November Goals & Progress Thread

[skatasticdinoboy]

@ksjp17, thank you so much for the links, I'll be sure to check them out!  

 

[Marquise*]

On the rear of Dragon2... *cybermentally choking the dragon with own bare hands "WOULD YOU JUST BE FINISHED UP ALREADY!!!????"*


@bgillisp*Cybermentally trows the dragon2 to the germs "That might help in the fight!!!"*  Take care, those cold suckers kinda deplete energy.  I am happy I have two nice natural hot bottles in here with fur and claws and one with sharpened fangs in my toes sometimes!  Maybe keep an artificial one in your bed and warm clothes and chicken broth with jalapeños and French onions and garlic and nutmeg and chili and then just snore your way out of it? 

 

[Lantiz]

@Lantiz I wonder what the plot is now!? Perhaps the hero has extreme short term memory loss and forgets where he is all the time and so just wanders around.

No, it's not hahahahaha... but this is a nice idea for another game.


My plot is about friendship, betrayal and, ofcourse, the end of the world.

 

[Punamaagi]

Thanks for all the feedback!


@bgillisp & @ksjp17: Good to know that I wasn't the only one who thought that sentence sounded weird... Or, actually, it's not probably a good thing, but it's good that it got pointed out. ' For some reason, I struggled with expressing the idea I wanted (there's a town called Ethela and it's west from the starting point; it's not far away so the party should go there). I've hopefully found a better way of saying that now. I will definitely try to find someone to proofread my game eventually, in any case: even though I consider myself fairly fluent in English, I know that I'm still not on a par with native speakers and that even small mistakes can make the game feel unprofessional and awkward.


@OmegaGhost: Busts tend to take a lot of space from the screen, so I can understand why they can be distracting (if that's what you meant). I'm trying to include some visual novel-esque elements in my game so bust images felt like a no-brainer although I'm not sure if I should make them at least a bit smaller.


@Vox Novus: Thanks for pointing that out: I might try to shorten the torso and the forearms a bit. Your memory scene system sounds interesting: are they required for progressing in the game, or are they sort of semi-hidden things which allow players to gather more information?


@EliteZeon: Your battle system and sideview battlers look neat. I especially like Fortune's character design. Just out of curiosity, will you explain the difference between Dark and Shadow in the game somehow, or will players have to figure it out?

 

[Vox Novus]

Just a couple of replies for the moment before I forget:


@skatasticdinoboy That's much like Feature creep, where you keep adding things to a game that might not be necessary to actually finish the game. Although, that's usually applicable to actual features of the game that are added unnecessarily; tiles and such certainly have a reasonable purpose.


@Punamaagi No problem! The memory sequence is a necessary part of the game to progress. Basically it leads up to the climax of the game and reveals the hidden aspects of the story. I originally decided to do it this way after realizing most of my game took place inside one location and wanted to expand where the player went in the game a bit. I was thinking of reasons why the player would need to sort of backtrack through locations to get back to the town that is nearby and thought of a story reason to revisit the area by having a segment of the game take place inside another character's memories. The section is grayed out with a monochrome tint to the screen to represent the disparity between the present and the past; its also a way to give a nod to older style games.

 

[skatasticdinoboy]

@Vox Novus, it all started when I went to adjust some tiles that looked weird to me. A lot of the kitchen tiles, like appliances and such, either didn't line up correctly or took up multiple tiles and had spaces on the sides, so I went align things and found myself making a lot of modifications( I changed the stove and the fridge, I made side counters, merged the one sideways sink with one of the counter tiles); things that'll make mapping easier down the road.


I definitely don't think it was a waste of time altogether lol.

 

[AceOfAces_Mod]

@ksjp17, Well... I'm planning the first part to replace the demo.

 

[bgillisp]

@OmegaGhost: 7 Chapters? Is that based on a previously written plot or an educated guess?


@Vox Novus: Look at it this way, it means there has been good progress for all of us, right?


@ksjp17: Thanks. Today was somewhat better at least.


@skatasticdinoboy: I second the vote for working through the tutorials. I jumped in feet first into my game, and let's just say attempt 1 lasted 4 days.


@Marquise*: Thanks. Maybe that scared off the cold bug? Or the Dragon now has the cold? Actually, let's hope its not the second, because if it sneezes, there goes a village!


@Punamaagi: It come with practice. I still find an occasional line where I go "Just what was I on when I wrote that? And how come I didn't see it before?"


11.8 Update: Cold bug seems to be weaker, still a little low on energy. Still, managed to map half of one of the maps I had on my to do list, so some progress occurred today.

 

[skatasticdinoboy]

@bgillisp, I did the same thing back in the XP days. My first attempt didn't even last that long. I definitely plan on rereading the tutorials, working through them and even trying that game out!


