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[Philcrifo]

Overview:

Fossil Echo is a 2D platformer/adventure game coming for PC, Mac & Linux.

Influenced by the Oddworld series, Ico & Shadow of the Colossus, as well as Studio Ghibli films,
Fossil Echo tells the story of a young boy and his journey to climb a giant tower in the middle of the sea.

How he got there, and, more importantly, Why? are questions that will be answered via playable flashbacks during his ascent.
And for those willing to meet the challenge, eight temples offer some insight on the game's lore and back-story.

It is planned to release sometime in 2015.





Some screenshots:








For more, higher resolution screenshots & info, visit:



You can also follow @FossilEcho or @Philcrifo (me) on Twitter for some insight on the development process.


The Devlog:

I'll try to update this thread with relevant stuff, but I'd especially like to hear from you and what you're interested in seeing.

If you have any questions about the game, the team, de development process... please ask away!

Cheers!

[qwurp]

Looks lovely! Will be sure to drop it a vote!

[Philcrifo]

Thank you very much 

[arrebeat]

Beautiful! Just beautiful!

Oddworld is always a welcome inspiration! I noticed your camera following the main character around, though. No static camera angles on this one? Not that it's something bad! Just an interesting topic for discussion 

[Philcrifo]

Beautiful! Just beautiful!

Oddworld is always a welcome inspiration! I noticed your camera following the main character around, though. No static camera angles on this one? Not that it's something bad! Just an interesting topic for discussion 

Yes, we have a subtle parallax effect to add depth, with levels varying in width, but it's not side scrolling, it's still "1 screen" levels you switch between.

[tjpalmer]

Wowsers. How long does it take to make all that beautiful art? I could stand to see more animation frames in the main character still though, maybe.

[Philcrifo]

Wowsers. How long does it take to make all that beautiful art? I could stand to see more animation frames in the main character still though, maybe.

The character animations are 12fps, they do look a little choppy in the video (due tu capture framerate) but I feel like it's barely noticeable when playing the game at 60fps.

[Philcrifo]

Hi!

Here's a little rundown about how the levels are put together:



The player will be inserted just on top of the Gameplan so he goes below the Gameplan-front.
The background is smaller in width than the gameplans and the foreground is wider.
The layers are aligned to the side of the screen depending on the character's potision in the scene, creating the parallax effect.
The effects & particles often go just on top of the character or in the very front of the foreground.

After than a colored layer is added with an Overlay blend mode to kind of unify the scene, in that case it looks like this:



On top of that we put some grain (Overlay) that is a single image being flipped horizontaly and vertically repeatedly, and a vignette to darken the corners of the frame.

Result:



This is after the actual art has been produced, but if you guys are interested about what comes before/after that, let me know.

In other news, we've been featured on Kotaku! We're thrilled.

Cheers!

[Philcrifo]

We've been Greenlit!

We're delighted :-) Thank you very much if you stopped by and voted.

I'm going to post a recap of the whole process, hoping it helps other devs who are, like we were, a little lost when jumping into it.

Cheers!

[Fenrir]

That was fast! Congrats!

[Philcrifo]

That was fast! Congrats!

Yes, very unexpected. We're super happy

Here's a blog post about the process: Hitting A Piñata: My Experience With Steam Greenlight

[Philcrifo]

New screenshot for #ScreenshotSaturday

[Pidroh]

I really like you showing off the layers like that, makes it look really cool and inspires me to work on my graphics!

I love those butterflies and the water... Very awesome. Congratulations on getting greenlit! The trailer is very emotional, very well done, did you make in house? How big is the team?

Would you mind talking a bit, programming wise, about your particles and the butterflies?

[Philcrifo]

I really like you showing off the layers like that, makes it look really cool and inspires me to work on my graphics!

I love those butterflies and the water... Very awesome. Congratulations on getting greenlit! The trailer is very emotional, very well done, did you make in house? How big is the team?

Would you mind talking a bit, programming wise, about your particles and the butterflies?

Sure! It'd be my pleasure! Let me cook something up :-)

Thanks for asking!
Cheers!

[Jon]

Beautiful work! Congratulations on being Greenlit, and thanks for posting about your Greenlight experience! Your post was very educational
What tools are you using to create Fossil Echo, by the way?

[Philcrifo]

Beautiful work! Congratulations on being Greenlit, and thanks for posting about your Greenlight experience! Your post was very educational
What tools are you using to create Fossil Echo, by the way?

Thanks a lot! We're super happy to have been Greenlit that fast, it's a weight off our chests. Glad the post was useful in any way, too.

We're developing with XNA and will be using MonoGame to port to Mac/Lin.

[Philcrifo]

So Pidroh asked me how we deal with particles;

Our process is very simple, nothing revolutionary.

Particles themselves are either a single frame or an animated sprite. Example:


There are 4 different 'bokeh' sprites


The small 'air particles' are animated sprites.

I create an .XML file with all the emitter's data. This includes;

Particle Number: The N° of particles emitted
Burst: True/Fase - If the particles are emitted continually or only once
Animstretch: True/False - If the sprite's animation stretches to fit the particle's lifetime

Speed/Scale/Direction/Rotation: Min/Max - The range of Speed/Scale/Direction/Rotation can be applied to the particle when it spawns
Change Speed/Scale/Direction/Rotation: Min/Max - The amount a particle's Speed/Scale/Direction/Rotation can change during its lifetime

Lifetime: Min/Max - The duration of the particle's life cycle

Mid Alpha Time: The point when the particle reaches its 'Alpha Mid' value (in % of lifetime)
End Alpha Time: The point when the particle starts reaching to its 'Alpha End' value (in % of lifetime)

Alpha Start: The alpha value when the particle spawns
Alpha Mid: The alpha value when the particle reaches its 'Mid Alpha Time'
Alpha End: The alpha value at the end of the particle's life cycle

R: Red color value
G: Green color value
B: Blue color value
(The three have Start/Mid/End values allowing to change color over time)



A fog emitter would be soft 'smoke' sprites with a long lifetime and low alpha (Start: 0, mid: 50, end: 0) and some low horizontal speed and a slow rotation.
While a water droplet would be a blurry 'drop' sprite with a short lifetime, fast vertical speed, no rotation and short alpha transitions, for example.

So as I said, nothing out of the ordinary, but if you have questions please ask away  

Cheers!

[Pidroh]

Thanks a lot for taking the time to write it, Philcrifo!

I wouldn't imagine the air particles would be an animated sprite as a particle, heh. It does look good! I always think it must be some OpenGL magic I don't know about.

[Philcrifo]

#ScreenshotSaturday - Happy new year everyone!

[Philcrifo]

Hi everyone!

We just got back from London where we were showing the game at EGX Rezzed, alongside other cool indie games in the Leftfield Collection.

It has been three amazing (and tiring) days where we got to meet a lot of friendly indie devs and got a lot of people to try the game (I'd say a little less than 200 but I didn't count); this was very valuable for us and even if the reception was very positive, we're already tweaking stuff based on what we saw there

Only "complaint" I have is the lack of Press presence in the indie area. EGX being a huge event with many of the big names, I feel like the Press had their hands full with the big stuff; that's understandable.


Here are some pics;

Entrance of the Leftfield Collection


This is how packed it was pretty much all day


People trying out the demo build



We had a feedback notebook, It may look a bit cheap, but I find that people often feel more comfortable writting (either positive or negative) feedback down than telling you in person, so it's been very valuable.


Bonus pic

Finally, my advice for any indie dev attending an event; bring a lot of hand sanitizer, I've been sick for two days since I got back

Cheers!