October Goals & Progress Thread

[TheGreatEater]

@Vampire Vox, yep I had the first one under more light than you'd normally see, and thanks.

______________________

*Facepalm* I had no idea lips could be such a pain in the butt. But I think by tonight I'll finally have those babies done. 

 

[bgillisp]

@ksjp17: Must be the time of year for busy RL obligations or something?

@Thegreateeater: Looks like they are coming along nicely.

@Marquise: Is it bad that the first thing I thought when I saw it was "He's going to disco dance!". And now I got that scene in Despicable Me stuck in my head "No, I want cookie robots, not boogie robots!"

@Chiara: So far so good, though I do need to restock it properly. Either that or learn to live on canned soup.

@Schlangan: I'll admit to not liking Chibi that much either, but by the time I learned of XP style sprites I was too far along in my project to change. Might try what you did for my first MV project though.

@Acesofaces_mod: Hope the studying goes well! What classes are you taking? I was a computer science major at one time, so curious.

@Sharm: Hope you get better soon!

10.14 Update: Spent today writing...one...stinking...cutscene. That dinner cutscene proved so hard to say what I wanted to say and what I wanted the party to learn, in an order that didn't flow like the author was a squirrel who just drank a Red Bull. But I think I have something I'm happy with, and I'm too beat to continue today so will call it good, even though its only 6 pm in my time zone. Maybe I'll go play a game for a few hours now?

Tomorrow I except slim to no progress due to a mammoth stack of papers to grade and midterm grades due this weekend. I hope to wrap up the last of these cutscenes on Friday. There's only the next morning cutscene, then a couple meanwhiles (as the party goes through areas), and the final cutscene where they discuss what to do now at the end of Chapter 1, so as long as none of them prove this hard to write one day should do it.

 

[Hollow]

@HawkZombie: Nah, no templates. There's nothing too fancy in it--honestly, the dialogue setup is the most difficult (which it's not), so you should be able to recreat it pretty easily.

@Chiara: Yeah, I'll probably keep the navy color for all the busts. I've noticed before when I tried changing it up that it can actually make things not match as well, so I'll be keeping it pretty consistent.

 

 

October 13th & 14th, Progress:

I've spent the past two days revising the opening's dialogue, and then this morning I started to actually get everything evented on the map. It's kind of funny to watch at the moment, since there's both Mack and RTP sprites used and Milagros's face appears in almost every dialogue box since she's the only bust I have atm, lol. I'm going to try and finish all of that up tomorrow, and then I'll probably try to work on some more sprites.

 

[TheGreatEater]

End of Day Progress: Finally got the lips fixed. I made some decent headway on the eyes, but I'm waiting to hear back from the Blenderforum on how to get out of the little Wireframe mode bug I've stumbled into. I should have some rather nice looking eyes and a good face for y'all tomorrow afternoon. 

Edit: Forgot to add. I  used a combination of two different eye textures to capture the eye, and the capiliaries in it.  So far I'm feeling pretty good about it. Might add a few more textures to give it some more depth. 

 

[Another Ned]

@Marquise*: For some reason, I pictured you walking $Evilgod like one would walk a dog for a moment. Which makes me wonder what it eats. Which– I better stop here.
@TheGreatEater: Haha, thanks and thanks for the shield info link! The character in question is more on the tank-y side but using a spear to keep people from breaching her defence seemed kind of useful, as well as having a shield-thing for those that manage to come close. I will take a lot of liberties via creative license, but I'm still curious how it'd work in reality.
But my game is neither survival nor horror, probably confused with someone else..? And it's an interesting idea, only it exchanges one resource for another. I was thinking of not using anything like that at all. But as I said, swirling mass of ideas. Nothing concrete yet, but thanks for the input.
And good luck with lips and hair. Lips are notoriously hard to make look "right" when one aims for realism, without it looking like the character in question is wearing makeup.
@Schlangan: While I kind of got used to and even came to like the chibi characters I still have a soft spot for XP styled characters. I don't know much about spriting, so I can only say that I think it's looking good.
@Vampire Vox: Haha, thanks. And I thought the garlic myth was spread by vampires themselves so they get to eat seasoned food. Plus, I once heard garlic lowers blood pressure, so it's less of a mess when they feed.
@AceOfAces_Mod: Ah, thanks for clarifying. And hope that studying is fun/interesting.
@Sharm: Hope you get well super quickly. Doing small challenges while not back at 100% power sounds like a good idea. Enough to feel good because one did something productive, but nothing that'd overexert one.
@bgillisp: Fingers crossed that the other cutscenes won't be such a challenge to write, then. And on some days, playing games for the rest of the evening is the only sensible thing to do. Or so I claim.
@Hollow: Almost didn't recognize you with yellow instead of black. Yay for consistent lineart colours.
But it sounds like quite good progress. I'm looking forward to seeing/hearing about more of it!

