What are you working on? (Game Making Thread)

[coyotecraft]

Learned a lot of new stuff about Dies Irae's story. At first I was questioning the effectiveness of it's presentation. Because I've only see this first part of the story for years, it feels like I've been mislead for a really long time.
But then, it's like a web comic that updates weekly and this one scene has been dragging on for months. But then you step back and realize it's only 10 pages and the scene only lasts a moment.

I also might need to cleanse my palate after playing reading Idea Factory/compile heart games. It's like a dozen characters taking turns spouting meaningless dialogue.
Idk, I've just lost my taste for friendly banter, bravado blah blah blah, and disgusting words of encouragement about teamwork and friendship. Washed down with Hard Exposition, straight from the bottle.

Zankoku keeps reminding me that it only starts out as slice-of-life. Which I understand as the ordinary world in the Hero's Journey before the call of adventure. But from my perspective this ordinary world is all I've seen, I know there's more to come but it still leaves the impression the rest of the game will be more of the same.

I mean, the demo for FF8 was the Dollet SeeD mission that promises the rest of the game would be full of action and suspense.
"Squad B, move out! Something big is happening so we're disobeying orders to investigate. Then we're going to run for our lives back to the boats while being chased by a giant spider war machine"

How poorly would it have been received if the Demo was the very beginning of the game instead.
"Tsk-tsk. Squall, you haven't taken the timed test at the Fire Cavern. Meet me at the front gates after touring the campus and we'll mosey on over; or else you won't be allowed to take the SeeD Exam."
It's not reflective of the rest of the game at all.

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

I've been creating the bare-bones of this town for Ghost Shards Inquisitor.

((This is not an in-game map, but all the maps pasted together in a paint program))

So much more to add. ;_;

 

[Leonardo]

I wonder why wouldn't you use a 1-map-only structure. Particularly I prefer playing a game with the least possible number of teleports.

Anyways, the tiles are very neat and match very well. I like it.

 

[Leonardo]

I've been scripting 2 system:
-A completely customized Turn-based Battle System script, FFX inspired. I'm thinking about reducing the battle viewport to 320x240, so I'd be able to use character sprites as battlers, instead of having to make completely costumized ones.
-A completely costumized Lighting system script. I'm looking foward to make the light be blocked by scenario pieces, but that is not ready yes. All that is done is a script that quenches darkness via bitmap designs located at source.

 

[Ellie]

Beautiful!

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

I wonder why wouldn't you use a 1-map-only structure. Particularly I prefer playing a game with the least possible number of teleports.

Anyways, the tiles are very neat and match very well. I like it.

Lag.

 

[coyotecraft]

I need to build up my confidence that I can do a lot of work in a short time.
So...how many NPCs can I make in a day for Strawberries game?

Edit: Zero. o_o; I wanted to talk to Strawb. about the art direction, color, attire. But I couldn't get in contact.

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

Sorry Coyote.

Star had the computer from me ALL day so I couldn't use it.

And usually I'm on it. ><

 

[coyotecraft]

Not like you'll ever see these guys without clothes. But but I wanted to make adjustments anyways.

I should be making clothes and hair but the template doesn't have walking animations and I see a potential shortcut.
With the Fairies, imo, you can have them hover and not worry about moving limbs. Just attach animated wings. But that's the real tricky part. At just 3 frames (4, but one repeats) It's hard to make wings flicker. Since they have dragonfly type wings, I can only see it moving fast.

Maybe the wings don't need a full range of motion. I should try some other position, keeping the side view in mind.

Edit: although, I forget what the fastest speed is for events. So it'll probably be something more like this; a very steady but short wing movement. This is 2 frames, might look better at 3. idk.

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

Some might fly, but not all. It would get tiring. That pose is still useful for the flying ones, though. :D

 

[coyotecraft]

Just blocking some stuff in. Tweaking the skin tones and figuring out what my values need to be. I like shaping hair, but not turning it in space.

I think I can make a lot of characters if they're just one-frame poses. It's easy when you're just drawing it and not worrying about how it's going to look from different angles. That's the hard part. Or one of many hurdles, anyways.

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

Having them face the character is important enough - according to Star.

Looks good though!

 

[coyotecraft]

Haven't made any progress with Dies Irae's battle animations.
And it mostly has to do with the rpgm and the battle script's limits.

The biggest thing is getting the characters to run from position to position. And I'm mostly working with strict battle animations. Unlike Lucid Awakening 2, where you could string together action sequences and had control of the battler positions and poses, play multiple animations ect...You could calculate a projectile's path from Caster to target.
But with the default battle system, you're working with fixed positions. So if a character is going to throw a fire ball I'll have to do some trickery in showing it's path.
I'd hate to use scripts to control animations, just because if something needs to be changed it winds up being something only I can do.

I have some ideas about breaking out of side-view perspective. But some of it involves changing the background to action lines or some black void. It's do-able without scripts, but maybe not as pretty.
I kinda have some ideas about damage display. Maybe changing the way numbers appear based on an attribute or who is attacking. How it bounces or fades away with variation to critical hits. But I'd want to to implement it as an add-on that doesn't require individual skill/animation customizations.

