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[AwkwardKnightGames]

Update - January 24, 2015

Despite the hell that is midterms, I have been able to make some great progress with Caelis.

Firstly, I have added more objects that the player can interact with. My favorite one is a crate that the player can throw around. When it's picked up, the player's movement is slowed. I have made a few carrying animations, but I'm not sure if I'm happy with them yet.

I have also added an objective system. It is able to read from a text file and construct objective lines. Using the crate throwing, I was able to make a short test mission in order to try out this new system. It works pretty well, but I'm not sure how it will handle extremely long missions. Below is an example of a test mission that involves bringing a crate to a certain building.

The objectives also are connected to a HUD system that is able to determine which tasks have been completed and strikes them.

I also added some cute idle animations such as blinking and yawning.
   

And of course, what is an indie game without a cat?!

As always, please leave your thoughts below!
Matt

[~Tidal]

If I were you, I would change the title: the current one seems an horror game one. If I look at you game I won't stay, because it isn't scary out there. I would rather explore that world.

[AwkwardKnightGames]

If I were you, I would change the title: the current one seems an horror game one. If I look at you game I won't stay, because it isn't scary out there. I would rather explore that world.

I have been meaning to, but I am just not creative when it comes to naming things. Thanks for the feedback and expect a name change soon

[SirSwiftSword]

"Woah this is cool a game made by a 15 year old. Wait... I'm 15. I haven't done anything in my life." jokes aside congrats this is amazing and I hope you make it.

[AwkwardKnightGames]

Update - Feb. 2, 2015

Hey guys! Sorry that I haven't been as active on here, but I've still been working hard on Caelis. 

I added lots of new areas to Rosemill, the beginning town in the game. There are now 6 houses and 5 shops all ready to be explored! I am still working on adding more variety to the interiors of each of the buildings, but the framework is in place and all I have to do is create more art assets. I've also been able to add four new objectives and have been working on constructing the main storyline.

This is one of the basic designs for The Screaming Potion, the shop in Rosemill.

Recently, I have also revamped the day-night cycle. I made the day-night cycle smoother as well as added stars. The stars are randomly generated and randomly flicker. The flicker is simply changing size by a few pixels and then returning to their original size. The stars also randomly appear on the screen creating an even smoother transition. I also changed the street lamps and made them also randomly start turning on and off to make the transition feel even better.

I cleaned up the math for rotating pixels. Before there were small gaps between pixels during my matrix multiplication. But the method scales the sprite by two, scales it, then scales it back down in order to get rid of the awkward spaces. The rotation itself is performed by matrix multiplication which I'm sure you can find somewhere if you google it. haha.

I am currently in the process of writing the narrative for this game, but I'm not the best at doing that. So if you have any ideas about the narrative, or anything about Caelis in general, please leave a reply down below!

Matt

[LuluLu]

The day-night cycle looks super cozy and great! maybe the protagonist could go on some sort of journey in order to save the kingdom or something. But keep up the work, it's looking great!

[AwkwardKnightGames]

Update - February 13, 2015

Hey guys! Sorry I haven't been able to post updates that frequently, I have been swamped with schoolwork and basketball (high school problems haha).

I have added many new features to Caelis. I have begun developing the first forest level as well as implementing some of the physics in order to create projectile magic. I have also designed explosions by rendering circles that ease in and out of the player's view. It also uses particles in order to create that smooth explosion style. The explosion is randomly generated as well as the speed and color of the particles.

I also started working on parallax scrolling. The background of the forest shows off this feature of the Caelis. There are several layers of the forest that all scroll at different speeds and are able to loop accordingly to the style of which they loop. There is also a slight tint and blur in the layers as they get away from the camera. The tint is a fog or sorts with a slightly blue hue.

Any thoughts???


Matt

[LuluLu]

Once again, it's looking great! The little wizard is super cute. Try adding some green to those trees to make the forest feel more alive though. Just a thought

[AwkwardKnightGames]

Custom Level Editor from Scratch!!

The past week in development, I have been making a level editor for Caelis from scratch entirely in Java. There are many options in the level editor: gameobjects can be placed, mobs handled, level names altered, and tiles drawn. It allows for all of the levels in Caelis to be updated in-game and quickly save to a .txt to be loaded when needed. In terms of what can be edited, it depends on what you selected.

If you selected an object, it's x, y, width, height, color, level, and light emission can be changed. Also, you can change its layer. It's layer changes the order that the objects are rendered. The rendering system first sorts all of the gameobjects by layer. Then it divides even further by looking at the position of the object and whether or not it is currently visible on the screen. This is the most efficient way to handle rendering as it doesn't waste resources rendering objects that can't even be seen.



More details on how the objects are selected: it checks if the current position the mouse intersects with a pixel of the sprite. Then, it determines if the pixel that the mouse is over is transparent or if it is actually a visible pixel. This allows more precise control when selecting objects because if transparency didn't matter when making selections, it would be near impossible to layer various objects as the selection area would be a rectangle and it would be hard to overlap them and accurately choose the desired object. 

These are some houses that I made quickly with this new development system

   

[AwkwardKnightGames]

March 5, 2015

I remade the entire forest level as well as made lots of little tweaks. This week, I began developing the opening sequence of events. The player will start in one of the small towns, Finn's hometown and he will eventually learn lots of amazing information that will motivate him to go exploring. He eventually makes his way to a forest, filled with the evil bunnies. I remade this level with the new level editor and I made lots of visual changes such as this cliff and waterfall.

The current design of the town of Rosemill.