Progress, 14th:

• more thumbnails of Ashanah's boss version. Waaaaaaay better quality than the ones from the evening before. Now, I only have to decide if I go either more toward ceremonial non-martial attire or ceremonial armour-like attire. Knowing myself, I'll probably try a mix of both, but for now, this is enough – I'll only need her like this for one scene and probably one or two flashbacks, after all
• somehow ended up with a scribble of one scene near the end of Part A
• spent some time reading the link on shields TheGreatEater gave me as well as watching videos of people fighting with polearms. Had to stop after an hour because of brain overload (it's one of those days wh– squirrel! No, really, outside my window! Awww. Red squirrels are the best)
• thumbnail sketches of some guard uniforms
• fifteen minutes or so of environment studies

Turns out the person viewing the house was "only" a real-estate agent. Great. My stepgrandfather: Sucks at communication. If I had known that while that person was still in the house, I'd have asked whether he knew about any affordable flats.

 

[TheGreatEater]

@Chiara, Yeah I misremembered your game sorry XD. I remembered something about an island, and they were in camo-army gear. So my mind made the jump to that XD. Although you do have awesome looking characters so far. As for how it'd work in reality [spear and shield]. I'd direct you to two online videos, Sparta Vs. Ninja [battle Simulation from Deadliest Warrior], and Spear and Shield Sparring. Should give two rather nice views on it in an IRL environment. 

 

[Schlangan]

@AceOfAces_Mod : Even if ti was only a bit of tweaking, it's still progress, so congrats


@Sharm : Pumpkins and cats, if we suppose you're in the Halloween mood, can we expect a witch ?


@bgillisp : If I manage to do what I want, I'll put these resources in the corresponding subforums, and free to use for anybody. You'd be able to use that as a basis if you want.


@Hollow : At first my game had the same RTP pictures for all characters, it was the same feeling


@TheGreatEater : Congrats on the lips. You don't want to have too much contrast with the rest of the face, but they still need to be distinct enough.


@Chiara : A boss version ? It sounds like the playtime is over with that character


My update :


I'm still playing around with my new charsets, and I'm done with the base for standard male and female bodies.





And here are the first sprites for Soldier #1. On the left XP charset (put in three frames as I was testing it in VXAce), and on the right the future MV charset.





Slight note on the MV charset; I tested the animation in VXAce, since it is similar to MV. However, I had to slow down the animation (by increasing the @animation count between two frames in the scripts) to get a behavior similar to XP.

 

[TheGreatEater]

@Bgillisp, thanks, and good luck on your cutscenes. 

@Schlangan, Thanks, I should have a pic up tomorrow.

__________________________

Decided to use this video  on photorealistic eyes. Turns out I'll  need to redo my eyes if I want them to be super sexy [in a manner of speaking], but it'll be worth it. Might actually redo the skin textures by layering them in Gimp [which I'm going to need to get, to use the aforementioned video to it's fullest], rather than the massive texture hog that my textures currently are. Should lower the memory cost by quite a bit hopefully. 

