July Goals & Progress Thread

[Schlangan]

@bgillisp


I'm still at mission 8, that would be wonderful if I was further though ^^ I added the missions to my signature for it to be clearer. I'll update every time I change mission ^^

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

@ksjp - yeah it got a bit squished actually due to the length of the text, I just made the list use 1 column instead so that the info fits without squishing

 

[Marquise*]

@Marquise* A dragon faceset to go along with the dragons, I take it?

I do it for all monster sprites I make!
@Mirpono


I like it! Seems good research. I still continue to wonder about how to use busts I might one day try to use something like battle backgrounds and that at the same time like a photo novel to start dialogues. But I guess I must first learn that in order to start somewhere! So many things to learn!


@Exhydra


I always confuse Ninja Gaiden with Legend Of Kage



BTW you have very interesting graphics and masks!
@Ksjp17


I just spent my last money to "HELP" poor kitty. She is fine now. Sometimes I wonder if I should shave the cutie. Poor her. I think she might enjoy the caniche or the lion cut! Might also run a lot to race her fur to grow! XD Aww... Well I saw she don't scare of an electric razor (She thinks it purrs and tickles) but, she have a distinct way of dancing around the tool. Which might kinda cause accidents of manipulation. At least I can cut the tip of her claws.


You know, I used to like little boxsets and instruction books. Might be hard with new technologies to achieve that back some day with one of my games. But I like your idea of Strategy guide.


RPGMwise;


I kinda get color in there but it was a very hot day and I had another big muscular walk when I walk on 3 legs I just have one hand for kitty litter/food/treats and go twice in 4 floors stairs!

 

[Another Ned]

Forgot to post again. Bad me. And even though I just got up an hour ago, I already feel drained of energy. So no replies this time, sorry again. But yay! Progress!
I need something like an anti-break. Seven days of having to do nothing but working on my game would be nice. Life got annoying again lately, would love to tune it out for a while.

Progress, 10th:
It's been a Paperwork Friday, so didn't have any energy left to do anything productive. It's been one of those ridiculous days I lack the vocabulary to properly describe.
I try and make the best of it and use it as an inspiration for equally ridiculous bureaucratic quests. I mean, I already have some of them planned out, but there will be more. I have one NPC who's taking bureaucracy way too seriously after all (though that's his way to cope with everything that's happened. And after today, I at least have additional inspiration for his personality – and desk. This means I need some document files for tilesets. Colour-coded ones).
Progress, 11th:

• faceset sketches for a bunch of NPCs (seven in total. Except for Fhal's professor, who got two additional expressions, only one expression each)
• a few more tileset edits (yes, ksjp17, it's already too late for me to ever stop)

 

[sabao]

Progress:

• We're a little slow to start, but I've met with my IGMC team and since Friday night we've put together a playable prototype of our game. After a few tests and some really really long Skype conferences, we've ironed out what exactly it is we want to make.
• We've put together studies of the character design. We're putting the style choice to a team vote. I personally prefer Style 2.
  
  
  

Goals:

• Finish new test build for mechanics.
• Build the maps this week.
• Finish character designs, start on sprites.
• Conceptualize the environment.

 

[Mimironi]

@sabao

I think I also prefer style 2 :x

---

Awww man thank you guys for the support ;-;

And  I hope everyone's progress is going this month.

Today I finished setting up the bio scene in the way i wanted it to [thanks to sixth's script ]

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Decidd to try to make an entry for IGMC, so I started by trying to map using the germania pack. So far I'm liking the pack.

 

[TheGreatEater]

@ksjp17, yep, it's one of the character traits of mine that I'm proud of ^_^. 

Progress Report, didn't do any art. But my brother came over and we spent 3 hrs going over the martial arts and fine tuning them for Real World applications, and discussing the fantasy element. At least for the Shishen-Jo Elemental Shrines, and a basic run down on the two major crime families [Tsuyaga, and Ureiha crime family] special martial arts. As well as a basic grasp of what Meijin would do.

For the Paladins he came up with an Easternized version of Pankration [spartan MMA] mixed with Crusader's Knight Training. Basically since they are mostly made up of ex-Shishen-Jo [spiritual Artists] and Ichizoku-Shi [First Generation Death Clan [Ninja Sorcerers]], they'd not have a real set martial arts. Rather each individual temple takes bits and pieces of what is most efficient and works for that group of individuals. And merges them together, basically utility and efficiency over artistry and philosophy [which the other styles are mostly tied around]. Add in weapon and heavy armor training [standing and ground fighting] and it's rather interesting. 

