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[JobLeonard]

Well, I immediately picture hyperactive Japanese anime upon hearing it, so I guess GREAT SUCCESS?

[TonyManfredonia]

Well, I immediately picture hyperactive Japanese anime upon hearing it, so I guess GREAT SUCCESS?

Hahahah thanks!!! I still might try incorporating some Japanese instrumental flair. I'll give it a go tomorrow and share it immediately following to see what the reception might be.

Thank you for the feedback, however :D

[Zorg]

I think the old intro was a bit too long and too loud. It was obvious that the structure was inspired by old Mega Man intros, the opening part okay, but maybe a bit boring, compared to the the main melody, which is great! So it ws a good decision to shorten the intro. It felt like the old intro was too loud, maybe it's still a bit too loud?

I wish, the new short intro would "build up" a bit more. It sounds a bit like something was cut before the first note, imo.

I remembered this intro when i heard your new composition (notice the buildup around second 25, directly after the last word of the narrator):

[TonyManfredonia]

You guys get all the sneak previews before I put this on Twitter! Thanks for the feedback. In response, here is a slightly revamped version. This includes a slightly longer (by one measure) intro, and some Japanese instrumental flair.

Let me know what you think! Click here to listen. If you all like it or are finished providing thoughts, I'll then put the looped version on Soundcloud for the rest of the world

[Zizka]

Hello!

I'd like to know which vocab card design is the best in your opinion. Just identifying the number would be great. Should take you less than 5 seconds, probably less. I finally got my paintbrush font with the number there and I'm really happy with it! I think it looks cool as cucumber!

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Come on now, you know you want to!

[alvarop]

I'm not 100% sure what I'm looking at (given that I don't know what the symbols mean, and that there is a lot of information in them) but I like the blue ones the best. I'm between 6-7-8.

Again I'm not sure what I'm looking at so my vote is worth 0.01% of what it should be worth.

[JobLeonard]

It really depends on what the symbols mean, I think - are all cards trying to express the same thing? Otherwise it's not really a fair comparison.

[Zizka]

Oops, yeah, good point. So:

In the upper part: the symbol to guess. Right to the symbol to guess, is the power rating of the card (2 in this case).
In the lower part:
This is the various status ailments that the card can trigger. A check mark means it can trigger that ailment and a cross means it can't. From the upper left to the bottom right:
Stun, disease, shock, burn, frozen, frenzy, critical hit and haste.

[alvarop]

There might be a more clever way than checks and crosses to show if something is enabled or not, maybe using a more "greyed out" colour so that you can save a lot of space and make the cards seem a little bit less busy?  In that last example you posted, it would save 50% of the space on the bottom, making them more readable. Or, why not simply only show the effects (or alignments??) that the card has available instead. So then you would have say 4 symbols per card, show them a little big bigger, might make the whole thing more attractive. Less is more.

Just thinking out loud.

[JobLeonard]

Have you tried only showing what it might trigger, and nothing else? Because right now it's basically a large list of irrelevant information: why do I need to know what it doesn't trigger if I can check that much faster myself by checking the few things it does trigger?

It's like the visual equivalent of summarising to the essential information.

[Zizka]

Good point both of you. I'll just list what is relevant and get rid of those extra icons. The number 2 is the most important information here on the card along with the symbol. I'm still not convinced about the way it's displayed.

My concept is based on a magic card:


I also checked heartstone:


I'm still not convinced about my current design. It's important because if it sucks later down the road I will have to redo all the cards...

[ProgramGamer]

Here, have an edit:

[Zizka]

While it looks cool, I think it's better to limit the icons to those are necessary like alvarop and Jobleonard mentioned. I also don't think the number 2 is important enough. Design is really difficult at times.

I feel like the number doesn't belong just randomly up there with the Japanese character.

Not easy this!

[JobLeonard]

If you think backwards from the intended functionality you at least can build a clear set of goals to work towards. But it's a pain, for sure!

[marcgfx]

Not really sure why it should be a pain to redesign later. I kind of get the feeling you are making static cards, where it would make much more sense having the content of the card dynamic?
The positioning of the main symbol should be defined, but the symbol should not be a part of the card graphics. The status effects should be stored in a list and then simply placed on the card. It should be no trouble changing the alignment or the margin between these element. You could also swap out the card graphic with hardly any work.

[Zorg]

Here, have an edit:

Here, have an edit of the edit:

[Zizka]

@JobLeonard:
True!

@MarcGFX:
Also true. I'm seeing things from the perspective of an artist not as a programmer. I'm used to do each card by hand. But I'll ask Jeff to see what he can do.

@zorg:
Very nice edit!

The thing is that most cards will have one or just a couple of assigned status effects. This would mean that most cards have all those icons greyed out all the time which I think would become redundant. I didn't mention this before however!

So I'm finally hesitating between these two:




I feel like the small number still feels best. The big number draws focus away from the symbol which is the most important.

[oahda]

Small! I think zorg's idea of having the number be a different colour or hue from the main symbol is better than having them both be the same colour tho.

