January Goals & Progress Thread

[mogwai]

RTP game, it sounds like a plan   (I've actually made one a while back, but it's wildly inappropriate)


I'm just now waking up to my RPG projects recently, because I've been preoccupied with my (now self deleted) Tumblr. Some of those vector templates have been sitting on my hard drive since 2015. I made it and then kinda dropped all and went on art blogging webcomics sporadically because it requires no straight path, but anyway since I deleted my own blogs because my Tumblr activity was dwindling and the dashboard started producing nothing, but a bunch of overshared Facebook/Twitter-esque nonsense (I blame Yahoo and the money), I'll have more time for RPG Maker.


 I'll just take these daily (new game) inspirational bursts and focus them on daily (new plot) elements for one game with the RTP all ready to go. Less tedium; more personal satisfaction.


This is the month for big self-promises. I've got the time.

 

[Sharm]

I have troubles looking at all the blank spaces on my tile sheets and wondering what to draw in them (which is probably why A is easier, there are less possible options and I can just draw).  So I've decided to use the challenges from Pixel Dailies to get me started drawing each day.  Sometimes the challenges can't be fit into something that would be useful for the set, but I've got a list of the earlier challenges so I can go back and do one of those on a different day.  Today's was toast, so I made bread and toasters and such.  Plus some variations for things related to it like counters and plates.  I haven't finished editing the problems I found last week but I'm still recovering and progress is still progress.

 

[Lihinel]

@Kes: Yes, they are.


Right now they are planed to only give an achievement, gold and some loot.


Though I am currently playing around with just lowering the speed once you failed (and increasing it once you win, if it was lowered before) so that the game adjusts in difficulty. (You would still need to clear the brawl on max difficulty to get the achievement though.)

 

[Celianna]

@Sharm I'm starting to do this less and less. It still bugs me when there's open space in the tileset, but I don't specifically look at it and wonder what to draw anymore. I draw based on areas, and what those areas should include. For example, a cafe. It needs stools, a bar, chairs and tables, many wall decorations, drinks, playing cards, a front counter, perhaps a cake display, lamps, and the standard things like walls, floors, doors, and windows. I try to imagine what the map would look like and what it would need, and draw based on that.

 

[bgillisp]

@KawaiiKid: I didn't know it was meant to be night. I'd say it's ok, just be careful. I've seen games that tried to do realistic dark and it resulted in me being unable to see a thing (Dragon's Dogma was one of them. Only way I could get around at night in that game was to turn the brightness of my TV up to max).


@HexMozart88: We must think differently, because usually the first thing I do is turn off the voice acting and read the subtitles instead (especially if the maker didn't bother to put an English option for the voice overs)


@Lihinel: That sounds about like my game. I think I scrapped it and started over 4 (or is it 5?) times before I got to this point.


@Kes: It's more like, it goes in waves. I get a day where I have a lot of energy and just push ahead, and I get days like today where I stare at the screen and just go "Duh? What are words?"


@mog: That's what I did to start out my project. I used all RTP until I was about 4 - 5 months in, then once I knew I had a very reasonable chance of finishing this, I hired an artist to make the sprites and facesets for the game. Though I did get a few remarks of why was Sarah in a maid outfit in the first version of my demo.


@Sharm: I always say some progress is better than 0 progress.


1.17 Update: Managed to write two lore books. Still stewing on ideas for the next one, and I'm also brainstorming how to handle that missing cutscene from Chapter 4, so I think this is as far as I'll get today. Now watch, I'll come up with the perfect idea while driving to work later today...but in the meantime I think I'm going to go blow up some aliens in a shooter game from the 90's for a while.

 

[Citrus-Shock]

Hi all!
I'm a little late, hope it's okay if I share the progress I've made this month so far.
Am making a scary game.

This month I have:

• Figured out how to make some plugins work
  
• Figured out how to make implement a time travel mechanic
  
• Made some maps
  

What else I'd like to accomplish this month:

• Finish almost all maps for the prologue/introduction
  
• Implement the first jumpscares
  
• Make sprite for first monster
  

Great job to those who are also accomplishing their goals!!!!

 

[Little Adventurer]

Well, I have a kinda cool idea for one of my cities. Called Sonata City, it's the hometown of three of my characters- Minuet (a noble), Aria (a princess), and technically Quintus (who was an orphaned doorstop baby raised in the city's orphanage who's also a knight) and the starting area of the game (though more specifically the Academy). It's considered the "crown jewel" (the Whiterun, if you will, for those who've played Skyrim) of the world, the big capital city blah blah blah. You probably don't care about that. 


