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[loudo]

Hi everyone,

just a quick update on the current development status.

• Graphic :
  
  • 2D Graphic : 50%
  • 3D Graphic & animation (characters for combat) : 70%
• Development :
  
  • Hud : 40%
  • Map generation : 40%
  • Base engine : 30%
  • Character animation handler : 30%
  • Data : 15%
  • Exploration Engine : 5%
  • Combat engine : 5%
  • Event engine : 0%
  • AI : 0%
• Game Design : 80% (rather 100%, but some things may change)
• Research for screenplay : 70%
• screenplay : 5%
• Music and fx : 10%

So, graphics progressing well while development's part needs still a lot of work (this is mostly due to the transition from as3/starling to haxe/openfl). It's scattered but I needed to make some test on each part. I need now to focus on Map and Events to make this part playable. Stay tune, new screenshot is coming this saturday.

[kraed]

This looks, amazing, expressive, and refine. Very professional style and i'm itching to see the animations. Love the 3D models and the texture work, it has me very impressed and curious to know how you achieved this kind of 3D work and look. Do post a tutorial/pipeline for them. Best of luck!

[loudo]

This looks, amazing, expressive, and refine. Very professional style and i'm itching to see the animations. Love the 3D models and the texture work, it has me very impressed and curious to know how you achieved this kind of 3D work and look. Do post a tutorial/pipeline for them. Best of luck!

Thanks for your support kraed
To answer your question about the rendering process of the characters (others contents are full 2d), we use a simple toon shader to affect the shades of colors and then we use a script in photoshop to add the edge (we could do it with a postprocess in the 3d software but we didn't got the same results). I guess my 3d artist could make a detailed post later if she has time.

[Sly]

I really like this project Keep up the great work.

[loudo]

I really like this project Keep up the great work.

Thank you for the encouragement.

I also want to show the 2 last screenshots I've posted on screenshotSaturday topic.

So, here is the dialog management. Some answers show up depending on your previous choices or some others only if you have some item on your inventory. There are others critera of course, like your team member, your character's spec, etc.


Here is the simple inventory management sreen. You can equip some gear for your crew and visualize if an item is allready used by an other team member (on rollover you can know who).

[loudo]

Here is a quick update :

Graphic: we have almost finished the new tiles for the map, so I will post a comparative next week.
Code: I did my first haxe macro this week !  Yay ! So it helps me to build my xml data and checks xml structure at compilation time automatically. I used to build external tools for my past project for this kind of works but here it's compiled with the whole project. So, it is really less time consuming. You can even generate code with macro, it's very powerful.

[loudo]

I didn't post the title screen last saturday, so here it is :



And today, I present the improvements of the map that my artist made :



I will be pleased to have some feedbacks on the map
I will post some details later.

[loudo]

So, about the tiles you can see in my last post.

We improved the contrast to remove the bright horizontal lines and the dark vertical lines you can see on the grass tiles, thanks to some tutorials given by the TigSource community. Thanks:)

Then we added different transitions between each tiles. We had only 8 transitions per type (4 corners, 4 borders), now we have between 8 and 12 border transitions per type.
And finally we added different tiles for each type of tiles. We had only one tile per type, now we have 5 (but the ocean has only 3). So, 23 tiles in total (vs 5)!

[loudo]

Wow, it's been a long time since my last post. We've almost finished the graphic but I spent a lot of time testing, monitoring and validating this stuff. So, now I really need to focus on development. I want something ready for mid-June to allow playtests and get some feedbacks. It's a really tight timeline but let's do it.

...meanwhile I will show you the first animation tomorrow 

[castled]

The artist has done a great job here! The overall aesthetics are nice, and the background paintings (for title screen and battle) are really amazing.

The tiles with variations are very helpful in giving the map character and realism. The contrast increase was interesting, hopefully the sprites are still easy to see against the higher saturation background?

I hadn't noticed this game when I made the working title for my own game to be "Glyphseeker"... I'll probably be changing the name though 

Looking forward to seeing the animations!

[loudo]

The artist has done a great job here! The overall aesthetics are nice, and the background paintings (for title screen and battle) are really amazing.

The tiles with variations are very helpful in giving the map character and realism. The contrast increase was interesting, hopefully the sprites are still easy to see against the higher saturation background?

I hadn't noticed this game when I made the working title for my own game to be "Glyphseeker"... I'll probably be changing the name though 

Looking forward to seeing the animations!

Thanks for your feedback. I really appreciate!
I don't think your game's name will be a problem though

Stay tuned for the animation in few hours.

