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[Octopus Tophat]

Could the PENIS be extended to also handle Tom Hanks whereabouts and placement?

PENIS: THWAP?

Absolutely. And in fact, I plan to do so. Tom hanks had a big role in the development of the Wilson character, and I can confirm he will be doing the voice and motion capture for Wilson. He said "The initial design for Wilson came from a film I did called 'cast away'." However, I am unfamiliar with this film. Still, wonderful to collaborate with him on the project.

[Octopus Tophat]

Ok first attempt at creating an enemy.

These are gledges. (The name comes from an inside joke). These are basically "slimes".
The reason I went with this moving animation was for a personal challenge. I wanted to see if I could make an animation with a kind of complicated loop. The enemy is actually moving when it plays the animation, then at the last frame, it moves it a bit so it lines up with the next loop. It basically took me the whole day to start and finish this.

They are luminescent. They glow, so you can see them at the edges of the screen where your light is out of range. They drop jelly when killed. Different colored gledges will drop different colored jelly with different effects. You can either walk into the jelly to gain the buff immediately, or use a bottle near it to bottle it up for later use, like a potion. Jelly can also be found by breaking pots and other destructible objects. Jelly effects include: Healing, agility (run faster), rapid (double fire rate), acid (hurts the player but can be bottled and thrown at enemies to deal damage), and more.
I'm re-doing the character and gun systems. So, even though there was some gun and enemy stuff in my first post, that was old and didn't work well. I'm going to utilize the same super optimized entity system for enemies. I should be able to have loads of enemies on screen!

I also have a character sprite as you may have noticed. I want to go for something simple, like kirby. Also, the character's body and face will be separate sprites. So I'll be able to change the player's emotion while also playing any animation. So I can have it look hurt when it's low on health, or have it scared when a certain event triggers. The color of the player can be chosen when starting a run, and I might put in multiple face types too. Like.... girls... for instance. I plan on having equipped items show up on the player. All I have so far is the walking animation. I want to make sure people don't absolute hate it before I continue work with this character.

I think he's cute and simple. His hand is sticking out to hold weapons. Some of you were probably expecting a more... human looking character. Like terraria or something. But I want the character to be square-ish. Kind of like super meat boy. Like a square kirby.

Also (I say that a lot), I have smooth camera transitions. The camera will zoom in when you open the inventory, I wanted it to look nice.

Feedback for this stuff is greatly appreciated. I'm not good at art! 
Edit: Forgot to talk about my text boxes, but I've been working on them too. They're almost done! Boy... I really have problems focusing on one task at a time. I just work on whatever I feel like, lol.

[11clock]

-The game is long
  Most roguelikes take around an hour or so to complete.  I'm tired of that.  I want an experience like minecraft, where I can just come in and play, save, then quit. I'm not sure how long, in terms of hours, it will take to beat the game, but once you beat it, you can just keep going forever.  There are no level caps, and some achievements might require to "get to the 100th floor of any dungeon" or something like that.  (achievements unlock gadgets for future runs)  The game uses a revive system.  So it's not quite perma-death.  You can buy revive potions, which scale with your player's level, but having more than one exponentially increases the price, and revive traders are hard to come by.  So most often, you'll only have 1 or 2.  And when you run out, it's game over, for good.

The game sounds interesting and cool, but this turns me off.

Unfortunately, long games with permadeath, even if procedurally generated, turn me away. Basically, I feel that with rogue-likes and rogue-lites, I really like permadeath unless an average run is longer than two hours. Then when I die I feel like that I lose "too much." It's why I hated the game Dungeons of Dredmore.

The rogue-lite that my team is working on, Earth Overclocked, is focused on extremely short runs (20 minutes or less in length), but with lots of reasons to continue playing even after winning one time. (Truly beating the game requires 12 wins, actually.) Basically the focus is on width rather than length. It is literally impossible to see everything the game has to offer in one 20 minute run since it restrains most of its content from being generated in each run, by both unlockables and random selection.

Good luck with the project, nonetheless. It looks interesting and I don't mean to be discouraging. I'm just letting you know that some of us prefer shorter rogue-like experiences so it may be a good idea to give the option to disable permadeath or lower the death penalty (as a complete option, not saying to remove permadeath at all, you should keep it). Minecraft's permadeath is optional for a reason.

