Indie Morgana - a cutesy-Lovecraftian pixel blobber

[Atlantico]

I ran across this game on another forum. There's nearly no information beyond a gameplay video:

So if there's only one character and this isn't party based, how is this a "blobber"?

 

[Trithne]

JaumeAlcazo

You say you can't let go of the 2 row inventory, and that's fine - it doesn't preclude just having some basic tabs above the top row, or in that empty space under the inventory.

Just some simple categories like FOOD, ARMS, BOOK, KEYS, MISC would be enough, with items automatically going to the relevant tab. That alone would make it vastly easier to use that inventory.

Atlantico you can see its party based in the screenshots. Also why are you even here other than to continue your mad crusade against the word blobber?

 

[Bastardchops]

I ran across this game on another forum. There's nearly no information beyond a gameplay video:

So if there's only one character and this isn't party based, how is this a "blobber"?

It's not a blobber. In this instance you are correct.

 

[Atlantico]

Atlantico you can see its party based in the screenshots. Also why are you even here other than to continue your mad crusade against the word blobber?

The word is fine, though why not "gridder"? Why are you on a mad crusade against the word gridder?

It's not a blobber. In this instance you are correct.

Actually, the dev has been busy adding companions so now it is a party based game — even though it still plays exactly the same as when it wasn't.

diclaimer: neither blobber nor gridder nor DRPG are real genres, they're banal constructs of neckbeards and grognards and their simps and have no inherent meaning or utility

 

[Bastardchops]

Actually, the dev has been busy adding companions so now it is a party based game — even though it still plays exactly the same as when it wasn't.

Oh ok. That would make it a blobber.

 

[Lady Error]

I don't know why it matters so much whether something is a blobber or not, but since this will have a party and combat similar to Wizardry or Bard's Tale it is quite likely one.

 

[Bastardchops]

I don't know why it matters so much whether something is a blobber or not, but since this will have a party and combat similar to Wizardry or Bard's Tale it is quite likely one.

Because Atlantico is a retard who can't grasp the definition or see it's utility. It doesn't really matter it's best to ignore him, which is something I intentionally didn't do. Because I just like arguing with people.

 

[JaumeAlcazo]

Hello Morganaholics and thank you again for your interest, posts and feedback.

Public announce:
I'm a bit of overwhelmed on the programming side in general since a long time ago, not a specific thing. I could use some help and a collaborator as a programmer. I someone wants to jump in drop me a line to jaume.alcazo@gmail.com with a small sample of your work or presentation and we can talk and negotiate. I contacted some people and will publish some posts on other forums.

The stuff used is C++ with Object Oriented Programming and Tilengine (http://www.tilengine.org). Minor uses of SDL2 (https://www.libsdl.org/download-2.0.php), SDL2_mixer for audio (https://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_mixer/) for mp3, wav, ogg music and sound FX), SDL2_ttf for managing text (https://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_ttf/), SDL2 image (https://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_image/) and Code::Blocks IDE (https://www.codeblocks.org/).

Experience not needed in anything except C++ OOP.

If you know anyone that could be interested please put us in contact.

Proceeding to some answers, old and new alike:

Trithne

You say you can't let go of the 2 row inventory, and that's fine - it doesn't preclude just having some basic tabs above the top row, or in that empty space under the inventory.

Just some simple categories like FOOD, ARMS, BOOK, KEYS, MISC would be enough, with items automatically going to the relevant tab. That alone would make it vastly easier to use that inventory.

I will do that, good idea!

I've already implemented the numbered stacked items to alleviate the issue. They merge accordingly but can't be unmerged (but when someone drinks a potion obviously the count decreseases in one. It also checks you don't overingest potions above max cap on health/mana/sanity).

99 is the hard limit. I check the merge doesn't overflows 99, it forbids that with a warning. 99 should be more than enough.

KateMicucci

Looks great. I would play this and I'm picky about games.