[Zizka]

Small it is!

-Devlog 85 : Major Changes Incoming[/hr]
Hideliho!

It’s been a little while since I’ve written a devlog but that’s because I wanted to have something worthwhile to say.

New Upcoming Features:
1. The most attentive ones will most likely notice the new sound effects but the actual core of the game has changed significantly.

2. The first major add-on is the ability to assign cards to each one of your attacks. This has a strong impact on gameplay for various reasons.

For one thing, players can decide which card they would like to practice that way and review. Since your attacks become more potent the more cards you guess correctly, the more cards you assign to an ability, the more potential for greater damage exists. There is a drawback to this however; the more cards assigned to an ability, the greater the chance you’ll be randomly handed a card you do not know! In other words, the greater the risk, the greater the reward.

3. The other new feature is the exploration phase. It is now possible to wander in a randomly generated dungeon. This is one aspect of the game which had been sort of left further down the priority stack but since Jeff has been doing a lot progress lately, we have now reached that point.

4. A new hazmat defense, a new whip attack have been added as well.

5. New card design (thank you for the feedback, you know who you are guys).

6. Some reworked tracks from Tony.

7. A changed title screen.

8. 46 battle cards (as opposed to 6 in the previous version).

9. A new font to replace the old one.
So as you can imagine, a lot of time and effort went into working on this build. I hope you guys will download it when it’s made available which shouldn’t be too long!

10. Working on a new environment:


Animation:


Battle System:
The battle system will be redone to be made more dynamic. Battles will now involve reflexes in the sense that you, the player, will need to trigger to right attack/defense at the right time to survive. You will still have time to type up the answers to cards however once the attack/defense has been triggered so the change will be for the best overall.
Thanks for reading.

[Zizka]

So the devlog has been quiet for a while so you might be wondering (or not) what's going on. Well, loads actually. I don't think there has been so much effervescence about the project.

For one thing, the team is getting reading for the KickStarter. Tony is working on the trailer, Jeff is coding like a speeding cheetah and I'm drawing 6 hours a day. Actually, my schedule is to get up at 6:00 and draw until 12:00 (sometimes I'll go over though). Everything is carefully detailed and nothing is being left to chance so to speak. This is something I'm pretty anxious about, failing at the kickstarter is something I'm very wary of.

For those of you who have been following the game since the beginning, you know of my woes with the programming aspect of the game. I never really talked about it but this situation really got to me at times. I'd nervously check my emails to read an email announcing me that someone had quit or something.

Working with Jeff has been really great. He's really down-to-earth and reliable and I'd like to think that we've become closer to being friends. I'm so lucky I came across him. He's very involved in the project and reliable. I would really recommend him to anyone looking for a programmer (but I'd rather keep him for myself).

Anyhow, I thought I would run down the new art for one thing. So for the KS, we wanted a really polished demo. The current (and very outdated) demo had one attack, the current one will have three.

You've already the punch and the whip. Here are the new two:

Laser Cannon:


The laser cannon has a chance of shocking foes. A shocked foe has its attack randomized.

...and some interesting edits form other artists which I'd like to share:

Hapiel:


yaomon17


wzl


so this animation triggered a lot of inspiration I would say!

I also redid the flame thrower which was outdated and inferior to this new version:

The flame thrower has a chance of setting enemies on fire. Foes aflame take damage over time.

Defense wise, you've already seen the block and the radiation shield but I added the focus ability:

This ability reduces energy cost of abilities for a short amount of time.


This ability allows you to recover health pretty much.

Although level up won't be for a little while but I also finished the level up animation (a nod here at Dragon Ball). It's harder to see on a white background though so:




As I said, this isn't a priority at the moment. We'll see later.

We've also added a place to for typing so it doesn't just happen out of thin air:


As I've mentioned before, we reworked the combat system which lacked dynamism. Basically, we got rid of the turned based battles entirely.

When battle begins, both the energy meter of Pan and the foe start at the same time. Abilities have different energy costs. It's up to you to decide how to manage your energy for attack and defense and this is where strategy comes into play. This is the concept we're aiming for:


Of course, the icons we'll be different in-game but this is just to explain a concept.

You might be wondering how long you get to actually guess the cards once you've triggered an ability? Well, the clock is gone so instead the battery starts draining while you're in "guessing" mode. So you can basically take all the time you want as long as you have energy remaining in your battery. So it's better to be quicker about it.

This is sort of the "major" change. We've also added new sfx and an exploration music as well. We used the Workshop track that Tony had composed before.

KickStarter
So yes, future blogs will probably discuss the KickStarter. It's boring and it's not something people care about and I totally get it. The reason why this is something I want to discuss is because this matters a lot to me and I'm worried I'll mess up. I mean, I don't want to fail so I want to make sure everything is perfect. I don't expect people to get super involved with the kickstarter presentation but if you feel like participating, giving feedback about the KickStarter is one of the most helpful thing you could do.

Thanks for reading!