Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

 
Advanced search

1411283 Posts in 69325 Topics- by 58380 Members - Latest Member: bob1029

March 29, 2024, 12:26:50 AM

Need hosting? Check out Digital Ocean
(more details in this thread)
TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsCasmage: A cooperative boss-fighting platformer
Pages: 1 ... 4 5 [6] 7 8 ... 10
Print
Author Topic: Casmage: A cooperative boss-fighting platformer  (Read 30236 times)
Canotico
Level 1
*



View Profile
« Reply #100 on: January 20, 2016, 04:27:47 PM »

If you need an audio engineer or audio producer be sure to message me so we can work something out for this project

Hey I really appreciate the offer but I've already found someone to help me with that Smiley Thanks either way!
Logged
Canotico
Level 1
*



View Profile
« Reply #101 on: January 30, 2016, 06:33:39 AM »

Ok so, like I said before I've been getting help from a concept artist, and let me tell you he is amazing, here's concept he made for The Eye and its Fists:



I personally think he did a great job (and he's still working on some awesome stuff for Casmage so yaaay! :D). Feel free to check out his site

I've been crazy busy but here's what I've been working on:



I think it's looking great. Although the placeholder sprite of The Eye hurts the visuals a little bit... But I also like that picture, The Eye somehow looks cute? Idk.

Anyhow, I'll be working on making sure that the conecpt art makes it into the game properly and looks awesome as shit.
Logged
Canotico
Level 1
*



View Profile
« Reply #102 on: January 30, 2016, 02:52:45 PM »

Well now the hands are comlpetely done, I had to make a second version of them facing the other way so that it didn't look weird. This is the result and I think it already looks great :D even tho the.... thing that takes up most of the screen space is... umm.... placeholder.

Logged
soulfoam
Level 0
**


View Profile
« Reply #103 on: January 31, 2016, 12:00:50 PM »

I have got to be honest, I really don't like the hands.

They seem to high res compared to the players. They are of course beautiful pieces of pixel art, but for some reason I feel like they don't fit and are just so high res compared to the players, looks like they are from different games.

Logged
flipswitchx
Level 3
***



View Profile WWW
« Reply #104 on: January 31, 2016, 03:36:33 PM »

I think because the hands are just so much bigger than the player they are bound to look more high res. I wouldn't worry about it and keep focusing on the mechanics and how things work it's looking awesome  Smiley
Logged

Canotico
Level 1
*



View Profile
« Reply #105 on: January 31, 2016, 05:46:26 PM »

I have got to be honest, I really don't like the hands.

They seem to high res compared to the players. They are of course beautiful pieces of pixel art, but for some reason I feel like they don't fit and are just so high res compared to the players, looks like they are from different games.


Thanks! I'm glad you think they look good :D. And also, I do think like you, that they seem to be out of place, but just like flipswitchx, this is because of the size of the sprites. Once the rest of the boss is in place, I may "downgrade" the overall detail if it still looks too out of place.

I think because the hands are just so much bigger than the player they are bound to look more high res. I wouldn't worry about it and keep focusing on the mechanics and how things work it's looking awesome  Smiley

Completely agree with you, I'll just see how it goes and if at any point I figure out they are not working I can do something about it, but for now, I'm going with what was made for the concept art.

Also, thanks Smiley glad you like it.
Logged
quantumpotato
Quantum Potato
Level 10
*****



View Profile WWW
« Reply #106 on: January 31, 2016, 06:01:47 PM »

Hi concept sounds tight. Reminds me of Realm of the Mad God. Definitely check that one out if you haven't. Nice gifs.
Logged

Canotico
Level 1
*



View Profile
« Reply #107 on: February 02, 2016, 02:52:01 PM »

Hi concept sounds tight. Reminds me of Realm of the Mad God. Definitely check that one out if you haven't. Nice gifs.

Thanks!
I have played Realm of the Mad God and its pretty fun imo, aaand I'm kinda missing what aspect of Casmage similar to it Shrug

Glad you like the GIFs, sometimes I'm worried that having such a GIF-heavy blog would be a problem, hope it's not :3
Logged
Canotico
Level 1
*



View Profile
« Reply #108 on: February 03, 2016, 04:38:12 PM »

So... Turns out that while I was working on the main body of The Eye I did a small miscalculation and was working with 3 times the intended size, therefore the sprites where freaking huge. No wonder I thought it was weird they were taking so much space...

Any way, I took care of that in like 2 hours and now I put everything in-engine just to see how things are going.



I think its looking great, althought I do think that perhaps the values of the body are off or something because it looks kinda weird and not part of the environment. Also, if you saw the piece of concept art I posted before, you can tell the pupil is missing (this is mainly because FIREISHARDTOMAKEWHYDIDIDECIDETOMAKEABOSSTHATHASFIREINIT. Ahem, I'll take care of the pupil after I fix the values or whatever is wrong with the colors, and theeen animation!

