Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[Zed]

Very impressive stuff on this page. Pretty sure you've single-handedly outdone Daggerfall's quest generation Zed, looking forward to it. ForeverdarkWoods, your tileset is awesome, I'd only suggest either adding shaded tiles or dynamic shadows.

We were going to make a big announcement about the game on Friday, but it turns out game media sites don't report on much over the weekend so we'll probably do it tomorrow. I'm getting interviewed over the phone by Kotaku tomorrow, hopefully the article will go up within the next few days. I've never done an interview before, I have no idea what to expect. Very nervous and very stressed out right now. This is definitely the most stressed I've ever been in my entire life, even more than when I put off term papers for the night before. I'm working on a lot of marketing stuff (new site, social media stuff, contacting journalists, writing press releases and the Kickstarter, securing physical rewards) and it is frustrating and difficult. It hasn't even started and I can't wait until all this is over with. Still, it is kind of fun and exhilarating. I hope we don't crash and burn.

The quest gen isn't for an RPG though.

If you're looking for a stress-free outlet, perhaps a Codex interview would be of interest? Maybe I've already asked. I don't remember. That's how stress-free it is.

 

[Zed]

Protip: have different colours/shades/etc. for the floor and walls so they don't blend into one another. Even if it's just two different browns or greys.

They do have different colours, although maybe I should differentiate them a bit more since the difference is very small.

I usually tint it a little blue'ish or just darker in general. green also works pretty well for floors. anything that makes it look a little more worn/older or colder usually works.
hasty PS edit:

for detail, the bricks in the wall closest to the floor, as well as the bricks around the door, could be tinted as well (perhaps with something greenish if you're going for an old ruins kind of look).

 

[ForeverdarkWoods]

Ok. I made some adjustments. Does this look better, or worse? I'm leaning towards worse ATM but I haven't decided yet.

Spoiler

 

[sea]

Looking better, I like the increased variety, but I would make the colour difference even more drastic. Blue-grey as Zed said would work really well.

 

[Zed]

I like it.
I don't know what you think of the cracked tiles, but I think it could add variety with at least some having more subtle cracks.

There's so much you can add to a dungeon in terms of detail, by deciding what the dungeons is:
1) above ground or under ground? windows could add light sources if it's daylight. moonlight if you're feeling castlevania'ish. even if not using light sources in the game design, just adding windows to walls is very nice way to add variety.
2) environmental effects. it could be dusty and sandy like a dessert tomb, or almost swamp-like with moss, vines and puddles of water. there could also be traces of snow and ice, or signs of being set in a volcanic region.
3) thematic details: blood, bones, mists etc. perhaps banners on the walls if there's a cult living there. statues, idols, etc.
4) age. if it's really old and crumbling, then the walls should be falling as well. broken-down doors. even stronger environmental effects if there are any. if it's set underground you could have tree-roots and stuff sticking through walls or the ground.

 

[ForeverdarkWoods]

Currently, I'm making tiles that I could work with to create lots of things. A library, so to speak. The posted images have been tests thus far, to make sure they look good and tile correctly. I have started looking into ading lichen or moss to some tiles and making some "overgrown ruin" themed tiles. I also think I managed to make the cracks a bit more subtle and increase the contrast between the floor and walls a bit so that it is a bit more pleasing to the eye. I also included a sprite I made to show scale.

Regarding environment, the door is one thing that absolutely wouldn't be in an old ruin (which the rest of the test map looks like) if it wasn't attached recently by goblins or bandits who moved in later, but I mostly wanted to make sure it worked, and it did.

Spoiler

 

[Destroid]

Now that you mention the door tile - it's surrounding bricks could blend better, there's no reason for it not to match your wall tiles.

 

[ForeverdarkWoods]

Well, regarding the door the intention was to create some arch-like frame around it, but I can see how that intention might not be so obvious as it doesn't look too good atm. Changed it now though to make the intent more obvious and it looks better now.

EDIT: for those interested, here is an image of the new door pieces and my moss experiments. Not sure about the moss, something feels wrong about it.

Spoiler

 

[Destroid]

It's too bright, it looks like toxic sludge. Try a darker tone.

 

[Zed]

moss grows from cracks (mainly - if there are any). this makes it extremely hard to tile properly. the cracks in the tiles get "inverted" with moss, kind of.
it's usually not pure green, often has some other shade in there as well. blueish for that sunken temple sort of look, I guess. outdoors it often has a yellowish tint.

Spoiler

this doesn't look perfect either but perhaps it can give you an idea:

I gave it a blueish tint and it made a lot of difference. it's also important to give it a grassy texture if needed, otherwise it will look like liquid (or slime).

 

[Destroid]

Very impressive stuff on this page. Pretty sure you've single-handedly outdone Daggerfall's quest generation Zed, looking forward to it. ForeverdarkWoods, your tileset is awesome, I'd only suggest either adding shaded tiles or dynamic shadows.