The game that I'm working on now was actually my girlfriend's idea; she wanted us to work on a horror game. We sat down, did some brainstorming and came up with some pretty compelling ideas.


There aren't going to be any random encounters or any traditional battles/levels/XP, the PC is going to be mostly unarmed and his main goal during combat is generally going to be to escape.


as far as NPCs and "monsters" they're going to be one and the same thing and there'll be a handful of them, a lot of the game is essentially learning the story and lore from the environment (personal memos and effects lying in apartments, things that the monsters say when they're attacking you and stuff like that... I think an interesting combat mechanic, do you try to get away or do you try to figure out what all you can learn from them at the risk of possibly dying?) and then trying to solve the mystery that the entire game's set around:


"You're here to find out who killed ___?" 

 

[Marquise*]

@bgillispIf I see my dragon doing A... A... A...FLAMES!!! I will know it is sneezing cold.  XD


Done paper works today, brought DC for last test and payments to the vet.  Not the one curing her for her bladder and fixing her and tried in least than 2 hours my firsts 1100 NaNoWriMo words in... DA DA DA DUUUUUUM~!  English.  (think it ain't special? Try dyslexia and French.   )


Up for Dragon Butts now! (That's not a new anime)

 

[PsychicToaster]

I finally finished(I think...) my organized design chart. Basically, as I do things, I'll fill them in with color to designate their status. Completed, in progress, etc. While some things will change on the fly, ultimately these are things that go into a game, give or take. I might have left out some integral things on that list, like eventing, but again, it's more of a way of staying organized and remembering what I'm working on. The details of each of these categories will go into separate Excel and Word documents, the spreadsheets for stats, items, skills, etc and the Word documents for developing lore, characters, story, quests, the list goes on. I highly recommend anyone trying to stay organized at least do a rudimentary one of these. If I forgot any kind of design category, please let me know. 


WARNING:HUGE IMAGE(Link to Imgur to avoid breaking the forums)....

Spoiler

http://i.imgur.com/VaVPPaI.png

EDIT:Just seeing that Act III is placed below Act II lmao. The things you miss sometimes...

 

[Lantiz]

@PsychicToaster


Woah nice job.


You could just use Kanban, check this. It helps me a lot.

The game that I'm working on now was actually my girlfriend's idea; she wanted us to work on a horror game. We sat down, did some brainstorming and came up with some pretty compelling ideas.

That sounds so nice, sometimes brainstorming is what lacks.

Up for Dragon Butts now! (That's not a new anime)

Hahaha not sure if I would like to watch this

 

[skatasticdinoboy]

@Lantiz, I have to keep myself in check a lot of the time. It's very easy for me to operate at extremes where I'll be either all thought and no action or all action and no thought lol.


I actually posted in the resource request forum looking for someone that might be willing to redo one of my sprite designs; I ended up trying it out myself and I wasn't too upset about the results. Maybe if I finish the sprite sheet, I'll post it in here along with the old one lol.

 

[Lantiz]

@skatasticdinoboy


Hmm I see... I think and never do :/


About the sprite, Is it the hungry ghost? (or something like that?) think I saw it.

 

[PsychicToaster]

@Lantiz


I could use more of a to-do style list, that is true, but the web really ensures all connecting elements that come together to form a game have been accounted for.

 

[skatasticdinoboy]

@Lantiz, yea lol. The name is a work in progress.


It sucks because my laptop isn't connected to the Internet at the moment, so I have to send images from my computer to my phone and my phone converts them to .jpg when I do.

 

[Lantiz]

@Lantiz, yea lol. The name is a work in progress.

It looks better than mines

It sucks because my laptop isn't connected to the Internet at the moment, so I have to send images from my computer to my phone and my phone converts them to .jpg when I do.

Oooh I feel your pain... that looks hard :[

 

[skatasticdinoboy]

It looks better than mines

Did you see the one with the single image or the one with the full animation cycle? The first one with the animation cycle looked awful lol. I just went back, deleted the other frames and improved on it some. 


Sometimes, it helps to have an outsider's perspective because we can be way too critical of ourselves. A bit of confidence can go a long way!  

 

[Kes]

EDIT


I just made a big mistake.  I misread which thread this was and thought I was in maps and game screenshots, so modded 3 people telling them they were off topic.


Oops.


Sorry about that. (I really need to get an early night.)

 

[PsychicToaster]

@ksjp17

LOL. It happens to all of us, hence my design document having the game's acts in the wrong order haha. It has since been fixed. I almost forgot to do it too. Wouldn't have had any effect on the process but I would certainly have slapped myself in forehead for it later on once I remembered.