TIGSource Forums

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1829034266/volgarr-the-viking

Crazy Viking studios is a small indie developer composed of industry veterans ready to make a game on their own terms. Volgarr is a classic hack'n'slash style PC game with hand-made pixel art. Check it out!

I'm quite surprised, this is one of thousands retro pixel games on ks that I really like and I'd happily pledge some money if I'd have any. Good luck with the kickstarter, looks like you'll reach your goal without any problems.

 :handthumbsupR:

This looks great, one of the few 2D games I'm looking forward to.

I should mention that I don't work for this company or anything, I just know them. Hopefully this isn't coming across as a commercial. I really think this is a cool thing to fund. I added 10 bucks myself.

Looks fun, but putting SGnG and even Rastan next to their game really highlights how much worse their pixel art is.

The gameplay mechanics look very solid, and the PC sprite and animations look good, too... I think it's just the environment tiles that are lacking.

Pillow...shading...primar...colors...urghh
:epileptic:

The features they're highlighting seem really silly. For example, you can move while attacking.

Really like the mechanic where you can jump on to your spears

Didn't they say that they put a lot of work into this single mechanic?  ???

I'm betting they'll hit the goal by next Wednesday...

Liosan

I really liked it more when it was called Fishbane (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=12548.0)

After "working in the industry for years" and "studying the best 16 bit games of the era", I think they could have produced a tilesets that looks better than that.

Also: I think a game like that is too much work for two people

Unless they are part of TIGSource. Some people here have better stuff than that.

The mechanics and viking theme look cool, sprites and animation look good but the backgrounds look too basic, hopefully they are just quickly made placeholders.

These guys should team up with the guys that did the graphics for Trine 2, that way we could get a team that does good graphics + team that does good design.

Nobody remembers Quackshot :(

Nobody remembers Worms: Armageddon :(

The effect of this one decision on the feel of combat is massive. It only seems trivial if you haven't spent weeks tweaking tiny little rules like this and trying to really understand every single bit of control and physics that affects the feel. To me it says that the team has a very good attention to detail and makes me more confident of their design abilities. Yeah, it's not something to brag about, taking a few moments of coding and some extra animation work, but it's a very significant design decision.

A good example is the combat in Bastion, if you actually study it very carefully you will notice that it's tooled completely (except for a few weapons) for constantly being in motion. You can attack while moving with the Cael hammer and you are not stunlocked or interrupted when hit. Your character is slow, dodging around is a critical skill in combat, so the ability to move while dodging and being able to cancel into an attack improve the feel tremendously. Individually these are super minor things, but ignoring them would have made the combat much worse, and unfortunately a lot of designers who make combat-heavy games don't realize that you need to spend a lot of time perfecting the little details like this.

In the original video script, we went into detail on why moving while attacking was significant, in addition to many other design decisions that we felt were significant but the reasons may not be obvious at first.

However, that made the video very long and we thought we may lose a lot of the audience.  So, I then had the idea of showing some of the games we were inspired by and talking about the specific mechanics that were similar to elements from those games, stating that we had done something similar.  I figured this way, anyone familiar with those games may understand exactly what the impact of those design choices was, and the video wouldn't be too long for people that don't really care to know that much detail.

So I can see why it might seem silly, but as nihilocrat pointed out, we carefully considered the potential impact of each feature, and I could easily write up a big document of reasons why we did X, Y, or Z and why we thought this or that was important.  I'm just not sure how many people are deeply enough into game design minutia as I am to actually appreciate it instead of falling asleep.

Oh, and it was actually a fair amount of work because of having to split the sprite up so the walk cycle was not interrupted by the attack animation, especially combined with each piece of gear having to be shown (or not) on the character.  Other than Rastan and Terraria I'm not familiar with any other side-scrolling action games where you can walk and swing a weapon at the same time, though if someone can list a few I'd love to study them!

Ah hadn't seen that game before, that one looks good too, especially riding your flying spear.

Best Mega Drive/SEGA Genesis ever made... for me at least.


So, one of the guys is reading this? Are you the one that worked on Web of Shadows for DS? Love the combat in that game, make it as flexible as that please! :D

Yes I am that one.  Volgarr is more old-school arcade style combat and not combo-focused like Web of Shadows, however, I still used many of the same techniques to ensure smooth and responsive controls, like interrupts and cancels.

