[final 48 hours]

Goodluck on the final days of your Kickstarter! Really hope you guys make it

Keep up the awesome work!

Thanks a lot!
We're entering the final 48 hours very soon at 81% funded, and it seems like it's going to be a very close call. Definitely doable, but we're going to need all the support we can get!

If anyone would like to help us out, we'd be very grateful! Kickstarter Link

Also, anyone interested in some design logs will probably like our Kickstarter updates, as we cover pretty much all our game systems and designs in great detail on there. You might want to start with the later updates, as some of the early ones mirror content I've already posted here in the past ^^


Some notable news is that we ended up redoing our idle animation from the "classic style walking in place" idle animation to a new custom idle animation:

old vs new

both sides

There was a lot of fans asking for it and while we initially had a Stretch Goal for it on the Kickstarter, it became apparent that the fans were very passionate about this issue, hence we decided on delivering the new idle animation regardless. We had to get a bit creative with our budget and schedule as we didn't want to drop any other content to deliver this, as it would be unfair to all the fans that were happy with the former animation.


Also, here's the concept art for a new monster we're working on right now:


Back to the grinder for me, as we now have 48hours to make this thing successful!

Thanks to everyone for their support!

Game looks great and I'm excited to see how much better it will be after going through the kickstarter process and getting feedback. We definitely need another entry in the tactical RPG genre. Too few new ones out there!

Haha, agreed! The world has languished too long without enough tactical games! But we plan to change that!

[Live on Kickstarter!]

Live on Kickstarter!



Link: Kickstarter


Not a devlog entry per say, but still an important part of the dev process!

We're collecting as much data as we can during the campaign and we hope to have a solid post-mortem to show for it afterwards, with lots of stats about what seems to be more effective or less effective.

Oh, that looks like a lot of fun!

Especially for my wife: she's the hardcore "Contra style" gamer of our pair, as I get too angry too quickly with the deaths in my old age, haha ^^

I couldn't find a mention about multiplayer in your dev log, but I did see GIFs with multiple dudes running around (although, they could be an AI as they didn't seem all that good, haha ^^)? In any event, in case no one has mentioned the obvious: some local coop would be truly amazing for this, obviously!

Personal taste, I think the graphics are not high-detail, high-res enough for my liking (I know it's a thing these days, I just don't really like that style myself, without getting into the details), but the gameplay looks solid, so I'd still play it with my wife ^^

[it'll add a very large amount of frames to absolutely every character and monster sprite we have]

Beautiful! What a great style.

Admittedly, the walk cycles on the spot are messing with my simple mind though.

Thanks for the kind words!

As for the "walking in place" idle animation: that's the number 1 criticism we've gotten from the fans to date, so you're not the only one, haha. >.<

The biggest issue at this point with redoing that idle animation is that it'll add a very large amount of frames to absolutely every character and monster sprite we have, and we have a LOT, and this is going to be costly. But, we're hoping we've found a good solution to the situation: we'll let the fans speak for themselves on their enthusiasm for this change.

If you check out the Stretch Goals in our upcoming September 26th Kickstarter, you'll see we have a goal to finance a new idle animation for all characters in there. It's the 2nd stretch goal, right after a fairly inexpensive one, so we're really hoping it'll get met.

Our plan is to provide the new idle animation, but retain the "walking in place" animation as an option to turn on for the fans that really enjoy the nostalgia factor from it.

It would be super great to get telemetry on that number too, but I fully expect that whichever option is the "default option" is going to get more numbers one way or another, which will skew things. Still, more data is always good ^^

[Design Spells - Part 2]

Design Spells - Part 2

I promised before an extended spell explanation, this time about their range, height and size, so here it is!

It's been a bit harder to find time lately since we're launching our Kickstarter in 5 days from now and those are certainly a lot more work than expected, haha. >.<

Here goes:
Our spells have a fairly standard system involving range, size, shape and height, but with a couple of details to hopefully make it fairly simple and more intuitive than some other systems.


