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[LeafThief]

Just wanted to pop in and tell you how great everything looks. You're making something amazing here and I honestly can't wait to get my hands on that game  - and I say that well aware of the fact that I usually don't like fighting games.
But your gorgeous illustrations and animations and the whole premise of connecting the fighting game with a life sim - looking "behind the scene" is awesome to me.

Regarding your latest updates: I too think that K.O. presentation and visual feedback on hits are perfectly executed. I think the game's very readable! However one thing I noticed across all screenshots you posted was the HUD/Interface. IDK whether they're placeholder art or final but looking at the average tone (redish-brown) of your backgrounds and game I find it rather hard to distinguish the UI from the background making them hard to read (an extreme example of this IMO is 'Honey's Room') but I think the collection of screens shows this rather good as well.
However I found in the latest screens (the fight scenes) it works okay. I hope I'm making sense here and that it helps somehow.

Keep up the great work

[Pehesse]

Wow, many thanks for your feedback and enthusiasm, it means a lot :-D

I see what you mean about the tint of the HUD/interface. It's not a placeholder, but it's not final either since I need to update it to make fonts more visible/legible - so I might as well try to update the coloring while I'm at it :-D I'll try some things when I get back to the VN segment, you'll see how it goes :-D

As for the K.O. segment, I'm really happy about that one, since it's one of the few things I consider completely done for now :-D I intend to find the same dynamism and energy in the match intro scene as well, but for now it's not working. I'll get it done at some point :-D

Also, your comment about not usually liking fighting games means a lot as well, since I'm indeed not trying to do a hardcore (or even traditional) fighting game at all, rather a beat'em all mechanics wise, and even then I try to make it more accessible to players who usually don't go for that genre. We'll see if it works in the end, but comments like yours are exactly the sort I try to elicit, so that makes me very, very happy indeed :-D Thanks a lot!

[Pehesse]

Match intro!
The sound effects used (which you can't enjoy in this .gif) are pretty placeholder-y but they still get the job done. Perhaps I'll rework a bit of things after a while when I get cleaner eyes on it, but the main idea is there.

[Pehesse]

A shameless repost from my tumblr devlog, because that took too long to write!

So, what’s new today? Actually, many things, but the biggest is right there in that screen! Can’t see it? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not actually what’s on the screen that matters.

…

…Well?

Here it is: there’s now gamepad support! (what do you mean, that wasn’t clear just from that image? The debug line is right there: “Controller input=gamepad” :-D)

So, yeah, gamepad support, and it works just as well as you’d expect. Both D-pad and stick are supported, though it’s not fully customizable yet and still limited to the fighting segment for now, but I’ll work towards making it compatible with the rest of the game when I get back to the VN segment. I’ll need to figure out more things for it to be really customizable, but it’s the plan, as they keyboard already is. Speaking of keyboard, you can seamlessly go from one to the other without breaking the flow, as that’s always nice to have in case of impromptu disconnections!

As for other additions: I’ve redone the hit effect manager, so I can have a better placement of hit effects (it’s not clear from the above picture but it does actually work most of the time, there are simply too many cases to account for with my crude collision system to get it completely clean I’m afraid!). Along with that, I’ve begun adding directional hit effects (a bit of which is portrayed above as a placeholder) as a complement to said hit effects, and there are jump/landing effects as well. Small cosmetic stuff, but it all adds up. But it’s not all!

I’ve also reworked how Honey grapple works so it’s less wonky, and it should feel pretty good now. I’ll have to test it out further but I can play out many matches without any hitches due to that, so that’s a definite improvement. But you want more, so I give you: Little Sun’s escape! Before, once grappled, Little Sun was basically helpless and you could even exploit the timing of the hits to keep the lock forever and end the match that way. Now, not only is that particular flavor of cheese gone, she can now also escape on her own if you give her the opportunity, so best decide what you want to do quick!

But just in case all of this still wouldn’t be enough, I’ve also added cancel capability to Honey’s fighting style, straight out of a regular Guilty Gear! She can now cancel her dash and some of her attack moves to go into more fluid combos, if you wish to master the timing of that. It’s absolutely not *required*, but it sure helps in hard mode, and it feels cool! (I’ve almost managed to overturn a match where she ate half of my lifebar right at the beginning, through timely use of cancel moves followed by grapple/charge attacks - she still managed to get the best of me after a lucky cartwheel because my test Honey is statistically underpowered, but that was one hell of a match).

And last, I’ve found a funny exploit that allows you to enter a slapstick headbutting match with Little Sun until one of you keels over. I’m not sure I’ll actually bother to fix that one, as it’s still RNG and player timing dependant, and I find the results hilarious to watch, if a bit repetitive (the audience seems to go for it, though). If you want to slap your way to victory that way, more power to you!

And I think that’s all for today, unless I manage to get some other breakthrough soon! It’s probably going to be only hit effects/smoke effects animation for a while, though, as the match itself is getting pretty tight (really!). There’s also going to be the menu that’ll need fixing to account for all these new features, and then, Carrion Wind time!

[Pehesse]

Another shameless repost, this time from IndieGAF:

What's new: new and improved hit effects! We've got a few more basic hit effects, directional hit effects, and smoke effects on ground contact. I'm particularly glad to have the smoke be correctly in front/behind the characters to create a bit of depth, as I'm using separate front and back smoke animation sprites :-D It's such a simple trick, yet it adds enormously compared to a single smoke sprite placed in front of the character, and the memory consuption basically amounts to the same thing.