[Octopus Tophat]

Thank you for the response! I haven't quite figured out the pacing and length of a run yet, so that's all just early plans. I will make sure the game isn't too punishing, so if that means throwing away permadeath and just having the player lose some money/items when they die, then that's how it'll be. I was always iffy about my plans with permadeath. I want death to mean something in this game, because even though there's a money penalty in terraria, I find myself being pretty careless about my health. Rogueworld's health system will be like spelunky, where every hit counts. But I also want to make sure death counts as well. My planned solution was to have lives, like mario. But I might have to change that a bit. Maybe I can make the player lose their weapons, or items, or have death effect the home town in some way.
Just trust me, I have the same concern you do, the "perma-death but with lives" is just a system I wrote down to keep the "Roguelike" genre intact. I expect the game to be similar to the length of a terraria run, which I consider "done" once you get all the best weapons and armor. If people are many hours into the game, with a super awesome home town, crazy weapons, and all the best gear, then they die and lose everything for good, I can understand why they'd be frustrated.

I'll come up with something that works

[Green Gospod]

-The game is long
  Most roguelikes take around an hour or so to complete.  I'm tired of that.  I want an experience like minecraft, where I can just come in and play, save, then quit. I'm not sure how long, in terms of hours, it will take to beat the game, but once you beat it, you can just keep going forever.  There are no level caps, and some achievements might require to "get to the 100th floor of any dungeon" or something like that.  (achievements unlock gadgets for future runs)  The game uses a revive system.  So it's not quite perma-death.  You can buy revive potions, which scale with your player's level, but having more than one exponentially increases the price, and revive traders are hard to come by.  So most often, you'll only have 1 or 2.  And when you run out, it's game over, for good.

The game sounds interesting and cool, but this turns me off.

Unfortunately, long games with permadeath, even if procedurally generated, turn me away. Basically, I feel that with rogue-likes and rogue-lites, I really like permadeath unless an average run is longer than two hours. Then when I die I feel like that I lose "too much." It's why I hated the game Dungeons of Dredmore.

The rogue-lite that my team is working on, Earth Overclocked, is focused on extremely short runs (20 minutes or less in length), but with lots of reasons to continue playing even after winning one time. (Truly beating the game requires 12 wins, actually.) Basically the focus is on width rather than length. It is literally impossible to see everything the game has to offer in one 20 minute run since it restrains most of its content from being generated in each run, by both unlockables and random selection.

Good luck with the project, nonetheless. It looks interesting and I don't mean to be discouraging. I'm just letting you know that some of us prefer shorter rogue-like experiences so it may be a good idea to give the option to disable permadeath or lower the death penalty (as a complete option, not saying to remove permadeath at all, you should keep it). Minecraft's permadeath is optional for a reason.

Don't ever play Stone Soup. Also btw Dungeons of Dredmor has the option of not having permadeath, for... the weakhearted, like you.

Nice game concept so far OP, though I must say seeing the main character's image completely changed the feel of your game.

[Octopus Tophat]

Nice game concept so far OP, though I must say seeing the main character's image completely changed the feel of your game.

Thank you.
I figured that would happen. Is that a bad thing? I'm sure people didn't expect that this is the art style I was going for. I want it to be simple. I don't want it to be Kiddy. If it comes off as childish, let me know, cause that's not what I'm going for. There's going to be blood in the game, but like spelunky, where you collect it.

Look at cavern kings, spelunky, skytorn, avalanche 2, nuclear throne, path to the sky.  Bright, colorful, crisp, simple. That's the style.
The styles I'm trying to stay away from are risk of rain (too grey), binding of isaac(good pixels, but too dark), catacomb kids (too dark, bad looking pixels), magicite (too much glow, weird polygon based animation), vagante (dull colors).
Everything is gonna have black outlines too, for extra crispness!

Edit: You'll probably see more of the style I'm going for when I add more enemies, weapon, items, and areas.

[Octopus Tophat]

Ok I was getting a bit creeped out by the eyes. I made it even more simple now.
Here's the kinds of emotions I can put on the player. I also gave him a backpack and a gun, just to see what it would look like. Again, the color of the player can be chosen at the start of a run.

In-game:


*the minimap doesn't actually work yet, it's just a mock-up sprite.
Actually most of the HUD will change. That's for later.
I like this character.

Also, let me mention, the idea is that the character starts off simple, then vastly changes by the end of the run, like in Isaac. That's why I'm going for a simple design. The player can design the character by the choices they make throughout a run.

[11clock]

-The game is long
  Most roguelikes take around an hour or so to complete.  I'm tired of that.  I want an experience like minecraft, where I can just come in and play, save, then quit. I'm not sure how long, in terms of hours, it will take to beat the game, but once you beat it, you can just keep going forever.  There are no level caps, and some achievements might require to "get to the 100th floor of any dungeon" or something like that.  (achievements unlock gadgets for future runs)  The game uses a revive system.  So it's not quite perma-death.  You can buy revive potions, which scale with your player's level, but having more than one exponentially increases the price, and revive traders are hard to come by.  So most often, you'll only have 1 or 2.  And when you run out, it's game over, for good.