Range:
Each ability you can use has a specific range, in tiles, from the caster. Most basic skills share the same range as your weapon (so, a sword has a range of 1, but a bow has a range of 6 for example), whereas most spells have an effective range of 4. When designing the range of abilities and weapons, it's important to match them to the basic movement range of characters, which in turn must be matched to the overall size of the map. There's some leeway with matching the map, in the sense that you could want small, medium or large maps to begin with.
Most of our characters have a base movement of 3 or 4, so the base range of spells is around 3 or 4 as well, so these values match. This means that the basic setup is where the player is NOT able to "kite" an enemy by staying always out of his range, unless the enemy has a movement of 3 (but those usually have range abilities of their own). This dynamic can then be changed by what the player equips (movement increases, etc), thus adding more strategical options the player can go for when designing his characters.

This is the basic layout for simple single target attacks:


(Single Target Close Range Attack)


(Single Target Long Range Attack)


Shapes:
Next, we have all sorts of different shapes including single targets (as above) and:

(Ranged cross shaped attack of size 3)


(Perpendicular line w/r to caster and target, of size 3)


(Line shooting out from the caster, of size 4)

We have a few more esoteric shapes, but you get the idea


Size:
Next we have the size of the area. In the above images, we can see a line that's 4 long and one that's 3 wide. The cross shapes are a good example of where the size can make a big difference, as here:

(Self centered cross shape attack of size 5)

This attack is centered on the caster, which means they must be in the thick of things for maximum impact, but to compensate the attack has a good size and is pretty powerful: high risk, high reward.


There's also special shape+size combos, such as abilities that target all allies, all enemies, everyone on the field or only the caster.

(Ability that only targets the caster)


Height:
Finally, we have the height of the ability. There's actually 2 different heights to worry about. The first one is the height difference between the caster and the target, which applies to all abilities, be they single target or AoE.

(Here, you can't target the lady down-right of you with a sword since her height on the map is too dissimilar to yours. This wouldn't be a problem with a bow though.)

Then, the other height value comes in play for AoE attacks only. It represents the maximum height that the AoE will spread from its center.

(Here we can see that only 2 of the possible targets have the "triangle target indicator" over them, meaning the other 2 targets aren't included in the spell because of height issues)

This one is definitely making things a bit more complicated than we'd have wanted, but it's important as it prevents strange height abuses cases. Options were to keep it 'the same' for all spells (so it's simpler) or have it change a bit, to differentiate the stronger spells further, since those tend to have the same size as their weaker counter-parts (but more damage). We went with the slightly different values and are hoping it won't muddle things too much. To help with that, we're also making it so that all 'weak spells' share the same height and all 'stronger spells' share the same height, etc., so that in the end, there's only about 3 different heights to worry about and they should be fairly intuitive (hopefully ^^).

This covers the way spells, abilities and simple attacks are generally handled when targeting. The system is fairly standard, but also very intuitive to use. We've been pleasantly surprised at conferences and events that everyone has just been able to pick it up and grasp everything very quickly. I believe the height system might not have been understood immediately, but it doesn't come into play in the early maps and will allow the players to pick it up as they grow more comfortable with the systems.

[Story Characters Creation: From Concept Art to Sprite]

Story Characters Creation: From Concept Art to Sprite

First, apologies. We've been extremely busy in the past 2 weeks with all the various milestones we've hit in a row, such as
Demo is out: https://gamejolt.com/games/fellseal/278902
Being featured by the Square Enix Collective: https://collective.square-enix.com/projects/388/fell-seal-arbiters-mark/
Steam page is up: http://store.steampowered.com/app/699170/Fell_Seal_Arbiters_Mark/
Kickstarter is coming: September 26th!

So I've been slow with updates in here.

Now, onto the "pièce de resistance"! Here's the rough workflow of turning a character concept into a sprite:

First, we start with a 'blurb of information' for our excellent character concept artist. Something like this:

Name: Kyrie
Gender: Female
Age: somewhere in her 30s or 40s
Role: Arbiter* captain, main protagonist.
*The Arbiters are basically an elite force of warriors that act as policemen and diplomats throughout the land. They are invested with immense power from the Immortals (the ruling council of the land), acting as their primary agents.
Personality/History: Kyrie is tough, stern, and not afraid to dispense justice when it is deserved. When she sets her sights on a wrongdoer, she can be impulsive and borderline obsessive. But she does have a dry sense of humor and whimsy that sometimes reveals itself.
She was once trained by a famous Arbiter, and she is now mentoring the daughter of that Arbiter.
Design notes: We picture her sort of like a female Jon Snow from Game of Thrones: a medium height and build, with medium-weight armor (leather). Maybe a fur-collar cape if you think it's a good idea. We'd prefer a little more color in her clothes, though (maybe some purples?). Our writer says he was inspired by Cassandra from Dragon Age as well.
She should have an Arbiter's armband on one arm (sketch attached, but it doesn't have to be the same color).
I've attached some inspiration images for her face and hair. We will probably prefer medium length hair styles, like the image of <some lady>, more than the very short hair styles that some of the images have.
The silhouette in the game's logo was originally intended to be Kyrie, but don't feel like you need to limit your design because of that. Go in whatever direction you think is best!


