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[WarriorGeneral]

That's an awesome concept. The way the terrain floats in space reminds me of toejam & earl, though I doubt there is much inspiration from that its a fun (and sort of awe inspiring) scenery nonetheless.

Haha, we've gotten the TJ&E comment a few times now. I definitely see it now, but no, I wasn't inspired by it originally.  I did play a fair amount of it with my friend way back when though, so maybe I was subconsciously inspired.

We're trying to depict "lost in time and space" idea with the environment. I plan to have some random swirly clouds and rocks and stuff in the background as well by the time all is done, to help push the atmosphere more.

Reminds me of Secret of Mana! Cheers to the sudden nostalgia! 

I was definitely inspired by the classic Square games, though, so glad I hit that mark! They were the true pixel masters, that's for sure.

Thanks for the comments!

[WarriorGeneral]

Recently reached a milestone with three new character designs, bringing the total done to 50!

The OP is also updated with all 50 in a single image.

[WGCorndog]

Character of the Week


Zane the Fire Mage:
Red and firey, Zane casts fire magic fast and furiously.

Sample Skills
With Fire being dangerous to play with, Zane has a unique overheat mechanic that he needs to balance.

Overheat Passive: Fire skills increase your damage but deal Fire damage over time.	Flame Shield Consumes Overheat stacks to absorb damage and deal Fire damage to attackers
Flame Jet     Deals Fire damage to the front     and back row enemies.	Burn     Deals Fire damage over time and     can stack multiple times.

[WarriorGeneral]

I figured I should post stuff from the last couple of screenshot Saturdays, since I missed last week!

Wensho, the monk, doing his Lightning Kick skill (and then getting smacked), and three new class designs:

[Mixer]

I'm liking the character reveal things, and the idea of having so many characters. Reminds me of pokemon, with all the little people being able to do different things. Hats off for being so ambitious :D 

I'm interested to hear about how you are managing all of these characters and things on the technical side, do you have a class for each character, using characters scripts (hscript?), or something like a database? I can imagine that easily becoming a tangled mess if not thought about.

With so many planned characters, I am also curios on how you will make all these characters add meaning to the game, and have different value/worth (ahh, just another blacksmith. Oooh, a shiny banker, that's great! Yes, got a nina, that's kick ass.). If players think of each character as just as good (same value), they don't have much to *work* for, they already really have the 'standard' character (other than a different graphic). And to make characters have 'worth', it means making them have unique properties/mechanices, which means more programming. Super interested to hear you're opinion on this, as it seems like you have already thought about this (you already have loads of characters)


This is some interesting stuff. Great job with graphics by the way.
ps sorry if some of this has already been asked.

[WarriorGeneral]

I'm liking the character reveal things, and the idea of having so many characters. Reminds me of pokemon, with all the little people being able to do different things. Hats off for being so ambitious :D  

Yeah, we are kinda of going for the "collect em all" thing for sure. We're both big fans of the exploration side of games, so finding and unlocking all kinds of stuff, and then figuring out how to use it, is really appealing. That's kinda why we started on this game.  

I'm interested to hear about how you are managing all of these characters and things on the technical side, do you have a class for each character, using characters scripts (hscript?), or something like a database? I can imagine that easily becoming a tangled mess if not thought about.

We've got a pretty organized class/subclass structure, with a class for each character that has a component-style system to plug in skills and traits, and a JSON style structure to define things like their attributes, names, dialogue, etc. It's a lot of data to handle, but as long as the structure is organized logically, no amount of data is too much to handle, right? It also helps there's only two of us working on the code at the moment; we're both pretty well versed in how things work. I think somebody else could come in and get up to speed pretty quickly, though.

With so many planned characters, I am also curios on how you will make all these characters add meaning to the game, and have different value/worth (ahh, just another blacksmith. Oooh, a shiny banker, that's great! Yes, got a nina, that's kick ass.). If players think of each character as just as good (same value), they don't have much to *work* for, they already really have the 'standard' character (other than a different graphic). And to make characters have 'worth', it means making them have unique properties/mechanices, which means more programming. Super interested to hear you're opinion on this, as it seems like you have already thought about this (you already have loads of characters)

This is some interesting stuff. Great job with graphics by the way.
ps sorry if some of this has already been asked.