Thank you very much. I like your portrait profile, I love Serpent Isle. I spent hours with it on my teenage years, and was replaying it a few days ago but kinda dropped it, I will resume it hopefully, altough I hyped to play Cyberpunk 1.5 patch (I preordered it on GOG but still haven't played), I need some escapism, even retro escapism haha

luj1

this released?

No. And will not for a LONG time. Sorry. The circumstances are very complicated.

Conagium:

At a cursory glance I thought this reminded me of "Aeon of Sands" which was pretty disappointing overall, but I'm hoping this is better. As everyone else has noted...looks really promising

Thanks. I will play it. Looked good. Maybe I can get some ideas of the OK things.

whydoibother

The big static UI with a small action screen in the middle made sense before, it was too expensive to animate everything and have dynamic UI and a big screen picture. But now, its just for nostalgia.
I wish these games would have the action on the big screen, and you could bring up controls/map/inventory/etc with button inputs. You know, like a normal modern game. The only reason this isn't done is for its own sake. Just to say its old-school. More like old-fashioned.

Already too late and too invested to change that.

kintake:

Looks so damn.. busy? More like a theme park haunted house with spooky faces and other cheap jump scares every two steps, not sure why you'd lose sanity to that. The stripping part was proper scary though I'll give em that.

I was trying to showcase the maximum amount of things in the less time possible to keep the player thrilled. Maybe I was too over the top with that.

howlingFantods:

The incessant voice-acting has to go. Totally detracts from whatever atmosphere the game has.

I will put an option in the settings to disable Morgana's voice. The voice actress will probably change, tough.

Darth Canoli:

Looks alright so far except for no combat and no party

There's a party now. There will be combat, altough I'm not fond of combat for my game in particular I understand it's a staple. Maybe will add some pacifist mode that hides all monsters.

Generic-Giant-Spider

WILL THERE BE ROMANCES?

No.

 

[Null Null]

Looks awesome. I like the cutesy-meets-Lovecraft look; it's a weird combo of influences but it works!

As for the mental health stuff...hang in there. I've more-or-less lost a creative outlet recently and I know it's tough, but I can tell you lots of people here seem really excited about your game!

Kinda reminds me of Eye of the Beholder (which I very much enjoyed), though I'm guessing you were more influenced by Dungeon Master.

 

[ghostdog]

Watching thread. This looks pretty neat!

 

[JaumeAlcazo]

So after *SOME* (ehem) time away (mmm-hmm, mmm-keey) I went back to some development, although I can not be sure that I can keep any kind of pace or progress measurable by any human being, I'm sorry for that.

So I revamped the “paperdoll” “inventory” screen and I would like to get some feedback. Some user here “complained” about the two row icon inventory in the main screen, but I will keep that for nostalgia purposes. And the tabs for organizing inventory were already in place in the last development branch in main screen.

So I thought in doing the tabs as well in the inventory. It feels more natural to play like this, I got inspiration for this for SkyUI mod for Skyrim. So we can look at the whole inventory in one glance in this screen and two rows in the main screen, what about that?

Remember Lands of Lore 1 only had ONE row for inventory in the main screen, after all.

Well, furthermore, I think I'll limit the inventory size in 7×7 grid for each category (stacking included) to avoid arrows in this screen.

This is only a test drawing with Mrmo art, some free art and me messing around, downscaling, etc., it's not definitive, of course. The font I like it very much for this screen, it's hmm Pixtura12 on Opengameart.

I rebooted once again my engine, so:
— 1st iteration, ?-?: C & Tilengine & SDL (gcc)
— 2nd iteration, ?-?: C++ & Tilengine & SDL (g++)
— 3rd iteration, 2023-2024-?: C++ & SFML & SDL (clang compiler + clang-tidy for static analysis).

Best regards.

 

[HeyCheckOutHowHardICanPee]

I rebooted once again my engine, so:
— 1st iteration, ?-?: C & Tilengine & SDL (gcc)
— 2nd iteration, ?-?: C++ & Tilengine & SDL (g++)
— 3rd iteration, 2023-2024-?: C++ & SFML & SDL (clang compiler + clang-tidy for static analysis).