 

[Kes]

And yes, here I am back.  RL has been overfull and there's been a lot going on in the forums as well, so time got a bit too squashed to get anything much done.  There's about 3 pages of posts since I was last here, and there's no way I can comment on that lot, but I can see that a lot of progress is being made.

I'm going to make one small exception to the 'no response' bit.

@Marquise*

This may simply be personal preference, but I think having that shadow as solid black is one of the reasons you're having a problem with it.  I'd knock the opacity down to about 30% or so.

My update

On a bit of a roll today.

Did some 'System' things, i.e. made a new battle transition and nailed the design for the Game Over screen, complete with its own phrase.  (I try and have something which picks up an aspect of the game, so, for example, the G.O. screen for The Tale of a Common Man was "The little people always lose.")  I may rejig the image a little, but I've got what it's going to be (a newly dug grave).  Also did the second battleback for the first dungeon (you have a change of terrain halfway through).

Finished off the final map for the dungeon and all the events.  Just got a couple of bits of dialogue to put in.

Finished the skills for all the ordinary enemies, and made a couple of skill animations for them.

But the main thing - and I'm so proud of myself - is I've done an animated side view enemy battler.  Okay, I was constantly referring to other battlers for ideas, but I think that I finally have something that's rather good.  At first I'd made the movements too big, so the enemies looked a bit demented, but once I'd toned things down somewhat, it all came together.  It's a humanoid enemy, don't think I could even begin to do non-humanoid.

If anyone knows of sources of animated side view enemy battlers, I'd love to hear about them.

 

[Marquise*]

@Marquise* : I like the sprite, but it looks like the evilgod is dancing You should slightly shift his body towards the left and right to give the impression it is moving.

Oh no the dancing curse is following me! Sincerely, nice input; at that stage it ain't a bad idea to off-center it! Nice spriting

@Marquise: Is it bad that the first thing I thought when I saw it was "He's going to disco dance!". And now I got that scene in Despicable Me stuck in my head "No, I want cookie robots, not boogie robots!"

Ack... that digital curse is still following me! *Note to self; stop working while listening Crypt of the Necrodancer's music.*

@Marquise*: For some reason, I pictured you walking $Evilgod like one would walk a dog for a moment. Which makes me wonder what it eats. Which– I better stop here.

Don't IT dare getting NEAR my meat freezer!


XD Real estate agent! You think someone is ready to sell a house?


@ksjp17


Shadows... I start with them with the default ones to keep the original positioning reference. But true I will go with 40%.


My list...


Yesterday foodbank day


Today laundry day


In the middle of all...





You think there is a way to adapt a RPGMaker Vx Ace GUI/HUD to that? Yest it is an unfinished character sheet!

 

[Hollow]

@Chiara: I'm excited to see how Ashanah's boss design turns out! It sounds like you've got some interesting concepts going into it. And I know the feeling--I once happened across a link for various field archery techniques and suddenly three hours had gone by and my head hurt something awful, lol. Also, you could always see if your step-grandfather has the agent's number or email, and then contact them that way o:
@Schlangan: Those sprite bases are looking good! My only critique would that I think you can up the contrast between all your shading colors, but other than that it's turning out nicely.
@ksjp17: Congrats on animating that enemy! It doesn't sound like a lot, but I think a lot of artsy folks can attest to the fact that animating anything is a huge pain in the butt. Always an accomplishment when things turn out properly, haha!
 
 
October 15th, Progress:
Wrapped up the cutscene's first 3/4 or so. The tiny last part requires a new map, so I'll have to crank that out at some point so I can get this finished and start noting where behaviors and whatnot would be appropriate.
 
Also, we're starting to work with HTML5 in one of my classes, and when I got back to my dorm I was still in a programming mood and ended up getting the main menu all set up. Just an extra thing I wasn't planning on getting done this soon.
 

