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[SouthpawHare]

Hello everyone!  It's been a long while since I posted here (and even back then, it was a small little thread), so I'm betting I should just reintroduce myself.  My name is Christopher "Southpaw Hare" Czyzewski, and I love making games   ....  Ok, so, I bet that's no surprise on this forum.  I'm a recent graduate from RPI in Troy, NY, and although I have a non-gamedev-related day job for money and living purposes, my game projects are my greatest passion, in which I pour my heart, soul, time, and effort into.  I've been working for quite some time on a project that I'm only now starting to feel confident in truly showing to others.

The game is Fimbulvetr: War of the Great Winter.  It is a hybrid of a lite Real-Time Strategy Game merged with a Fighting Game, in a setting featuring anthro animal characters warring in an only vaguely Norse Mythology-inspired world.  The fighting system, which has the most work done so far, is inspired by many other games of the same genre, but most primarily from Smash Bros., with it's simple, no-nonsense controls and two-dimensional spatial strategy elements.  The map portion of the game encompasses the grand scale of the overarching battle, with teams of several characters fighting smaller skirmishes across the landscape.

You can check out several of my videos discussing and showing the game here:

Gameplay Demonstration 3:


Gameplay Demonstration 2:


Gameplay Demonstration 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ejei3hhpz4

Weekly Update #17: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPvvF4vbTzE
Weekly Update #14: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08H8xZqtDZ8
Weekly Update #12: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwZJDH0tNgs
Weekly Update #9: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXfIPXjOBP4
Weekly Update #8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-uoYogEnaw
Weekly Update #5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAoTtbZeopM
Weekly Update #4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmxLJ2DTvZE
Weekly Update #1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLyZ50jNHso&feature=youtu.be

Preview 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPdXMu-EEHQ
Preview 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLd5vltQ_nU
Preview 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhkrmLgEYgs
Preview 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5zvbpmpAe4

And the list of downloadable releases here:
http://code.google.com/p/fimbulvetr/downloads/list


I am hoping for criticism and feedback of all variety, although as I'm sure is often the case, please note the early, pre-alpha, work-in-progress nature of the game.  The art is terrible, the sound and music non-existant, and well over half the functionality of the map mode has yet to be implemented it, leaving it presently rather superfluous.  With things things in mind, I invite all thoughts and discussions.  I appreciate all your time and interest!    

[Theon]

Um,
Did you try to write Fimbulvinter, and somehow fell on your keyboard?^^,

[LDuncan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fimbulwinter

^ Fimbulvetr is completely correct.

Anyway, looks interesting. I like the map, looks interesting how you're doing it--would like to see how it all eventually comes together once the programmer art is replaced.

[Mikademus]

"Fimbulvetr" might be technically correct but anyone from a Scandinavian background will choke on it since "Fimbulvinter" has been the vernacular for three centuries and it is cognate with the English "fimbulwinter".

Checked the first video. The logo typeface makes it look like the name subtitle is misspelled as "War of the Dreat Winter", which makes it appear as there are two misspellings in the game title. Feel free to ignore it though since technically there are no misspellings

Basically, it seems as a non-tile Archon with 2D battles?

[SouthpawHare]

Basically, it seems as a non-tile Archon with 2D battles?

You could put it that way.  Archon was not one of my inspirations, but it's fairly fitting.  The original two concepts that combined into this were basically:

1) Take the best parts of Smash Bros, Street Fighter, and other great fighters and put them all together, for the PC, with animal characters

2) Take Ogre Battle, and replace the uninteresting (personal opinion) RPG battles with a much more appealing type of battle

I found that these two ideas merged fairly well

[starsrift]

I've seen this kind of thing before, and I've never seen the balance work out. Either it makes unit types useless since a player likes a specific unit type and is good with it so they make all their units that type, or it makes unit types useless because one unit is (relatively) impossible to lose with since they have a power hierarchy so it becomes impossible to defeat that unit with anything other than an equivalent unit.

That said, I look forward to see how you face this challenge!


And Comic Sans would be a better font... 

[Mikademus]

And Comic Sans would be a better font... 

Burn the witch!

[Theon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fimbulwinter

^ Fimbulvetr is completely correct.

Well, fuck me crazy.
I suppose an apology is in order.

