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[eigenbom]

sweet, can't wait for the release!

[nihilocrat]

I'm pushing the release date a week back to September 7th thanks to some personal issues. The release was pretty arbitrary anyways, just some date to get me to stop reworking or polishing and release the damn thing.


I make the gifs with Fraps and VirtualDub. Here are the steps I take:

* Record in Fraps, no surprises there.
* Open the .avi in VirtualDub and move the playhead to the location where you want to start the GIF sequence.
* Click the black left-facing arrow at the far right end of the play/pause/etc. buttons
* Move the playhead to where you want the sequence to end and click the right-facing arrow.
* Go to Video->Frame Rate, set it to skip every other frame (to cut down on size)
* Go to Video->Filters->Add.. and pick "null transform".
* Click "Cropping"
* Set the X1, X2, Y1, and Y2 parameters to your liking. Drag the playhead across the entire clip you selected to make sure everything gets in the shot.
* Make sure "Video" is set to "Direct stream copy" to ensure the GIF is a pixel-perfect copy of the clip.
* File->Export->Animated GIF

[Shackhal]

I saw that you submitted the game on Greenlight. Great!

[nihilocrat]

Working on the main menu, and playing around with a more google-able name (consecutive vowels pose a problem), which logo do people prefer?

[Belimoth]

COLON ANNIHILATION is still my favorite subtitle.

[Dinsfire]

This one is definitely the most logical to me, and the logo is much cleaner than most of the others. And, as a minimalist myself, I prefer the menu coming straight-up. Game menus that introduce themselves with "press start" or in this case "press spacebar if you dare" is fairly redundant and just puts one more unnecessary sub-menu between you and the game. I see the nostalgia in it, but like I said, I'm a minimalist.

Actually, I think the logo/subtext on the on the last image, combined with the immediate menu of the quoted image would be a perfect choice for me, personally. But that's just my taste.

A more legible font might be worth considering, too.

[JobLeonard]

COLON ANNIHILATION is still my favorite subtitle.

Listen to this man. This man knowsw what he's talking about. Unless you're going Minecraft and randomise the subtitles every time you open the menu.

[Paul Jeffries]

I can understand changing the name from a googling perspective, but SWØØØØRDS! was a much better and more memorable name in my opinion.  I don't think that it not really being pronouncable is that important - it didn't seem to hurt VVVVVV.

[jamiebell]

As a sound designer, "Sounds from freesound.org" makes me so sad!

[Belimoth]

I can understand changing the name from a googling perspective, but SWØØØØRDS! was a much better and more memorable name in my opinion.  I don't think that it not really being pronouncable is that important - it didn't seem to hurt VVVVVV.

You could have the official name just be "SWORDS:whatever" but still have "SWØØØØRDS" in the title screen of the game? Maybe that defeats the purpose, I don't know.

[nihilocrat]

SWOOOORDS! Colon Lords of the Sword is hereby released!

Gameplay Video:



Web Version (Unity Webplayer): http://www.kongregate.com/games/nihilocrat/swoooords-colon-lords-of-the-sword

Downloads: http://www.indiedb.com/games/swoooords/downloads/

It's taken me about 10 months, 8 of them actually working on the game in my spare time. I desperately hope I was successful in making a challenging, fair, and varied combat system that makes for an exciting and unique brawler.

SWOOOORDS! is basically the combat prototype for a much larger action RPG I'm calling Urverden. It will be an attempt at combining the brawler and roguelike genres to provide a unique experience, somewhere in between Dark Souls and Dwarf Fortress' Adventure Mode.

[DustyDrake]

"Not googlable" you say.
"I laugh" I say.
https://www.google.com/search?q=SWOOOORDS!

[Paul Jeffries]

Nice!  The first time I tried the online version it wasn't registering mouse clicks but when I reloaded the page it worked fine - I guess it had keyboard focus but not mouse focus for some reason.

Also: the indieDB download link seems to not lead to a valid page.

[nihilocrat]

Weird to hear about the keyboard issues. I updated the first post with mediafire links, because IndieDB has not yet approved my download links

"Not googlable" you say.
"I laugh" I say.
https://www.google.com/search?q=SWOOOORDS!

During development people kept forgetting the right number of "O"s to use, which ended up in differing results. After lots of fooling around I decided to keep the name and just add a subtitle.

[richy486]

Could the sword in the title poke through the Os? might look rad

[verticalvertex]

Could the sword in the title poke through the Os? might look rad

Sound like a great idea. Spice it up a little.

[nihilocrat]

SWOOOORDS! 1.2 is forthcoming. Expect it….. soon?

Changelog:

- Linux build, thanks to Unity 4.0
- Localized versions: French, German, Russian
- Fonts are now a bit easier to read
- Switched to a perspective camera
- Life meters are now directly under players
- Falling off a ledge will no longer kill you, it will damage you then teleport you back to the last safe location.
- Depths 5 and beyond now have “elite” versions of all enemies
- Depths 5 and beyond have a few new super-rare swords. They are a bit harder to learn to use properly.
- Fixed: Enemies would not be hurt by traps if they were standing still directly on them
- Fixed: Level-specific music wasn’t being played
- Fixed: Barrels, chests, and debris were being spawned midair: it was a bit hard to notice

[Udderdude]

Is there a way to turn on Vsync?  I didn't see one, and the game makes my graphics card heat up like crazy despite the simple graphics, suggesting that it's running with an uncapped framerate.

Edit: I loaded up Fraps and sure enough it's running at ~950 FPS.  Come on man, add Vsync option.

Anyway, I recorded some footage of the AI/enemy animations getting kind of buggy.





As far as the gameplay goes, I didn't like how it's possible to shield yourself for basically limitless amount of time.  I think every time you get hit while shielded, it should raise a meter, which gradually decreases, but if it gets too high your guard is broken and the enemy can attack you.

[bleezy]

nihilocrat, I really love your simple easy-to-animate character models.  I also have no experience doing 3d animation or modeling, so I would love to know what tools you used to build and animate your little swoooordfighters that would be good for a beginner.  Thanks!