...Third time's the charm?

 

[Infinitron]

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Is that the GOG girl mascot?

 

[JaumeAlcazo]

lol God, I was not aware of her. That's really an unfortunate coincidence, they look very similar. I think we started development with Mrmo around 2018. The mascot was launched same year, ouch (just checked their twitter).

But still I think we went from the portrait on the main screen to the paperdoll and I asked for the long braids and purple hair if I don't recall badly. I could check our emails to see the dates of the inception of the portraits.

Well, if all goes well and this ends up being playable and a real game, then if GOG asks, I will not have a problem changing her for another girl named Morgana. It's really annoying that they resemble so much. I have grown fond of her portraits and not a fan of changing main character, but whatever… Or hm, maybe I could change the hair color for red and bows to purple. But I'm not skilled enough in pixel art, and the hair would clash with the red potion, hm (and we are out of touch with Mrmo to commission more art, I hope to write him back (or another artist) when I do important progress or another cool big gameplay trailer).

If you check out her small portrait you can see the big sad eyes I asked for, the big eyes resemble manga damn. But the dark makeup or tired eyes are of Morgana and not in GOG's character.

Thanks, HeyCheck, I hope so!

Thanks all for the cool emojis and reception back

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

They look almost nothing alike, imo.

 

[Grauken]

lol God, I was not aware of her. That's really an unfortunate coincidence, they look very similar.

I wouldn't worry, I'm a regular GOG customer and I wasn't even aware they had a mascot and as NEG said, they don't look alike

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Maybe I'm the only GOG mascot fan. I need to check their twitter. I don't think I'm subbed.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Nikanuur]

Please firstly I want you to answer a simple question, what would you like more for combat for this game: real time or turn based? I initially planned to do realtime, but now I'm more biased towards turn-based.

Awesomely looking game.
As for your realtime-shmealtime, turn-based-swum-mazed question... Why, do good combat, of course! I will play the heck out of either, if you continue in the spirit presented herein.

 

[JaumeAlcazo]

Morganaholics, sorry for the delay. Some progress:



Showcasing functionality of the slots of the paperdoll, tooltips, some SFX, tooltips over weapons, some sketch of “familiarity” functionality (I liked this so much in Mortal Shell, so I'm taking it for Morgana, if the creators of Mortal Shell aren't against it. By the way, I enjoyed Mortal Shell a lot. It's my first “Souls” game, and I was very noob, but I enjoyed the challenged and the progression of understanding the mechanics of the combat, and finally I have beaten the game in approx 33 hours.

In the video I showcase as well a very fast transition from black to the paperdoll using a checkerboard pattern and killing black squares at random. I can make it slower for the next update to show you.

I'm shown testing swapping items, and the double-handed cases of pick, drop, and swap. Furthermore, I think there's only one case that I missed, that is dropping a two-handed weapon in an empty slot WHEN the OTHER hand is carrying a one-handed weapon. In this case, I forbid the drop and do an SFX sound to queue the player.

But this could be better doing this: actually dropping the two-handed weapon and making the mouse pick THE OTHER HAND weapon. But this is somewhat tricky, and I was tired of the functionality of this module of code in particular, so I left it forbidden, but I may revisit this at some later point.

Now going to answer some questions:

They look almost nothing alike, imo.

I wouldn't worry, I'm a regular GOG customer and I wasn't even aware they had a mascot and as NEG said, they don't look alike

Maybe I'm the only GOG mascot fan. I need to check their twitter. I don't think I'm subbed.

Thanks, folks. After some thought I agree the similarity is not relevant, the hair in front of the forehead of Morgana is clearly long, and it merges with her long braids. In the case of the GOG mascot, she features bangs that arrive mid-face length and has two big bungs Leia (Star Wars) style at the top of her head.

