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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsJack Move. A cyberpunk JRPG
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Author Topic: Jack Move. A cyberpunk JRPG  (Read 48959 times)
empika
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« on: June 22, 2013, 06:28:48 AM »

Jack Move is a cyberpunk Japanese style RPG. Set in a gritty hi-bit pixel art world and featuring an intriguing story & exciting tactical cyberspace battles.

Play the new demo during the Steam Game Festival, 16th-22nd June!

They whisper her name on the streets: Solares. A mysterious veteran of the Data Wars, she keeps the fight against the Corporations alive as a vigilante hacker-for-hire, empowering the downtrodden and undermining those with power.
When she receives an emergency message from her estranged father - the eccentric Dr. Abner Solares, whose wife's death spurred him to become the leading researcher of 'digital reanimation'  - Noa is thrust into a world of murder, kidnapping, dark research, and the corporation that would steal it for their own ends: Monomind.
What starts as fight to save your father will become a fight for the future of mankind itself...


  • “VHS era” cyberpunk world - Neon. Rain. Cityscapes.
  • Gritty story - Play as a hacker, fight an evil mega-corp
  • Cyberspace decks - Configure the loadout for your sweet cyberspace deck. Software, RAM and firewalls!
  • Random Turn-based battles - Because everyone loves random battles, right?
  • Lovely hi-bit pixel art - …with fancy modern lighting!
  • Wicked soundtrack - Music by cult Drum and Bass producer Fracture

Game design + background art by me (Edd Parris). Character design and animation by Joe Williamson. Writing by Amalie Kae. Music by Fracture. Sound Design by Adam Hay.













Smiley
« Last Edit: September 11, 2022, 08:20:50 PM by empika » Logged

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« Reply #1 on: June 22, 2013, 09:00:54 AM »

Ooh! Consider me intrigued. Grin
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« Reply #2 on: June 22, 2013, 09:14:39 AM »

Looks cool Smiley

It would be interesting that there was no actual art in the whole game (but that might get tiring in an hour or two)
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« Reply #3 on: June 22, 2013, 10:19:04 AM »

Reminds me of playing the Hacker class in Forumwarz. Looks very cool. Will be following this.   Beer!
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« Reply #4 on: June 22, 2013, 11:36:49 AM »

I would seriously love to do the music for this project, if you plan on having any at all. If you already have someone or don't plan on having music, that's fine, just offering a friendly hand of help to a neat project I'd like to be a part of Smiley
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« Reply #5 on: June 22, 2013, 03:48:18 PM »

Thanks for the support folks, mighty kind of you.

Dinsfire, unfortunately I already have someone lined up for the music, currently in discussion over how to work it. Thanks for the offer though, I'll keep you in mind if it falls through.

Thought I'd post some more pics of bits and peices.

Here's the editor



And here's the world in debug mode



And with debug turned off



All looking pretty crappy, but I'm just trying to get the main functionality working. Those big red boxes in the debug image are the collision objects. Collision detection is being handled by the Farseer physics engine, it's pretty good, better than I could code by hand.

Today I've been messing about with lights. Trying to get something half decent working just using additive blending. That's what those weird blobs and triangles are. I think it'll work out ok and could look pretty good with some good art and imaginative use.
I was also working on portals/doors. I now have a secondary position on them defined, so when you arrive at a portal you will automatically walk to that position rather than just popping into the level Smiley
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« Reply #6 on: June 27, 2013, 12:15:25 PM »

Hooray. Over the last week I've been working on getting some NPC's into the game. I've not had as much time as I'd wanted due to other stuff (like going to a local dev event to mess about with oculus rift etc).
But today I got some npcs on screen, they dont do a whole lot but they have 'collision' detection on them so I can start giving them events and things.
The next thing on the list is to try and order all characters by their Y axis, so that they get drawn in the correct order and we don't get any z fighting. That should be pretty trivial so after that I'll start looking at some interaction.

Had a great lunch with my writer today too. Got some really good ideas for the beginning of the story and, gave me a good idea of what we'll need for the first mini demo we're working towards.
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« Reply #7 on: June 27, 2013, 03:03:13 PM »

Seems like there's a lot of original stuff you can do gameplay-wise with a turn-based battle system in such an abstract setting. You don't have to resort to the usual weapons-armor-skills-etc that most JRPGs use. This could be super cool.
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« Reply #8 on: June 28, 2013, 04:10:00 AM »

Seems like there's a lot of original stuff you can do gameplay-wise with a turn-based battle system in such an abstract setting. You don't have to resort to the usual weapons-armor-skills-etc that most JRPGs use. This could be super cool.

Thanks!

Hopefully it should work out pretty good. The battle stuff is based on what "software" you have installed. The amount you can have at at any one time depends on how much ram you have etc. You can see in the picture in my previous post that some of the slots are greyed out.
There will also be passive software, these won't be actual move's you can execute but will buff you or perhaps automatically perform a counter attack. I think there's an interesting balance there, between moves you can actually execute and buffs. For example you might have only one move installed, but along side that have 4 other passive softwares that buff your attack and defense to counter the lack of moves.
I'm still working out how to balance it all though.
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empika
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« Reply #9 on: July 06, 2013, 03:49:29 PM »

Managed to get some work done on the dialog system today. Still needs a bunch of work, but you can have multiple conversations with npcs and it'll loop the last one when they run out of things to say. Pretty happy with that.