I think basically the question here is "are you really doing all the work to make each character different?" Yes, we really are. We're doing our best to make sure every character has at least something unique about them, whether it's a unique battle mechanic, something that helps you find your way around, something that affects your town, or an attribute that is way different (like they are super strong/weak or super durable/fragile or super fast/slow, etc) than others. Yeah, some are going to be favorites because they are versatile or "better" but each character has something that makes them worthwhile.

I mean at some point, you're always limited by the base mechanics of the game -- a battle always comes down to guys damaging each other in some way or another for instance -- but the goal is to allow you to have interesting groups of guys that create interesting combos to allow you to accomplish the damaging of the other guys in interesting ways. Time will tell if we're successful or not, but even in basic playtesting so far, we've already had some really interesting combos come up that created some sort of emergent strategies that we didn't even think of in the original character designs, so I'm pretty encouraged on the fun factor there.

Thanks for the questions/comments!  Always love to hear them.

[Mixer]

Wow, what a totally awesome response, your guys know what you're doing. Good job!

[Gargoyle440]

Also, to answer your question:

Ooooo. I love me a good Roguelike. I'll definitely be following this one.

From an audio standpoint - is each class going to have a unique kind of sound/musicy bit to represent them?

There will certainly be plenty of unique sounds for the various skills and spells and whatnot of each class, but I'm not sure it would be feasible or even really fit to have over 100 different music themes for each character. You can have up to six characters in your party at a time, so it might be kind of weird to pick a tune for just one of them.

As of now, we the plan is just having a general chiptune style soundtrack, with some unique themes for battles, boss fights, and certain special encounters.

Is there any way that, instead of writing 100s of individual musical themes, you just dedicated a sound/patch/instrument to each class/character?
As long as it's in the same tempo and key, and each instrument (or even a small ostinato) occupies a relatively small space, couldn't that mean that you'd end up with a unique piece of music for each party combination?
I mean, I know chiptune is fairly limited, even with something emulating SNES sounds this'd be tough.
Worth a shot?

[WGCorndog]

Character of the Week


SK04-A the Cyborg:
Half man, half machine, SK04-A arms himself with heavy weaponry.

Sample Skills
The SK04-A model comes with a gun arm, letting him arm weapons to be used on demand.

Flamethrower Arms a Flamethrower that deals Fire damage to enemies.	Gatling Gun Arms a Gatling Gun that deals Physical damage to random enemies.
Heavy Cannon     Arms a Heavy Cannon that deals    Physical damage and stuns.	Self-Repair     Restores a large portion of HP,    usable once per battle.

[WarriorGeneral]

Also, to answer your question:

Ooooo. I love me a good Roguelike. I'll definitely be following this one.

From an audio standpoint - is each class going to have a unique kind of sound/musicy bit to represent them?

There will certainly be plenty of unique sounds for the various skills and spells and whatnot of each class, but I'm not sure it would be feasible or even really fit to have over 100 different music themes for each character. You can have up to six characters in your party at a time, so it might be kind of weird to pick a tune for just one of them.

As of now, we the plan is just having a general chiptune style soundtrack, with some unique themes for battles, boss fights, and certain special encounters.

Is there any way that, instead of writing 100s of individual musical themes, you just dedicated a sound/patch/instrument to each class/character?
As long as it's in the same tempo and key, and each instrument (or even a small ostinato) occupies a relatively small space, couldn't that mean that you'd end up with a unique piece of music for each party combination?
I mean, I know chiptune is fairly limited, even with something emulating SNES sounds this'd be tough.
Worth a shot?

Hm, I like the idea in theory, but that's still coming up with 100 unique instruments, which seems like a pretty tough task, especially for chiptune. At least with chiptune they'd be more likely to not clash, I suppose, but there's only so many beep and bloop sounds you can come up with. Maybe there could be sounds for certain groupings of types of characters or something? I dunno. Something to keep in mind as an idea, for sure. Thanks for the suggestion!

