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Aik
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« on: January 18, 2011, 05:19:02 AM »

(very much a working title)

Accidental Rebel and I are collaborating. I'm handling code and he's doing the art.

The concept is, basically, magical girl battles inside a magic school, using speech recognition to cast spells.

So yeah, if we succeed I expect to see some videos of you yelling stupidly into your microphones at whatever event it is that Derek's getting us to make this for.

Here's our current plan:

Milestone 1 - stationary duels:
Voice recognition
Basic spells
Mouse aim
Character art/basic background art

Milestone 2 - running battles:
Character movement
More spells
Character movement on different planes (like Legend of Mana or Double Dragon)
Level design - nonlinear levels
Environment art
Minimap (maybe)

Milestone 3 - tactics and learning:
Versatile spells (effecting environment)
Experimentation to find new spells
Randomised spell words
Spellbook (to write down new spells discovered)


We discussed further possibilities, but there's no way we'll get that far. Getting to any of these milestones in time will be sufficient anyway.
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TobiasW
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« Reply #1 on: January 18, 2011, 05:23:00 AM »

That sounds awesome! How far do you want to make the speech recognition aspect? Are there small speech commands, or do I actually have to chant a whole spell? Do you already have an idea which library you will use?

(Hmm, minus the speech recognition that reminds me of an old idea of mine. I'm wondering if I should dust it off for this compo.)
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Aik
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« Reply #2 on: January 18, 2011, 05:28:04 AM »

Honestly, haven't thought through the technical details yet, but chanting whole spells would be pretty great. I'm imagining that the basic spells would be simple commands though. If anyone has advice on speech recognition libraries I'm all ears. Pyspeech looks incredibly simple though, but I'm not married to any language even at this point.
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namre
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« Reply #3 on: January 18, 2011, 05:37:46 AM »

That sounds awesome! How far do you want to make the speech recognition aspect? Are there small speech commands, or do I actually have to chant a whole spell?
We will require players to chant the whole spell to cast it. The stronger the spell, the harder it will be to cast.

I am also excited on Milestone 3, where players need to look for and memorize the spells. Spells will be randomly generated so players are required to learn how to say them. By doing it this way, every match is a fresh start for everyone, nobody knows how to cast spells unless they learn it.
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TobiasW
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« Reply #4 on: January 18, 2011, 06:09:14 AM »

We will require players to chant the whole spell to cast it. The stronger the spell, the harder it will be to cast.
I love it!

What kind of camera view will it have? Topdown, plattformer side view?

Damn, this game sounds so awesome, I would make it if you weren't already Crazy
« Last Edit: January 18, 2011, 06:36:07 AM by TobiasW » Logged

namre
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« Reply #5 on: January 18, 2011, 06:34:35 AM »

Quote
What kind of camera view will it have? Topdown, plattformer side view?
We'll have it in platformer side view.

Quote
Damn, this game sounds so awesome, I make it if you weren't already
Lol. It's a product of two hours of brainstorming. This idea wouldn't have emerged if it were not for our mutual sentiments on the state of magic in video games.

Will be posting a mock up tomorrow :D
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TobiasW
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« Reply #6 on: January 18, 2011, 06:36:20 AM »

I'm looking forward to it!
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Sos
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« Reply #7 on: January 18, 2011, 08:00:33 AM »

Man your deadlines are worse than at my work, hope you make it tho. Wink
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namre
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« Reply #8 on: January 18, 2011, 09:14:26 AM »

Our approach is that each milestone would represent a finished version of the game. Our primary target is milestone 1. If we still have time before the deadline, we'll push on to do Milestone 2 and so on.

:D
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namre
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« Reply #9 on: January 18, 2011, 11:20:31 AM »

Hi guys,

On my first try on creating a character, I ended up with a nice sexy anime chick, similar to the girl found in Muramasa: Demon Blade pictured below:

I would have continued with that character but I figured it would be a pain in the ass to animate her especially with the limited time that we have, so I went back to the drawing board and tried again.

To come up with some character concepts, I looked around the net for inspiration. Surely, the first thing that would come to your mind when it comes to witches are those evil-looking, dark, ugly witches. But to me, my first thought were those from anime shows. You know, the cutesy and sometimes sexy witches that battle each other with magic.