Next, our awesome concept artist sends us some sketches, and we help him zoom in on what we envision by pointing out which parts we like/don't like.


Basic sketches to start orienting the design process in a specific direction.


After a little back and forth, we then get a refined sketch, where we now select finer details in general:

Refined sketch showing more of the details


Then from this the final image is produced:

First version of the final image.


At that point our artist gives a lot of thought to how the resulting sprite is going to look. In some cases, there are still some small tweaks we'd like, usually pertaining to details or colors.

Final version, with belt altered, hair tweaks and red rather than brown sash.


Finally, we have our final concept art and we then start working on the in-game sprite.

First version of the in-game sprite.

We're still finalizing the sprite, but the idea will be to create a front and back version of it and once we're 100% happy with it, we'll start creating the walking, attacking, etc, frames.

There are some constraints in that area, primarily from the way weapons are equipped on sprites during combat. Each weapon is also a sprite and they are shown over/under the character sprite, so they must line up properly. Every weapon in the game (and we have over 153 weapons) has its own sprite (that's probably around 2000 frames for the weapons alone).

Thus, every weapon we have MUST work with every humanoid sprite, otherwise it would be a crazy amount of extra work. That's where the constraints come in. Basically, the 'hands' of all characters must line up in a similar fashion for all generic sprites and story characters. That way the weapons line up with the characters properly. Characters can have different builds and girth, but the hands will have to line up for the weapons to fit properly.


Image is made from a character sprite (which is itself made from a head, hair, helmet, outfit, etc) and a weapon sprite.


And that's how we go about creating a story character and also how we handle weapons in battles.

Still haven't gotten to keeping up with the devlog, as we've been very busy with events and with finally releasing a first version of our public demo.

Here's a link to the demo in the meantime. That's gotta be even more interesting than a new devlog entry!

https://gamejolt.com/games/fellseal/278902

[presentation we gave at the Indienomicon]

Gotta find the time to get another batch of design concepts transcribed here, but in the meantime, here's the presentation we gave at the Indienomicon event I mentioned before.

We made a short powerpoint presentation that covers the basics about our team, how we formed, a quick overview of the game, our graphics and some programming decisions. The real interesting point of the presentation is probably the Q&A at the end IMO. The audience was quite engaged and we had great questions that really showed how savvy the crowd was when it comes to development and tactics games




The questions at the end are a bit hard to hear, but I transcribed them as best I could in the video description with timestamps.


As a bonus announcement: we'll be at the OrlandoIX event coming on August 19-20! Anyone feels like checking out our game or chatting us up, feel free to drop by our booth! We'd love to see some fans and get some feedback and comments on the game!




edit: fixed the youtube link >.<

Oh, nice! I didn't realize Microsoft sent out free cats with their dev kids. I would've gotten one a long time ago if I had known!

Not just any ordinary cat either! That cat is our chief HR officer. He knows his stuff... Can't ever say 'no' to him.

We've officially been approved by Microsoft for Xbox One!

Here are our shiny dev kits:


We'll be starting our Xbox One tests this week and we're hoping our Unity build will work fairly easily. I'll be posting the results of the initial tests in here

Hey, just wanted to chime in that this looks bloody sweet! Also big props on the awesome updates, lots of interesting detail.   

Thanks a lot friend!

Awesome, I actually will be in Orlando...........but not until September  Hope Indienomicon goes well for you!

Guess I'll just have to stare at these beautiful gifs for now and be content...

We might end up attending some event in September if there's anything going. I'll post about it if it happens ^^
Thanks again for the kind words friend

Really like the art here too! And the concept is intriguing.
Your status says 20% done... are you really releasing in 2017? That sounds ambitious ^^

Beautiful stuff in this thread. Can't wait to play a demo Also interested in hearing what your composer does with the score. Will you share future audio snippets?

