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[mushbuh]

OH GOD

[Fervir]

Well now that ludum dare is over, I've started picking up on the game.
Here is the beginning of a the new map editor.
I'm trying to find a way to standardize the tilesets so that I can switch between them on the fly.



Also, check out my LD27 game by clicking this picture

[Fervir]

This editor is pretty cool neat.
I've been practicing my tiles too.

[Fervir]

Decoration Tiles!

[Fervir]

So I have a dialogue system all set up where you can make choices and loop around i guess. (pic related)
The map making stuff should be finished soon as well.
I worked out the inventory system so that it isn't as confusing anymore to equip stuff.
You can buy and sell stuff in the shops more intuitively.
I've got it so that you can have bigger item combos.
Monsters are pretty much good to go and can add more when I need to.
The same thing with items, even under the new 1-4 slot inventory system.
The dungeon mechanics need working up on, but they work.
So right now I have almost all I need to just start making content for the game like actual dungeons, a hub town, an overworld map, quests, NPCs and the actual game.
I just have to draw a bunch of sprites up for all the new stuff.

I'm slowly moving out of the mechanics design phase of the game and into a content creation phase.

[RedPandaWasTaken]

Hi there, just checked out the demo, it's fun and the overworld music is good. Also, are you going for a GBC-look? Because it does look so and it looks pretty cute.

and i'll just leave this (not) made by me fanart here


By the way, any plans on making the editors available to the players? You know, user-created dungeons and stuff.

[Fervir]

Hey, thanks for playing the demo. Yeah, I’m going to go for a GBC-look.
Is that really fanart for the game? That’s a really neat interpretation of the main character. The hair is definitely the same though haha.

As for the map editor, all it does right now is set up the floors, walls and decorations and a few dungeon things.
I have to put things like switches, doors, traps and that stuff "hard coded" in the game.

If I were to make it so that users could create their own dungeons, I’d have to really think of a way that makes sense and is easy to control what the various objects do and also how they interact with each other.

But, just right now, I thought of an idea of how to handle it.
If it works out, I might be able to do stuff like procedural generated dungeons with procedurally generated puzzles! (I don’t think the puzzles will be too exciting though atm).
That stuff is really high level for me to handle right now, but throughout the game’s development I do want to work towards the goal of procedural generated stuff.

[RedPandaWasTaken]

Oh, that's not really fanart, that's Foo Fighters from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure but now I owe you a real one :V

Well, good to hear you just had an idea about it but yeah, editors are haaard. I'll keep an eye here, I want to play more of your game! Also, I know it's just a demo (and you probably already have something in mind about it) but are you going to put in a main plot and stuff to direct the player or will you just let it open to dungeon crawl/explore and maybe put in some sidequests? It's just that it feels like there is no direction in the game.

And maybe I just didn't get far enough but is there a m-map?

[Fervir]

Above are some tilesets that I'm working on.
Cycles through template, ice, fire, current.
Second pic is a map, but it's nowhere in the game.
I'll probably have to include it somewhere in the pause screen, or maybe I can have it as an item.

Yeah, there's no direction at all in the game. It's pretty much a combat/dungeon tech demo I guess. The map above is the entire explorable area of the dungeon. Blue means all set, green means it needs a little more polish, orange needs a lot more polish, red has nothing in it.
I'm probably going to trash that dungeon and recycle rooms for the final game. Oh and this map is not up to date, but it's pretty accurate.

As for the story, I'm just getting started on it, but I do want to have some kind of story, and at least a few sidequests. I'll try to steer away from lame sidequests. My idea for the game is that you'll be doing a lot of interacting with the NPCs in the main HUB town. I want to focus on making the NPCs in the HUB town more like real characters instead of soulless collect-this NPCs. But yeah, I don't know how it's going to turn out as of now.

[ericmbernier]

The reddish 'fire' tile set looks very nice.

Any ideas on how you plan on making the NPCs feel less soulless? Majora's Mask is a great example of a game making its NPCs feel more 'lively'.

[Whiteclaws]

Hey there , do you need any help at pixel art ? I need some pratice and I would be glad to be your artist , I also have huge experience with Scirra products , what do you say , I'll do it voluntarely too

Some work

[MrBones]

This actually looks pretty good. Keep up the good work.

[RedPandaWasTaken]

Nice tilesets you got there but what's with the blue and yellow one? Do you have something special in mind for it? It looks out of place when compared to the other ones.

