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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsUPDATED 10/30/2018! A survival horror game inspired of older turn-based RPGs!
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Author Topic: UPDATED 10/30/2018! A survival horror game inspired of older turn-based RPGs!  (Read 28383 times)
FrankieSmileShow
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« on: July 02, 2014, 11:22:19 PM »

NOTE: A lot has changed on this project since this first post! Check out this post here for details.

This game started out as a little Rpg Maker side-project I started as an excuse to draw a bunch of goofy spooky monsters every weekend (thus the working title of "WeekendRPG"), and to give the newer RPG Maker programs a try years after using RPG Maker 2000 back in the day. It has since grown into a pretty big project, and is now being made in Game Maker Studio 2.



Here is the original first post, back when this was an RPG Maker game. A lot of it is still relevant!
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A few weeks ago, I started work on this thing:




I'm thinking I should update some sort of dev log. I work on this on the weekends only. I have been working 6 days so far, next saturday is day 7.

I'm thinking this is something simpler. A nice ol side project, with less pressure. Something easy. This is made in Rpg Maker VX Ace, baby!

I started it just for fun. Idea was, I didn't touch a RPG MAKER since like 2004. What if I went back to it with fresh eyes? Maybe, just maybe the restrictions and premade things will spur some creativity instead of feeling oppressive and limiting...

But after about a week of work, I learned there was a contest going on mainly for RPG Maker games, deadline being June 30th, midnight. So I wrapped up a shorter version of the game, and signed it up! I started the game mid-june, so I didnt really have much time, but still, its worth a shot.


You can play it here:
Get The Prototype Here
This is an old demo after about a month of development. Its more than a year old now, but still shows the games overall idea and direction pretty well.

The overall idea is to try and make a simple game in RPG Maker, sticking mostly to the built-in engine (except with a few customizations here and there) and try to make it fun. Having fun combat is pretty difficult with a vanilla, dragon warrior esque turn based combat system, so I decided to design the game more like survival horror. Scarcity with items, no grinding possible, finite ways to recover health, equippable weapons break etc. A big inspiration is the game Sweet Home for the famicom, which I think hits a lot of really good notes on making a "normal" turn-based RPG exciting.

I've been recording time lapse videos of the entire process of making this game:




I've also been streaming a lot of it. I'm not streaming now, but next time I am, maybe ill post a link here? If anyone's interested?
« Last Edit: October 30, 2018, 02:39:37 AM by FrankieSmileShow » Logged

dancing_dead
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« Reply #1 on: July 02, 2014, 11:33:51 PM »

pretty!

and that is what counts in a devlog, right?
haha, but seriously, great color choices.
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« Reply #2 on: July 03, 2014, 01:52:16 PM »

Your dev log is fun to follow. I love watching your spriting. The game has been downloaded, I'll give it a shot later.
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FrankieSmileShow
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« Reply #3 on: July 03, 2014, 09:20:40 PM »

Put up a new time lapse, the latest one.




(any way to embed videos here? I forget.)

With this, the time lapses are up to date with the current playable game.
Gonna keep going with day 7 this saturday, going to expand the city a bit.
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« Reply #4 on: July 03, 2014, 10:26:29 PM »

i know the thing was coming because i watch most of the streams but i still got spooked
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« Reply #5 on: July 05, 2014, 02:24:55 AM »

Haven't tried the game yet but loving those timelapses and how you color things! Following.
« Last Edit: July 05, 2014, 03:55:30 AM by umutD » Logged

FrankieSmileShow
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« Reply #6 on: July 05, 2014, 04:03:48 PM »

http://www.twitch.tv/frankiepixelshow Streaming some work on the game right now. Going to be expanding the city a little.
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« Reply #7 on: July 05, 2014, 09:30:19 PM »

Nice art, and colours. Congrats for avoiding the 'Made in RPG Maker' look.

Would be keen to see how it turns out.
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« Reply #8 on: July 06, 2014, 10:17:38 AM »

That demo(?) was super fun. I got to the church, but some SFX error made the game close out. That was alot of fun though, i love how the choices and survival options panned out.

I would honestly play a game like this for hours on end if I could. Great work!

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FrankieSmileShow
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« Reply #9 on: October 31, 2014, 09:39:23 AM »

Haven't really updated this in a while, here's a recap of what I've been doing on this in the past two months.

