being surrounded by wildlife that all behaved differently.

Well you can count on me to take feedback seriously. I'm pretty sure you were behind half of the big changes for this current build, but maybe not. I'll add you to the credits, too.

I've also responded to your response, as I like to address issues so they stick in my memory and so I don't forget to do something about them. It's also just nice to be transparent with testers and players.

I'll post more later, right now uploading so i don't have a reliable upload speed for a progress post.

 

[coyotecraft]

I'm going to be offline for the most part of a week. I don't know how much computer time I'll actually get to myself.

 

[LaDestitute]

Been back to work on tilesets for my A-RPG Gamekit:

Mostly a work in progress/just assets to polish up on commerical release, so hooray for rotating assets and reusing old sprites to make processes quicker.

 

[Xilef]

LaDestitute, what kind of file formats do you use for your kit's data? I'm interested in how you came about selecting something that works for your needs

 

[LaDestitute]

I'm using JSON/XML and AJAX. AJAX requests project-files (i.e JSON) to load the data from the JSON into Construct 2 Dictionaries, which are basically hash-tables. I might switch to XML completely (as I use it to store mapdata and data like weather/temperature for layouts now that I have a weather/temp system implemented) instead of JSON though as much as I like that loading Dictionaries with AJAX.LastData autofills keys stored in the JSON, XML is more human-readable (though I can get over the human-readability of JSON with a JSON editor that would come packaged with the gamekit...I was actually working on one before I forgot about it)

Anyhow, I also finished the interior tileset:

Some of the tiles are temps/could be improved but it'll do for until I hit close to release. I'm moving onto dungeon tiles next and I'll finish extra overworld stuff once the gamekit is ready to ship in a month or two.

 

[Xilef]

I'm using JSON/XML and AJAX. AJAX requests project-files (i.e JSON) to load the data from the JSON into Construct 2 Dictionaries, which are basically hash-tables. I might switch to XML completely (as I use it to store mapdata and data like weather/temperature for layouts now that I have a weather/temp system implemented) instead of JSON though as much as I like that loading Dictionaries with AJAX.LastData autofills keys stored in the JSON, XML is more human-readable (though I can get over the human-readability of JSON with a JSON editor that would come packaged with the gamekit...I was actually working on one before I forgot about it)

Looks like you went through the same process I went through when dealing with data files in MV. Everyone was like "why are you using XML use JSON like everything else?" but I specifically wanted non-coders to be able to edit XML files and it really is more human-readable than JSON (which is a freaking mess most of the time).

I'd still go with XML over JSON for anything intended to be edited by a human.