I'm actually excited to get started animating it because its gonna be a fun mixture of sprite animation + unity's animations and probably some code stuff too. If I can manage to make it like I'm imagining it it's gonna be extremely awesome :D
Logged
Canotico
Level 1
*



View Profile
« Reply #109 on: February 04, 2016, 05:23:37 PM »

Well, just as a quick update, I'm working on improving the current state of the sprites for the body. I've improved the values aand I think it now fits better with its surroundings.

I'm also starting to add details to the body itself so it doesn't look so smooth thus making it more interesting to look at.




I also have to start working on finishing the pupil (the magma orb, sauron style thing in the middle)... But I think I'll finish the easy stuff first so that I can get plenty of frustration in the end with it :D
Logged
Canotico
Level 1
*



View Profile
« Reply #110 on: February 07, 2016, 04:15:53 PM »

Animating this is really freaking hard! There's too many perspective things going on!



Still needs a lot of work. You can tell the inbetween frames are not even complete, but I needed to know if the way I was going was working. And I think it is, I just have to put more work into it.

I like how it's slowly taking shape.  Smiley
Logged
Canotico
Level 1
*



View Profile
« Reply #111 on: February 10, 2016, 05:42:21 PM »

quick update, working on the pupil itself (if you can call it that). Its pretty fucking hard making fire and animating this is gonna be a bitch... Awesome :D

Logged
Canotico
Level 1
*



View Profile
« Reply #112 on: February 13, 2016, 03:58:37 PM »

Oh boy, this was a lot of work for me, but I've finally finished animating the pupi of The Eye.



This is in-engine, and the animation is actually composed of 3 different pieces: The center, the iris itelsf thats like spinning around, and then the borders. Working with fiery stuff is super hard! But I'm proud of this :D

There's a lot of polish that can go into this, but right now I'll leave it as it is because it's more important to finish The Eye itself, I can later dedicate some time to fixing the details.
Logged
quantumpotato
Quantum Potato
Level 10
*****



View Profile WWW
« Reply #113 on: February 13, 2016, 06:47:58 PM »

Hi concept sounds tight. Reminds me of Realm of the Mad God. Definitely check that one out if you haven't. Nice gifs.

Thanks!
I have played Realm of the Mad God and its pretty fun imo, aaand I'm kinda missing what aspect of Casmage similar to it Shrug

Glad you like the GIFs, sometimes I'm worried that having such a GIF-heavy blog would be a problem, hope it's not :3

GIF heavy blogs are great lets people immediately see what's been created!

Re: RotMG: Past the tutorial you are co-operating with online players to kill monsters. Go far enough into the world and scary giant monsters come out that aren't killable without dozens or hundreds of players fighting all at once.
Logged

Canotico
Level 1
*



View Profile
« Reply #114 on: February 13, 2016, 07:42:59 PM »

Hi concept sounds tight. Reminds me of Realm of the Mad God. Definitely check that one out if you haven't. Nice gifs.

Thanks!
I have played Realm of the Mad God and its pretty fun imo, aaand I'm kinda missing what aspect of Casmage similar to it Shrug

Glad you like the GIFs, sometimes I'm worried that having such a GIF-heavy blog would be a problem, hope it's not :3

GIF heavy blogs are great lets people immediately see what's been created!

Re: RotMG: Past the tutorial you are co-operating with online players to kill monsters. Go far enough into the world and scary giant monsters come out that aren't killable without dozens or hundreds of players fighting all at once.

Yeah I guess you are right about the GIF heavy blogs. I guess I was worried having to download so much stuff in the page would be annoying.
And about RotMG yeah I can see what you mean, cooperation to kill a boss is there indeed.
Logged
Canotico
Level 1
*



View Profile
« Reply #115 on: February 14, 2016, 02:46:19 PM »

This is the current state of things. I've added a bit of detail in the open areas of the fists and cleaned up the thumbs a little bit. I also played a bit with the color of whats surrounding the pupil so that it feels a bit hotter



Now I'll be working on adding effects such as particles and perhaps some kind of lighting (although not sure if using sprites or the engine itself for that)
Logged
Canotico
Level 1
*



View Profile
« Reply #116 on: February 16, 2016, 05:04:35 PM »

Well, was adding some particles effects and fixed the movement of the eye and...



That's..... not quite right, I don't know if you can tell, it's very easy to miss it... but the eye itself shouldn't be... like... outside of its own body.  Shocked
Logged
Canotico
Level 1
*



View Profile
« Reply #117 on: February 18, 2016, 05:23:43 PM »

Wohooo! Time for a wall of text! It's been a while since I last made one of these :D

Lets talk about the improvements on the design of the boss fight

So, I've never ever liked the idea that during the second phase, the objective of the players is to reach that weak link on the top left of the room and break it. Why? Because it's completely unrelated to what's been happening throughout the fight.