[loudo]

Take a look on the first animation made for Graal Seeker.




The asset/animation was made with a 3d software. The outline was made with a Photoshop script in post-process. I've used Spriter to place the PNG and add additionnal images like the weapon and blood. This animation has only 12 fps but I will upgrade to 24 fps later because for now I have to manually add the weapon for each frames.

I'll be happy to have your thoughts

[castled]

Nice! I like the character design and the post-processing looks great.

Are you looking to have a cartoonish animation, or do you want something more realistic? To me, the way he swings the sword looks more like he's swinging a fly-swatter or tennis racket. I think it would look more like a sword swing if the blade was more horizontal to the ground on the wind-up, and if the wind-up was given more weight with additional frames of the sword raised. Then again if you're looking for a cartoonish style for all animations I think it works great.

[loudo]

The animations are definitely cartoonish. But some of them are too caricatural and need some tweaks. For example, the knight seems to fall when he attacks here.

At the beginning, we had handmade animations with very few fps. So, the artist made very cartoonish animation because we need to understand what the moves describe with only few images. Then, when we moved to 3d, we kept this style even if it is not really needed now.

When I was writing the game design, I wanted very realistic animations. So, it means no unnecessary
moves. I was watching some video of

and was wondering how to include this in the game. But finally, I let it go because I think it's too ambitious, especially with an inexperienced team. I think realistic animations are hard to achieve, and we don't really see such moves in movies nor AAA video games.

But I'm not satisfy of the current result, I think we could improve it in many ways, so I really hope we will have the time to do so. Thanks again for your feedback, it helps a lot

[loudo]

just a quick update on the current development status (~= 2 months of work since last time).

• Graphic :
  
  • 2D Graphic : 90% (+40%)
  • 3D Graphic & animation (characters for combat) : 85% (+15%)(need to polish now)
• Development :
  
  • Hud : 50% (+10%)
  • Map generation : 50% (+10%)
  • Base engine : 40% (+10%)
  • Character animation handler : 60% (+30%)
  • Data : 20% (+5%)
  • Exploration Engine : 10% (+5%)
  • Combat engine : 5%
  • Event engine : 20% (+20%)
  • AI : 0%
• Game Design : 85% (+5%)(rather 100%, but some things may change)
• Research for screenplay : 75% (+5%)
• screenplay : 5%
• Music and fx : 10%

Since the graphic part is almost finished, I don't need to test and validate the assets anymore. It took so much time to validate the graphic assets. I'm thinking now starting so soon the graphic part was a mistake  (or at least I was to much focusing on it).
So, now I'm focusing on the Event Engine to get this part working in 4 or 5 days. Then I will put all my efforts on the Combat Engine and AI. It will allow to begin some playtests.

[loudo]

The Event Engine needs some additionnal work as I was not able to focus on it as I wanted. I needed to add some features on the UI and the Game State Handler to have the ability to fully test and validate the Event Engine.

Regarding the Game State Handler, I'm very happy with it. I try to use an entity component system approach using Ash Framework (haxe version). The game logic is driven by Systems and so the Game State Handler has to add and remove systems into the main game loop.

So, here is how my Game State Handler works :

• Configure for each system the states where he's active.
• When the game state change, it removes all non-used system and adds sytem not yet added.

I've added 2 features to create a state which knows his full potential of systems but doesn't know if he needs all of them. Let's call it a flying state (it's like a sub-state which doesn't know his parent).
For example, in a game, we have an inventory system for the inventory state. But the inventory can be launched from the exploration phase or from the fighting phase. We need to use the systems used by the exploration state or the fighting state while running the inventory state but we cannot use both. We need for example a specific rendering system to render the background of the inventory.

In my configuration file, I have only the current systems for every state. So, it's easy for the Game State Handler to add and remove systems. But with the flying state, I need to introduce an exclude parameter to tell The Game State Handler to not remove some systems.

[loudo]

Before going into the details of how the Event Engine works I want to show you how the translation feature works. I use a modified version of Firetongue.

First, you have to build a csv file with all your datas for a given language. You will have to make a copy of this file for each language and adapt the text.

The file is really simple, you have a tag on the left and a translated text on the right:

Code:

"$RE_CAT","A little cat is here",
"$BLACK_CAT","A black cat is looking at you",
"$WILD_CAT","A cat is growling",

So, when you will call the $RE_CAT tag, it will display A little cat is here.

Then, the first feature I've added allow you to build some text by combining some tag:

Code:

"$RE_CAT_ANGRY","{$RE_CAT} and he's angry!",
"$RE_CAT_HAPPY","{$RE_CAT} and he's happy!",

The first one will display : A little cat is here and he's angry!

