kr0 is basically the definition of all style no substance, it's a puzzle free adventure game. That said, if you're into magical realism and minimalist art (i am!) then check out their demo/technical test thing and see if you think you would pay $18 dollars for a few hours of that. The first episode is very short, maybe 30 minutes. I dug it.

[super]

Man Catguy is like super pissed that other people don't like the shitty game he likes.

You tigsource guys are wound TIGHT. I wouldn't say super pissed...

Any recommendations? I have very little money, I already bought kr0, and I like good games.

This is a thrice edited, pre-coffee, bumbling, ranting post, but bear with me.

also, you may be thinking my standards are too high for art and music in an indie title. but keep in mind the game had a two MILLION dollar budget. for two million i'd have expected better

Man, when I say I loved the art, I'm holding it in competition with every other game released ever, not just indie darlings. It's gorgeous, and it's kinda weird to me that you find it busy (in a bad way) -- the designs are really elegant and well constrained, I thought. There's a lot going on, yeah, but it's never unclear -- are you one of those guys who wants art to exclusively serve the purpose of communicating gameplay ideas? I guess if so it would seem a little pointless.

As for the gameplay, I played it for like... 20 hours? 30? I beat it, all the arenas with all the modifiers on (holyshit), and almost all of the game on ng+ with all of the modifiers on. It was a little awkward to me at first and felt like a shitty top down shooter, but after I got a little bit deeper i fell in love. I think it's a game that does a bad job trying to introduce its mechanics. There's actually a lot going on with picking pairs of weapons and ways to dodge/block enemies, as the activated shrines start to pile up the specific, tactical uses of your two weapons become dramatically important, but the game does a lot of hand-holding on the default settings to let you just slug away if that's your thing. Which I think does it an injustice -- a lot of intricate, cool combat design falls away if you lower the difficulty to a point where it isn't meaningful.

Because of this, though -- that bastion is a game with brilliant design that doesn't really make the most of it -- I have very high hopes for supergiant's future games. Slightly better balance and teaching of mechanics to players and they could have something that knocks everybody's socks off.


Lastly, paul, as for the story, I think it either totally failed to get to you and you tuned it out, or you didn't play very far into the game? There's a pretty personal story of betrayal and loss and hubris and regret that goes on with the companions and the (obvious) twist. It's a sorta ham fisted look at the tragedy of war blah blah blah, but it's certainly not 'the valkyrie, elf, wizard, and barbarian team up.'

So hype. Loved bastion's art/music/writing, liked bastion's gameplay.

I'm sorry to reply so late. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Riddle_of_Steel The riddle of steel uses a similar 'dice vs dice, compare difference' mechanic to what you're proposing, but places around it an elaborate tactical game based on betting and losing dice on actions -- it's wonderful and an effective simulation of the risk/reward of attacking and defending. It's emphasis is modeling simultaneous action in a turnbased dice game.

There's a playable combat simulator here to feel out the ruleset -- it's pretty great.

http://www.driftwoodpublishing.com/support/

http://www.sirlingames.com/collections/yomi Sirlin did exactly this, translating high level fighting game play (him being a top level SFA3 player) into a cardgame -- you can find a lot of design articles about yomi and other games he's been involved in on his blog.

Some draft stuff for a game(!) project.

A lot of the early game difficulty comes from Thin Men -- The game is never up-front about telling you that light plasma grants an accuracy bonus, so an uninformed player wont realize a thin man or overseer has a significantly higher chance of hitting his soldier if they're trading shots from cover. Like, 40% for your rookie is probably 65% for the thin man looking back at him.

They're still nasty mid-late game. I remember doing a bomb mission after mutons/ethereals. Was confident because I didn't lose any guys earlier. Totally underestimated them, lost half my squad.

Of all the units, thin men are surprisingly deadly because they're damn accurate and can very easily outflank you, and they come in numbers. A thin man can jump over the train you're hiding in and shoot you from the back, and a couple others could be in positions to surround you. Heavy floaters are the only ones that come close in deadly mobility.

Thin men are always dangerous as a surprise (I think they climb environments, ala grappling hook, for free, just like stepping from one square to the next?) but, assuming you're playing the economy right and have interrogated a beserker (that's another thing! We Have Ways is ESSENTIAL and none of the other continent bonuses really are, which I don't like) you should probably have 3-6 suits of titan armor by that part of the game... There's maybe a VERY narrow window where thin men are actually a late game concern, but by the endgame not even their crits are really gonna dent the obnoxious amount of health you'll be rolling with. There were a few missions where my only wounds came from thin men, but I dont think Ive lost anyone to them past early game.

Anyway gosh great game, I normally wouldn't be excited enough to talk about little tactical details like this in a tbs!

