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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsAscendant - 2.5D Side-scrolling beat 'em up with roguelike elements
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Author Topic: Ascendant - 2.5D Side-scrolling beat 'em up with roguelike elements  (Read 11601 times)
Leon Fook
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« Reply #20 on: September 05, 2013, 11:03:19 PM »

Is this game based on 3D side scroller or 2D but with rotoscope of the character from 3D animation? I'm intrigue. Anyway, the animation for the idle is quite nice, running is okay, but the attack really need to get some tweak. The hang time is quite long, and make the character's attack a little bit float-y.

And wow, what a big team. Hope you all success with this game. :D
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diegzumillo
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« Reply #21 on: September 06, 2013, 12:08:33 AM »

The concept art is amazing! How are you going to achieve that? I'm seeing what appears to be some sprites and now a 3d animated model. So far I have to say those animations need work though. It's really REALLY hard to achive a fluid animation in 3d, like the concept suggests.

3d animation has the advantage of being a little easier to tweak during runtime. Speed is trivial, but with some work you can even dynamically change it.
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« Reply #22 on: September 06, 2013, 12:17:15 AM »

So many artists Shocked I'm really interested to see the final result as it's not often you get an indie team with this many artists on board.

My one-man project is starting to make me sad now graphics wise, my models should never be seen by the public Tongue
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Leon Fook
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« Reply #23 on: September 06, 2013, 01:20:58 AM »

My one-man project is starting to make me sad now graphics wise, my models should never be seen by the public Tongue
Offu topic, but you shouldn't hide anything that you wan to improve. Maybe you should post in the workshop for other to comment?
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pants
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« Reply #24 on: September 06, 2013, 12:57:46 PM »

Is this game based on 3D side scroller or 2D but with rotoscope of the character from 3D animation? I'm intrigue. Anyway, the animation for the idle is quite nice, running is okay, but the attack really need to get some tweak. The hang time is quite long, and make the character's attack a little bit float-y.

And wow, what a big team. Hope you all success with this game. :D

The game is a 3D game with a two-dimensional playing field. It's kind of like Trine or LittleBigPlanet but with a bit more use of 2D planes in the foreground, background, and particle effects.

Thank you for the feedback about the animations! We are always looking for ways to improve on all fronts and this is an aspect that we want to really get right. This particular set of the grunt is our first iteration of animations for him so we are definitely going to put some more work into his movements. The animators wanted to try something that was a little bit more punchy and quick. The reason for the big wind up is to let players see its tell so they can either dash away from the attack or hit him before he strikes.

And yes, our team is pretty big. We've all known each other and worked together in various fields and now was exactly the right time for us to come together and make this game happen Smiley

The concept art is amazing! How are you going to achieve that? I'm seeing what appears to be some sprites and now a 3d animated model. So far I have to say those animations need work though. It's really REALLY hard to achive a fluid animation in 3d, like the concept suggests.

3d animation has the advantage of being a little easier to tweak during runtime. Speed is trivial, but with some work you can even dynamically change it.

Hi! I'm really glad you liked the art Smiley We are trying to follow the concept art pretty closely to get a very nice painted style in the game. All of our materials are unlit so it is kind of flat right now but our concept/texture artist and tech artist are working together to create some shaders that really gets the game environment to match the concepts. Additionally, the concept artist is working very closely with our modelers to get the look of the environment pieces just right.

Our process starts out with just the concepts that you saw in the earlier posts. After being iterated on and finalized the concept artist passes them over to the modelers and they are able to get a character out and into the hands of the animators, programmers, and level builders relatively quickly. From there it is just iterating and polishing until we have something great.

I totally agree with you about 3D animations. We are pretty early in production so figuring out the most efficient pipeline with the animations has been kind of a pain. Unfortunately we can't use Unity's Mecanim for the kinds of things we are doing so we've had to move back to the Legacy system. Because of this we've had a little trouble with transitions between animations (as opposed to using Mecanim where blending is seemless) but we are figuring it out :D

So many artists Shocked I'm really interested to see the final result as it's not often you get an indie team with this many artists on board.