Thanks!

Demo: Well, if you're in the Orlando area, we have a presentation tomorrow night (August 3rd) as part of an Indienomicon event and we'll have a playable demo. Also we'll be at OrlandoIX on August 19-20, also with a demo.

Other than that, we're still thinking about the best way to handle early access, beta access and a demo... We should have a better idea about that soon enough!

As for the music: the music in our trailer was made by our current musician, so it should give a decent idea of his skill. He hasn't yet finished anything else, as he took an extended vacation abroad pretty much immediately after we signed him up (bastard!), but I'll be putting in at least a track in here for sure, although we're saving that 'reveal' for our upcoming September Kickstarter first.

The art looks really cool, but, at least so far, it seems like the spell animations really lack impact. Very linear and not very strong.

Hmm, might be a question of taste, as I personally don't feel that way.

Thanks for the feedback though! I'm adding it to my notes. Going to need to find a way to get a large amount of feedback soon though, to make sure I can get a better idea of what's a general trend and what's more of an isolated opinion.

Interesting stuff.

The sound propagation stuff looks like a very good concept to me.
Keep up the good wok!

[Design: Spells]

Design: Spells

I already covered the technical aspects of our spells/combat effects and some of the reasons that led to it on the technical side. Here, I'll touch on specific design decisions we made on that front.


(2 different tiers of earth magic)


(2 different tiers of lightning magic)


First thing to note is the style. We went straight for pixel art effects, very old school.
No particles, no 3D, etc. We've been aiming at a clean and high-res pixel art style for the game from the start, so it made sense to us to stick to it for our spell effects as well. We explored other alternatives (particles being the other big contender), but ultimately we thought the style wasn't fitting that well and we were lucky enough to find someone very talented for the spell effects, so everything more or less fell in place naturally.

As far as the design of spells/abilities in concerned, one of the key design aspects of our game is the various elemental and physical damage types. After a few revisions, we ended up using 6 elements + 1 physical + 1 non-elemental magic, for a total of 8 damage types. That sounds like a lot (and it is I suppose ^^) but we started with about 14 before we decided to simplify things considerably.

The final layout is fairly classic elements:
- water > fire > earth > lightning (each working in a rock-paper-scissor fashion)
- dark <> holy
- physical damage
- non-elemental magic damage

There are multiple reasons we went with this layout. First, we want the rock-paper-scissor feel and the ability for the player to customize both their resistances and their damage types. Multiple enemies are designed to have specific elemental strengths and weaknesses on top of their base physical/magical defense scores, so it offers strategical options in combat.
We're trying to keep it to a small enough count so it's not overwhelming either.

The 4 elements also serve to ensure there's some possibilities for impressive looking magic and cool signature spells.

Dark and Holy were added in part because there are a lot of demonic creatures in the game settings, so we wanted to allow specific spells and classes to specialize to dealing with them. Initially, healing magic was supposed to be holy magic as well, but we eventually changed all healing spells to being 'non elemental' in nature, as it was causing weird effects (such as your people resisting holy magic, hence diminishing healing magic power on them or demons taking damage from healing magic, which we didn't specifically want either, etc).

Then we have pure physical damage, which encompasses most physical abilities (although physical abilities could also be elemental, in which case they target the enemy's physical defense, combined with their elemental resistance, instead of targeting their magical resistance combined with their element resistance, like magic would).

Lastly there's non-elemental magical damage, which is a fairly rare type. Generally speaking, if you exploit the weaknesses from enemies, the 4 core elements should be more efficient than the non-elemental damage, but having a flexible non-elemental spell can always come in handy and specific classes try to take advantage of that.

Characters have a resistance score (seen as a % resistance value) for each of the 6 elements and will end up taking extra damage, normal damage, no damage or even absorbing the damage depending on their actual resistance. Generally speaking, the resistances will come from gear for human characters, whereas monsters have built-in resistances, often reflecting their standard fantasy archetype.


(Here this recruit has 50% water damage resistance)

There's a lot more than just the elements to the design of our abilities in general, including their range, shape, size, etc. I'll cover more of those in a later post

The world needs more strategy/tactical RPGs I say!

Looks interesting to me

Oops, it's a bit dated by now, but I forgot to add a link to our intro-of-the-game video. Shows the game's first cutscene and battle and should give a good idea of what things will look like