I feel kind bad that I was only able to last an hour of letting my bro use me as a guinea pig for practical testing, but still we got a lot done.  And he went home to think of Katas and One Step Sparing for the 6 Elemental Shrines and Two crime families martial arts. We already got the basics of the Self Defense aspect down pat, and so far Fire is the most BAMF style there is. So quick to overwhelmingly punish anyone who tries grappling you, while being the poster child of economy of movement. With every defense being an attack and all attacks doubling as defense. 

Earth is pretty cool too. Didn't think it would be, but there's a rather elegant brutality to the style. It seems like it'd be weak, and ineffective, but seeing it in actual action is kind of exciting. I'll give more details later. Thinking that now I got what they'd look like on paper. Doing World Building and back story videos on Youtube. 

 

[mlogan]

@chiara - Sounds like you are getting quite a bit done, despite Paperwork Friday.

@sabao - Love the character sketches! I think I'm also in agreement with style 2.

@Mirpono - The bio scene looks great. Clean and easy to read!

@Engr. - Isn't it a great pack? Cannot wait for more in this style.

@TheGreatEater - Sounds like you guys had a good brainstorming session. A lot of technical choices made, it seems.

I'm actually posting progress for the first time in a really long time. I had this random idea for a possible IGMC entry. I'm not going to say much because it wouldn't be possible in RM without a lot of heavy scripting, so I started playing with another engine. But, progress was made, lol.

I'm not sure if I will have time to complete it for IGMC, but I'm going to tinker with it and see what happens.

I am also hoping for some time to work on Slimer in the near future and pick that back up. I miss my little slimes.

 

[Kes]

@hiddenone

A pretty unique way of selecting workflow!  Now that you know which direction you're going in, good luck with it.

@Schlangan

It is an odd balance writing a Guide and adding stuff, but not too much.  This is the third one I've written for my own games, but I have written for other people's games as well, and it is a very different process when it's someone else's game.  How's the bear getting along?  Nearly done now?

@bgillisp

Travelling is the bane of game work - though I often do it by train, so that can be quite handy, just to sit there and get on with it and pretend that my phone can't get a signal, so I can ignore any calls.  A couple of hours (or more) of uninterrupted peace is quite nice.  I have to admit, until I read your post I hadn't thought of looking on the internet for damage formulae for popular games.  Might do a bit of surfing around on that later.

@Engr Adiktuzmiko

Nice that there's now no squishing, because the font elsewhere looked rather nice.  Good luck with IGMC - you're right, Germania is a lovely set.

@Marquise*

Glad that daughter cat is better.  That video was a good find.  I like how the face is coming along.

@Chiara

Ooh, more facesets.  Looking forward to seeing them. Hope the paperwork is moving quietly along and getting out of the way.

@sabao

I prefer style 2 as well.

@mirpono

those bios are looking good.  Nice choice of style.

@TheGreatEater

How important will it be for the player to grapple with, remember and understand all those Japanese(?) terms?  I must admit, I tend to get lost with them.  It's like all the old 2k3 games that featured a ninja with a set of skills that it was impossible to pronounce or spell, and I could never remember what they did, I always had to carefully read the description (which was a bit tricky as most of the games were ATB and so I needed to be fast).  Just thinking about it brings back nasty memories - like the time I was 15 minutes into a boss battle, had a sneezing fit and came out of it to discover that in the meantime the enemies had stomped all over me and I was about to get an undeserved Game over.  Nope, me and Japanese fighting terms are not best friends.

@mlogan

great to hear that you're going for IGMC, and that you want to get back to your ever-lovin' slimes.

My update

Strategy Guide.

Distraction activities - I made a new sound effect so that I could get rid of Darkness5 - I hate that one.

In the Shrine that people may remember because it had dragons everywhere, I had a plain empty altar at the top.  No more! There is now a golden dragon statue on it.  A lot of fiddling around to get the colours matching up with the others, there are just so many of them on what is, after all, only 2 tiles wide and 1.5 tiles tall.

Here's what he looks like - he's holding an orb in his front paw, if you're wondering.  I shall no doubt fiddle around with it a bit more, but this is the general idea.

 

[Ossra]

@Exhydra


I always confuse Ninja Gaiden with Legend Of Kage BTW you have very interesting graphics and masks!

