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[Theophilus]

Orb It

What genre?
Orb It is a platform adventure game focused on combat.

Why create this game?
I am creating this game because it is a genre I like - adventure games - and I’ve always wanted to make a long-term project. It is purely of personal intent.

What is the main focus?
The character’s village is ruled by an evil commander. Though stronger than everyone in the village, he knows he is not strong enough to conquer other villages. He requests the player character to fill up these orbs with energy in order to vanquish other lands. Instead of handing over the energy, the player realizes he can use it to fight with the evil, and save his village and the villages of the world.


The player is granted an orb, which the game is based around. His goal is to fill this orb with energy, coming from monsters. To fill an orb with energy, one can either kill a number of monsters and drain energy from their carcasses (Resulting in less energy), or hold the orb near a monster (Resulting in more energy). While holding the orb next to the monster, the player cannot defend himself. Particular bits of terrain and the type of monster will affect the strategy the player might use.

Latest screenshot:

7/28/11 - Engine with clouds, orb holding, basic things.

Thanks to...

Matt Thorson (GrandmaEngine)

[BlueSweatshirt]

Sounds neat! It'll be cool to see how you design around that concept.

Gogo, man!

[SolarLune]

It is indeed an interesting idea - one that I haven't heard of before, actually. Very nice and simple, yet fun concept.

[Theophilus]

Thanks for the replies. I do worry though, that it will be perceived as gimmickey.


To-do for today:

Sprite the character
Work on the design document


I'll be out for a bit today so it's a small list.

[Theophilus]

7/26/11 - Day 1

-Sprited a placeholder character and animations so I at least can progress with that. Nothing worth showing.

-Added sprite changing

-Finished the first draft of the design document.

-Sketched some enemies and ideas for them (Thanks to Timmy GILBERT for that post about enemies and how it's important they affect the core of the game - definitely helped - read here.)

-Wrote down another idea. The main weapons will be a stick as a sword and a stone as a projectiled weapon. If I were in this situation, I would combine them to make a better weapon - probably an ax or some kind of hammer or a monkey's fist, or maybe I'd break the rock and make a cat o' nine tails. So I wrote down this concept and wrote some of these combined weapon ideas down.



To-do for tomorrow
-Update the design document with this new weapon concept.

-Make an easy CSS template I can use to add things to an online design document - specifically, enemy tables. I love having things online.


-Write down enemy ideas, sketch them out, add to the enemies page on the online design document

-Start on a custom platform engine. Up til now I've been using Matt Thorson's GrandmaEngine, and while it's great, I'd like to have my own engine so I know my way around it a bit better.


ChevyRay has gifted me the humble bundle today, so I spent a large chunk of my time playing VVVVVV (PLAY IT NOW) and Hammerfight, which I have to say sorely distracted me. I am more than thankful for Chevy's gift though.

[Thomas Finch]

I really like this idea, and I really love the name. I'll be paying attention to this project! :D You know what would be interesting... if you had the orb constantly orbiting the player (thus working a double meaning for Orb It) and when you kill a monster, it simply absorbs the nearby energy, but like you were saying have it give you more energy if you just hold it near. So the animation would be something like it's orbiting around you and the character stops it mid-orbit, holding it towards the monster. If you get hit, then you let go and it just orbits you.

[Theophilus]

7/27/11 - Day 2

-Updated design document with the weapon concept.

-Made the CSS template, added a few enemies

-Came up with only one enemy. The day's not over, hopefully I can be inspired soon.



To-Do for tomorrow:

-Start working on the game.

-Sprite something.


I decided it wasn't worth it to create my own platform engine. Moi once said, "Make games, not engines.", and I think I better do that. I'll learn to use the GrandmaEngine. It won't be that bad. Adding a few things might be a bit tough but I'll manage.

Nothing new really in the design portion on the plate, but if something comes to mind I'll be sure to write it down. Hopefully I'll get some graphics done, too.

[BlueSweatshirt]

CSS template... For enemies?

[Theophilus]

CSS template... For enemies?

Yup. See, instead of fiddling around formatting images and text with a table into google docs, I just made an HTML page, and I'll link to it.

[BlueSweatshirt]

Ohhh, gotcha! That's cool.

At first, I thought you were referring to using CSS for their actual implementation in your game.

[Theophilus]

7/28/11 - Day 3

-Added orb equipping

-Added a small sprite font, temporary.

-Organized project folders, assets.

-Added clouds spawning, fading, moving.

-Changed tileset. Still experimenting with which art style I want.

-Made screenshot taking a whole lot easier. Before, each screenshot had a generic name (screenshot100, screenshot101, etc. You know how GM is). Now they go to a custom folder with a timestamp. This is a long term project, and I'm glad I got this done.

-Added icon.

-Added placeholder background so the clouds look decent.


Click to enlarge


Today was a highly productive day. I managed to not get distracted by games. All around A+, no other thoughts.


EDIT: Almost forgot!


To-do for Tomorrow:

-Design some more enemies. I'll be analyzing my game more so I can see what fits.

-Make some basic combat. I hope it goes well!

-Put some basic enemies in the game.


I forsee making the combat to be a bit rough, so a small schedule for tomorrow.

[BlueSweatshirt]

Your game is looking really inorganic

You should try separating collision blocks from their visual representation, so you can make the ground actually curve smoothly while still having those sharp slopes. Hope that makes sense!

Of course, you don't need too. Personally, I just find something jarring about those pointy hills.

[Theophilus]

Your game is looking really inorganic

You should try separating collision blocks from their visual representation, so you can make the ground actually curve smoothly while still having those sharp slopes. Hope that makes sense!

Of course, you don't need too. Personally, I just find something jarring about those pointy hills.

Yeah, I'm not sure how I should though. I guess I could make a tileset a little less generic with different segments, but my main concern is having the player walk along the slopes normally though the mountain is not.

I'll definitely work on this though.

[Theophilus]

No progress today, I had a game jam.  I feel so bad.

[BlueSweatshirt]

Hope it was a good jam! 
[EDIT]
If you didn't just spend your time circlejerking, you should post up what you made there!

[Theophilus]

Actually, I'm about one day into it, and it's 72 hours. I'll be sure to post it here, though, it seems promising so far.

[Xardov]

Game looks nice, though it looks like your character is naked. XD  What tool is this made with?

[Tumetsu]

Looks nice though like already said rather inorganic. Maybe try to get some curves there? I'm not sure how hard it would be try make level editor use bezier curves for example. Math with collisions could be rather complex too unless you make only graphics have smoothed look while actual collision masks are tiled.

[antymattar]

I saw this in the mockumps section. Hope it gets finished. Also, good luck making ai with the grandma engine. I usually have bugs.

[Theophilus]

Uhhh, I don't recall ever posting this in mockups.

I'm redesigning this game. I like the concept but it seems like a grinding game. There is no real gameplay. So for now, I'm closing this thread until I have a better game.