Not very exciting but to show we're still alive: I've been spending a lot of time on reworking the collision(old system didn't work well anymore for what we're planning) inbetween being stupidly busy and here it is already being 100% superior to the old system.

I'd love to see more technical posts like this! Highly interesting!

*cough*
We're here.

One of the more important aspects to Kingdom Crazy will be immersion into the world, and the ability to represent yourself how you want.

I took steps today to make the options more versatile with noses and skin-tones.

[Reserved]

Hello!

My name is Sam and I'm making a Twitch game called "Kingdom Crazy."
I'm handling both art and code.

I want to create a world to house a communiy!

When viewers join the stream, they're given a character that they can customize by equipping items that show up in different scenes. They can unlock new ones by participating in events, chatting, or battling monsters!



Each character's progress saves as they enter/leave the stream.


And you'll meet a wide array of characters to interact with!

It's an especially challenging project as I have to balance between flooding the chat with commands so players can interact, and being engaging enough for the game to be interesting without direct interaction. Also, I have to make sure it's just as engaging with 1 player as it is with 1,000.

http://www.twitter.com/masharcade
http://www.twitch.tv/masharcade
I invite everyone to follow along with my progress as we work to build Kingdom Crazy together. I stream sections of the game periodically, come check it out!

09/15/2017
For Kingdom Crazy, the general workflow goes like this:
Idea > Inkscape > Spine > Game Maker.
I jot down some notes on paper as I'm going about my day in a tiny, pocket-sized notebook. Sometimes I feel at my most clever when I'm just going about my day, and I don't want to forget it. From there, I make some "pieces" in Inkscape, put them into Spine for animation, then import the animations into Game Maker for code and implementation.

Animating is therapeutic. It's an amazing feeling to literally breathe life into your world. I've been really thinking about animation lately, and what it means to be distinctive. One commitment that I've recently made is to bring as much life and personality possible into each animation going forward. Sure, the characters can swing a sword, but I think this lends itself to more interest:

Still need a coder? I'm available in my free time.

SO much work has gone into preserving the quality and sanctity of literally -every- pixel placed.

Pixel art is something I've always known, but probably not something I've truly appreciated until now. One pixel can mean the word of difference when doing adjustments in speeds, a face, a number.

Christina has done some truly outstanding work here.

Added on-the-fly palette swapping, so we can change our tones when the mood strikes...

Thanks again everyone for the kind words! It's very encouraging to see as we chug along. Regarding the small font, I'm going to leave that to Christina!

However, I can talk about:

This looks amazing

What platforms are you targeting? I just got (yesterday) my Pebble Time Steel, and I think this game would be awesome on it! Though you'll have to adapt it to the very limited controls

I think a platform like this would be very fun! The issue is that the game may have a lot of control/action outside of battle, so the controls may not be fitting. If this project works out, I can definitely see another, smaller, tiny resolution game in the future where we may deploy to a watch or a similar small screen.

We want to make the game only limited in resolution, color and pixel purity. Other than that, not much else. We can get as complicated or advanced as we like, so we'd like to capitalize on that as long as it makes sense for gameplay. I'll be writing up some more... complicated technical pieces soon, too, to show these obstacles in-depth.

Thanks, everyone, for the kind words! It really means a lot.

I love it so so much! I know it's super early atm but the player movement looks very floaty.

Could be! We're so early in development that we're going to lay down some scenes and see what feels best. Polish hasn't even begun, so everything will change quite a bit I'm sure.

Aw hell yes! This project looks dope as hell, plus the pixel art is good as always.

Questions!

What platforms are you looking to launch on? I'm guessing PC, but this would probably be a great fit on mobile. Given the playable area is square, you could totally work this by having virtual controls on the bottom (fairune is a decent example of this, but I think it could be done better)

I'm very curious about how you're going to explore combat. Is it a one party member type of game? Seems like the screen rez would better support that, in which case I am really curious about what time of mechanics you're going for.

Anyways, cheers, this looks awesome, so keep at it.

PC of course with a definitely possibility on other platforms.
We're ironing out ideas for combat, but as of right now, it's BASED on one party member at a time, but all will be involved... stay tuned!

I'll definitively keep an eye on this, really nice concept and origin. The only thing that concerns me a bit is, being it an rpg game, won't it be a bit confusing navigating through dungeons and relatively "big" towns covering so little vision area?

That concerns us, too! I think the trick is to fit as much uniqueness on one "screen" at a time to make navigation easy by landmarks. We're playing with ideas and concepts to tie it all in, and so far I think our solutions have been rather elegant. Take a look at the mockups. There's something pretty significant in each area to help you "get by."

Hey All,

My name is Sam and I'll be programming this adventure. Thanks for the feedback, everyone! It's been a really exciting and challenging project to play with.

[Christina beat me to it, but...!]
Agersant, at this resolution text sure has been a challenge. We're experimenting with sizes to balance readability and aesthetic, but I don't think anything is final yet. I've left it open ended and flexible so we can swap text sizes and/or fonts at any time and the game's UI elements will automatically adapt to it.

Now -THATS- how you post to a devlog. Really interesting, thank you for sharing.

Can't wait to see more!

Check in your "with()" statements...

Sometimes I get this bug by accidentally having multiple "controllers" in a room, too. 

WANT.

BEST EVER.

I hope you're okay with a small edit I did.
The game looks charming, but the levels look particularly flat. Look to punching in the depth by adding simple shadows. In this edit, on the top of the stage, I added shadows below the outlines of the stage to give a perception of depth.

Keep up the good work!