I had to enlist some RTP actors to help out so I could see how everything looks with busts~ :>

 

[TheGreatEater]

Found where the body UV maps where. For the next few days will be using: 

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/21/d7/4e/21d74ead8c01e956edff52c414d4b5df.jpg

and

http://www.topinspired.com/top-10-whole-body-makeup-contouring-guide/

for basic contouring my light and dark base skin shades. 

Then 

http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/female-anatomy-view-front-back-side-35423328.jpg

and

http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/human-anatomy-female-muscles-made-d-software-31217734.jpg

as a guideline for muscle contouring for the rest of the body. 

After base [top layer] of skin tone is done. I'll be adding other colors and textures to it, to add on to the main one. 

Then there's looking at the bits and peices of light contour / topographical map of the body, and tie it into a greyscale image. To give a bit more definition to the body. [ex. of human topography.]

After that [however long it takes XD] I'll be able to get back to the eyeballs. 

 

[Another Ned]

@TheGreatEater: I'm somehow happy you remember it, but actually, I'm on a different project right now (with the island one put on hold until I have the experience/ability needed to complete it). And thanks for those links, I'll make sure to watch them later today. : D
Realism may not be exactly the best thing to start out with, but beating high-level enemies at low levels yields more experience, doesn't it? : D Best of luck tackling all those texturing bosses!
@Schlangan: Actually, the character is boss first, and party member only later. : D The scene of her becoming a party member is in the next part of the story, so I have to hold back now, but it'll be fun writing the dialogue.
Seconding Hollow's suggestion with higher contrast. Didn't notice it in the base, but now. Also, when thinking things further: If everything is low in contrast, it may become harder to discern separate elements. It's probably one of the reason why in XP's RTP, at least the characters pop out via colours and contrast compared to the tiles <-- ignore this, this is just me musing about and noticing things.

Otherwise, I think it's looking nice. : D
@ksjp17: That's a good amount of progress. I like the project-specific Game Over screen part. I do think Game Over screens break the immersion a bit (for me at least), but having them fit the overall game may reduce that effect. And congrats for the animation! I find creating decent-looking animations extremely hard so have an extra Yay for this!
@Marquise*: About selling a house: My stepgrandfather is. Planning to sell the house (the one where we're currently staying at).
That's a nice-looking character sheet. One question, though, is it supposed to be a "x3" for Combat Value or is the missing x intended? What does Shock Value do? Curiosity: Marquise*'s character sheet edition!
@Hollow: Yeah, my mother beat me to it: She stealthily got that information from a card lying openly on the dinner table. xD
The menu is looking great! All the important things about the characters visible at one glance. And I can see the Testing Island behind the menu! Makes me curious, does everyone do the Testing Island on the first map of a new project?
I'm really looking forward to seeing more of your project. In a non-pressuring but rather puppy-like kind of way.
And aren't Eric and his team just too nice, always helping out. : D

Progress, 15th:

• tried to make a neater digital version of all my story planning so I don't have to dig through pages of hand-written notes to find everything I need. I kind of succeeded, I think, and was able to make revisions as I went. Kind of a second draft for the story outline for Part A, neatly divided into 16 scenes (4 of those flashbacks) which should be easier to work with (and more motivating), especially since each requires a different amount of work (for some reason, I lose interest and/or motivation really quickly when things stay the same ")

Slow day, so nothing else got done.
At least, I now know that this week there's no dedicated Paperwork Day and the next one is next Friday so unless some tempovores (if that isn't a word it's one now) suddenly descend on me I hope to get more stuff done in the next days. Motivation, I need you for drawing. Don't go back to sleep!

 

[TheGreatEater]

@Chiara, Man I really missed out on my little sojourn XD. So what's the new project about? 

And yep. Tackling bosses at lower levels does yield more XP. I can almost hear myself leveling up now ^_^. 

 

[AceOfAces_Mod]

@bgilisp, I study for Computer Sciences so I can be a Software Engineer.

Quick Progress Report #5

-The launcher is being renamed to Firehawk.NET Management Component. The .NET part comes from the technology that I use (Microsoft .NET Framework) and the Management Component comes from the purpose (manage anything related to the game). That's not the final name of course.