And finally I use some replace internal tools of Firetongue to allow the use of variable.
For example, you can have this:

Code:

"$RE_RANDOM_CAT_ANGRY","{RE_RANDOM_CAT} and he's angry!",

If your variable RE_RANDOM_CAT (no $ here, it's not a tag) is a simple string, it will display the result. But if your variable is a list you can have a random text as the final result. To have this kind of variable, you have to build an xml with this kind of tag :

Code:

<textList id="RE_RANDOM_CAT">
<text>$BLACK_CAT</text>
<text>$WILD_CAT</text>
</textList>

So, when you will call $RE_RANDOM_CAT_ANGRY it can display :

• A black cat is looking at you and he's angry!

Or

• A cat is growling and he's angry!

[loudo]

Graal Seeker has a kind of exploration phase where the player moves his hero from place to place. We have for now approximately 15 places (castle, bridge, forest, menhir, hawker, watchtower, lake...) but we hope to add so much more. In each place a random event occurs according to the current place, and the player can be prompted to make a choice or make an answer in a dialog sequence. For example, you have more chance to meet a Druid nearly a Menhir or more chance to get a fight event if you go in a military camp.

The following screenshots are work in progress so there will be some changes in the final version of the map generation. The most significant difference is that we see all the island here whereas we will see only a portion while playing in the final version. The island will be much bigger. But having a small island helps me tweak the map generation for now.





So, as you can see the distribution of the different places is not good enough yet. In fact, it's totally random for now. I have still to limit the places in particular region to avoid having so many same places next to each other.

I'll be glad to have some feedbacks. How can I improve the map generation ? Do I have to forbid castle next to each other or define more rules for the procedurally generated map and what these rules could be? Or do I have to redistribute the places once they are added (2 procedure : random and then redistribute?). How would you guys do ?

By the way, Graal Seeker has now his page on Steam.

[loudo]

Somebody points the Poisson Disk Sampling on IndieDb. It seems to be what I need to distribute better towers, castles and other things I called places. Here is some pros and cons I thought about, maybe there are some more.

Pros :

• I avoid to have too much same places next to each other
• I avoid to add the places by fixing them on the tile center, and I can have non-aligned places
• I can determine empty places on a single pass (for example grass tile without anything on it) and add them to the event engine

Cons :

• Making a forest will be more difficult because I need a lot of trees next to each other. Maybe I can build the forest in a second pass when generating the map.

[loudo]

Let's get back to the Event Engine. I have something good working now and I'll surely add some features later.

So, how does it work?

First, you have to know that an event occurs only when the player reaches a place which are either a castle, a tower, a forest and many more. Then the Event Engine chooses either a place event or a default event according to a chance parameter set in an xml. The default events can occur in every place but there are more chances to get a place event. So, I need to sort all my events in different lists and here is the result (in xml).

Code:

<!-- ALL EVENTS BELOW CAN OCCUR EVERYWHERE -->
<list id="DEFAULT_EVENT_LIST">
	<event id="RE_CAT"/>
	<event id="RE_CAT_2"/>
</list>
<!-- ALL EVENTS BELOW OCCUR IN CASTLE OR TOWER PLACES -->
<list id="castle,tower">
	<event id="RE_MILITARY"/>
	<event id="RE_MILITARY_2"/>
</list>
<!-- ALL EVENTS BELOW OCCUR ONLY IN FOREST -->
<list id="forest">
	<event id="RE_FOREST"/>
	<event id="RE_FOREST_2"/>
</list>

Let's make a recap : The Event Engine chooses a list, then it chooses randomly an event from the aforesaid list.

Now, let's see how the event is described in the xml.

Code:

<event id="GWERRANN">
	<choice id="CHOICE1" if="DERWEN"/>
	<choice id="CHOICE2" if="dagger"/>
	<choice id="CHOICE3">
		<fight id="BRITON_LORD"/>
	</choice>
</event>

Here, this event has 3 choices. The Event Engine will search a localized text with $GWERRANN as an id and optionally search for a localized title with $GWERRANN_TITLE as an id. And the engine will display the text in the GUI.
Please see older post to know how the localization engine works.
The texts for the choices work the same as for the the main text but all choices have an icon according to the situation. We have 8 different icons to display with the choices and obviously we don't display choices when the condition is not fulfilled.

• continue choice
• exit choice
• player previous choice
• item requirement choice
• character requirement choice
• attribut requirement choice
• fight choice
• bard choice

Now let me show you the result :