City of Chains

[cabfe]

I knew something was bothering me, now I found it.

In Atonement, your characters had a shadow on the ground. Yours now in City of Chains do not and they look flatter. I don't know how much work it'll be to add shadows, but since you're still early in development that may be doable.

Shadows has a lot to perpective.

For example, in your "small barracks building" screenshot, a quick glance is not able to say if the leftmost guy is standing up or lying on the ground with the others.

 

[Matseb2611]

Yeah. I chose not to add the shadow, because the default shadow included in the tileset goes too much to the side, and so if I walk next to a wall or a building, the shadow ends up going over it, which looks silly.

I guess I could add a shadow, but it'll have to be a small circular shadow, not like the one Atonement characters have. That's going to be hell of a lot of work though. No idea whether I should just stick with the default shadows and risk the small display bug of them being cast on top of buildings, or whether to bother doing the circular ones.

 

[Kes]

If it's of any interest, this script adds just that little circular shadow under your characters.  Just drop the script in; no work involved.

 

[Matseb2611]

^Now that's awesome. So I assume I can specify which character events would have a shadow and which wouldn't? Also, I couldn't see it mentioning anywhere about the commercial terms.

 

[Kes]

Somewhere (and I can't immediately lay my hands on it) I asked about commercial terms and was simply directed to this 

Copyright policy:

You are free to use this script in your project(s) ONLY IF you credit the original author (SYDONAY) of the script.

I took that to mean that it was free for any project.

As for determining which character events, I think it's a bit all or nothing.  Either all your followers have shadows or none of them do.  Either all your events have shadows, or none of them do.  I remember trying the 'all events' option and changing my mind when I saw the result.  I now don't remember what that result was.  Quite what the 'additional shadows' script call refers to, I never found out.

 

[Matseb2611]

Lol. Yeah, having all events with shadows would look funny. So parts of the scenery and invisible events (like autorun) will also be sporting a shadow.

I'll probably just go with the default shadow provided in the pack and see what people think of it when they try the demo. There's no win-win option here as it seems.

 

[Kes]

It works fine with having just the player and followers with shadows, that's independent of events.

Ah, I've just remembered why I tried it out with all events - I wanted NPCs to have shadows too, but of course, everything had one and it just looked ridiculous.

 

[Matseb2611]

Just added default shadow graphics from the pack to the characters. Hopefully it's looking better now.

 

[cabfe]

It looks better in my opinion.

But how is it that shadows give you problems with walls now? Aren't they the same as in Atonement? I don't remember having seen overlapping shadows on the walls back then.

 

[Matseb2611]

Yeah, in Atonement it was the same problem, but it was already built in with the character models, so I couldn't change it, but here with Wild Steam pack, I can customize my own characters.

What I meant about it going over a building, you can probably check in Atonement and see. Like if you come up to a building from the left (so that the building is on the right) and walk right up to it, you'll see the shadow going over the building, even though the building in reality is much higher than the character. The shadow is also always in the same location relative to the character, even though in real life light sources could be located anywhere around the character. But I see players don't seem to mind these minor issues quite as much.

 

[cabfe]

You're right, I didn't mind it and actually don't even remember it was an issue.

If no one reported it, I think it's best to keep the shadows.

For smaller sprites it can be overlooked, but bigger ones need them to stand against the background, especially if you show sprites lying on the ground like in your screenshot.

Another option could be to only add an outline shadow to the fallen sprites. I've tried it in my game and it makes them look closer to the ground like they should be.

 

[Matseb2611]

Do you hear that?

It's the sound of City of Chains Demo being released!

Only non-RTP version (65 MB in size) - Enter at your own risk.

The demo contains the first hour or so of the game. Would love to hear some feedback and any (reasonable) suggestions for improvement.

The game uses the new PVGames sprites, which require their own scripts to work properly. There has been one issue with the script that caused sprites not to walk as many steps as you instructed it to. I've tested each cutscene and event thoroughly, but it's possible that I've missed some, so please let me know if any movement looks odd and stops earlier than it should. It's possible also that I've forgotten to include shadows on some sprites.

Some questions for you:

- How is the story so far? Interesting? What about the characters?

- Anything that feels unbalanced to you? (let me know what difficulty you're playing on too)

- Any bugs/crashes?

That's all for now. I'll leave you with the title screen pic, though it looks way better in-game whilst it's scrolling.