-Went back to the UI and moved the feedback and bug report buttons to the Utilities menu. Not sure what to do about the "About" and "Exit" buttons.

-I think I'll move some of the code to a dll file, if I can find how to call things from the launcher.

-I think that the faces need a makeover. But in order to make the art style coherent, this will need an entire make-over. This will be a strain to the artist :-( . I can't draw, but I know a friend who can.

 

[Marquise*]

@Marquise*: About selling a house: My stepgrandfather is. Planning to sell the house (the one where we're currently staying at).

That's a nice-looking character sheet. One question, though, is it supposed to be a "x3" for Combat Value or is the missing x intended? What does Shock Value do? Curiosity: Marquise*'s character sheet edition!

Well didn't found the division sign either on my French or my English keyboard settings. (The ones responsible for those weird punctuation typos sometimes!) So I got old school with

(Body + Mind + Soul)

                 3

Meaning, the sum of the 3 stats divided by 3!

 

[Schlangan]

@ksjp17 : Congrats on your side-view animated battler, i will need to do that as well


@Hollow : I especially didn't want to up the contrast, to remain in XP tone. It is also close to GCH base for XP. More contrast would be likely for VX, VXAce and probably MV charsets. However, I'll probably increase the contrast of the skin for sprites who keep parts of the body bare. Here the base will mainly serve as positioning.


@Chiara : Congrats on the digital version of your notes


@AceOfAces_Mod : Why do you want to move some code to a DLL. Can't you do it with a single Class module incorporated in your project ?


@Marquise* : You can type the ÷ sign with ALT+246. Or you can use the common slash / too


My progress :


More spriting. I got bored of the soldier so I switched to the main character instead. The contrast issue is still recurring for the skin. I separately did his head, body, tail, wings, and body markings. The wings and tails are moreover subdivided in foreground and background in terms of layers. That way, I have the basis for other characters of his race (I'll keep the name secret for now, as we learn of it much later in the story)


Here is the current charset. I now need to do his eyes, pants, shirt, armlets, boots, armor and katana. Phew.

 

[BlackRoseMii]

Next update:

I haven't have much time these past few days, because of university, so all I've been able to do are a few new facesets...Well, I hope I get more done soon.

 

[Milennin]

Been working on remaking my characters' facesets, currently on the last one for the main party. The old facesets were drawn at much lower resolution (96x96), the new ones are at twice the size of MV's (288x288), three times bigger than the old versions. However, my previous faceset for Eldin was a redrawing of a RM2K3 NPC's face, but it didn't really fit in with the other characters in the party. So, I remade hers to be more in the style of the facesets of the other characters. I'm kind of happy with the current lineart so far, but not 100% sure about it. Does this look good? Looking for an opinion before moving on to the colouring phase. (I have trouble judging my own artwork)

 

My progress :

Since I don't like the chibi versions since VX, I've started to draw an increased resolution of the XP characters, for MV. The characters will be 48x72 pixels. Here are the front, left and right pictures for a base male character. I need to do the back view, and work on the female one. I also plan to make taller, smaller, fatter, thinner, younger and older characters. But as they will be edits of the first one, it will be easier.

Aren't MV sprite sheets 48x48? How would 48x72 sprites work on there? I'm interested, since I'd like to use taller sprites as well.

 

[Schlangan]

Aren't MV sprite sheets 48x48? How would 48x72 sprites work on there? I'm interested, since I'd like to use taller sprites as well.

The base charsets indeed follow the grid size 48x48. However, the charset have always be considered in VXAce and will be in MV as three columns and four rows. The software will automatically divide the png file in cells to extract the characters. Hence, if you use a bigger file, you'll get the whole character. Of course, problems may arise if the characters are too wide, but it's okay if they are taller than expected.


I've been testing my new charsets in RPG Maker VX Ace (32x32 grid size and default charset), and they work perfectly in it too. Of course they look like giant compared to the RTP, so you'll have to change the tilesets too.