I liked this game a LOT, I blew through it on ironman classic (13 games!!) over the first week I got it. It's deep and pretty amazing, although it has a couple of REALLY nasty bugs. Most notably, the weird abstracted logic with undiscovered enemies can go totally haywire, and you can have an entire map worth of enemies drop within your soldier's LOS during their turn -- once on the graveyard map I had an ironman squad wiped when 6 heavy floaters and 6 mutons all spawned in the same square IN THE MIDDLE OF MY SQUAD. Not a good bug to have in an ironman game.

Other interesting stuff to remark on:

• A lot of the early game difficulty comes from Thin Men -- The game is never up-front about telling you that light plasma grants an accuracy bonus, so an uninformed player wont realize a thin man or overseer has a significantly higher chance of hitting his soldier if they're trading shots from cover. Like, 40% for your rookie is probably 65% for the thin man looking back at him.
• Overwatch is incredibly viable as an offensive tactic -- even with the aim penalty, I get the impression overwatch @ enemies out of cover is significantly more accurate than fire @ an enemy in cover -- keeping soldiers on overwatch before you end your turn, so they can fire if any enemies are revealed and take their free move, is a vital tactic... ESPECIALLY with snipers, which brings me to...
• SQUAD SIGHT is super overpowered, to the point of being pretty much the only viable tactic in the late game. Two snipers with plasma, squad sight, and opportunist (no aim penalty on overwatch) placed in elevated positions will have you looking at 95-100% chances to hit any enemy revealed anywhere on the map by the rest of your team. I kinda wish there were more good late game squad makeups -- a couple of squad sight snipers is such a profound silver bullet (ESPECIALLY endgame, with double tap) that it doesnt make sense to take anything else.
• Lightning reflexes (first reaction shot by aliens always misses) is a super cool power, that kind of thing is lovely to have in your strategic toolkit -- I wish there were move powers like that, which made me use soldiers in interesting tactical ways, like bating enemies' overwatch so that other soldiers could safely move.

Anyway though: Great game. Bring on some tftd dlc.

My take on the same concept that got JackWhat started.

[here]

Animation is a weirdly artificial practice. You can't just think:
"Okay, frame one it's here, and frame two it's here, and frame three it's..." or you're gonna get a weird, stifled slideshow. You need to think about timing, you need to think about squash and stretch, you need to study.



- Something to consider how complicated it is.

Alternatively: If you absolutely need a quick and dirty solution on a timeframe, you have some good options.

1: Get some 3d software with animation tools and see if they have any kind of particle system/dynamics you could use to simulate leaf flutter, and then draw over that.

2: Rotoscope (ie trace) them from a video. I would recommend tracing 20-30 frames in a row, and then toggling on and off a variety of them and watching the animation until you get a punchy, snappy leaf fall, instead of the awkward floaty (too floaty for even leaves!) result you'll get at first.

Ps: I like your art a lot.

[big fucking deal]

Controlling your contrast and level of detail is a big fucking deal, and you should think about it from the beginning:

Your early versions featured a lot of good art, but some bizarro world contrast, where some details (like the walls or the lava box) were SUPER HIGH CONTRAST AND DISTRACTING and other important details were arbitrarily low contrast. Or some parts were very dark, and the others were very light, or etc. It was a mess!

Think big!

Hey thanks a bunch dudes! Pixel animations are SO FUN, but I havent had any time to make more. 

I HAVE had time to put together a whole new 3d section of my portfolio though! www.catkilo.com/3d

[interaction]

For me it is all about how much interaction there is between the game and the player. Typically speaking, the more distinct ways the game can interact with the player, the more difficult it becomes, so I can see how people frequently confuse difficulty with quality.

Interactive games are engaging because you act and they react, and complicated, engaging relationships between the player, their obstacles, and the world, are delicious to players. People play dark souls because there is so much awesome shit to talk about, and to think about, and to chew up and enjoy. It's not that it's hard, it's just that there's a hell of a lot actually mechanically going on.

Typically speaking, complexity of relationships between your actions and the games responses leads to difficulty, but not always: Games like animal crossing, the sims, harvest moon... Hell, tycoon games, too, feature the same super rich mechanics and encouragement of player experimentation, interaction, and problem solving, while being super fucking easy to boot.

Available once again, and more hireable than ever!

 This isn't a Europeans-finding-the-New-World situation where there's gonna be a bunch of gold and trees we can just go take

Actually... http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/resource.html

Many valuable resources drift as close as or closer than our moon.

okay whoops her anatomy only got weirder she has a rubber spine sorry guys

Okay dudes not trying to be difficult or disregard your crits, maybe i've been looking at it too long, but I dont really see it. The shoulders are tucked forward, and the hips are a little unnaturally wide. The elongated neck may make the shoulders look a little weird, but nothing outside of the realm of possibility, especially with a little anime stylization. The bicep is pressing into her chest.

Could one of you guys kick me a quick redline drawover or something so I can better get the point?

Png and super wip animation.

Ninja: Appreciate the crits dude! Im really not shooting for that kind of anatomical accuracy on this piece. Any exaggeration of proportions and perspective is very intentional.