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Onix Rift video commentary.

Posts

Pages: 1
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
Really cool stuff! It was interesting getting an inside peek into some of the rationale for the design decisions you've made.

The new camera looks great. It's dynamic and engaging, which adds some cinematic flair.

I also agree on your rationale for keeping the sword skills to a single key press. The less menu management you're doing in an action RPG the better, I feel. Looking forward to more.
Awesome, I'm glad you checked out the video dhm. I hope to make more of them just to try and document some of the different stages along the development process. It could be fun to look back on in another ten years haha. good to hear I'm not alone in appreciating some of my design choices and that's the first affirmation I've got about the new camera pan screen, I haven't uploaded a current version of Onix Rift as I want to complete the next dungeon before I put another one on here. It'll be a while before that happens but I can at least keep people updated through some video content anyways. Thanks for the feed back man and again, thanks for checking out and commenting on the video, you the man.
Damn dude, you gotta switch to paint.net!

I was a die hard MS Paint user for years since it was just so simple and unobtrusive, but after switching to paint.net for like two weeks I was completely hooked and I've never looked back. It does everything MS Paint does but you get way more options if you need them, and it has advanced tools without having too many of them. Like some people use Photoshop for pixelart which is...intense, but paint.net is the best hybrid I've come across for an oldbie who can't be bothered to learn new shortcuts. Check it out. You will have to download a plugin to add "flip selection" (for mirroring sprites) but otherwise it's great out of the box.

Those default-named desktop icons and the fact that you didn't capitalize the g in "Saved games" walk hand in hand through the garden of RPGMaking, for sure.

Agreed that the screen pan looks better now, a very cool trick, especially in RM2k3. I really like the way it snaps as you push the screen edge away from enemies. It's also good because it reinforces players who have cleared the area before pushing past enemies, since they know the route. People who haven't cleared the screen won't know where they're going, since the camera will lag behind. A cool feature. I'm sure it looks even better in real time!

The run animation looks cool, too. I think maybe his leg is a *little* too far stretched out right now in the side view. Like it's at full sprint stretch when it could be at fast jog stretch, if that makes sense. It still looks good, though.

Gotta think some on the skill system, but I dig that you want it to be fast and autonomous without requiring menu pauses and stuff. I wonder if there's a way to hybridize that? Give some control to a player but also keep it fluid? It's a shame RM2k3 is so limited in keypresses and doesn't recognize long-presses, that I know of. That'd be a good fix.

Anyway, good stuff, glad to see you're still working at it. Kudos for the shoutout, haha
Right on man, yeah I'll check out that paint. Net and see what it's all about. It sounds alright. Is it like an open source program or something with patches the devs are ok with?? I'll definitely have to give it a try. I'm glad to hear you liked the screen panning, it has just a bit of refining to do but it's in a fully functional state so hopefully just a bit of minor tweaking it'll be 100% rock solid. That's a good way to put it how you mentioned clearing an area. That's kind of what I was trying to get at but couldn't seem to spit out haha.

Yeah I've played with all sorts of ideas for the skills, even as far as reworking item use to be fully menu based, freeing up that key for skill execution.

I agree on the run animation. I'm happiest with the facing down run animation. I'm good with the up facing run animation. I'm currently unsatisfied with the right and left profile running animations. It's almost there just not 100% for me either. Probably try to get to it this weekend when I have some free time. Maybe make a video out of it lol. Really glad to hear from you man and I always appreciate the feed back dude. You two are awesome. I'll do some refining and fill you guys in and see if I can't get something that is not too distracting graphic wise. I hope all is well, keep an eye out, I'm going to try to post another video this weekend with some more content.
paint.net might be open source, I'm not sure, but it is definitely free. It has built-in plug-in support, so you just download the plugins (also free) and drop them into a folder and then they appear next time you load the program. Very easy to use and totally legit/above board. The creators intend for people to expand its usability with plugins. I like it a lot because it has really easy to use colour replacement/palette tools and it has layers but they're very simple to use. It's just like MS Paint but with added functionality if you want it, but the added stuff doesn't get in the way if you want to keep it simple.

