Love the graphics!!

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

This seems like it's going to be an interesting concept. I think it would be great if there were a way to see where your throws are targeted before you actually let go of it.

Keep up the work.

The art style of this is looking amazing and the concept seems to be coming along great.

In my opinion, the bird's gravity and fall speed seems a little to fast and harsh. But, the other aspects of its movement seem like they'll work well.

Keep up the work!

i love this concept and the art direction looks great!

[March 31, 2015]

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!

[March 14, 2015]

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

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

I took some of the ideas you had and tried to implement them.

I would like to get some feedback so I can make it feel even smoother before I go any farther. The new version with the mouse control can be downloaded here.

Thanks in advance for your great feedback,
Matt

Thanks for all this feedback.

The clunky movement could be due to the camera's easing so I will probably just cut the easing and have it directly with the player.

Also, how do you suggest implementing the mouse to interactions because that is something I am interested in adding, but just don't know how.

[Caelis]

Caelis

DOWNLOAD HERE (EARLY DEMO)

MAIN DEVLOG

Hey, I'm Matt from Awkward Knight Games and I'm an aspiring indie game developer working on my first major release, Caelis.

Development

Caelis has been in development since December of 2014. It is being developed by myself in Java with NO framework. All of the pixel art are original assets created in Photoshop.

Background

Caelis takes place in a medieval/fantasy type setting. It follows Finn Archer, an ambitious little boy who dreams of finding the last dragon left in his world. In order to speak to and control the dragons, one must possess a higher understanding of magic. Finn journeys in order to learn many of the unknown secrets of magic in the world. He not only learns about the magic of Caelis, but he learns more about the world around him and even himself as he transitions into an adult. On his quest, he experiences several life-changing events and meets people that will change him in ways that he never thought possible.

Features

Smooth Day-Night Cycle - time smoothly changes in Caelis and so do the NPC actions. The NPCs go to work in the mornings and when night falls, they return home. The sky colors gradually transition throughout the day and stars smoothly appear in the nightime.




Advanced Dialogue System - the dialogue system in Caelis reads the branches from a .txt file allowing the player to choose what they want to say and alter the course of the conversation. Based on what the player chooses, the character that they are talking to will have a different response as well as have their attitude towards the player change.



Dynamic Explosions w/ Lighting - when an explosive crate is broken, it triggers an explosion. This explosion made with particles causes the screen to shake and lights the surrounding area.




Many, Many, Mob Types! - there are many different animals and enemies that populate Caelis. My favorite so far is the bunny. When the player is far away from the bunny, it looks very cute and cuddly. But as soon as the player gets too close, some bunnies will turn evil and attack!




Contact

I post updates on Youtube: TheAwkwardKnight
I am the most active on my Twitter including small updates: @awkwardknight
Website (With a more detailed dev blog): awkwardknight.com
Like us on Facebook: Awkward Knight



Follow for more updates!
-Matt

[March 5, 2015]

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!

The level editor looks amazing.

Will you also be adding in a single player vs AI or will the game be entirely online matches?

Keep up the work

This week, I made a custom level editor for Caelis in scratch entirely in Java!

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

   

I personally think that the original angle looks better. But I guess I would have to see the entire game in both views to tell. Both look great!

This looks really nice! The artstyle is so charming I will definitely by following this and am excited for more updates in the future. Definitely has my vote.

[Update - February 13, 2015]

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

[Update - Feb. 2, 2015]

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

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