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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsElegy [ALPHA DEMO AVAILABLE NOW!]
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Author Topic: Elegy [ALPHA DEMO AVAILABLE NOW!]  (Read 9492 times)
threesided
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« on: August 18, 2012, 09:29:27 AM »

DOWNLOAD THE ALPHA DEMO HERE!

ELEGY REVEAL TRAILER
UPDATE: I made a concept reveal trailer for Elegy, which is also to announce the Alpha demo we will be releasing on August 22nd!
For those who need visual incentive:





Elegy is a top-down arena shooter RPG for Window/Mac/Linux PCs.  



The land of Delta has been overrun by an entity known as The Void, a massive, intelligent hivemind bent on destroying everything. As a new recruit to the Tyrian army, you are tasked with staving off the impending horde that moves ever closer to Tyr’s walls.

Features:

Dynamic battle system: Acting like a hivemind, the Void is capable of learning your tactics and adjusting accordingly to try and ensure your utter defeat. As you progress through the game, enemies will progress with you in order to counter your playstyle. Feel like going pure range? The enemies might learn to dodge your bullets more efficiently.

Guardian Companion System: In Delta, Guardians are the manifestations of the pure energies of the world and are your primary source of defence. As you progress, your Guardians will grow and develop into powerful allies that you can tune to fit your play style.  Gathering new material will be crucial in conjuring new guardians that will help you fend off the Void and bring you closer to victory.

Branching Storyline: As a world literally falling apart, the hero must make crucial choices. Do you try and save a town overrun, or do you try and secure a crucial crossroads to try and prevent the Void from encroaching on Tyr’s walls? Time is short and it just might not be possible to save everyone.

We will be demoing this game for the first time at Fan Expo Canada, so if you're from Toronto, stop by and see all the hard work we've been putting in!

We are currently at build 0.30.3, and the game has come quite a long way since we first started back in April

The demo we will be showing at Fan Expo is pretty much just the battle mechanic and how the guardian system might work, which has been packaged into a sort of arcade style twinstick shooter (like geometry wars) just so you can get a feel for the style and how it will eventually play out. Still have a long way to go but yeah.

Check out http://elegythegame.tumblr.com for more updates as we make them. I'm kinda rushed today so there's not too much to check out there yet, but over the next week we will be adding lots of stuff to check out!

Ask any questions here, I will try to keep this devlog updated on a pretty frequent bases. We are working pretty steadily so there will be much to come as the months progress. We're not ready to release a public demo yet, but soon I'm sure we will be there!
« Last Edit: August 28, 2013, 06:27:42 AM by threesided » Logged
Cellusious
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« Reply #1 on: August 18, 2012, 01:36:59 PM »

Cool looking,  Smiley
 
Does it have a voice commentator that commentates everything you do?  Roll Eyes
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« Reply #2 on: August 18, 2012, 01:55:49 PM »

You have to learn that Windows != PC...
If you use Linux, it's still PC. If you use Mac, it's still PC. (Unless you use the old Mac PPC hardware, even though even then it should be called PC because, well, it is a personal computer.)

...

The game looks great btw. Can't wait for some trailer or a gameplay video Smiley
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threesided
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« Reply #3 on: August 18, 2012, 06:04:18 PM »

You have to learn that Windows != PC...
If you use Linux, it's still PC. If you use Mac, it's still PC. (Unless you use the old Mac PPC hardware, even though even then it should be called PC because, well, it is a personal computer.)

...

The game looks great btw. Can't wait for some trailer or a gameplay video Smiley

Duly noted sir. Duly noted.

I will try to get some gameplay footage following Fan Expo, just having trouble finding a good video capture program for mac. Everything I've tried is either too slow or puts a big ugly watermark on top of the video footage. Which renders it useless.

And no cellusious, the hand drawn graphics are where this game and Bastion's similarities end! I swear!
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threesided
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« Reply #4 on: August 19, 2012, 10:21:49 AM »

Well because there's not a lot of activity, probably due to a lack of information, I'm gonna start trickling out some info that might help generate some conversation.

The Guardians

Some concepts for future tiers of Guardian.

The guardians are the main sourse of both defence and attack in this game. They are what will determine your play style, as well as what you will be levelling and tuning into awesome fighting machines. They are conjured by the hero to do his bidding akin to Golems.

There are three main types right now:

Melee:


Melee are strong tank fighters who sacrifice long distance for brute force. They will deal the most damage per hit as well as take the brunt of the enemy forces attacks. In our first demo, the starter melee guardian attacks with a burst of air that he propels into the Void Spawn.