I hope your Kickstarter pulls through (and it looks like it will). I tend to hate Kickstarer because people see it as an avenue for free money with little to no evidence of any ability to follow through or investment in the final product and Kickstarter funders sop it all up with their bank accounts. You both have demonstrated both competence and investment, so good luck to you.

They worked on Shinobi 3DS, I'm helping  :handmoneyL: :handmoneyR:

Not really sure about this.
I can definitely see myself funding something like this, but the playing area shown in the video doesn't really inspire confidence design-wise - lots of samey stretches, blind jumps and elements placed next to each other haphazardly. The graphics could use some polish, especially with your claim to improve on the classics.

You should have no problem meeting your goal, but personally I'm holding out for some more gripping gameplay footage.

I don't know if this is revealing too much, but...

All of the footage you saw was from a special map we call "the gym" that won't be in the game (and would be a terrible level).

I always make a map like this to quickly test all the different game mechanics - when you have to recompile and tweak something, you don't want to have to get through a real level every time, you want something where you can immediately test the mechanic.  So yes we have things like slopes, ropes, platforms, spikes, fire, etc. all just placed nearby each other so we can get to them quickly while working on mechanics.  It also has platforms in various seemingly random places just to test different jump distances to see which jumps feel the best.

Since the gym was already there it also was convenient to use it to test the parallax scrolling and animated tile systems, which is what the quick BG art was made for.  It doesn't even actually have enemies normally, I just added some with the run-time editor to record the footage.

What we have from real levels was not shown as they have no art at all yet, because we are using a development method were we make sure the level fits all our quality tests first and then have it drawn, to reduce the amount of re-drawing that would need to be done for finalized art.  Level art is one of the last things done, first need all the mechanics down pat, then the enemies for the level so you can make sure the level works correctly with them while designing it (some people make the mistake of making the level layout and then throwing in the enemies later, or worse making the levels before the mechanics are nailed down!), then the level layout itself, and finally the level art as the last step.

This method makes for well crafted games but isn't so great for showing it off in-development in videos or at things like PAX, E3, etc.

Really?

Oh definitely, I've seen it on more than one occasion.

Are you the only one from the Shinobi team working on this?

Nope, both members of Crazy Viking Studios worked on Shinobi.  Kris was Lead Designer and I was Lead Gameplay Programmer.

Awesome. I bet this is going to turn out great too  :)

If you haven't played Ultimate Ghosts and Goblins yet Zauron you should definitely play that, its awesome.

Welp, shows how much I understand about game and level design. :)

Sorry, seems like I completely misunderstood. Then again, you should probably consider the fact that a lot of people out there might be just as intellectually challenged as myself, and perhaps show some short, but specifically designed courses in an update - or just slap a big "TEST LEVEL, DO NOT ENTER" on the current footage.

Good luck, I'll be watching this closely!

EDIT: And congratulations on making your goal in excellent time! Now hire more of everything! :)

Well, if the level art will still be made.. you just got my money! :)

Also, the gym idea is very good, gonna use that for my next game.

No, dude, the fact that you noticed how terrible the gym would be for a real level means you are quite observant!  I tried to hide it in the footage by only showing small pieces of it at a time and hoping people would be too busy looking at the game mechanics to notice the level layout, so its a fair critique to say that I failed in that regard.

I would have rather waited until we had a final level with all the enemies detail-drawn (Kris draws them in stages, they start as boxes to prove out mechanics, then motion sketches to get animation timing and basic shape down, and finally details like shading, outlines, etc) and final level art to make the video (and hero 100% completed, some of his animations are due for replacement as well now that his mechanics are all functioning), but we calculated we couldn't finish the game without some more funding and didn't want to continue dumping so much of our own time and money into something that maybe no one would even be interested in.

I put a little thing in the beginning of the footage that said it was in-development and does not reflect final game, but given reactions to the BG art and now the gym's design that was likely insufficient.  Lesson learned for next time!

If I'm not mistaken, Miyamoto does the very same thing, only he calls it "garden" instead of gym.

Good luck with the project Zauron, it look it will feel really old school and that can be a great thing

I am just bumping this thread because I found an earlier example of a game where you stick things in the wall and jump on them.  Nail 'n Scale:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seRBpemPnNM
Probably not a great reason to bump the thread but it's a pretty fun game.