Anyway, my idea is to have the city be mapped out in sections (not sure if I'm going to go with one big map or seperate maps), four of them, based (as you might have uess with the big music theme of the game) on the four sections of an orchestra- Percussion, Woodwinds, Brass, and Strings. The "Percussion" area is where the workers and shops are, the "Woodwinds" is where the ordinary common folk live, the "Brass" is where the nobles live, and the "Strings" I haven't fully thought out yet but I'm thinking of making it a relaxing park area and also where the Academy is located. The temple is in the center of the city, at a crossroads, for reasons you can probably guess, and the castle is a seperate map.

 

[Sharm]

@Celianna  That makes sense.  I won't be filling up sheets like this again, I think, but I want to do it at least for this base set.  I think my inexperience with actual game making is coming back to hurt me with this.  I don't do enough mapping to know what's needed or what would be nice to have.  My mockup maps don't help very much since they're just to display or try out tiles and not to be useful in a game setting.  I can make good looking maps and lots of variety of them with very few tiles but that doesn't mean it's a good set.  Maybe I should take some time and just recreate maps for other games for a while, see what I can learn.

 

[Marquise*]

*Cybermentally runs into the tread*


HEEEEEEEY... WAITTTT FOR MEEEEEE!


*cyberermentally pants*


Well this month's goal... 


despite running on a kinda expiring computer (hey it is a 8 years old one, c'mon!), I will attempt to improve it and do the best I can on it.


First attempt to be certain it is stable and to make it relax a bit, The Calm and The Fury (BTW... hope they don't disclose full names as I always use my handle on the internet !?)


And second attempt, try Pyxel edit on that 2nd Dragon! 


Hopefully, since I can choose both minimal computer time, I can also try to keep it stable enough to steer on paper while attempts to bypass my BIOS are made to boot my computer!  (My new mouse is... puny...  Really really really small, light and optical and do not have the thumb button...)


Hey guys and girls I missed you and I do HAVE to read up all you did.  (Ack... STEAM will be full crack packed with messages! and I didn't reinstalled it yet... all right, first, photoshop.  hope my CPU won't choke!)

 

[Kes]

@Little Adventurer Sounds interesting - but you haven't (I think) actually specified what your goals are for this month to help you to make that city.  That's the beauty of this thread - by working out and stating what our goals are we can work more productively, and have a more realistic overview of where we want to go and how we're going to get there.


@Sharm Sounds like a sensible (and potentially enjoyable) plan.


@bgillisp At last you have revealed the secret of your success. Blowing up aliens. Now, why didn't I think of that?


@Marquise* Ah, you've returned! Nice to see you back, and good luck with that CPU.


My update:


More of the same.  Had a couple of ideas for objects (statues, things like that) to dot around the future location where I've just done the cut scene.  That varied things up a bit.  Doing NPC dialogue.  It needs to be multi-purpose, i.e. show the player that this place has a life of its own, quite separate from the lives of our heroes, but at the same time to comment on what they're doing, and to set up a side quest, if the player so chooses.  So it gets a bit complicated, with assorted common events for some bits, and individual dialogues for others.

 

[Larry Jones]

My "goals" are already out the window. They were related to productivity and timetabling my day. Ah well, I can always start them up again I suppose, or do them in modified form.

 

[Celianna]

@Sharm recreating maps sounds good to me as well. But how about creating sample maps that are present in your own stories? I'm pretty sure you have them! One of my stories was a princess locked up in a castle guarded by a dragon. The important areas were the bedroom, the library, and the entrance hall ... guess who made sample maps for them, and subsequently, tiles?

Spoiler

 

[Pierman Walter]

Still working on the picture. For those who are wondering, the resolution is around 2000x700, and the faces are around fifty pixels tall. It doesn't have to be super detailed because it is for height comparison and reference purposes.

Spoiler

 

[bgillisp]

@Marquise*: Welcome! All you missed is Schlagan built a death star and is now taking over the universe with it.


@Kes: Well it does help, as I can take a 20 minute break to clear a level, and then come back to game making. Seems the older games like Doom, Heretic and Blake Stone are good for that.


@Little Adventurer: I am curious too, what are your goals? Or is this a go with the flow month?


@- Laurence -: Anything's better than none. Maybe write down what you need to get done for your game in word (even if it is everything), and then pick something to work on each day?


@Pierman Walter: 2000 x 700? I can see that taking a while. Good luck with that.


