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Some slow movement
dragonheartman- 08/17/2020 09:13 PM
- 2191 views
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:
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.
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.
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Closeauthor=DarkenThank 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.
Welcome to the game maker realm friendo
(The Machine that Breathes is looking incredible. Just wishlisted it.)
author=TauThank 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.
Still doing that tile battle system thing? Also congrats on sticking with it man holy shit haha.
author=BlindThank 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.
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!
Blind
2262
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!
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!
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™.
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