I decided to come up with a way to relate the first phase (pressing the buttons) with the scond one, or at least making something that feels more natural that eventually lets the player know what they have to do without arbitrarily saying: "Hey! You are on the second phase of the fight! See that thing on that place you have never ever had to even see before? Well you have to get there and break something! Ok? It's hard to get there so it's probably fun!"

The objective of the second phase is "breaking a chain", pretty simple and understandable, but it has nothing to do with the buttons at the beginning... you can't even see the freaking thing unless you wall jump high enough because you felt like exploring! So I decided to inject some logic into the buttons because to be honest, up until now they just magically dropped The Eye to the ground for a couple of seconds. So what do the buttons do now? They activate these sort of pulleis that loosen the chains holding The Eye, making it fall. If you want more unecessary specifics about it, the magi that built this place made that to be able to reach The Eye to do maintenance to it.

Ok so, we now know what the hell it is the buttons do. Now what...? The new idea for the next phase is MORE CHAINS! ... Let me elaborate on this. These chains are all holding The Eye in place, so what happens after the buttons are broken by the boss, is that one of these chains' links cracks, making it clear that it can be broken.

When a chain is broken, The Eye's position will be lowered a little bit, making it clear that that chain was holding it in some way. This leads to the thought of "perhaps if I get rid of all the chains it will fall to the ground and I will be able to hit it!". Cool right? But breaking chains alone is not that exciting, so what will happen is that these weak links will take A LOT of hits in order to be broken, and while you are doing that, the fists will be annoying the crap out of you, so you will have to be actively evading them while also tryingto break the chain.

Sweet! That sounds like something that could actually be fun. BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! The last chain that is supossed to drop the boss to the ground is in this really unreachable place and you have to deal with this complicated and hard to communicate mechanic of getting rid of specific fists in order to use the bridges to reach it.... Thats like too complicated and awkward in every possible way... And besides the awkwardness of its design, when the player is in this area, The Eye can't reach it, so they can basically stay there and take their time breaking it without any threat...

We get rid of the upper zone of the room because it sucks. "But how the hell am I going to reach that last chain in order to break it and do sutff with the thing?!" PLATFORMS! Platforms are the beautiful solution to all of this. You see, the room is a big square, and because of this, there's a big portion in the middle that is unreachable for the players because they can only move upwards using the walls. To address this issue, there will be platforms in the upper area instead, these platforms will also serve as footing for the players to destroy the weak links.

Want to know what's also cool about those platforms? There's nowhere safe. The Eye can attack you anywhere. This is great because there is now constant pressure from the boss, generating tension on the players that are frantically trying to destroy all of these chains to beat the crap out of The Eye.

"Hey, but you got rid of the bridges, that means that the wall levers (the green things on the walls) are no longer useful! I liked those!" Me too, that's why they wont be removed, instead they will do something different. They will move a set of dynamic platforms to the left or to the right depending on the levers you use. Why is this cool? Because there's even more shit a single player can do to help out in the fight! You just destroyed a chain on one of the platforms and need to get to the other side to reach the other one but you cant? Thats easy! one of the players takes care of moving the dynamic platforms so you can reach this other place! Cool right?

So that's it for the changes in the fight that will hopefully make more sense. One thing I'd like to hightlight, is something I think is really important about fight, and specially because this is a game focused on cooperation, and it is that even tho players have clear main objectives, there are secondary objectives that players can do in order to make things easier:
  • You can dedicate time to killing a couple of Fists, this will result in having an easier time destroying the chains and moving around
  • You can use the wall levers to help your teammates reach the other chains
  • Other objectives that I haven't talked about include doing things like taunting The Eye


As the fight's design reaches its last stage, I hope to come up with a couple more of these secondary objectives to further enhance the cooperation feel the game is intended to have

TL;DR: More chains to break. Upper section sucks. Upper section with platforms doesn't.
Logged
Connor
Level 8
***


Smooth talker, musician. Loves all things 70s.


View Profile WWW
« Reply #118 on: February 18, 2016, 09:31:03 PM »

damn, this has changed a crazy amount since i last said anything. eye concept looks badass.
Logged

Firearrow games
www.firearrowgames.net

blitzkampfer:
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=52009.msg1280646#msg1280646

too bad eggybooms ents are actually men in paper mache suits and they NEED to be agile
marcgfx
Level 8
***


if you don't comment, who will?


View Profile WWW
« Reply #119 on: February 19, 2016, 12:32:31 AM »

the changes to your boss sound really good. It makes a lot of sense that you are going to use a concept that the player should be able to understand through visual cues without a lot of trial and error.

the fists hovering over the player looks quite weird, maybe it should not stay exactly over him, but trails slightly? it should look more natural then.

the roaming eye is an interesting feature  Cheesy
Logged

Pages: 1 ... 4 5 [6] 7 8 ... 10
Print
Jump to:  

Theme orange-lt created by panic