I keep mentioning my animation script that duplicates the target battler as a pattern tile within the animation- that I can move around while the real battler is hidden. But then damage display is going to show in that one spot no matter what.
hmm, maybe specify damage to appear in top-middle when target is hidden...or maybe...how would I prioritize clones? Have damage coming off the stunt double that I'm moving around within the animation and not that any trailing after-images or pulsating effects that are also clones of the battler.

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

Sounds difficult.

 

[coyotecraft]

oh and I need to work on stawb's npcs. I wasn't home over the weekend to do it. You wanted it by the end of February, sorry. I intended to do it as a training exercise. Rep to failure. Just as many as I can pump out in one session.

Partly to gauge what I can accomplish when i'm stretching attention across many small things instead of one big thing.
But also, the "it's just practice" is sort of a mental safety net to work uninhibited by success or failure, and as a barrier from getting too serious about it that it starts occupying my thoughts afterwords.

 

[Ellie]

Might try and get Afar online by the weekend. Depends if anything comes up.

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

oh and I need to work on stawb's npcs. I wasn't home over the weekend to do it. You wanted it by the end of February, sorry. I intended to do it as a training exercise. Rep to failure. Just as many as I can pump out in one session.

Partly to gauge what I can accomplish when i'm stretching attention across many small things instead of one big thing.
But also, the "it's just practice" is sort of a mental safety net to work uninhibited by success or failure, and as a barrier from getting too serious about it that it starts occupying my thoughts afterwords.

We now have until the first week of April!!

 

[coyotecraft]

Dies Irae is getting a script debugging. There was this weird bug that would happen after certain circumstances after saving, then exiting the game, reload, change map - error message about armor ID.

I think I found a reason for low framerate.

I need to focus on the fixing the battler and animation alignments. "Bottom" aligned animations are like centered on the bottom 1/4 of the enemy graphic. But The battler runs to a point offset from the exact bottom of the graphic. So when the character's battler is replaced with it's animation version, it starts playing in a different spot. And that spot is going to be different depending on the size of the enemy's graphic's height. So my solution was have the battler run to the 1/4 point - and it worked, but when it's the enemies' turn to run up to the actor's position, it doesn't know where that 1/4 point is because the actor battlers don't have a height attribute like the enemy battlers do for some reason. So I need figure out which script (there are a lot) is defining the animated battlers for Actors and add that in.

Trying not to get distracted by how bloated some of the systems are. I'll just show you:

Animated faces...expressions, blinking, mouth moving ect...over 88 files and 5mb for one character.
This is something that really needs to be broken down into base parts and arranged on a single sheet, and let a script manage the eye blinks and stuff.
I could figure something out on my own, but I have other stuff I need to complete first.

This is a similar problem that bugs me about the animated battler sheets, all the poses and frames lead to a huge image file that could be compressed into heads and arms and stuff, but I'd have to make a different script that would then assemble them..and it's just a lot of work, you know?

 

[Xhukari]

Feels good to be game devving! Feel like I've broken through a wall with this game; I usually encounter some kind of technical / programming issue which I just can't crack, that halts my game development. And I feel as I've just beaten such a wall! Of course, others are likely to pop up, but boy does it feel good be over such a hurdle!

 

[Ellie]

I have been working on concepts for when I actually get around to making my game. The current one is to implement a skill level system but breaking it such that it's a similarly enjoyable system, but without the grind and boringness of many games that can kill it for normal players rather than power users.

Basically the idea I have is that yes, you have merchant skills, but leveling them up is a means of character development rather than merely leaderboard point scoring.

You don't just gain levels by making x amount of product, either. There are various tasks that you need to complete, some worthy of a level, others making up part of a level.

There are three grades of merchant skill: there is the overall profession (Labourer, Artisan, Hunter Gatherer) which goes on your signatures and small things. This is like your "combat level" for merchant skilling I guess and it's a measure of character development.

The second is your individual skills - these go on your character profile. Within Labourer you might have Miner, Lumberjack, etc. Within Artisan you might have Blacksmith, Woodworker.

The third is categories within these skills - inside Blacksmith might be Armourer or Gunsmith.

Then within each of these are the task based levels. Just as a hypothetical example this might look like this:

Labourer - Blacksmith - Armourer

Level - Task
1 - Create any piece of armour
2 - Create a full set of armour and use it in battle
3 - Sell fifty pieces of armour on the tat exchange
4 - Complete the quest: xxx
5 - Use an anvil in every town
6 - Create an elaborate set of armour and imbue it with magic
7 - Earn 50,000 gold from selling homemade armour
8 - Complete the quest: yyy
9 - Locate every piece of x equipment and create the rare x armour set
10 - Earn 1,000,000 gold from selling homemade armour

Of course if players want to grind and grind and make up numbers on a leaderboard, they can do so, each piece of equipment made giving them prestige (basically EXP points). Prestige is given in individual points but shown on leaderboards as a rounded level.