[WGCorndog]

Character of the Week


Kara the Space Marine:
Ready to fight the alien hordes, Kara utilizes high tech gadgets.

Sample Skills
Kara has access to a wide array of Gadgets, that are powerful skills with a limited number of uses.

Cryo-grenade Deals Ice damage and lowers Speed and Agility	Rail Cannon Deals a large amount of Physical damage, but requires several turns to charge
Power Armor     Passive: Mitigates received damage, recharges every turn	Repair Drone     Passive: Heals a random ally every turn

[WarriorGeneral]

Realized I've been slacking on posting updates recently, so here's some stuff from recent Screenshot Saturdays! Outside of interesting screenshottable things, I have also been working on expanding our procedural level generator with some new ideas on how to stitch together predesigned map chunks and random pieces. I'll probably expand on that more when I figure out how to show it visually.

Three more class designs done. I finished up a couple others that you can see in the OP character image, if you can pick them out. We're now up to 60 designs finished!




Also recently worked on an animation concept for some water tiles. It's a combination of alternating "wave" tiles and some overlaid FX sprites:

[WGCorndog]

Sorry for the lack of character updates guys, been spending a lot of time working on other aspects, like introducing new hooks that can be used for new and interesting abilities. I've also been finalizing the concept and fleshing out the gem system, which could probably be it's own devlog entry...I'm quite excited about how much impact they have on strategically building your party.

Anyway, here's a the Samurai...

Character of the Week


Kenji the Samurai:
Armed with the ancient art of Bushido, Kenji protects his allies with his body and soul.

Sample Skills
On top of being naturally tough, Kenji manipulates his very essesnce into a protective barrier.

Bulwark Protects all allies, transferring some damage onto yourself	Spirit Shield Temporary buff that causes a portion of damage to be taken from MP instead of HP
Soul Swipe     Attack that deals Physical damage     and steals MP from an enemy	Sacrifice     Passive: On death, deal massive     Arcane damage to enemies

[WGCorndog]

Figured I'd make a more in-depth post about gems, and what we have decided to do with them.

Gems are essentially our equipment system. With a hundred characters spanning every age, it makes it difficult to have traditional equipment. Originally, we were planning on just making a few dozen fairly generic gems to spice up your adventures and allow some customization within each session. However, after playtesting...it became pretty apparent on my end that finding and figuring out how to optimize the gems you find has a LOT of potential.

So, with gems being a strong concept, I decided I want to make it "more". After a lot of pondering...I decided to tie it in with another core system. That system being character unlocks. Basically, for all hundred characters, I'm going through and adding at least two gems. These character gems will be tailored towards each character, but anybody will be able to equip them. Additionally, one of the two will always grant a skill that the class has access to.

When you unlock a character, you also unlock any associated gems, meaning you'll be able to randomly find them during your adventures. Each character will also always come equipped with their specific gems, which makes for some interesting decisions on your starting party. Maybe the Jester isn't the greatest at fighting, but maybe one of his gems is really strong on a Paladin, so you bring him along with your Paladin.

The amount of customization available with this system makes me giddy. I'm excited that I can bring a Pirate along with my Cleric, swap some gems, and have a Cleric that spends battles chugging Rum. Or combine Dark Knight gems and a Priestess to turn the Priestess into a "shadow priest" that casts dark spells. Then, get some gems from another character to also give that Priestess a Kevlar vest to guard against physical damage.

Six character parties, with a hundred available characters, each with four gem slots and hundreds of available gems...that's a lot of possibility space.

[WGCorndog]

Hope everyone had a happy holiday season!

Despite the busy schedule, I managed to finish up several dozen gems. The more I play with the system, the more it's reminding me of old Final Fantasy job systems. The ones in which you can mix and match jobs and classes. Namely Final Fantasy Tactics, which is one of my all time favorite games.

Here's a screenshot of a barbarian making use of Alcohol type skills, as well as a gem to gain an extra attack skill and even stronger attacks.

[WGCorndog]

Character of the Week


Tank the Brawler:
Big and Burly, Tank swings wildly with great strength.