Edit: Almost forgot to mention something. But I've now decided that I will no longer be posting any new content on RMN (not only for this game, but overall), simply because that place doesn't resonate with me and most of that community isn't my audience, so my time is better spent elsewhere. I will pop in there every now and again to check for messages, but if you'd like to get a hold of me or leave feedback, etc, then here, on these forums, is the best place to do so.

 

[Soul]

When I'm able to tonight, I'll power through it and give you my thoughts. Might give each difficulty a try. Downloading now. ^_^

 

[Matseb2611]

Thanks Soul. I am looking forward to hearing your feedback.

 

[The Stranger]

Great game, thus far. Loving the Cyberpunk setting, the alternate routes (I can do a mosty non-combat approach!) and the design of both locations and characters; the locations have a nice retro-dystopan feel to them. Looking forward to playing more.

 

[TalalAlgreby]

Great looking game, Good job on the originality so far.

keep this up !

 

[Matseb2611]

Wow, thanks for the comments, guys. I really appreciate all the support. It is good to know that the game is on the right track.

 

[Kes]

There seems to be a problem with the mediafire download page, specifically the captcha bit.  Every time I try, it comes up with "there was an error..." at item (2) i.e. the bit that generates the captcha code that you have to type in.  Clicking on the 'click here to reload page' button does indeed reload it, but it still comes up with the same error message.  I've tried exiting and starting afresh from your link several times, but no improvement.  I don't know if that's mediafire or your download in particular, but I thought I'd better mention it.

 

[Matseb2611]

Thanks for letting me know about that. I am not sure what's happening to it. I think it must be something happening with Mediafire itself. Maybe it's worth to try again a bit later? Please let me know how that goes. I hope it's just a temporary issue on Mediafire's end.

 

[Soul]

I enjoy writing, and I held back in the review a bit as I continued to play through it - my thoughts on portions of the story flow, dialogue, etc. I typed this as I played:


One of the first dialogues, coming from Jinn: When he says "wretched", it didn't really sound fitting for how you had the character coming off to say, especially with how he looks and the futuristic aspect. Seems like he should be cussing at them. They did arrest him and tell him that, essentially, he'd be tortured after all.

 

After that, when he says "pretty face", either he's just really bad with pick-up lines, or you might wanna make it read "And ya, (pretty face / hot stuff / etc)? The Hell are you lookin' at?". If he's gunna be lude and come off as crude, might as well nose dive into it for writing.

 

When in Hope's interrogation, when she brings up "invasing methods", it should be "invasive". Grammar Nazi'd.

 

Addition to the above: You can always use the text command "\|" to make it seem like a pause in her speech before her second line, in the same text, comes up. Just kinda bothered me seeing all that empty space after her first sentence in the window. Might just be me with this part.

 

Those 3 items you include, should probably go under Key-Items. Whenever something is referenced in-game, you can just point someone to look under their key-items for more info. Saves them space in their regular items area, and saves you from having to explain anything, if you do.

 

When Lorelei is met, she openly admits that she is an assassin. Wouldn't it be better if she just said "body-guard", and incorporate her background into the story for the player to learn? Strikes me as odd that an assassin would be so open.

 

Side-note: Where -did- she pull that pistol from? o.o

 

Once they escape, the assassin is already trusting of Holt? For all she knew, she was freed to help better the odd's of two other prisoners escape. They could have ditched her at any point - or vice versa. It'd be cooler to have to earn the trust of your companions rather than have it given from the get-go to be honest man. Especially since she's an assassin, and the three of them are pretty much just on a first name basis (though Holt at least knows of Chloe).

 

Inside the store, instead of "teammates", might wanna say something like "fellow guardsmen" or simply just "The prison is under attack- you do know that, right?".

 

Inside the repair shop, you've got me confused. Are fights initiated via encountering an 

on-screen enemy-NPC, or are they that plus random encounters?

 

Addendum to previous confusion: You may need to look into what's going on with one encounter. When I went up the stairs and went right, the next room had an enemy a ways away from me on the screen. Combat initiated - after I won, said enemy exploded. UNLESS - it is a line-of-sight trigger. In which case, you should let the player know some how.

 

Btw - the song that's played outside of the hostile buildings (I think it's only played outside of those), it reminds me a lot of Temple of Elemental Evil if you've ever played that. Not as if it had been stolen, it just has similar sound. It's also very atmospheric. I love the track a lot.

 

With all that said and out of the way, I played only on Casual. Couldn't play it last night due to some RL issues. I enjoyed the demo and really am looking forward to how this game develops. When I've got more time, I'll tackle "Hardy". And if you want the thoughts that were held back, I can give them to you.