  • Designed a new dungeon to replace the placeholder final area of the playable demo in the first post
  • Added more NPCs, added an ambush inside of a house, where some bandits get ya. Added broken glass on the floor that triggers enemies to come running at the crunch
  • Added hunger. Your energy (Mana/magic/ability fuel) goes down over time by one point. its very slow, but faster when you walk, and much faster when you run. (enough that running wastes about 2x more food for the same distance traveled)
    Once you run out of energy, your health starts to go down instead, by 2% of your CURRENT health, rounded. The drain slows down and eventually stops when you have 25 life left, so hunger can't kill you on its own, just weakens you a lot. Also, it means characters with a high max health get much more damage from hunger. Big warriors need more food.
  • Made food items all heal your energy as well as your health. Usually, meat gives more energy and veggies give more health. Bread gives you almost no energy, but adds an extra delay before hunger resumes draining your energy, like its just staving off the hunger.
  • Made it so you can switch weapons during battle. Was a bit tricky, had to figure out how RPG Maker VX's battle code works under the hood. A lot of hunting down functions and experimenting to get that right. Theres still some bits im not sure I understand...
  • Expanded the area to the west of the starting point, the part walled off in the playable demo. Added a mansion and a cemetary there, some houses.
  • Designed the western mansion, a big building infested with plant-mutants.
  • Did a whole lot of planning. Got one of those scary ever-growing design documents and maps. Lots of spooky events in there. The story though is still kind of vague. Its taking shape, but lots of its parts don't quite fit together yet. You know, like some motivations don't really make sense? Guess I'm waiting for an epiphany on some of that.
  • Drew a lot of monsters to fight. Like half of my weekends were spent just drawing spooky monsters. Here's the ones I put on my Pixeljoint so far:


Been streaming and recording timelapses of most of this, except for the planning stuff and some monsters I want to keep secret, like the final boss and some quests with twist endings and the like.
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FrankieSmileShow
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« Reply #10 on: November 02, 2014, 09:30:25 AM »

http://www.twitch.tv/frankiepixelshow
Streaming some more pixel art monsters right now. Gonna be drawing weird, alien-looking angels.
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FrankieSmileShow
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« Reply #11 on: November 06, 2014, 05:29:51 PM »

Drew some monsters recently on my stream. Drawing some more right now on my stream!


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« Reply #12 on: November 06, 2014, 05:34:04 PM »

been following this on youtube and stream, and frankie's work never disapoint, you have my full support bro   Hand Money Left  Addicted
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Nicholas Lives
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« Reply #13 on: November 07, 2014, 05:34:20 PM »

Guhhhh that art. Blink Blink I love it, man. The colors, the shapes, the monsters. Everything here is awesome. Can't wait to see more!
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FrankieSmileShow
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« Reply #14 on: November 08, 2014, 09:53:28 PM »

Trying something new! I will stream the design process of a new dungeon. Its probably gonna be really bad, but who knows.
tune in if that sounds interesting to you!
http://www.twitch.tv/frankiepixelshow
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Impmaster
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« Reply #15 on: November 09, 2014, 05:53:47 PM »

Following cause I saw your twitch stream.
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« Reply #16 on: November 09, 2014, 06:38:01 PM »

Haven't played the game yet, but I find the YouTube videos quite enjoyable! Love to see the art come together.
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FrankieSmileShow
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« Reply #17 on: February 20, 2015, 07:14:29 PM »

Still workin on this! Didnt post in a while though. Here are some monsters:




Drew all of these on my stream a while back. Three of those are vampires, and one is an angel.

More recent news, I've found a contender for the game's title. Not sure about it yet though, we'll see if I find something better.
Its "the eye in the dark"....


Overall improvements in the past few months, other than lots of monster drawing and laying out areas:


-When picking a target in battle, the game tells you how far the target is, the reach of your weapon, and the accuracy reduction from it all, color coded. Also tells you that you get x2 critical hit rate if the weapon's reach and targets' range match. This was an important addition, since an enemy's distance isn't always obvious from the sprite alone, and changing weapons mid-battle means its easy to forget which character has longer or shorter range with their attacks.


-When you try to escape, the game now tells you how good your escape chances are after the attempt, so you know if you are likely to succeed if you keep trying, or if its futile. The escape chance goes up a little bit at every attempt, so if you keep going at it, you might escape eventually, but its sometimes just impossible. When a battle starts, a random escape chance is picked, modified by some stats of the enemies and the party, so that every now and then you are forced to fight a battle out, when the random draw really wasnt on your side. When that random escape draw (before the modifiers are applied) is very low, you receive a warning at the start of the battle that escape will be difficult. This was also an important addition: Players should feel a bit more comfortable escaping battles in this game, and should know the difference between when they are just unlucky, and when a battle is just hard or impossible to escape from. There is gonna be a smoke bomb item you can use to both raise your escape chance and reduce enemy accuracy for a few turns, that you can use to either escape or just to get an edge in the fight.

-Worked on a bunch of special events and setpieces in the game, and worked on an area near the beginning of chapter 1. Some creepy things involving a headless guy and another with that green 3-armed butcher monster I posted a while back.

-I also mostly figured out the game's overall structure at this point, I will make a more detailed post on that in a bit. Its gonna have some spoilers tho, so watch out...  this forum has a hide tag for spoilers right? [hide] guass not.... whups... [/hide]

I haven't been recording as much of my streams, so fewer videos have been going up on my channel, but theres still a few new time lapses in there if you want to check em.



This Sunday I'll work more on that manor where the green butcher guy is. Planned some stuff for it this week, gona b sppok as hell.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2015, 07:19:52 PM by FrankieSmileShow » Logged

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« Reply #18 on: February 20, 2015, 09:56:07 PM »

Hot damn!
That crocosmile.
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« Reply #19 on: February 20, 2015, 10:00:57 PM »

FOLLOW. hi frankie, nice stuff as always
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