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Some slow movement

Hi there! I hope you're doing well in these crazy times. A couple things are moving forward for this project and I wanted to provide a little bit of news. First, a quick recap of what's happened in the last few years:

1. In 2016-2017 I tried making my own engine, UmbraCraft. It's open-source and available on github if you're interested. This was a great experience, but it abstracted out some of the things I enjoyed more than I realized now (such as making maps) and the editor was more cumbersome to use than 2k3. Oops.

2. In 2018 I tried using EasyRPG -- an open-source RPG Maker interpreter. This was great because it was cross-platform, modern, and I even was into rebuilding a battle system on top of their work. But the nagging feeling in the back of my head was the story and assets felt a bit fragmented, so those would need revisiting again.

(Aside: In 2018 I completed and launched Heroes of Umbra on Steam. It was incredibly stressful.)

2.5 I also spent some time with Unity but it felt like overkill, especially for a 2D game.

3. 2020! Post-quarantine. Finally after playing with other engines, I'm enjoying Gamemaker Studio. Here's a tweet showcasing my attempt at recreating a map in a 2k3-style.


This workflow feels incredibly good. I have a light cutscene system that parses text files. Events can be triggered by collision, interaction, or on map enter. Anyone using 2k3 will be very familiar with the syntax:
show_screen(1)

pan_to(360, 151, 10)
wait(8)
hide_screen(1)
wait(2)
configure_message(false, false, center)
show_message("Focus...|Take a deep breath, squeeze, and throw.")
hide_message()

This is a segment of the intro, and does the following:


I've also spent some time tidying up the characters and the story. Gameplay and character development take the stage, but spending the time to come up with a cohesive story up-front will save me some headaches down the road.


Armed with a bit more pixel art capabilities and strong nostalgia for 2k3 character sprites, this is where I landed on the character styles. In general, characters will look and feel much more different than before. (I don't know what I was thinking giving two of my main characters blue hair!)

I'll keep sharing more as things move along, thanks so much for reading. It means a lot to me.

Posts

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Rad!
New sprites look and feel completely different (I really like them).
I know you'll put something incredible out.
Here I thought this project was long done for.
Can't wait to see more updates!
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
author=Giznads
Rad!
New sprites look and feel completely different (I really like them).
I know you'll put something incredible out.
Here I thought this project was long done for.
Can't wait to see more updates!

Thanks for checking it out; I hope I can have a working tech demo soon™.
Tau
RMN sex symbol
3293
Still doing that tile battle system thing? Also congrats on sticking with it man holy shit haha.
Looks amazing! So glad to see you're carrying on with this - I wasn't sure where things ended up.

The new maps looks especially crisp in that GIF. Going with a combo of Refmap/original tiles gives this game some extra visual impact. And Andoru's sprite - perfect!
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
author=Tau
Still doing that tile battle system thing? Also congrats on sticking with it man holy shit haha.
Thank you! I actually have been really inspired by action RPGs recently. Namely FF7R and Xenoblade Chronicles really blew me away from a battle mechanics perspective. That, combined with transitions to battles feeling somewhat jarring in retrospect, has pushed me to explore something a little more real-time, but maybe not purely action since I still like numbers and stat growth a ton. Whatever I do I want it to be a lot of fun and a little different in some way.

author=Blind
Looks amazing! So glad to see you're carrying on with this - I wasn't sure where things ended up.

The new maps looks especially crisp in that GIF. Going with a combo of Refmap/original tiles gives this game some extra visual impact. And Andoru's sprite - perfect!
Thank you! For now yep, whatever I have the energy for will be original but I also don't want to reinvent too much graphically. Refmap is a trove of assets available to use and with some minor palette tweaks everything looks somewhat cohesive. The sprites+maps are using the Love42 palette at the moment. I'll see how far that gets me.
Welcome to the game maker realm friendo
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
author=Darken
Welcome to the game maker realm friendo
Thank you! I like it so far. It's low-level enough but handles some of the tedious stuff I had enough of building an engine from scratch.
(The Machine that Breathes is looking incredible. Just wishlisted it.)
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