elvaq

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Posts posted by elvaq

  2. Posted

    The deadline extension is truly a blessing from Jah. Finding the motivation to work on this for more than an hour each night after a full day of actual game programming is pretty difficult. Mornings are better and usually super productive but alack, there is only ever so much time.

     

    Final list of features I'm burning through now. Will try not to add too much because of the extra time, just polish and bulletproof what's left:

    • 16 Sigils with ramping, semi-plotted difficulty curve (while still giving player options on how to proceed after completing a sigil) - 9 complete right now
    • SFX - ideas for most, less than 10 total
    • Title Screen with Start and Quit selectable, show high score in corner
    • Add "Sigils Cleared" as secondary stat and display during game
    • Add left and right indicators on sigil complete to people know to press keys
    • Add mouse support to selecting the next sigil so people don't have to press keys
    • Record high score and display on game over
    • Let there be a game over
    • Screen shake on failure

    If there's time / bonus round

    • Pause screen?
    • Music?
    • Record high score to non-writable file
    • 3-initial name input for high scores

     

    Currently working on the Title Screen and High Scores!

  5. Posted

    2D artists and sound/music folks: hello! I am looking for some help applying the gloss to my wizjam thing, Johann's Baton. That last post there has a playable build and a description of what I'm looking for to take this baby home. If you're looking to help me pump out the jams, I can be found in the IRC chat or I guess this forum thing has a PM feature too!

     

    Cheers! :sombrero:

  6. Posted

    Put up a playable build because why not.

     

    Timer doesn't completely work, and existing sigils need some tweaking for the drawing system adjustments so that's what I'm focusing on for today & tomorrow (along with looooots more sigils).

     

    Also could really use some sfx and art!

    Any 2d artists out there want to have a crack at a title screen or background? And with sfx I've got all my needs written down now, in case I have to raid freesound and bfxr for my own resources.

     

    My ideal art target would be something like a Kyary Pamyu Pamyu video

    ...so maximalism and general throwing-crazy-crap-at-the-wall is appreciated!!

  7. Posted

    I've been using Firefox for the past year and while Flash seems to be super buggy, it's an overall much better experience than Chrome. Buuuuuuuut market share yada yada so we can't really ignore this.

     

    Which means that I think everyone just needs to do both builds now, one huge, slow Chrome and one classic style for everyone else. Annoying but not the end of the world

     

    Here's hoping that this has the intended effect of speeding up WebGL development so that it becomes truly viable

  8. Posted

    Thanks! I did switch over to using LineRenderers so performance is still okay. I do need how to tweak how they're working though, as it creates a new LineRenderer for each stroke until it's cleared by a success or failure. Would be nice to get them to delete themselves visibly, following the trail you used to draw them as well. Ahh, there's so much possibility to improve even without adding in any other mechanics or big story stuff!

  9. Posted

    Have been slowly and consistently building out the base systems of the game through the week. The core game loop of drawing the sigils and choosing the next one is in there, as seen here:

     

    sigilsmultiple.gif

    (good thing i added tons of particles since GifCam doesn't seem to like the mouse cursor)

     

     

    So now I'm at the halfway point and need to start making big decisions that will let me finish with a relatively complete. I had a silly backstory worked out, explaining that Johann was a minimum wage wizard who deals with outsourced anxieties and dispels them by summoning demons. Kind of a grandiose concept which boils down to rote actions and a quota, which I really like.

     

    But after listening to Sean & Danielle discuss creators hamfisted-ly dropping in weighty themes or stories into what are otherwise simple puzzle action games, I think I might drop it. I generally agree more with Danielle that the personal touch is always great but I don't think I'd have the capacity to get something in there that I'd be proud of with the time remaining.

     

    So I'm just going to double down on what's in there and make it as wild of a "babby's first demon summoning" arcade game as I can, with more particles, screen shake, and all of that. Which means that those anxiety text strings will probably be replaced by regular old demon names. So long, 'extra hair,' I'll miss you while I'm testing.

     

    Besides, I think I'll just barely have enough time to push in a lot of content while tweaking the balance and bullet-proofing the systems. Two weeks suddenly seems like a very short time indeed!!