We were going to make a big announcement about the game on Friday, but it turns out game media sites don't report on much over the weekend so we'll probably do it tomorrow. I'm getting interviewed over the phone by Kotaku tomorrow, hopefully the article will go up within the next few days. I've never done an interview before, I have no idea what to expect. Very nervous and very stressed out right now. This is definitely the most stressed I've ever been in my entire life, even more than when I put off term papers for the night before. I'm working on a lot of marketing stuff (new site, social media stuff, contacting journalists, writing press releases and the Kickstarter, securing physical rewards) and it is frustrating and difficult. It hasn't even started and I can't wait until all this is over with. Still, it is kind of fun and exhilarating. I hope we don't crash and burn.

How did your interview go? Any articles or releases up about your project yet?

 

[eric__s]

How did your interview go? Any articles or releases up about your project yet?

It was fun! I'd never done a phone interview before so I didn't know what to expect, but it was pretty lax and enjoyable. It's weird, we talked for about 40 minutes but I feel like I didn't say very much of substance. I don't know! I enjoyed it.

The interview isn't up yet, but a couple articles about the announcement are - Kotaku, Joystiq, rockpapershotgun, probably some more. The interview isn't up yet, but we've got a few more interviews lined up and we're hoping to start the Kickstarter early next week.

 

[shihonage]

Monsterland reached release candidate 0 yesterday. Playable from beginning to end, estimated length 4 hours for average player. This estimation was derived from my cousin (co-designer of monster behaviors and various mechanics) playing through the game in 3 hours and 15 mins.

Working on RC1 now. There are some difficulty spikes and narrative confusions going on.

 

[ForeverdarkWoods]

I don't have anything new to show yet because I spent all of yesterday and today scripting and learning the ropes of coding lua. I sort of got a menu working. Sort of.

Below is my ultra basic menu and an early working title for the project (screenshot from the program).

Spoiler

At this point, only new game, quit and manual do anything, but it's getting there.

 

[curry]

can you please start using tinypic instead of imgur

 

[Zed]

I've had a lot of trouble adding keyboard-supported movement while also enabling mouse/pathfinding movement (based on tiles/4 directions like Ultima or something).
But today I successfully added configurable keyboard movement (WASD or left/up/down/right) that doesn't fuck up the mouse movement. So now you can both click and push buttons to move around. Happy times.

 

[Zed]

not directly game development related (I may or may not put this in abandonware), but I'm making pixel arts. I'm also making the most difficult thing to draw ever as well - big breasted women
basing it on 4 colors, which I think is pretty cool.
made in built-in paint program of multimedia fusion 2, which is essentially MS paint except you can put shit into animation frames.
posting this quite uncomplete version first so you can see progress later on! this can be version... 0......2. yes, 0.2.

Spoiler

 

[Excommunicator]

Is all of this stuff going to come together into some sort of game, Zed (such as that quest generator template)?

 

[shihonage]

I don't get the extremely dim palette, Zed.

 

[Zed]

Is all of this stuff going to come together into some sort of game, Zed (such as that quest generator template)?

The quest generation was a learning project to create a huge amount of randomized shit... and trying to make something out it. It also involved drawing and was a bit of a UI excercise.
I probably won't be doing anything with it. It was supposed to be some sort of management game/RPG. You're put in a randomized town and then you assign randomized quests to randomized hired adventurers based on certain factors. When questing, the idea was that there could be randomized events like combat (a quest with High Risk would mean a high chance of combat) and stuff with outcomes based on the character's attributes. When not put on a quest, it would be more like the Sims or something.

I got randomized quests, randomized town names, randomized characters, and the player can enter the 'adventurers guild' and assign the quests. This is pretty much how far I got.

Spoiler

I did this randomization project over a couple of days and it served as a mental distraction from what I've been doing with pathfinding and this pixelart. Perhaps I will post more about that during the holidays :D Professional abandonware makers keeps thing hush-hush just before they can it.

I don't get the extremely dim palette, Zed.

It needs some highlights for sure. Keep the 4 color scheme.

It was supposed to be a sort of "wood carving" at first. Then it looked too human so I kept the colors and just continued.
I'll focus on pose and scene before colors. I think it's very easy to add colors later on. The hard bit, I think, is textures and proportions.

 

[Zed]

We should have an art thread.
update, started coloring

Spoiler

 

[OlivettiFever]

Seconded, Zed. On another note, nice to see a fellow MMF2 user around.

I bit the bullet and started spriting again last night. They need a bit of work, and I'm not too terribly confident at my detailing and shading abilities, so I just blocked out the figures for now. Left leg needs work on the alien, and the upper arm looks a little wobbly on the firing animations. But I'm reasonably happy, all things considered.

 

[Kosmonaut]

Why are both sprites from the left brushing their shoulders?

 

[Zed]

Why are both sprites from the left brushing their shoulders?

they're shooting handguns, duuh

 

[Kosmonaut]