next »

[Ninja Dodo]

New video:

[r0ber7]

The thread has been a bit quiet because I've been busy with other work recently, so progress on the project has been slower than usual. Some of the stuff I'm working on now is also less visible, preparing for things to add later. Updates coming soon.

I know how that goes. Been busy on other projects as well, but I'm planning a demo release. I really like your last video, two player combat looks fun, and the spearthrowing will add to the gameplay a lot I think. Any chance of a download of your latest stable build? 

[Games Inquirer]

That last video has amazing stuff.

I see some NyxQuest in this game, neat

[Ninja Dodo]

@r0ber7: I should have a new build out this week. I'll probably stop doing downloadable versions in the near future as I get started with the singleplayer, at least until I have a more or less complete demo.

@Alextended: Thanks. And yeah I can see the parallel, but that's not quite where I'm going with the moving platforms.

[Ninja Dodo]

Version 20

Download: http://www.ninjadodo.net/temp/hellas/hellas_v20.zip

Skeletons can now pick up and throw spears, which makes combat a bit more dynamic and closer to facing a human opponent, which is basically what the skeletons are a template for... If I want to add enemy heroes later I can just copy the skeleton AI with a couple of adjustments. I also made it so they can attack while falling, which works better than just doing falling damage (especially on stairs).

And now they spawn from the ground instead of appearing out of thin air.



I got some feedback a while ago that hits weren't always clear so I added the shield breaking to address that. The *OW!* sound is often lost in the noise and if you're moving around a lot the jump recoil isn't always noticeable. This leaves a more obvious marker and hopefully helps clarify the shields as health metaphor.

... though thinking about it that metaphor is going to be stretched a bit thin when I add enemies that don't have shields. May have to go for something more neutral or just throw hands in air and call abstraction. Painting. Corner. Hm.

Blocking no longer stops heavy projectiles (like rocks). Besides making physical sense, this prevents players from camping under a roof when playing against another hero, which is a boring tactic since it kind of just stops everything if not used in moderation.

That and a bunch of other tweaks and fixes.

[Ninja Dodo]

Oh also, if you want to try the work-in-progress moving platform, press P.

And, this is for debugging mainly, press NUMPAD+ to add skeletons.

[Ninja Dodo]

Some animation thumbnails:





I'm working on enemies for the story levels. Will post a video tomorrow with some progress on the AI.

[eigenbom]

Cool sketches!

[Ninja Dodo]

Thanks!

New video of the wild boar in action:



I'm not a big fan of prototyping with placeholder art that's too far from the final look because you make different decisions when you're working with a square instead of a character. Getting key poses in there early means you can more easily refine the feel of the animation and how it flows with the gameplay, rather than just using it to dress up movement that was built for a cube.

If you want the animation to be connected to the movement you have to build them together.

However, creating final art is obviously time consuming. With the hero character I did all the thumbnails on paper, scanned them, arranged them in Photoshop for reference and then added them into the game one by one as I got around to painting each of the poses. For these enemies I'm trying something slightly different: using the animation thumbnails directly as placeholder art so I can properly prototype the movement without having to finish all the sprites first.

[Franklin's Ghost]

That's already starting to look nice. Interesting to read and see more of your process. Also like the way the wild boar runs into the wall

[devi ever]

This looks FANTASTIC! 

[Ninja Dodo]

Thanks . After a few months of not having much time to work on it it feels good to be making some solid progress again.

[r0ber7]

Hahaha, loving the boar! I'm releasing a playable demo of my game today/ tomorrow. You're welcome to check it out.

[Ninja Dodo]

Newbie Adventures in Sound - part 2

So far I've been recording mainly with a Samson Go Mic which seems to work well enough. Only thing is you have to either be at your desk or bring a laptop, so I also got a ZOOM H1 for outside recording. Starting to use it for inside stuff as well. I try to use stock sounds only for things I can't (or don't know how to) record myself...

Speaking of which, I've been rather struggling with lightning.

Since I don't have one of those fancy metal sheets that sound designers use, I decided to just stand outside in a thunder storm with a microphone (under a roof, mind you). Unfortunately, I need lightning without rain and it seems I don't know enough about noise filtering to remove it without losing most of the thunder - not even sure it's possible to adequately filter that much noise. The sound that's in there right now is a mix of some of this half-filtered actual thunder and the sound of crumpling paper changed to a lower speed and pitch. I'm not really happy with it so I may end up just going with stock effects here.