Ranged:


Ranged guardians are your typical twin stick shooter varient. Point where you want the bullets to go and unleash hell. They are capable of dealing out some decent damage, and are a middle of the road attacker, probably most suitable for picking off mobs before they get in close. The starter guardian shoots a torrent of razor shard leaves at his opponent.

Magic:


Magic Guardians are for when those mobs just become too much to handle. They unleash powerful AoE attacks at a cost of cooldown and charge time. Although they deal a good amount of damage to a large area, they become less efficient the closer in the mobs get. They are also the weakest character, and therefore might die early on if you aren't careful.


That's all for now, I will write about another aspect of the game in a little while!
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Ashkin
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« Reply #5 on: August 19, 2012, 11:55:03 AM »

Coolio.
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« Reply #6 on: August 19, 2012, 02:52:42 PM »

This project looks pretty promising, will more detail be added to world in the future?
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threesided
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« Reply #7 on: August 19, 2012, 06:44:06 PM »

@ C.D. Buckmaster: I've done a lot of writing and planning for the story and how the story arc will go, but we've been so busy building our public demo that it's still largely conceptual. In the coming months we will be getting into character progression, level scripting a lot more and hopefully in doing so will be able to show off a much more fleshed out world.

What I can say is that more detail will actually be taken away as the game progress  Well, hello there! Wink . Feel free to try and interpret that as you will.
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threesided
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« Reply #8 on: August 20, 2012, 08:42:43 AM »

Because I can:



More info on the enemy: The Void Spawn

The void is a hivemind entity, meaning that it can learn from your battles. It is comprised of a pure force known in Delta as Vod. Its only goal is destruction of the land, which it does without reason or discretion.

We are working on a dynamic leveling system, meaning that as you play, the game will pay attention to your playstyle and adjust. This is to try and build a consistently challenging experience that will change based on how you choose to play. This is also our way of trying to balance out each class and avoid any spamming of one particular style.  This also means that there isn't necessarily a need to max out everything in order to get a good character built. If you want to go full melee or full magic etc, feel free. Just know that the more proficient you get in that attack style, the more proficient the enemy will get at thwarting you.

This is not to say that there won't be any enemies vulnerable to your attack style. It just means that each enemy type will adjust according to how you play in order to keep the game challenging and fun.

This means that even the weakest enemies in the game will change how they act as the game progresses. Magic enemies might start keeping their distance more if you use a lot of ranged. Or, they might get faster if you've decided to rush in as a melee fighter, causing you to get overwhelmed by mobs.

We really hope to get a system that allows for a variety of playstyles and experiences.
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« Reply #9 on: August 20, 2012, 12:10:25 PM »

Neat art, flamy/hairy look of the void guy looks really well, hope it will be even better when animated. Your plans for AI seems to be quite ambitious, watch out for too smooth adjustments. I mean, when I read this first thing that came to my mind was Oblivion and the way it spawned enemies that fitted perfectly to player's level, eventually difficulty level of the whole game was more or less constant, which made overall experience rather boring (not to mention other Oblivion's flaws).
Anyway, I'm looking forward to the release, it definitely looks promising.
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shesaone
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« Reply #10 on: August 20, 2012, 03:47:57 PM »

You have to learn that Windows != PC...
If you use Linux, it's still PC. If you use Mac, it's still PC. (Unless you use the old Mac PPC hardware, even though even then it should be called PC because, well, it is a personal computer.)

If the game's being programmed in Java, he very well could have been using "PC" accurately. Cross-platform programming, hooray. (And also, ugh. Can get tedious.)

Game looks great. Can't wait to see it in action!
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« Reply #11 on: August 21, 2012, 03:31:42 AM »

Quote from: threesided
And no cellusious, the hand drawn graphics are where this game and Bastion's similarities end! I swear!

Haha, sorry; it looks amazing and is giving me bastion vibes.  Hand Thumbs Up Left
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threesided
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« Reply #12 on: August 21, 2012, 06:53:09 AM »

Quote from: threesided
And no cellusious, the hand drawn graphics are where this game and Bastion's similarities end! I swear!

Haha, sorry; it looks amazing and is giving me bastion vibes.  Hand Thumbs Up Left

I'm totally glad it does, because I consider Bastion a benchmark for the quality of the art. I've always worked/drawn this way, so the similarities are bound to come up. Being in the same perspective probably doesn't help it that much either.

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threesided
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« Reply #13 on: August 21, 2012, 07:14:47 AM »

So today, since all progress is on hold until after the expo, I thought I would share a little bit about the process that went into making the actual assets for the game. I'll go through the process by which we got the magic Guardian done.