No-o ... Ninja Gaiden is superior! Although that remix is quite awesome. ;o

Spoiler

Really wish I had stuck with drawing. I really do need to get back to it, at some point. Excellent work, even for sketches!

Today I finished setting up the bio scene in the way i wanted it to [thanks to sixth's script ]

Spoiler

Looking good, so far! Not sure I like the text on top of the images, but eh ... still looking nice!


After six days I have finally finished up the logo, title and introduction sequence. Those tend to be one of the largest time sinks as I try to make it a cinematic experience. So, starting tomorrow I will be working on the actual meat and potatoes of the game. Really excited!


Added some gestures to the introduction cut scene instead of just having a boring, standing figure.

​

And I also started on animating mouths for dialog and so on.

​

(Also Animation!)

 

[TheGreatEater]

@Mlogan, it was a rather fun session ^_^. With my brother's knowledge of tons of styles and is a professional martial artist he's really able to take my ideas and theories and merge them into a more coherent form. 

@Ksjp17, Not a whole lot to grapple with. Out of the I think out of the hundreds of races [playable, monster, and creature], items, fighting styles, and places. Only like 10% of them are Japanese (or of Japanese origins), or portmanteau'd from Japanese. 5% fit under the category of non-English (other), and the rest are in English. So approximately 85% of it is English, and most of the Japanese words used are common ones [Meridians, Shuriken, Senbon Needles, Katana, ect. Words that either are common place, or aren't to obscure.]

 

[DragonVine]

Lot's a great stuff folks, too much for me to comment on now, but I will say this:

@Marquise Legend of Kage is one of the first games I played on my Nintendo when I first got it years ago, and I still have it. I think Mega Man 2 was the first, but unfortunately I lost that years ago.

@Exhydra That animation is really, really cool. I like it!

@ksjp17 I read a few pages back about you doing a tutorial for a strategy guide, and that sounds very interesting. I'd love to see it when it comes out.

As for my progress, I've been working away on my hero sprite, but I've run into a little difficultly. I'm trying to find a sprite that has a character firing an arrow with a bow so that I can get an idea of how to actually draw one for all four directions, but I've had no luck thus far. Other than that, it's actually going quite well. I've used the Game Character Hub to create my base and I've managed to put together several of the poses I need for the character. I've been quite pleased with the progress thus far. Hopefully my bow woes will not last forever haha.

And with that, it's off to bed for me. I'm up way too late.

 

[Another Ned]

@sabao: I'd also prefer style 2. Style 1 has something about it that I find mildly creepy D :. Love the feeling of movement in those sketches.
@Mirpono: I wanted to say that there are a lot of colours on those screens, but then I noticed that every colour has been picked up at least another time, which I then again like. The style is super cute and I like the little texts. The lower screen has a typo in the bio text.
@Engr. Adiktuzmiko: Yeees, the Pixel Myth pack is so pretty! And you can make maps/buildings with it that actually look like they could be taken from here where I'm at (southern Germany). Good luck with the contest, then!
@TheGreatEater: My inner child that grew up watching martial arts movies squees at the martial arts descriptions. I don't know much about such things and only remember the pretty choreographed movements of such movies, but still!
@mlogan: Welcome back, hope your trip was enjoyable.
Yay for progress! And I too hope you find time for your slimes some day. They're so cute, after all.
@ksjp17: Sadly, paperwork will stay with me for the forseeable future. This particular thing has been going on since... Way too long.
For the golden dragon, it actually looks quite well if it's a matte surface. If the dragon were more polished, I'd also go and put some reflected light on the surface below the statue (because I like reflected light).
*gnaws at the Futhark for being different from the one I can read*
@Exhydra: Those screens look really really cool. I always admire pixel people who can show so much with so little colour!
@DragonVine: Yay for progress and good luck with solving the bow problem!

Progress, 12th:
As I had the luxury of being alone in the room for about an hour I forced myself to work despite lack of energy – felt a lot better afterward.

• more tileset edits – among those, I made my concrete-ish-looking tile tileable, made a XP-RTP-styled gradation into black for my basalt cliffs, and used the Mack bridge-like structure to create a placeholder bridge
• used the placeholder bridge as a layer mask to create the actual bridge made from wall tiles. Not too happy with how everything is aligned at the moment, but it's okay for now. I can always make a pretty version way later into development (so I don't spend the next X days working on that bridge)

Most of the grass and the little flowers are recolours of Candacis' spring tiles. I love this particular autotile.

And the railing is the one I made for indoors, so only a placeholder for now.