1.18 Update: Wrote two more lore books. Only got about 200 years of history to go, and there's only two major conflicts left to list in them. The rest will be mostly peaceful times for our corner of the world.

 

[Kes]

@- Laurence - Just pick up the goals and start again in whatever way you can.  My goals are constantly slipping around, and I think that's true for most people.


@Pierman Walter 2000 x 700 sounds much more appropriate for that number of images than the size I thought it was.  I like the 2 figures leaping around in the background.  Are they acrobats? Tumblers? Trapeze Artists?


@bgillisp A mere 200 years? Phutt! You can knock those off in your coffee break!  I'm glad to say I've never had the urge to do lore books.  That much history hasn't been necessary in my games - more by chance than anything else.  Seeing how much work you're having to put in to them, I think it's just become a firm design choice.


My update:


Mapping (no surprise there), but actually most of the time was spent creating the slanted walls and ceiling tiles I will need for the octagonal rooms of my optional dungeon (it's based in a Lighthouse).  I can do walls and windows quite quickly, it's the ceiling tiles that take me ages, or more precisely, the joins between the slanted parts and the straight parts.  I shan't need them for at least a week, but I couldn't face doing much mapping today.

 

[Punamaagi]

It seems like my bursts of activity were followed by a period of being less effective... or just focusing onto details which didn't feel worth mentioning.


Anyhow, I've mostly been testing out my game as thoroughly as possible and trying to weed out any bugs I find. It seems like I heavily underestimated the time playtesting takes.


Now that I've spent probably around 10 hours testing my 20-minute demo, I hope that I've learned the lesson. I still need to check a couple of scenes for two characters, though, and see if a bug in certain battle plugin I'm using gets fixed soon.


Other than that, I ended up making a simplistic battle animation sheet and coming up with a way to show the player when a character's reaction (= friendship value of sorts) changes. I also edited some of the main characters' sprites to make them correspond the bust graphics better. It took surprisingly much time even to add tattoo to one character's face: I'm not sure if it's due to my lack of skill or non-optimized way of working. Hopefully I'll get better and faster once I doing more of pixel art... I'd like to have more graphics done before releasing a public demo (i.e. making a thread on the Early Project subforum).


Good job with everyone for the progress you've made, and best of luck (and inspiration) for the rest of the month!

 

[AceOfAces_Mod]

Progress Report #7:


-Made an MV game to set the correct resolution on the Universal Windows Platform. Now to figure out how to re-adjust the resolution when the window changes size.


-Playing around with the region effects.


Misc:


And I happen to get sick ?. My stomach was messed up and I can't use my laptop for a while. Now I feel better.

 

[Sharm]

I was a lazy bones today and modified some of the 2k art to fit my set instead of actually working.  It was fun, and I'm feeling rebellious.  Not entirely sure what to do with these graphics though.

 

[Marquise*]

Got the rough of the calm done. 


In a less AM fashion I will rush myself and install Photoshop.  Yikes!  19 January...  (BTW maybe not the place to ask, but what is the privacy policy about contests here?  I feel bad seeing my full name on the internet!)


And...  I think I finally could type the one who commissioned me the new dragon about how long it takes.  (Fortunately, it is hard to kill an animator's light table so I still can progress one way before getting to sprite anything.)  And read all long missed posts.  I just regret my likes not being cumulative because there are a LOT of likes missed as some work and art were impressive in January.

 

[bgillisp]

@Kes: Thankfully the lore's already written in a way, as most of it is my old attempts at a story in word. Some of them just weren't going to be fun as a game, and some of them were just tabled. So its more a matter of piecing it together in an order that makes sense.


@Punamaagi: That's why they say plan a lot of time to test, especially if you have a lot of choices, as you have to check every possible branch.


@AceOfAces_Mod: Get better!


@Sharm: Sometimes though that is what we need. I know some of my side quests have come from days I just didn't want to work on the main plot anymore. Maybe you can use the edited tiles to make a short 5 minute game or something?


@Marquise*: I think that might be a question to ask in the contest thread? Though I think it was just answered if I saw that right.


1.19 Update: Wrote those first couple missing cutscenes. Just have one left, involving how the group reacts to the idea of riding in a car. It's going to be interesting, seeing as only 2 of the 6 in the party at this point in time have ever ridden in one, and the other 4 never even heard of a car until about ten minutes before this point (so just picture how say a person from say the 1500's or so would react to seeing a car, and you get the idea of how this scene is going to go). Once that scene is written, then it's smooth sailing to the Chapter 4 character scenes, as all of the rest of the material is done up to that point in the Chapter.