So I decided to go with that, and after a number of mockups this is what I came up with:
Instead of creating lots of characters that the player can choose from, I decided to go with just one but with different colored costumes. This is so that we could save time and concentrate on other stuff. Furthermore, our game doesn't have any individual stats that define the character (like in RPGs), our main focus is on the spell casting.

This limitation can also be used as a part of the story. Like for example, After using a forbidden spell, 3 doppelgangers of the protagonist was created. Afraid that she might get scolded by her professors, she took it upon herself to fight her clones and destroy them before bedtime. This would serve as the backstory for the game. (Hey Aik, let's use this!)

I shall be posting a mock-up of how the whole game would look soon. Maybe tomorrow morning. For now, I have to sleep.  Yawn

Cheers!
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ink.inc
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« Reply #10 on: January 18, 2011, 12:58:39 PM »

Good luck guys!
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SophieH
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« Reply #11 on: January 18, 2011, 01:33:12 PM »

So I read 'witch battles' and I'm already in love, then you say voice recognition and chanting to cast spells?

W A N T  S O  B A D !  Shocked
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Reiss
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« Reply #12 on: January 18, 2011, 03:38:22 PM »

Couple of friends + couple of beers + this = PROBABLY FUCKING RAD
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Inanimate
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« Reply #13 on: January 18, 2011, 04:49:29 PM »

This is going to be insane. Too bad I don't have mics...
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Aik
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« Reply #14 on: January 18, 2011, 05:59:45 PM »

I think this will be infinitely amusing to test.




So yeah - I'm thinking Panda3D+Pyspeech. I'm not 100% sure on the Panda3D yet - the inbuilt networking stuff looks nice and there's a lot of pretty graphical effects potential here. I'm not sure if that stuff overcomes the problems with using a 3D engine for a 2D game, but, well - how hard can it be? Orthographic cameras and textured planes everywhere ... right?

Mmm, yeah. I'm not sure, but if it turns out too difficult I don't think jumping to Pygame would take too long.

Not sure how distributing this is going to work, seeing it requires Microsoft's speech stuff installed (it comes with Office but isn't installed by default - plus takes about 15 minutes to train it to recognise your voice. Also, XP and Vista only, as far as I can tell) ... but I guess that isn't really our problem.
Uh, hopefully Accidental Rebel is using XP or Vista...?
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namre
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« Reply #15 on: January 18, 2011, 08:28:39 PM »

Uh, hopefully Accidental Rebel is using XP or Vista...?
Lol. I don't have one at the moment but I will have one soon (was already planning to downgrade one of my laptops). Don't we have other options? Just asking. It's always a good idea to target a lot of audience as much as possible. :D

Anyways, here's my update. A design mockup of how the game would look like:

The background and icons are the only ones I didn't make and are used for demonstration purposes only. This is how I want the game to look and feel. I want the game to be lighthearted and not too serious looking.

My main inspiration would be Maple Story. That game has great art backgrounds with cutesy characters but still manages to be flashy and awesome.

I haven't really put too much thought on the menu system as of now. But if you are wondering why there are spell icons on the top right when the fact that spell casting is voice activated, that is because these are used for checking your spell book. Again, it bears to mention that if you forgot how to chant a particular spell, you could check your spellbook. However, this will make you vulnerable to attack!

Hope you guys like how it looks! Feel free to leave a comment!

(Aik, please update the first post with our new updates? :D Thanks )
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Paint by Numbers
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« Reply #16 on: January 18, 2011, 08:40:41 PM »

This is looking very good. Can't wait to see how this turns out! Grin
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Riley Adams
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« Reply #17 on: January 18, 2011, 08:53:26 PM »

Holy crap that's pretty. Shocked
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ness io kain
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« Reply #18 on: January 18, 2011, 09:03:23 PM »

This looks and sounds both fun and adorable.
Best wishes to you on your endeavor, sirs!
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« Reply #19 on: January 18, 2011, 09:23:11 PM »

This is a really fun idea! I just wanted to chime in and say if you're inspired by Muramasa, you should check out the art in Grim Grimoire, an earlier Vanillaware game set in a magical academy with witches etc:

http://www.giantbomb.com/lillet-blan/94-9436/

Cheers,

Will
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