I added lots of cute animations as well including my favorite, the waking up animation. I also created the main menu.

Thoughts? Please leave any feedback and I'll be sure to update soon!

[AwkwardKnightGames]

After about two months in development, there is finally a little demo for Caelis. It is available on itch.io.

There are still lots of little bugs and things that I'm going to change. But I just want to get some of your ideas and critique before I get too deep into development.

DOWNLOAD

Leave any feedback!
Matt

[MereMonkey]

Hey Matthew just after trying out the pre-alpha build, first off from what I was able to play of it was  great. Here are some things that came to mind when playing it some of which you may already be aware of:   

Version - Mac

1. I love the musical speech you have going on haha reminds of Banjo Kazooie!

2. Once you die and press E to retry you respawn floating in the forest's back drop unable to move.

3.You should add to the controls section on your website - Press E to return. Took me a while to figure out how to close the shop menu screen.

4. You can click on a chair to sit down from a distance and it will teleport you to it. An example of this is the high up chair next to the butcher's shop, just jump/click.

5. When you mouse over a character I think their name should show up since at times the shopkeepers are not in their shops and you have to go find them.

6.In this version of the game you already have enough coinage to buy the ale even without hangleing.

7. During my first playthrough I explored the town before visiting old Charlie and activated the knife crate quest. There are a couple of things about this quest that I feel could be improved on. First off the magic shop owner says "can you carry this crate to the butchers" when it's actually half way across town haha. The needed create doesn't actually spawn in until you have ha the ale conversation with the butcher. Since there is already a crate by the bridge I tried giving this on to him by going into his shop with it. When inside the crate was invisible though my hands were out as if I was still carrying it. Later I discovered the new crate that spawned in and that worked. Possibly you should have a knife symbol on this crate to inform the player that it is different to the other crate and maybe have the shopkeeper say something along the lines of "It has a huge Knife on the side of it, you'll never miss it".

8.At the moment the SFX you have assigned to the player impacting the ground after jumping feels slightly out of place maybe decrease the low end on them so it's less boomy.

9. When clicking to speak to someone it often froze for me.

10. Once I got the ale and went back to Charlie he would repeat the conversation as before. Once he had finished I would click on him again which cause it to freeze. This is the point I got to in the game as I could not seem to get pass it without this happening. (Tried fives times)

Annnnd that's everything I came across! Like you said there are still lots of little bugs that you will get to but I'm sure as those are sorted it will be awesome.

Looking forward to seeing more! 

[AwkwardKnightGames]

March 14, 2015

I started working on little details that make Caelis feel and look great. I also started work on a third town, Orland. Orland is a large mountain town with a unique top level as well as an underground. I hope to utilize the cave exploration/middle divide feature in order to create an underground that can be explored.

This week, these are my favorite features that I added.

Bunnies now turn into ash when they are destroyed using magic or fire.





I added AI for enemies that allow them to fire arrows at the player if the player is more than 25 tiles away or there is no path to the player.




The AI also calculates where to fire if the player is running, by taking the player's current x and y velocities and locating a point. Then the angle is calculated between the current location of the arrow to that target point and the arrow is released at that angle allowing it to hit the player pretty consistently.

Thanks for reading, and be sure to check back for updates and leave any feedback you have!
Matt

[jovanmilic97]

This looks great,I hope you ll finish it .Will you go to the Steam Greenlight?

[Pixel Noise]

Very cool, and it's still very early - looking forward to seeing this develop. Following!

[TheChaoticGood]

You have a ton of progress for it being pre-alpha. My pre-alpha didn't look anywhere as good as this.

[AwkwardKnightGames]

March 31, 2015

Thanks for all of your feedback! Over the past few weeks, I have been adding lots of content such as new towns, mobs, AI, and objects all over Caelis. One of the newest towns is called Orland. It is populated with lots of northern-type people who come across as very brash and rough towards Finn. Also there a lot of new items such as gravestones, barrels, buckets, and towers.

   

I cleaned up the mountains in the background by removing the outline and giving them a more smooth appearance. Also, on the left is Orland, the new town I was talking about before.

Another screenshot of Orland. This also shows some of the new objects that I have been working on, gravestones.

Finally, one of my favorite new features of Caelis. I added a sun and moon that corresponds to the day-night cycle. It uses matrix rotation in order to rotate around a central point on the screen. I made it link up to the day-night cycle by adjusting the speed of which it rotates.

This looks great,I hope you ll finish it .Will you go to the Steam Greenlight?

Yeah! I hope to eventually get Caelis to Steam Greenlight. I also am going to launch a KickStarter campaign in order to raise the money necessary to fully polish, add all the features I want, and get a full length feature soundtrack for Caelis.

As always, please leave any feedback that you have below and follow me here or on Twitter for more updates!

[flyingmangoes]

This all looks incredibly interesting and beautiful.  I'm glad to see people my age (I'm 13) love pixel art just as much as I do!  Can't wait to see what this becomes!

[AwkwardKnightGames]

Hey guys -

Sorry for going MIA the last few months, but I'm back and working on Caelis like never before! 

I've spent a lot of the last month cleaning up code and adding small details. I have been able to consolidate a lot of the code and make it more readable as well as fix up some bugs.

Production wise, I have started work on another town, a port city called Blueport. I have also worked to create a new main menu and title sequence. The biggest feature that I've added is the character customization. Using the method I created, the player can choose the name, gender, appearance, and build of their hero. There are several different hair styles, builds, and color options and I only hope to add more as development continues.










As always, please leave any feedback that you have and stay tuned for lots of exciting updates!
Matt