Step 1: Placeholders:

The first thing I actually did was make rough placeholder art for the programmer to use so that he didn't have to stare at the even MORE placeholder art (which was mostly pictures of cats by the way). This was before I knew exactly what I wanted the guardians to be, but knew we needed 3 specific types made. For the time being, this was what was used until I could make proper assets.

Step 2: The Initial Concept:

Next I had to figure out what exactly the mage would look like. I had an idea based on a previous concept I had done, and knew I wanted it to look like a little hooded orb made of cloth or burlap. After some quick goes, I had this.

Step 3: The Model:

Once I knew what the magic guardian was going to look like, I devised a way to model out the bulk of the form in Blender. This allowed me to quickly figure out how the guardian should look while facing all 8 directions. Perhaps this isn't as exciting to others, but for me, figuring this out was a godsend in terms of productivity. I would set up an orthogonal camera set to rotate 45 degrees around the character every frame. In a matter of seconds I had all 8 directions roughed out for the character. It wasn't pretty, but that didn't really matter, since I was going to be hand detailing everything anyways.

Step 4: Making It Look Pretty:

Huzzah! Finished product! Once I had the 8 directions I arranged a sprite sheet with the rendered images, and proceeded to detail overtop, embellishing and cleaning up where necessary. The result was something I could totally be happy with, and it took a fraction of the time with no guess work as to where the major shapes were supposed to be.


So yeah, a pretty good process if I say so myself. I used this technique for all of the character assets currently in game (including the 64 frames for the hero running AND idle animation. 128 frames WHAT?!)

Just to feel the crowd out, are people interested in stuff like this? I think it's an interesting side people don't often get to see in game design. Let me know.
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« Reply #14 on: August 21, 2012, 07:56:20 AM »

I'm making an arena shooter just like you, and my biggest problem is figuring out the 8dir for the bosses. In fact, I feel like when things are bigger they need more directions, and making giant spiders that rotate and look good=hard.

tldr yeah please tell us more about your process!
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« Reply #15 on: August 21, 2012, 08:20:36 AM »

I was thinking the player sprite was 3D.  Looking forward to this also by the how your designs are fanciful, the mage guardian is adorable.
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« Reply #16 on: August 22, 2012, 03:22:13 PM »

Is it wrong of me to imagine that there's a personality sphere like Wheatley under the cloak?  Ninja

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« Reply #17 on: August 26, 2012, 06:40:25 PM »

Not to update with something so insubstantial, but our game got it's first public demo played all weekend at Fan Expo in Toronto. People were really enjoying it seems. I'll post more about it tomorrow. Needless to say it was fun.

That is all. Gentleman
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« Reply #18 on: September 06, 2012, 01:36:12 PM »



Well, today was a planning day. Dave and I got together and hammered out the features we'd like to have in the game, as well as what to work on next. I think we made a lot of progress in terms of where to go next in terms of bringing this game to life.

As it stands, we've decided to get into some UI work, so check back soon when I've got more concepts ready and I'll explain more. Wish I had more to share, but we're at the beginning of a new milestone phase, so there's not a lot of new to show. Soon though!
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« Reply #19 on: October 06, 2012, 08:38:41 AM »

Hey guys, not dead!

So, we've been a little bit burnt out from our first ever Expo experience, but rest assured we are working diligently now!

I've been hesitant to explain the story because I feel like that will be the most important element to discover on your own, so! What I have instead is a breakdown of more of the Guardian mechanics that we have developed:

There will be a number of characters known as guardians you can collect along the way. In the world of Delta, Guardians are the golem-like creatures you are able to conure using everyday items and elements, artifacts, trinkets etc. They are then imbued with the the forces of either Aena or Vod, two diametrically opposed forces that reside within each citizen of Delta.

In terms of game logic, this will represent your array of attack types. We hope to give each guardian a very distinct role as opposed to just having them be a power upgrade. This way you can cater your playstyle to the guardians instead of always opting for the "strongest" one.

How the guardians will progress then, is in terms of buffs and modifiers as they level up. For example, the first ranged guardian, a machine gun/bullet-hell type guardian, may be able to increase firing rate, or perhaps add a second bullet stream for better attacking. In addition to this, there will be passive buffs which will help inactive guardians still serve a purpose. In order to encourage choice and customization, you will be able to pick a limited number of buffs and one passive ability for each guardian, with more options for customization coming via levelling up that guardian.

Now, onto some art:





What we have here are the summon items, the things you will find along the way to make new guardians. These are the first three you will get to start, because I know people can't make it through a dev log without some pretty pretty pictures.

That's all I've got for now, I really hope to share more interesting in-game shots soon!
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