It's nice that you plan on making the hub NPCs more like real characters, maybe you should take a look at Bastion, there's like, three recurring characters in the hub town and its got a simple structure that makes it easy to go back and forth and some nice character development too, argh, what am I saying you've most likely played it already.

Anyway, will be doing some dungeon-crawling soon, thanks for the map and good work!

[Whiteclaws]

Da Spooky fanart  

Also , take note I am pretty slow and I just started animation , so you'll need to be patient with me 

[Fervir]

Any ideas on how you plan on making the NPCs feel less soulless? Majora's Mask is a great example of a game making its NPCs feel more 'lively'.

It's tough to make NPCs feel more alive.
All I've got right now is just making them have more unique personalities.
I'm probably going to have to write up some good dialogue.
Maybe one of the keys to a good NPC is that they react to you and their surroundings.
Perhaps it's all about the immersion?

It's a tough question, "How do you make a good NPC?"

Which definitely leads to many more questions.
I might not be able to answer it right away, but it's something I'll work on.

To kind of start off, I've drawn up a few NPCs today, for practice, thinking about what kinds of dialogue and quests would come out from these guys.

Nice tilesets you got there but what's with the blue and yellow one? Do you have something special in mind for it? It looks out of place when compared to the other ones.

It's nice that you plan on making the hub NPCs more like real characters, maybe you should take a look at Bastion, there's like, three recurring characters in the hub town and its got a simple structure that makes it easy to go back and forth and some nice character development too, argh, what am I saying you've most likely played it already.

Anyway, will be doing some dungeon-crawling soon, thanks for the map and good work!

That's the template tileset.
And yep, I've played Bastion, I don't remember a whole bunch about the story flow. Might have to replay it in the future.
Have fun with the dungeon crawl!

Da Spooky fanart  

Also , take note I am pretty slow and I just started animation , so you'll need to be patient with me  

Hey man, thanks for the fanart!
I'm actually handling all the art for the game and I'm gonna stick to that for a while, so I won't be needing another artist at the moment.
I'm doing my own art, so that I can practice as well and I like it.
Keep up the good practicing habits!

[RedPandaWasTaken]

Other than unique dialog and using their quests as ways to explore their backstory I think there are a few subtle and not that hard ways to add personality to the character. Many of this might be hard to translate to 8-bit graphics but I'll try elaborating on it, pardon the mess.

First you can make the character look pretty unique instead of "town NPC #379" (which you already are doing, some nice sprites there). You can add a few subtle cues, an exclusive idle animation (like if there was a horse near that gunman/cowboy brown guy he could pet it once in a while), a different animation when you interact with the character (like that lonely gunman there could pull out a cigar or spin his gun and holster it, or the green big-glasses dude could straighten his ties and calm his hair), NPC portrait to display emotion and stuff like that. I think adding a custom border/layout to the dialog box when you are talking to the character might work, too (for instance, if you take that purple witch, you can make the borders and dialog background purple-ish, when there is a topic or a dialog choice you can change the default icon with this character's motif, in this case, something related to wizardry), if the character has its own house and is not standing in the middle of the city (or even if he is) you can make a music for his house/shop or to play when you interact with him (different assets to put in his house are good but that's pretty standard), or if it's your sort of thing, put in those sound noises when the character is speaking (like Banjo Kazooie) or just some sound cues when they wanna express something (like Navi the fairy from Zelda goes "Hey!" or simpler, without any words and just a sigh, for instance).

Well you could take a look at the mask salesman in Majora's Mask




Like eric mentioned, Zelda has pretty lively NPCs, maybe looking at one of the 2D Zeldas would be good research material, Link's Awakening is for GBC so you might wanna start there.

And I remember reading this a while back and there might be something usefol for you, it's for 3D animation but I think there's stuff there that could translate to 2D 8bit sprites, and it's pretty short too so might be worth the read.
http://blog.wolfire.com/2013/04/GDC13-Summary-Animation-Bootcamp-Part-6-6

I'm not an expert but I hope my suggestions are useful and sorry for the wall of text :V

[Whiteclaws]

Good luck then

[Brayzen]

When I saw the dungeon gif on the first page, immediately thought Ganon's Tower LTTP. Made my day!

[Fervir]

I started working on a new tileset today.

When I saw the dungeon gif on the first page, immediately thought Ganon's Tower LTTP. Made my day!

I looked up what you were talking about and I totally forgot that existed.
Maybe I subconsciously included them in my game.

And now I'm going to take in this wall of text and information that sits before me, courtesy of RedPandaWasTaken.

[Fervir]

New decorations.
Map maker is getting close to complete