Also fixed a couple of bugs with swapping maps and some movement issues.
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« Reply #10 on: July 06, 2013, 04:05:17 PM »

Seems like there's a lot of original stuff you can do gameplay-wise with a turn-based battle system in such an abstract setting. You don't have to resort to the usual weapons-armor-skills-etc that most JRPGs use. This could be super cool.

I agree with this. It seems like there is a lot of potential if you don't rely entirely on the typical JRPG formula.
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« Reply #11 on: January 28, 2014, 12:49:00 PM »

So, been a while since I posted anything about this project.

I've been busy rewriting my own engine in monogame/xna, which I have then thrown out as I've realised that writing the whole engine and editor is just a pain, I learnt a lot from it but realized i'll just end up writing engine stuff all the time, not the game. So I've switched to Unity now that it has 2d support built in. Now I just have to learn how to use Unity Shocked

I've also been working on some art myself as Marcelo who has been helping out has been snowed under with real work and things, and I wanted to start moving things on with it. I find it hard to make stuff and stay motivated with just placeholder art. Although I wanted to avoid pixel art, it is the only sort of art I can realistically get done myself. To combat the sameiness of the pixel art I've been experimenting with using two tone backgrounds, different colours depending on the environment. The character sprites will be in colour to make them readable. I think they could look quite good with some nice dynamic lighting, particles and tricks.

Hopefully the perspective will make sense in these shots, it's top-down/front-on. It's easier to understand when you are navigating a sprite through the environments. Of course, any feedback would be appreciated.

Dark alley (click for full size):


Seedy dive bar:


(possibly the main) Character:


Another dude:


Ive' been using the excellent Pyxel Edit for the pixel art. It's a great tool, definitely the best modern pixel editor I've come across over the years.

Anyway, hope you enjoy!

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« Reply #12 on: February 02, 2014, 11:05:49 AM »

Heres a screenshot of what i've been working on this weekend



Been messing about in unity trying to get some nice looking lighting, it's starting to look quite nice I think. I opted to use this volumetric type thing (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/3787) as opposed to something pixelated/dithered because it just became too noisy. After experimenting I found this to work quite well.

I really like the shadows cast by the wall corners, it really adds to the depth of what is essentially just one big flat texture, although I'm still not sure about the lamposts standing out so much, they look weird when they have the light texture blended.
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« Reply #13 on: March 04, 2014, 08:04:55 PM »

Gradient-esque lighting mixed with dithering is an interesting choice. I'm kind of surprised how well it works, actually. Diggin' the character art by the way.
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« Reply #14 on: March 06, 2014, 03:00:14 PM »


I really love this style, this screenshot especially! The lighting really sells the mood.

Is the title "Jack Move" a reference to William Gibson's book Pattern Recognition?

Thanks guys! Good to know i'm on the right track.

Yeah, the title is a reference to William Gibson, I think he has that saying in all his books (or a lot of them at least). The one where it really stuck in my brain all those years ago was from pattern recognition though. I chose it because of what happens in the story, and also that it works in a cyberpunk context of "jacking in" Smiley
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« Reply #15 on: March 06, 2014, 03:09:39 PM »

I was sold when I saw "Ono Sendai" written there. I wonder if you can even do that, but it got my attention ^^

also, that 2d lighting solution seems very nice, indeed. having made something similar in xna (not from the grounds up, mind you), I take my hat off to whoever made that, looks great!

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empika
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« Reply #16 on: March 06, 2014, 03:12:47 PM »

I was sold when I saw "Ono Sendai" written there. I wonder if you can even do that, but it got my attention ^^

also, that 2d lighting solution seems very nice, indeed. having made something similar in xna (not from the grounds up, mind you), I take my hat off to whoever made that, looks great!

Ha! Yeah, don't think I'll be able to get away with Ono Sendai in the final game Wink

The lighting I'm using is http://u3d.as/content/reverie-interactive/2d-volumetric-lights/36x it's not 100% perfect, I had to mess with the shaders and bits to get it to my liking. Saved me a ton of time though, so i'm happy!
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« Reply #17 on: March 07, 2014, 03:29:05 PM »

That sounds and looks really cool, subbed.
Quote
This screenshot is awesome, but these non-pixelated lights spoils the entire look of the game for me.
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« Reply #18 on: March 08, 2014, 04:02:30 AM »

It's a tricky one, I tried some pixelated light stuff but couldn't find anything I was happy with. It's hard to find a balance of looking decent and not taking to long to implement.
I'm limiting the palette i'm using for backgrounds to two colours for similar reasons, my pixel art isn't great so introducing constraints that allow me to actually make the game and get things done, rather than spending a million hours on art etc is really important.
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« Reply #19 on: March 08, 2014, 04:44:10 AM »

Your pixel art is pretty cool, but I have to agree with the others, for a "two color" style, that light fx is quiet unfitting. I think there must be a good solution for this. Would you please post a non-lighted version of that screenshot? I'd like to try something with the lights if you wouldn't mind.
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