     

     

    Here's a bonus shot of my in-editor reference plane for building levels:

    workingfromreference.PNG

  18. Posted

    Something you might consider is taking some cues from the Battle Ogre series if you go the summoning route with it. Basically those games were RTS/RPGs where you would send groups of units across a map and when two opposing groups met it would open up a window that would show the two groups engaging in combat for two rounds. After the two rounds of combat the groups would be thrown away from each so that if combat didn't go in your favor you could retreat and actually have a chance of getting away. You might want to ditch the combat window part for sure I would think, but overall I think it would be a good way to give the player control over several monsters and not overwhelm them. Making the main objective for the player identifying what monster is best for what scenario, with managing the already summoned monsters a secondary goal. Or at least it is in the version of your game the exists in my head. ;)

     

    I'm not sure how relevant any of this is to you but for some reason the idea of summoning monsters via sigils brought that series to mind.

    Interesting! I've been thinking/working on turn-based strategy stuff so I'm aware of the retreat mechanics but not quite like that. Pretty cool stuff though I don't think it's a fit with where I'm going right now.

     

    Got a lot of basic systems and setup done today. Also made a surprising amount of progress with design and implementation of basic features. Have got one basic sigil going with checkpoints clearing and failing. Will need a hell of a lot of polish to make it feel good but I'm over the moon to have stuff just responding properly already.

     

    I think from here, I need to work on being able to transition to the next sigil, choose from one or two options (you'll rotate the wheel left or right, as seen in the gif below). And also think about a good content creation process because I now have to set up checkpoints for god knows how many sigils... I guess it's sort of like level design.

     

    Day two progress gif: i am a child.

    dayone2.gif

     

    I even started developing the 'story' because hey, why not!

  19. Posted

    Currently it's pre-fabbing a 32x32 sprite GameObject. Or rather, it's getting prefabs from an object pool, something I've been meaning to try for a while. It's pretty cool, they disappear and release back into the pool after a few seconds so there's a neat "erase effect" that basically traces over your path deleting stuff.

     

    I'm not happy with the look though so I'm going to try some of the LineRenderer solutions out there. Look fairly easy. Will probably have a series of "gates" to detect collision with the line, like checkpoints in a racing game.

     

    As far as goals/objectives, I'm thinking of pulling a bunch of random situations/quandaries from an XML file and then assigning them difficulty levels. Sort of like the custom dictionaries in the PC version of Typing of the Dead Overkill. There's a lot I could do with generating text meshes and putting various colors and effects on them to indicate difficulty (the player would be able to choose between a set of things which they want to tackle).

     

    But the real bugbear is going to be the core design of "difficulty" with drawing these sigils. I haven't got it all down yet but right now I'm thinking of some combination of color swapping, timers, and "sigil complexity." Anyone have ideas?

    I'm going to keep programming basic stuff while I think about it all more~

  22. Posted

    I'd be definitely be interested in joining a team but I've started on my own thing for now. It's a drawing action game, more info over here: Johann's Baton

     

    Anyone want to help out with art or additional code/design? Art would be super amazing since I am super unpracticed. Would be very open to design collaboration, ideas have the right to children!

  23. Posted

    Going to try and tackle drawing/mouse-based gameplay with this one. My current idea is something like "Typing of the Dead but with magic sigils a la Okami"

     

    Not sure if it'll be demon hunting or demon summoning but I'm leaning towards summoning big powerful monsters to defeat everyday and/or absurdist obstacles.

     

    Doing a lot of design thinking this weekend along with working on the basic drawing mechanic. Need to get "symbol/picture recognition" in as soon as possible.

     

    Gonna re-listen to the episode to see if it contains any weird/good ideas to include

     

    Current progress:

    busting.PNG

     

     

    FINAL BUILD AND GIFS

     

    PC (Windows/Mac)

     

    WebPlayer

     

    fromtitle.gif

    inprogress.gif

  25. Posted

    There are absurd Mechanics checks later but you're usually meant to just find the key.

     

    Finished the final boss last night and whee-oo that is one fantastic piece of video game. As is the tradition in BG games, that final boss is a really, really good fight. Difficult but not impossible. Took me about 8 tries maybe?

     

    RPS had a article a few days ago about one thing that this game does incredibly well (at least compared to every other crpg), actual roleplaying! http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/04/07/collaborative-storytelling-in-pillars-of-eternity/

     

    Also I have been planning/dreaming of my second playthrough since about Act II and while I am super excited to jump right back in and do everything differently/more completely, I will probably wait for a few more patches, if not the first expansion. There's so much there already to do differently that it's tempting to start now, but yeah, a couple major bugs in Act 3 made me wary.

     

    goat: possible