My one-man project is starting to make me sad now graphics wise, my models should never be seen by the public Tongue

Don't be discouraged! We are all in this together and the more indie devs support each other the better it will be for the community. Any feedback or criticisms (as long as they are constructive) can only benefit you into making something awesome :D
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« Reply #25 on: September 10, 2013, 04:49:41 AM »

Just stumbled upon this thread! The artwork is great, really sharp. 
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pants
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« Reply #26 on: September 16, 2013, 02:16:16 PM »

It's Pathing Time!

It's been a while since the last update and we have been making some good progress towards finalizing our pathing algorithms. We designed the system so all the hard calculations are made with the level. The AI only needs to make choices based upon the options available. And here I present the fruits of that labor, first iteration of enemy AI pathing.



Node by Node Breakdown:

Above is an image of what a module looks like after its had its pathing baked into it. We do this by creating prefabs of the different land pieces we use. Then on those pieces we place nodes for the A* pathing algorithm to use when trying to find the player. After a module has been assembled we then bake the information of what node can be reached, and how, into each node.

After the baking has been... baked, each node is then linked to other nodes by lines that each represent a path that can be taken by the enemy AI. Green lines represent walkable paths, blue lines are jumpable paths, and yellow lines are for jumping down. Below is a close up of this (the floating nodes are on the first iteration of our one-way platforms).



ACTION!

The result is this. 2 Enemies are using the nodes to pathfind their way to the player character. The redline that occasionally appears is the enemies planning a new path to the character. This happens once every second or so depending on if the enemy is touching the ground or not. This allows for enemies to be launched by the player and then path back after it recovers.

« Last Edit: September 27, 2013, 11:43:43 AM by pants » Logged

pants
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« Reply #27 on: September 27, 2013, 11:34:04 AM »

Name That Game!

After a long debate, many tables getting flipped, and a few time outs we finalized the game's name as Ascendant. We also have a pretty sweet banner logo the artists created below. We hope you like it, we certainly do. There was another name that stuck it out until the end which was pretty classy - Eternal Butts. However, in the end we thought Ascendant fit the theme and tone a smidge more.




Stalk us:

With the reveal of our new name we have also set up our very own website HapaGames.com where you can look at some picturs of the team, keep up to date on us, and other website like things. In addition to the website I want to remind everyone that we also have a Facebook page as well a Twitter updated by us.

Deadly Vixens From Concept to Model:

On a more gameplay related note Karen has modeled a new enemy for us based on Ryo's concepts. We plan on making the pink swirls that engulf her, and other enemies, attached through a socket system. This will allow us to switch out these patterns with different ones based on certain cumstances within the game.





Check out the model in more detail here.


Sharp & Pointy:

Sean has been busy making a bunch of different weapons and one of the next things on our list to do is getting them into the game. The Tentative plan is that the different weapons will have charastics such as speed, damage, etc. and the player will be able to imbue them adding extra charastics to it.

« Last Edit: September 27, 2013, 11:55:40 AM by pants » Logged

pants
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« Reply #28 on: October 10, 2013, 02:37:04 PM »

Grab some Popcorn!

Because we have a gameplay video!

http://www.indiedb.com/games/ascendant

As you can see most of the enemies are still running on rudimentary AI, but one of our programmers on working on making them smarter. Pretty soon we should have the enemies reacting to situations, and a post to go with it!
 Gentleman


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Pastywhite
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« Reply #29 on: October 10, 2013, 09:10:22 PM »

The art direction on this looks really cool. I like that the gameplay has elements that are reminiscent of Strider. And I know this might be slightly off topic, but I'm really glad to see you have a decent and functioning website. It kinda drives me nuts when people post links to their official sites and the link is dead.
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pants
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« Reply #30 on: October 11, 2013, 08:57:35 AM »

Thank you, I'm glad you like it and our website!

As for the gameplay, we've started iterating on it since the video. Right now we are adding in different weapons you can get as well as an aspect system which imbues your weapons with special abilities. It's not redefining the gameplay so it's similar to the video, but it should add a nice variance to it that will keep runs feeling fresh.
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pants
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« Reply #31 on: October 24, 2013, 11:46:52 AM »

UI: User Interface

Our gameplay has been making tremendous progress since the video, however I would like to wait a little bit before I share those fruits with you. Mainly due to getting new enemies who are currently a bit dumb since they have not seen the love their brothers and sisters have yet. We should be able to get them there, or at least close, by the beginning of next week.

Another front that we have been progressing pretty far in is the UI. This week Brian has been focusing on getting in all the elements our artists have been diligently working on. This includes the main menu and character select below. The idea is for the player to select different unlocked demigods to play as who have different abilities and stats imbued in them.




UI: Useless Information

As for our in game UI we are pushing to remove any and all useless UI that may overload the player with info they don't need. This comes from the design as well as the art style, which means we want to limit and replace the amount of health bars, mana bars, damage numbers, status conditions that flash on the screen with stylized and unobtrusive UI.

An example of this is our mana/spell counter. We put the individual spells on the back of the player as a counter of how many shots they have left. Sort of like how Deadspace put the health bar and hud onto the back of Isaac. We want to try doing this in other ways as well
if it ends up working out.




UI: Useful Information

Yet, we do know there are some things the player will always want on hand that will influence their decisions. These things such as Health, Keys, and Currency we are trying to keep on the screen at all times. Beneath is our first iteration of it playing together.


 
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pants
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« Reply #32 on: October 27, 2013, 09:03:46 AM »

Spring Has Sprung!

So, I realized in the last update I showed some of spring off without realizing I haven't really shown spring off. I would like to rectify this with a few full screen shots of spring.



Spring assets are coming together very, very well thanks to Mike, Anthony, and Sean. Each Piece has an abundance of setdressing options to help keep the visuals staying fresh.






And an explosion to end the screenshots!

Pretty short update but soon I will show how we are actually making the levels and keeping the scope down while still being able to create a bunch of variants of rooms. For now I hope you liked the new season.

 Beer!
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« Reply #33 on: October 27, 2013, 12:49:59 PM »

I'm liking the art!

Reminds me of Samurai Jack.
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« Reply #34 on: October 27, 2013, 01:09:54 PM »

The art is great. The menu has awesome colours. Looking at the screenshot it feels like the main character could use more colour contrast against the background.
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« Reply #35 on: October 27, 2013, 01:20:40 PM »

It's a great clean and elegant style, and nice to see such a big team. Good luck, guys.
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pants
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« Reply #36 on: October 28, 2013, 12:30:17 PM »

I'm liking the art!

Reminds me of Samurai Jack.

Thanks! We definitely took some inspiration from that show. It was a classic growing up and is still fresh and cool to watch now.

The art is great. The menu has awesome colours. Looking at the screenshot it feels like the main character could use more colour contrast against the background.


We are trying to do different things with his outline to make him pop a bit more. Hopefully that will help. There are several other characters that players can unlock with very different colors as well.

It's a great clean and elegant style, and nice to see such a big team. Good luck, guys.

Thanks for the well wishes! We have tried to stay consistent with our art style and there have certainly been some challenges. This Spring level is the closest we have to a vertical slice of our content thus far.
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pants
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« Reply #37 on: November 01, 2013, 01:11:03 PM »

Ascendant is now up on Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight. You would be supporting us immensely by taking a quick peek at the links below. If you like what you see, please think about supporting us by voting Yes on Greenlight or backing the game on Kickstarter. Thank you so much, TIGForum!

Links


A couple of enticing screenshots!






If you need a summary of the game before you check it out:

You, as the Ascendant, suddenly manifest in a world populated by raging fanatics, devout zealots, and wild beasts, furious at your arrival into their plane. You are a challenge to the rule of the older, tyrannical gods, and they will stop at nothing to eliminate you. The world has succumbed to their might and you must travel through the land gaining strength, enhancing your abilities, and gathering an army of followers to oppose their reign.

Ascendant is very much a brawler at heart. You will constantly be in the middle of combat as you progress through the game, bashing your way through the throngs of fervent zealots, rabid beasts, and indomitable bosses. Additionally, the game takes a lot of features from one of our favorite genres – roguelikes – and puts them to good use. Permadeath, character enhancement, random drops, dynamically assembled content; these things and more are featured in Ascendant.

Thank you again for your support. Please take a look at our Kickstarter and Greenlight pages! We will love you forever.

 
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adganong
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« Reply #38 on: November 01, 2013, 01:38:02 PM »

Gah! This looks incredibly cool, I will have to come and check it out when i have more time!
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« Reply #39 on: November 01, 2013, 01:44:14 PM »

Thank you! We aren't going anywhere so come back anytime :D
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