The game sounds interesting and cool, but this turns me off.

Unfortunately, long games with permadeath, even if procedurally generated, turn me away. Basically, I feel that with rogue-likes and rogue-lites, I really like permadeath unless an average run is longer than two hours. Then when I die I feel like that I lose "too much." It's why I hated the game Dungeons of Dredmore.

The rogue-lite that my team is working on, Earth Overclocked, is focused on extremely short runs (20 minutes or less in length), but with lots of reasons to continue playing even after winning one time. (Truly beating the game requires 12 wins, actually.) Basically the focus is on width rather than length. It is literally impossible to see everything the game has to offer in one 20 minute run since it restrains most of its content from being generated in each run, by both unlockables and random selection.

Good luck with the project, nonetheless. It looks interesting and I don't mean to be discouraging. I'm just letting you know that some of us prefer shorter rogue-like experiences so it may be a good idea to give the option to disable permadeath or lower the death penalty (as a complete option, not saying to remove permadeath at all, you should keep it). Minecraft's permadeath is optional for a reason.

Don't ever play Stone Soup. Also btw Dungeons of Dredmor has the option of not having permadeath, for... the weakhearted, like you.

Nice game concept so far OP, though I must say seeing the main character's image completely changed the feel of your game.

I defeated every boss but ? ? ? and Mega Satan in Binding of Isaac Rebirth. I'm not as weakhearted as I appear.

I unlocked The Kid in Super Meat Boy in only 30 minutes. And I only cried for 20.

And I am aware that you can disable permadeath in Dungeons of Dredmor, but even then the game is a very generic dungeon crawler with a sense of humor, and drags on for far too long (even in that mode that lets you level up quickly and generates smaller floors).

[Octopus Tophat]

Since I didn't get a SUPER DUPER OVERWHELMINGLY POSITIVE RESPONSE on my previous character designs, I've tried some more. I'm just trying to get the shape of the character set in stone, I'm not worrying about the look. So I gave these guys all the same clothes just to make it easier to pick your favorite shape. g


I like the first one the most, than the 3rd, 4th, and 2nd.
Which one do you guys like? Please, I need your help! 

[Canned Turkey]

I like the first one.

[Crabby]

I personally like the 4th one. The body size and the head size look charming.
But, then again, I'm new here.

[Octopus Tophat]

Being new has nothing to do with your personal taste in sprites.   Thanks for the feedback and you too, turkey.

[DarkWanderer]

I like the 1st & 4th, but those two seem like they may be more difficult for you to display emotion on their face. Be interesting to see how you would execute it.

[Octopus Tophat]

I like the 1st & 4th, but those two seem like they may be more difficult for you to display emotion on their face. Be interesting to see how you would execute it.

Ok. So far number 2 and 3 are out. Now I have to choose between 1 and 4.
I'm not as concerned with emotion as I am with the shape of the player.
It has to feel right. I feel like number 1 feels better. It feels more aerodynamic, like a ball bouncing around. I probably should have jumped around more when I showed the first one off.

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

1st one is good ,looks healthy. 4th is kind of weird , he is probly sick or something.

[Octopus Tophat]

1st one is good ,looks healthy. 4th is kind of weird , he is probly sick or something.

Lol, excellent response. Very constructive. Thanks. I think number 1 it is!
Time to animate and rig up some kind of multi-body-part sprite attachment thing.
I gots to be able to attach objects like armor and clothes to certain body parts.

I'll be sure to get #4 some vitamins 

[Zorg]

Which one do you guys like? Please, I need your help! 

No mouth, pls. #1 or #4 (or something in between) depends on animation/clothing/weapons/items, i guess.

[GIRakaCHEEZER]

I'd say design #1, it seems the best for the style of game you're going for.  Even with the belt buckle though, he still looks a bit generic, so maybe you should try making some alternate designs/variations of design #1?

[Zorg]

I guess it would be easier to show armor with different types of helmets instead of body armor, so i'd choose large head and small body.

[Octopus Tophat]

I'd say design #1, it seems the best for the style of game you're going for.  Even with the belt buckle though, he still looks a bit generic, so maybe you should try making some alternate designs/variations of design #1?

Thanks. Yeah, I know it's generic, I just wanted to get the shape down before I worked on the actual design 

I guess it would be easier to show armor with different types of helmets instead of body armor, so i'd choose large head and small body.

Holy hell that's awesome! hahaha. The armor system I'm making will have pieces for Helmet, chestplate, gauntlet, and greaves. I think I can get away with that, even with the small limbs. But the helmets will be the most detailed, so yeah, the large head should make that pretty easy.

How long did it take you to draw that? I wish I was that good.