One thing about items: in some games, healing items are automatically used when you reach a certain HP threshold. If your items are mostly just healing items, you could go that route to free up the button for skills. Like, if you have a healing item, it uses itself when you die to replenish half your HP (or all your HP, if it's an advanced version of the healing item). I know some action RPGs from Quintent on the SNES used that (Soul Blazer/Illusion of Gaia).

edit: like a fairy in a bottle from Link to the Past
I was thinking about it and currently if your atb bar is full and you hold the z button down it cycles through 4 different sword attacks then action stops and your bar starts to refill. What if when your sp bar is completely full and you have the available atb you will cycle through all four attacks and then the skill will be executed. That would kind of give purpose to the sword cycle as well. Then if the player doesn't want to use it they can simply not cycle through all 4 sword attacks. Maybe I try eventing that in and see how it feels
Hmm, not sure how hard this would be to event but it might be cool if that happens but the skills appear as sort of a four-directional thing. Like, you're charged up, the skill is ready, you hit up and he does his powerful sword slash. Or you hit down and he throws a lightning bolt, or whatever. That way you wouldn't have to cycle, but rather have them all in front of you, and the player can select them quickly so they don't spend too much time in a menu.

edit: like the menu from Lufia 2 if you've ever played that!

edit2: I realize I'm throwing out a lot of unsolicited ideas here so feel free to ignore them all if they don't work out haha
Lol, no it's great dude. I love it. You're on point man. Lufia style menu is something else I've mulled over before as well. Even if I don't use the ideas thrown my way it's awesome having 100 different ideas to contemplate rather than just 1 or 2 to choose between. The more feed back the better. Good or bad. I just appreciate all the time you guys have taken to comment and give advice and feed back.
Great development video ! Very informative ! You put a lot of thoughts in your creative camera system. I like how your implementation flows your intention (forcing the player into combat) and not the opposite. I like the risk associated with your flee system. It reminds me of FF7 where trying to flee exposes your back to the enemies. I worked on some action games (short games and prototypes) and only build one simple dynamic camera: Lya's camera looks in front of her. And I totally agree with you that the player should always be on screen.

If you want to expand the possibilities of your camera system, I recommend watching this (the most interesting part for you starts at 21:20 "Framing")
https://invidio.xamh.de/watch?v=tu-Qe66AvtY
author=Irog
Great development video ! Very informative ! You put a lot of thoughts in your creative camera system. I like how your implementation flows your intention (forcing the player into combat) and not the opposite. I like the risk associated with your flee system. It reminds me of FF7 where trying to flee exposes your back to the enemies. I worked on some action games (short games and prototypes) and only build one simple dynamic camera: Lya's camera looks in front of her. And I totally agree with you that the player should always be on screen.

If you want to expand the possibilities of your camera system, I recommend watching this (the most interesting part for you starts at 21:20 "Framing")


Awesome man. I'm glad you checked out and liked the video content. Right on man, I'll definitely check out the video. Thanks a lot for the comment. As long as people are enjoying the videos I'll try and whip more of them up on the weekends. I've heard from a couple people now that they agreed with my reasoning for the camera pan decisions I've implemented which is great for affirmation of design choices. Yeah, ff7 and other turn based games definitely influenced my reasoning for the camera pan slowing around enemies and the player having to push the edge of screen to "flee" combat. 2k3 ARPG's are rare, I'm interested to check out your projects you've worked on and see some of your design choices for the action based systems. If you liked that video, I posted a second video last weekend you might be interested to check out. It delves more into enemy design and how my hit boxes work. It's a little longer but I've been hungry for some 2k3 content other than "let's play" content so I thought I'd start making some of my own. Thanks a lot for the comment, don't hesitate to comment in the future if you watch my other video or you give the game a try and have some feed back. I love the communities feed back, it's always helpful. I'll check out your game pages and see if I can't get around to giving some of your custom systems a try. I'm always hungry for some 2k3 action rpg's. They're few and far between.
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