Here's all of that in action, along with some of the earlier upgrades, like gamepad support (though you can't really tell just from these):





There's even some technical stuff for players who want to play like that (even though it's pretty relaxed and slow compared to any fighting game), like dash/move cancels. Here's what it can look like when things get hectic with counters and the like:



For those who care, all of these were taken in hard mode, with a 40STR Honey against a 22DEF Little Sun, meaning Honey has been training quite extensively during the VN segment (more likely, you'd only reach 25-30STR at that point by doing regular training), but hasn't been to see Little Sun's exhibition match previously, which would cause her defence to drop lower :-D Still, with those stats, even hard mode is proving to be manageable!

I still need to rework the speed line effects, but we're getting to the point where I'm getting ready to move on to the next character. I'll work on the unmask event first, just to make sure it works and I can reuse it for all matches later (it's what happens when you lose and you have a chance to run away before getting unmasked), and once that's done, I'll start on the second opponent, finally!

[Pehesse]

If you happen to lose an official match, this is what happens! Unmasking fighters is serious business.

Kind of a tribute to "continue" screens of 2D fighters, you have this last chance to button mash your way to the escape. The game allows you to keep going if you "fail" official matches like this up to three times. More than that, and you'll run out of time/opportunities to make it to the top of the tournament.

[Tuba]

If you happen to lose an official match, this is what happens! Unmasking fighters is serious business.

Kind of a tribute to "continue" screens of 2D fighters, you have this last chance to button mash your way to the escape. The game allows you to keep going if you "fail" official matches like this up to three times. More than that, and you'll run out of time/opportunities to make it to the top of the tournament.

Cool idea. Very unique and fits the theme pretty well. Nice one.

[Pehesse]

Cool idea. Very unique and fits the theme pretty well. Nice one.

Thanks! Yeah, the idea was to offer something that wouldn't be a simple "retry" option, especially since the game relies so heavily on stats. The player might be confronted to a situation where the match is currently too hard because of lack of training, so simply retrying would have little point. Since unmasking is so prevalent in the plot and the context, the two came naturally together to offer this mini scenario and offer the player a chance to keep going and have another go later, with better stats :-D

Hopefully not that many players will see it, but if they do, it had better be as good and fun as it can be! :-D

As for something new: here's a preview of the next character, currently being animated!

[Pehesse]

Only a few animations done so far, but for Screenshot Saturday I wanted to see it all in motion, and it works! ...mostly.

So far she can only react to hits, walk around and do her ground combos (which is somewhat of a new thing: Little Sun didn't do "combos" at all and only cycled between different moves, whereas here she can actually try to chain into different hits, the likelihood of that being based on your difficulty setting). Since I've reused most of Little Sun's script, there are some weird behavior stuff happening, but I'll iron them out as I put more of her animations and related behaviors in. It's going to take a while, but hopefully not as long as Little Sun did!

[brrrrr]

nice animations! Good job!

[Pehesse]

nice animations! Good job!

Thanks! :-D

[Pehesse]

Like last time, putting the latest animations in and tuning every new move. Once it's all ready, I just plug everything back in to the AI so she can do it herself without my prompts.
Once everything will be done, I'll go back to check the correct displacements on everything, here the hit impacts are all over the place but since many things need tuning before that I'm leaving that as a low priority on the current to-do list! :-D

[Pehesse]

Clicking the screenshot leads to a video of the current test implementation!
I've added all the moves that were only sketched last time, and also the match defeat animation. Still missing are
the match intro, match win, and all grapple state/animations. Still, the match is playable AND mostly animated now!

[Pehesse]

Here's the start of the grappling moves involving Honey and Carrion Wind!

[danielgoffin]

Just found out about this via the screenshotsaturday thread. Nice!

I am sure somebody has mentioned this already but I am too lazy to read through four pages... I am getting quite a Jaime Hernandez feeling from this setting (in a good way). But since it has nice colours instead of black and white it feels a bit less grim (although I am not sure that is the right word to use regarding the comics).

Keep it up. Wonderful animations, btw.

[Pehesse]

Just found out about this via the screenshotsaturday thread. Nice!

I am sure somebody has mentioned this already but I am too lazy to read through four pages... I am getting quite a Jaime Hernandez feeling from this setting (in a good way). But since it has nice colours instead of black and white it feels a bit less grim (although I am not sure that is the right word to use regarding the comics).

Keep it up. Wonderful animations, btw.

Thanks a lot!

I had indeed been referred to Jaime Hernandez's work, but I'll confess that I didn't know of it before. Now, though, it's something I keep on my radar, and at some point in the future I'd love to make a game in pure black and white, too :-D

[Voltz.Supreme]

I'm not completely up to date on everything but I just wanted to say I've been checking this out every now and then for a while and it looks really nice!
Really steady progression which is more than rare on this site.

Great job!

[Pehesse]

I'm not completely up to date on everything but I just wanted to say I've been checking this out every now and then for a while and it looks really nice!
Really steady progression which is more than rare on this site.

Great job!

Many thanks! Yeah, it's a bit of my indie creed, if I can even say that - I'd rather have some progress everyday, even if just a very small increment, rather than big progress every few days. I just feel like it works out better (as in, a more consistent quality and production rhythm over time). Helps against getting bored of a project and wanting to start another one, too :-D
I actually start to get really anxious now when I don't have something to show at the end of the day :-D

I've listened to your Director's Dream album from your signature, and I really like it! I'm not looking for music for Honey, but I'm definitely keeping the reference for the future if/when I get to do something else :-D

[Voltz.Supreme]

Thanks for taking time out to listen to some of my music! Much appreciated!
Always looking forward to future updates!

Keep up the good work!

[Pehesse]

Update time! This week, three new animations/grapple moves. In order: the first and second grapple hit, and the grapple release. Missing in action are the grapple pass over, and the grapple throw/jump/however you wish to call it. And when those two are done, Carrion Wind will be done, and I'll finally be able to move that progress bar another tick!