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[ompuco]

Stetik Saves Friend is an explorative platformer adventure game with binary pixel art graphics.
It follows Stetik who leads an adventure to save his friend.

I'm currently working on a lot of artwork and animations, and am designing the story and world at the moment


(a small little animated mock up for now)

Stetik Team:
Quade Zaban [Meckz]: Programming
Sam Blye [ompu co]: Design + Artwork + Programming

[devi ever]

Yay!   

[Panurge]

Sounds and looks fantastic. I love those exclamation-point eyes.

[rundown]

Finally this has a devlog!! Can't wait to see more!

[ompuco]

I thought I'd update this with a bit more information, since this project is very well alive.

I've started working on some new music for this (primarily fast-paced chiptune-esque crap) kinda like this song here (which may also be used in the project).

Unfortunately, my computer is having some major hard drive issues, and can't even boot into the partition with all my work and software, so I won't be able to upload much new artwork or things for a little while, but I do have some new stuff for this thread at least for the moment. Luckily, I have most of the stuff backed up so once I get things replaced it shouldn't be too long until I'm back to work and can upload some newer stuff I've made recently. Here's a few new animations and artwork I uploaded recently:

1. game mockup 2. basic animation with alpha, black and white presented (as would be implemented into an engine)

Once I get my computer fixed/replaced, I'll start work on all the running/walking/jumping/actiony animations now that I've got base frames for the character finished (they really help get things going for me).


Also, I'll be updating the thread to describe this as a platformer adventure game than puzzle. There will still be quite a few interesting little puzzles, but I'm designing more of an short adventure-type feel in mind.

I've also asked someone if they were interested programming for this project, and while they did say they were interested in the project, I don't know if/when they would be available, and I won't bother them too soon since I'm not in a hurry right now, but me attempting to learn to program for this is still a slight possibility (as long as my computer doesn't keep giving me issues about various things and it isn't impossible to put together an excellent engine).

[ompuco]

UPDATE: I have gotten my computer fixed and am back on track working on new content. I've recently made a rough run cycle animation that I am still working on finishing up, and I've gotten started working on tile and general world design. I'm also trying to figure out exactly how the story plays out, but I've already developed quite a few ideas, and am working on some new character designs and cutscene animations.

Quade Zaban has offered to help with the programming and is currently writing the engine. We'll post more about the technical things of that as it's developed.


Expect more frequent updates soon!

[Games Inquirer]

Awesome style.

[ompuco]

I've been working on quite a bit of new content. I won't show much right now, but here's some new stuff.
This si some random UI designs and other things, though not much of this will really be used:



Here's some older stuff from when I was designing Stetik at the beginning:

The ones to the left of Stetik were what I made prior to that and ultimately led to his design, and there's two more things at the right which are just two generic looking character sprites that were primarily tests. Other characters in the game will likely not have those "exclamation point eyes" as that's an identifying feature of Stetik, and I'm trying to figure out designs to make each of the few characters easily identifiable and unique.

A series of character designs for a new character in the game:

(small 16x16 portrait of Stetik and friend)

I'm still working on him, but I thought I'd post what I've done so far. Top left to bottom right is oldest to newest versions. It's supposed to be some cervine character (that's like a moose or a deer or something) and might be a little bit thinner than Stetik is. If there's any features from seperate versions that appeal to you, please let me know, cause opinions could really help.

Quade is currently working on the engine.

I've put together a Facebook page (if you're into that kind of thing) which will have a lot of frequent updates and such. Follow it if you want:

https://www.facebook.com/stetiksavesfriend





I'm getting back to revising some old animations and putting new ones together for platforming actions to use in the engine to get that part over with first so that we can have some releasable video and more images of the game once the engine is more developed.

[rundown]

Would be awesome if his horns would grown during gameplay. Like the more you did the older he gets.

[ompuco]

Would be awesome if his horns would grown during gameplay. Like the more you did the older he gets.

I agree, that would be cool, but it wouldn't exactly be necessary or convenient, and there are a lot of animation I'm working on and having dynamic horns/antlers would be a bit difficult. Still, I'll think about it.


I continued working on potential designs for the second character, who is Stetik's friend. Still working on an actual name for him.



And here's some candidates that I might be choosing from.



I'm kind of leaning on 8 but would like to hear some opinions.

[Conker534]

I really like the 1bit aspect with really smooth animations, its pretty awesome to look at. Keep up the good work.

[Impmaster]

Finally, a devlog. Following.

[ompuco]

Thought I'd drop in and give a bit of an update.


The project is still going on, though Quade and I have been a bit busy with other things as of late.


Quade has gotten quite a bit of work done on the engine, but he's a bit busy for the next little while working on a larger project, and will likely be able to get back to this probably by December. I'm not too worried since this gives me quite some time to comfortably plan out more things for this before the engine is far in development, and make it a bit more interesting as a game and a unique world. It also helps me plan out technical design concepts.


I'm currently in my senior year at high school and things haven't been going so smooth with the staff managing my schedule, so I haven't been able to work too much on new stuff because of having to constantly study for new classes I get dropped into weeks after the courses had begun.
I have been working on ideas for this, though. There's a lot on visual concepts and game mechanics I've been writing down that could work with the 1-bit visual style in interesting ways.
I'm planning on starting on some visual mockups to test out some of these ideas, but I don't want to reveal so much of that right now. I've been doing some artwork on weekends and free afternoons, but the artwork I'm making is still something I'd consider rather early works in progress.



Things are starting to get a little bit more complex with this project, but it's starting to take shape. Here's a recent mockup testing some tile designs for a textured ground and water:

I'm currently trying to design some scenery and general decorations to form the atmosphere better, since everything in this mockup is just gameplay elements.


Expect a lot more news on the project's development by December or January. Until then, I'll post some new artwork every now and then.




EDIT: forgot to put this here as well:

[Blodyavenger]

Damn, those animations are so smooth  Also, I'm always fascinated with 1bit art how can you reach distinction between objects using just 2 colors.

Keep the steam machine running, it looks top

[Excy]

I see an outline where there are no pixels my mind!! Following, though. Looks extremely well done so far

[ompuco]

We're going back at full speed on development for this project later this month. I've been writing myself notes every now and then with some neat ideas so this project won't only just be appealing visually. This project's seen some long breaks and stuff (particularly because of school and other things), but that's given me some good time to think.

It's definitely far from dead, if anyone was worrying since there's been so little content and updates over so much time. Sorry about all that. I've been keeping myself from working on this until I could have a good amount of time to work on stuff so that things stay consistent and so I don't constantly have to keep getting back into the groove of things.

[jctwood]

This is some of the most evocative pixel artwork I have seen in a devlog. The style is giving me real windwaker and limbo vibes. I wonder what he would look like with the colours inverted? I'm really into dark themed games these days.

[happymonster]

I agree, I can't help but thinking this should be white pixels on black. But that's probably because I grew up with the ZX Spectrum..

[jctwood]

If there was an easy way for me to invert a gif's colours from my phone I would do it. But I'm glad you also think it might look nice happymonster

[ompuco]

Took a bit of a break but were working on it again. Taking some time off is kinda helping me spot out issues with the WIP animations, so I got started working on the more complex animations again. I'll post a few more things later.



As for the thoughts on White-on-Black vs Black-on-White, the first few mockups I made trying to utilize this style were white-on-black, but after reading some worries that it might be a bit easier on the eyes with black-on-white, I tried it out and started to like it more. I may have a point in the game where the colors become inverted, but I'm thinking ill stay with white-on-black.