Sample Skills
With Tank being a brawler, I thought it was fitting to have him
 focus on swinging wildly and landing big hits when he connects.

Haymaker Deals high Physical damage, but has lower chance to hit	Anger Passive: Taking damage increases damage that you deal
Whiskey        Gain increased Power and Toughness    but lower Technique and self control	Undeterred     Passive: Gain bonus to all attributes     for each Debuff on you

Tank's Glove (Gem) - Increases Power whenever you miss. Grants Haymaker skill.

[WGCorndog]

Character of the Week


Asariel the Angel:
From the kingdom of Heaven, Asariel protects
allies with divine intervention.

Sample Skills
Asariel is mostly a support character, with ways
to keep allies alive despite the odds.

Salvation Channels for several turns, reviving an ally afterwards	Safeguard Channels for several turns, preventing an ally from dying.
Ascension        Passive: On death, fully restore all allies,    but permenantly leaves party.	Blessing     Increases all attributes for an ally.

Angel's Wing (Gem) - On death, restores a large amount of health. Once per battle.

[WGCorndog]

Character of the Week


Sovras the Necromancer:
Master over the dead, Sovras blurs the line between life and death.

Sample Skills
Sovras is a caster, but tends to be very difficult
take down, getting stronger the closer he is to death.

Undying Soul Passive: Fatal damage is converted to MP.	Death's Embrace Passive: Increaes all attributes the closer you are to death.
Deathchill    Deals Dark and Ice damage,    based on target's missing health.	Summon Skeleton     Summons a skeleton that lasts for     several turns and deals Physical damage.

Necronomicon (Gem) - Increases Dark damage dealt. Grants Deathchill skill.

[WarriorGeneral]

I've been slackin' on doing updates for a while again, so I've just got a big dump of stuff to post here!

Last time I posted, I was working on procedural level generator related code. After messing around with trying to make rooms 100% procedurally generated (and generally succeeding in getting that to work), I ended up scrapping most of it.  I tried playing through the game and the random rooms were just not anywhere near as interesting as manually crafted rooms pieced together in a semi-random fashion. So that's what we're going with. It will be more work to make enough interesting rooms, but in the end it should make for a more engaging game. Live and learn on that one, but it sounded like a good idea at the time!

To allow us to make the rooms more interesting, I added some functionality to the engine to handle multiple-tiered levels so you and enemies can go over and under bridges or similar things and have the proper layer order displayed, and the ability to specify map sections to randomly get removed or added. I've got some other stuff I still want to complete, such as keys and switches and things related to puzzles. That's next on my list.

Outside of level generation and making rooms, I also did some more work on menu systems for leveling up and viewing skill related data. I also added the ability to swap out menu styles so the player can choose from different designs for their menus. Much of my time, as usual, was spent on continuing character designs, art, and animations. We are now up to 70 character designs, which you can see in the updated OP.

Most of the following is basically Screenshot Saturday posts from the last couple months. You can see some of another menu style design in the skill anims, which uses the swap-out style handler I added.

Some skill animations
William the Paladin's Holy Blast:


Zeke the Wrestler Panders to the crowd and throws down a Dropkick:


Brand the Cleric with his Holy Shield skill:


New character designs:
You can see the whole set in the original post of this thread.





Some Gem designs:
We are now renaming these to "Relics" to alllow for more freedom in the design. They are basically items, crystals, and gems that contain the "essence" of a character's spirit, which allows them to grant abilities related to each character. Corndog did a post on the idea behind them a little while ago.

[WGCorndog]

Character of the Week


William the Paladin:
Holy knight with heavy armor and conviction, William utilizes the destructive power of Holy.

Sample Skills
While Holy usually focuses on supportive skills,
William uses it to deal damage.

Holy Blast Deals Holy damage to the front row of enemies.	Justice Passive: Deals increased damage  when an ally is near death.
Consecrate        Deals Holy damage over time       to all enemies	Penance     Charges with Holy damage. Expend charge to heal all allies.

Holy Blade (Relic) - Causes your Physical Attacks to deal Holy damage.