Furthermore, the eyes of Morgana are clearly green, and GOG mascot are purple. And Morgana features dark eyes of chronic sleep deprivation or depression and sad eyes, which GOG mascot lacks. GOG's girl skin is somewhat healthy pinky, while Morgana's is sicky paper white from not seeing the sun never. Furthermore, the style is clearly pixel art and GOG's is clearly manga.

So all in all, yeah, more than enough evidence to prove their separation. And I can prove her inception from scratch with our conversations with Mrmo in 2018, so all in all I don't think anyone could have any legal grounds against her use in my game (or to bite me financially) when hopefully it launches commercially.

Awesomely looking game.
As for your realtime-shmealtime, turn-based-swum-mazed question… Why, do good combat, of course! I will play the heck out of either, if you continue in the spirit presented herein.

Thanks bro. Dunno if said this, but I think I will go for Bard's Tale remake (available in GOG) style of combat. At least, I'm thinking of doing a prototype of some type. But first, my next goal is to keep exploring all the inventory tabs and filling them with several batches of items. That way, I populate the Item's Factories and have them separated by tier or level to be available to ask later in the game for them. The chests and enemies will ask the factories for items to give loot to the player, according to level-tier and luck, and maybe perception (when looking inside chests, maybe?).

 

[Nikanuur]

Thanks bro. Dunno if said this, but I think I will go for Bard's Tale remake (available in GOG) style of combat. At least, I'm thinking of doing a prototype of some type. But first, my next goal is to keep exploring all the inventory tabs and filling them with several batches of items. That way, I populate the Item's Factories and have them separated by tier or level to be available to ask later in the game for them. The chests and enemies will ask the factories for items to give loot to the player, according to level-tier and luck, and maybe perception (when looking inside chests, maybe?).

I thank you! The screenshots alone are a reason to have a nicer day, man.

I wonder, is it a good idea to have some sort of 'core' monsters and chests with hand-placed items and the rest of the loot randomized with luck/PER/level-tier? Or maybe 'zones' where such hand-placed items would appear; sometimes on a monster, sometimes in a chest, or elsewhere.

It just occurred to me that it'd be nice to be able to know where to look for some stuff. It would probably add to replayability, too. But I don't really know if it's doable or if it's a good idea in general.

 

[JaumeAlcazo]

Some progress. 7x7=49 weapons, sourced mainly from itch.io, some free, some bought, edited a lot of them, trying to make them a uniform bunch.
I seem to go with the black outline, but clashes with the colored-outline of Morgana. I can't decide. But it doesn't seem to clash a lot if you look them separately, dunno.
Tooltip is weird on the lowest rows, so I must add the delay (configurable in settings.ini and in game options) to avoid the tooltip immediately obscuring the weapon.



If you want to read the descriptions, please pause the vid, can't stay still on each weapon for all the time needed to read all of this.
BTW, finished Mortal Shell some time ago, I think months ago. My first souls like game beaten. A lot of fun and dying a lot to “git gud”. But it feels nice to learn and own the mechanics of a game by the process of learning them the hard way.

Now testing The Final Station, 9 Years of Shadows, good games. Not any CRPG in the list, sadly I restarted Ultima7 serpent isle again some time ago, but abandoned it. I have beaten it a lot of years ago. But I would like to refresh it to get ideas and inspiration for Morgana and writing. And of course playing the expansion the Silver Seed, which I did not have as a teenager.

There were some guns in Elvira and Waxworks, but it feels odd for Morgana, for the moment. I think I will go with “medieval” weapons and magic weapons for now.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I need to see if I have Elvira from when it was abandonware. As to black outlines, I've always enjoyed them in a certain game I used to play. When they were enchanted a certain way, the outline would pulse glow a certain color. I don't recall if EOB series did this, Kyrandia or The Summoning. The summoning had a lot of weird effects for weapons. They look fine imho and I can't see them clashing.

 

[JaumeAlcazo]

So I uploaded an old test of “grimified” portraits after curtain clicking with the old engine, I don't know if I uploaded to YouTube earlier or not: