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[castled]

Latest video:


What:
Glyphseeker is a fast-paced combat platformer, where you wield a number of powerful spells and face off against smart enemies.

How:
You must collect mystical Glyphs during your travels. Doing so will allow you to unlock more spells. Spells are arranged in a skill tree of sorts, with fire, air, water, and earth branches available at the root of the tree. Additional magic types lie beyond the base elements. As you progress, you may specialize in a few specific types of magic. Your capabilities and strategies will vary considerably depending on your choices!

Why:
My goal with Glyphseeker is to create a game with tight mechanics and a fun variety of abilities. Too often games have spell systems that end up being very generic. Sure, there might be different damage types, but the use and delivery is often very similar between abilities when they're dynamically generated or crafted. I'm looking to create a set of spells that have many unique properties.

Under all that, I'm focusing on making the platforming mechanics top-notch. And I'm not a pro pixel artist, but I hope to create juicy sprites and environments suited to the action.

When/Development:
Glyphseeker is being developed by Hypothetical Games, a one man team! The game is still in early development, as it was just started in May 2014. I'm looking to finish in Q1 2015. You can follow my progress here, and these places:

Content archive (latest to oldest)

Images:
fight in forest
large forest scene

Videos:

-- Glyphseeker is being developed by --

@hypGames

[yuotta]

I really like the art in this! I think it's cool that you are making it with a custom engine, interested to see where it goes!

[SamLouix]

I like the style and your ambition, I'm going to send you a message.   

[castled]

Thanks very much for the compliments!

I've finally (after a bit of behind-the-scenes refactoring) added the first enemy:



He's some sort of troll-dude, native to this forest level. He's a dope right now, just throwing his spears randomly and walking between walls and cliffs. My next task will be to make a framework for the AI with logical states and whatnot.

Also I'm not entirely happy with the particle effect for the spear hit, probably do some tweaking there.

[loudo]

I love your troll and the way he throws his spear. Nice pixel art too.
Good luck with your project.

[Derqs]

Cool stuff so far. Your pixelart looks fantastic, love that troll! His throwing arm does look a bit weird when he's holding the spear.

[castled]

Agreed, I should probably tweak the troll's animations a bit. He needs stun/death animations too.

I've finished the first player spell, called Stone Toss. When you use it in the air or too close to a ledge, it's not very effective...



But when you cast it with ground in front of you:



That's a powerful boulder! Albeit not simple to use. I'm looking to make many of the game's spells like this -- with a few intricacies and some complexity. At the moment I'm only looking to have ~16 total so it should be doable.

It's fun to use in tunnels 

[Pezomi]

looking great! I love the use of the boulder in tunnels! Looks like there is some fun to be had already!

[Jad]

PLEASE APPLY SCREEN SHAKE TO THAT BOULDER 

[castled]

PLEASE APPLY SCREEN SHAKE TO THAT BOULDER 

Done!



probably needs an option to turn it off too

[castled]

So I started work on background tiles, and added parallax to the engine. I noticed I was starting to get a bit of an FPS drop with lots of sprites onscreen. Since I was just using a naive approach and considering each item for drawing it wasn't surprising.

So I spent some time making sure only onscreen backgrounds and tiles are considered each draw step. To do this I simply put those in 2D vectors instead of a list, with different vectors for different parallax layers/depth zones. Then I could draw from the areas in the vectors corresponding to the screen. The more robust/flexible solution would have been putting them into a Quadtree, but this solution was faster to code and works fine for the scope of what I want to do.

Afterwards I was happy to see a consistent 60fps even in debug build. I decided to stress the engine...


I don't think I'll ever need more objects onscreen than this!

[castled]

"Dusk! With a creepy, tingling sensation, you hear the fluttering of leathery wings! Bats! With glowing red eyes and gleaming fangs, these unspeakable giant bugs drop onto..."



(sorry for the weird artifacts)

[castled]

Been working on an AI framework. Bats acquire nearby players and bite them!



I was testing a long (2 second) stun on the bat's attack, so right now if he gets you once, he'll usually chainstun you to death!



Also I need to limit the capability of the AI to change the unit velocity when stunned, a small issue in the above gif where the bats continue to swoop in despite being hit by the boulder.

You might notice that there's no interaction between player and enemy collisions in the game. I think I'll be keeping it that way, and have enemies hurt you via an attack animation or projectile only. I've always felt that's a bit more fair way for things to work, unless the enemy is covered in spikes or something.

[clockwrk_routine]

like where this project is going
stun animation is pretty great

[castled]

like where this project is going
stun animation is pretty great

Thanks! I gotta say I'm a huge fan of what you're doing with Vagante too !!

The stun animation for units when they're on the ground is tied to the stun length as well, should help give a sense of how long a stun will last.

I have a question for people -- given the style of the game so far and your own personal opinion on the matter, do you think I should have (possibly gruesome) blood effects? It would certainly add a visceral feeling to hits, but I don't want to turn off people who think it's unnecessary. I'm undecided.

[Guitarmatt21]

You could make it optional like the screen shake, eventually all your features can turn into their own option menu skill tree of sorts    Also, do you have anyone doing music for the game yet?

[clockwrk_routine]

I think blood would be fine and not too out of hand for this game, you should show us.  the hits lack impact for sure, try adding hurt frames on the enemies

[castled]

Decided to spruce up the blog frontpage a bit, (finally) decided on a company name, got a twitter and whatnot!

I've added the blood effects, this gif doesn't actually show them too well:


I should take an actual video of the game, as the gifs are getting huge now that the game has backgrounds!

The background tiles are coming together for the dusky forest level.
large forest scene

[castled]

First Glyphseeker video:

[castled]

Two new spells!

Flame burst:
gfycat


It's the basic short range attack. It deals 2/3 of the damage through a fire effect over time. This one's quite cheap mana-wise and spammable.

Bubble shield:
gfycat


Enemies and projectiles harmlessly bounce off the bubble shield. It lasts six seconds, or until it takes 6 hits/bounces. You're a bit slower with a bubble around you, and the spell is pretty expensive to cast.

Now I just need to implement a double-jump spell to round out the basic four (with one of each air, earth, water, and fire).