• after dreaming about it two times in a row, finally got myself the humble bundle and sorted everything (so many things!)

It's July 13th now, which means I've been working on the same project for half a year now! (it's not exactly the same tbh since I've cut and changed so many things since then, but!)

 

[Marquise*]

@sabao


I like 2 too!


@Mirpono


It breaks usual RPGM style


@ksjp17


Allll right! I unfroze the panick button a bit today making half of one of my todo on my list today and you'll se down the link of where I was with dragon head when you asked for it. BTW I love your golden colors on your... errr dragons?


@Exhydra


I hope your preference is not just because of the end. Nice animation BTW.


@DragonVine


That game and Joust made me glued in arcades when I was an old teen. ^^;


@Chiara


I like how organic your terrain is and how well it fits with the building!


And... Apart half of a task accomplished, here is what you missed ^^;


http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=480106800


(It was set on FRIENDS only so it did an error report at first)

 

[TheGreatEater]

@Chiara, Then just you wait till my bro forms the Katas, and we can make a video demo of the martial arts. Seeing those in action will make your inner child explode with glee like a Michael Bay film. Heck I'm part of the creative process, and my inner child is about to explode with excitement.  

 

[Schlangan]

Wow, I forgot to post for one day, and I see so many progress since then.


So, progress 11th (yeah I'm late) :


- Some progress with charsets now. I'm done with my brown bear, and I started my fiddler crab. For now the face view is done (yeah it's a big crab), I still have to study crabs to understand how to draw them from side view.

Spoiler

 

[DragonVine]

My progress for today:

It's a little ugly, but my character is now weilding a bow. Only a few more poses to add, and the character set for my hero will be finished.

@Chiara - The grass in that tileset is great. I really like it.

@Marquise - That dragon is looking good. Very menacing. It reminds me a bit of Smaug from The Hobbit.

 

[Kes]

@Exhydra

I do like how the gestures and animation is coming on.

@TheGreatEater

I'm not entirely reassured about these terms.  In your earlier post you had things like  Shishen-Jo,  Ichizoku-Shi, Tsuyaga, and Ureiha crime family.  Okay, I suppose the last 2 are family names (so why do they have to be in Japanese?) but I have no idea what the other two mean.

@DragonVine

It may be a bit late, but Candacis has 4 hunter sprites i.e. people with bows, which might be useful as reference material.  You can find them here in the spoiler under Sprites

@Chiara

​Not being an artist, I have no idea how to do reflected light.  That's one reason for doing highly stylized stuff - no one can complain about problems of detail or perspective or whatever, because it's not meant to be realistic. I do like the way you've done the tiles on that map, the shading down to black on the cliffs, the grass, all good, imo.  And congrats on your half-year anniversary!

@Marquise*

that face on Steam is great.  I'm so looking forward to the final release.

@Schlangan

Good looking bears.  Until I read your post, I'd never really thought about what crabs look like from the side.  Now I can't stop thinking about it.

My Update

Strategy guide (perhaps I ought to make a makro for that)  On the other games I did a big chunk of the Guide at different times during development.  This time I thought I'd wait until I'd finished so that I wouldn't have to revise anything.  I think the former way of doing things suits me better.  Having to basically focus on one task day after day is tedious.  I think for me (not necessarily for everyone) a more piecemeal approach is better.

Distraction activity - not much time for it, so just a new sound effect and making a different confusion animation for when it is inflicted by an item than when it is inflicted by a skill.

 

[bgillisp]

@Dragonvine: I take it you are doing your own sprites? I've been gone most of the month, sorry if this was answered 6 pages ago.

@Schlangan: I thought there was a crab sprite in the RTP? Or am I mistaken?

@Chiara: More edits? Will these be posted sometime in your thread?

@ksjp17: Hmmm...could you break it up by testing the game? Or playing a game? Just throwing out ideas here.

7.13 Update: I'm baaaaaack. The traveling stint is done, creating energy is back, back to the game.

Today I play tested Chapter 1 of the game some more, tweaked some numbers around. Decided to (at the moment) axe the extra parameters script by Yanfly and try a more basic To HIt/EVA system. Once I get that down then I can add in the +2/+3% that script was adding it. Other than that, just been revising a few lines of dialogue that needed tweaking and catching some typos. Also did add in some more bonuses for characters of a specific element, now they will all have a small boost to stats, depending on which element they are (Fire gets +ATK, Earth gets +DEF, and so on). Though this affects enemies too, so watch out.