[SouthpawHare]

Hello everyone! It's been a while, but rest-assured, I've been hard at work getting lots of feedback and making lots of additions to Fimbulvetr. Finally, I have a Gameplay Demonstration Video ready - one that shows a "real" (loosely used term) match between a friend and I as we show all the features, new and old, and how the game might look in action.





Not only that, but a new executable version of the game is also available for download.

http://code.google.com/p/fimbulvetr/downloads/list

As always, please note the unfinished and experimental nature of the game - I don't claim that this is at all a "complete" game just because I'm submitting a "release". Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy trying it out, and I am always looking for tons of comments and feedback! Thank you again for everyone's interest!

[starsrift]

Really liking the degree of control in combat.

Concerned about the mentioned lag - is that in-game lag, or lag caused by the recording?

[SouthpawHare]

Really liking the degree of control in combat.

Concerned about the mentioned lag - is that in-game lag, or lag caused by the recording?

It's in-game lag, and your concern is well-deserved.  On poor connections, the game itself, rather than the controls lag, in a similar fashion to the netcode used in Super Smash Bros Brawl.  This means it's 100% reliable, but the game can play at 25% speed or less.  The lag can be pretty severe depending on the distance of the connection, making it only ideal in LAN environments right now.  This is definitely an issue, although it's one I'm pushing back for a time, as it is neither critical (in the strictest of senses), nor do I have any actual idea on how to make a better version of networking code anyway as of present.

[SouthpawHare]

Hello, everyone!  I'm back with a new update, and a video showing it all off.  I've made a lot of changes graphically, both to the user interface (through lots of suggestions and feedback) as well as to purely aesthetic portions of the map portion.  In the video I also discuss my new plan for doing updates - much smaller, more frequently and regular updates, with a new video approximately once per week detailing the progress I've made over that week.  Finally, the video includes a full-on local LAN match between my two friends, so you can see the current product in action.

As always, I appreciate any and all comments, suggestions, criticisms, notes, snarky asides, just popping in to say hi, discussion, banter, or what have you.

[SouthpawHare]

New weekly update video, this time showing off the Cat. He has some functional hitboxes now, as well as some basic components such as dashing/running and getting hit and stunned in various ways. Still yet to come are the abilities to be grabbed, defeated, knocked down, and the ability to block.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLyZ50jNHso&feature=youtu.be

[SouthpawHare]

Hello everyone!

It's been a while since I've posted on this forum, so there are a lot of updates.  I've been making update videos every few weeks showing my progress in a sort of VLOG form, which can all be seen up in the original post.  This week, I've also added a new gameplay demonstration, which shows a complete look at what the game looks like at this point in time by demoing a match from start to finish.  That's also up in the original post index, but you can also find it here:





You can continue to follow progress on Fimbulvetr on Youtube, on my blog at http://fimbuldev.blogspot.com/ , or on facebook at Southpaw Hare.

I am always looking for any and all feedback!  Please feel free to post whatever comments, criticisms, or ideas you might have.  I look forward to discussing Fimbulvetr with you all! =D

[Avgudar]

A russian (or whatever) from new york making a game with a scandinavian title and setting? Ok.


I think the graphics look to simple, by the way. Especially the colored bars. They should atleast have caps. Graphics is the most important thing in a game today.

[SouthpawHare]

A russian (or whatever) from new york making a game with a scandinavian title and setting? Ok.


I think the graphics look to simple, by the way. Especially the colored bars. They should atleast have caps. Graphics is the most important thing in a game today.

Improved graphics are well underway, as I've mentioned in a number of the videos.  The current presentation is simply temporary artwork, while artists better than I do their thing.

Oh, and the name is actually Polish, btw.  Not than I know anything about Polish culture or anything.

[SouthpawHare]

Hey guys. New video:





Lots of new moves for the Cat. Very happy with how progress is coming along with this second character.

[SouthpawHare]

Hello everyone. I have an update to report. You can check out the video here:






This weekly update actually has some rather big news. As it stands, I am going to be putting work on Fimbulvetr on a bit of a hiatus for a few months. The reasoning for this is not because I have lost motivation, or because I need any sort of break mentally; it is actually because I am going to be working on a separate project for another person. This project has a finite schedule, and once it ends, I will be returning to work on Fimbulvetr. So don't worry, I will be back! =)

I'd really like to thank everyone for all the great support and feedback I've gotten on this project so far. It means a huge amount to me. I hope you will all continue to follow the project when I return to it. Thanks again, everyone!