I've had mixed responses to the sound effects overall so far. Some seem to like them but I've also had a friend describe the mix in one of the videos as "terribad". I thought this may have been mainly because of some of the amplified impact sounds, so I went back over those and removed some noise. Especially on the bigger hits it had been kind of noticeable.

Work continues.

[r0ber7]

Cool to hear how you're making sound work. There's an option "noise removal" in Audacity but my guess is that just removes (predictable) static, electric kind of noise. I would try adjusting the equalization of the sound, trying to filter out the frequency of all the rain, see what's left. Maybe then download additional sound from freesound.org and equalize that inverted to the recorded sound. That way the downloaded sound would compensate for any higher frequencies lost in the mixing. Then I'd add a fading out bass tone at the start of the thunder, to give some extra oomph.

Now you've got me thinking about the sound in my own game. Right now it's just placeholder downloaded stuff...

Also, try not to stand under a tree. 

[Ninja Dodo]

Rest assured I aim to not get hit by lightning.

I'm familiar with the noise filter in Audacity but yeah, my attempts so far have either lost too much of the thunder, or not enough of the rain.

When using stock sounds I usually go to Soundsnap or Sounddogs but I expect I'll be using some sounds from free sites as well. Generally though I've found the free stuff isn't labeled very clearly and the quality is kind of all over the place so you often have to spend a lot of time to find something useable... The good ones tend to be overused and very recognizable and I'd like to give the game its own distinct sound.

[r0ber7]

When using stock sounds I usually go to Soundsnap or Sounddogs but I expect I'll be using some sounds from free sites as well. Generally though I've found the free stuff isn't labeled very clearly and the quality is kind of all over the place so you often have to spend a lot of time to find something useable... The good ones tend to be overused and very recognizable and I'd like to give the game its own distinct sound.

Very true, I can't make my game feel consistent with stock sounds because of that, they're too... iffy.
The only other option (besides going to sound mixing forums) I can think of is to find a spot where rain doesn't make as much noise. I'd think the noise rain makes is a lot louder when it falls on stone/concrete than when it falls on dirt for example.

[Games Inquirer]

That boar's art style seems a little off compared to the rest to me. Maybe too much white/grey vs the heavy blacks of the other sprites. Well, even the white sheep is somehow darker. Dunno. Unless that's a draft! Otherwise, great.

[Ninja Dodo]

Yep, those are temp sketches. The final sprites will fit the style. This is just a quick way to test out the movement.

[Ninja Dodo]

New video:



I've been meaning to post about the progress on the lion but it's taking longer than expected, so instead here's some other stuff I'm working on:



There's this problem with jumping that's been bothering me for a while. Around edges, even if you press and hold jump for maximum height, a running jump is sometimes weakened because the player is already falling. This shouldn't happen, because either there is no ground and the player should not be able to jump, or there is ground and the jump should go to its full height when held.

Nevertheless.

Thus far I had been unable to fix this without breaking either the feel of the jump, or collisions. So what I ended up doing is fudge jumps around edges by creating a temporary platform to jump from as long as the player is near the edge, basically anywhere in the "I should have been able to jump there"-range. It's not the prettiest solution, but it works.

This also helped improve jumping from stairs. Since the player only touches the ground once or twice when going down a slope I have to fake contact to allow a jump even when the player is not touching the steps. This creates the same problem as the edge thing, which I previously compensated for by putting extra force behind stairs-based jumps... but this didn't always work. The temp platform solves it more cleanly.

Another change is that the BLIND-power now interrupts GRAB. Before the main use for this power was preventing enemies from spotting you but this doesn't really work in split-screen against a human player since they can see you anyway. At best it disorients your opponent because they can't see where they are going, or prevents them from using a power in that area. Now you can actively mess with a player using GRAB by causing them to drop whatever object they are holding.

As shown in the video the shield now blocks passage on both sides which makes co-op a bit more interesting because now if one player is blocking enemies they have to open their defense to let the other player pass, which adds some risk. (before you could walk through from the inside)

Also:

- vases leave a puddle of red wine when broken.

- ZAP/LIGHTNING beam highlights target

- ZAP does 2x damage instead of instakill, costs 3 sacrifices

- increased max sacrifices you can carry to 5

- some changes to the Versus level.

- revised co-op HUD layout

- other tweaks and fixes


Download: http://www.ninjadodo.net/temp/hellas/hellas_v21.zip


NOTE: The wild boar is not in this build.

I'm going to stop doing downloadable versions for a while but if anyone wants to help test new enemies and levels etc as they develop send me a PM.