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[joaorequiao]

[UPDATED 18/01/2016] Tiny Little Bastards is a Sidescroller Action RPG for PC(Windows, Mac & Linux) XboxOne & PS4

About

Tiny Little Bastards is a 2D platformer Action RPG that tells the story of the tree siblings Ivarr, Helga and Ubba. They are unlucky tavern owners, whose tavern has been sacked by a horde of annoying little Goblins. They are now forced to take up arms to defend their tavern and recover their beloved beer!
You will be able to explore a vast world with many weird regions, ranging from huge pumpkin dungeons to lands where sheeps float in the sky!

 

Core Mechanics

Weapons:

Basically, in Tiny Little Bastards the main characters will have 2 diferent kinds of weapon each.

   - Ivarr is the strongest of the three, punching foes with Fist Weapons and slamming goblins with Heavy Hammers;
   - Helga is an angry badass Shield Maiden, carrying Axes and Spears to battle (besides her Shield.. only used in abillities);
   - Ubba is the lightest and fastest of the group, shooting with his Longbow as well as fighting in close combat with Daggers.

Both weapons can be used at any time and the player can switch between them easily by pressing a single button.


Gems:

The Gems took the place of equipment pieces. From now on, the player will be able to equip two Gems in the Greater Slots and three in the Minor Slots.
Gem slots will be available as the player levels-up. The Greater slots activate the Primary and Secondary powers of a Gem.

A gem in the Primary and Secondary Slots will affect the use of the primary (aka "Light") and Secondary (aka "Heavy) weapons respectively. The effect can change the way you fight in significant ways, such as adding a change to invoke a lightning bolt onto foes or set them on fire.

Gems in the Minor Slots offer Stat changes, giving a positive buff to a specific stat but reducing another one; for example: A Gem can give the player +30 Life but it may take away -5 Stamina.

Chosing carefully (and crafting) the stones you use is the key to a good character build.


These are the following stats changed by the basic types of Gem:
    
   - Life
   - Stamina (Every major action consumes Stamina. Running, Attacking, using Abilities...)
   - Armor
   - Damage
   - Critical Chance.


Crafting & Upgrading:

To support the whole character build system, Tiny Little Bastards will have a few crafting systems where the player can create diferent Gems and Potions. Many weird recipes will be a secret and uncovering them will be an important part of the game.

As there is no longer weapon drops in TLB, every character will be able to upgrade his weapon and make it even more powerful. Every weapon has three forms that are unlocked when it reaches a certain level.

Talent System:

To make the gameplay more dynamic, we're implementing a talent system. Players will be able to chose from passive and active abilities to change the way the characters interact with enemies. From passive boosts that grant a permanent +20% Life to a powerful Burps that damage enemies with sheer rage! Talents are necessary to achieve a top-quality character build coupled with the smart use of Gems.


Other features:

Besides the Action RPG mechanichs covered above, players will face the challenges of the game in a beautiful Platform world. Expect to see the following features:


   - Wide variety of enemies, from bee-shooting-bears to mushroom turtles
   - Rich Dungeons and Quests, including secret passages, optional choices and objectives
   - Traps of the most devious kinds
   - Level puzzles
   - Treasure hunting events
   - Side-scrolling with viking-furious-smashing and a loot of terrible jokes!

We like to think that Tiny Little Bastards is the bastard son of Diablo’s character progression with Castlevania’s Level Design!
 

Technical Info:

Engine: Unity.
Level Design Tools: Unity
Animations: Handmade frame-by-frame using Photoshop CS6.
Target Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, Xbox One, PlayStation 4.


The team - We are Overlord Game Studio

Overlord Game Studio is a small independent studio from Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
http://overlordgamestudio.com

The team members are:

João Requião - Programmer, game designer.
Yan Magalhaes - Game Designer and level designer.
Marcelo Ribeiro - 2D artist and Game designer
André Colares - Composer and Sound Designer
Davi Lisboa - Interface designer & general Designer
Bernardo Castro - Social Media, Programming Intern & Master Coffee Maker.

[Zanetski]

That art is beautiful but the gameplay looks a little shallow. Fun! But shallow. Got any videos? 

[joaorequiao]

Wow.. it took me a long time to answer you! Sorry about that!
We currently have no video to show you but soon we'll have it. We're making some changes in the Battle System and it's taking longer than expected! Maybe by the end of this week we'll be able to upload a video or long GIF!

Thank you for the reply!

[Orun]

Looks awesome. It's refreshing to see a game based on humor and nonsense.  Will be following the dev

[joaorequiao]

UPDATE 1

Today we finished a new attack set! This is Ivarr using the Spear (he calls it Britt) while in the Fire element stance! Soon I'll talk about weapons and stances! I hope you enjoy it! 

[joaorequiao]

Update 2

Hello!

This past week we've been rethinking our whole battle system. It's still not what we wish it to be... but we're having progress! Basically, I'll reprogram the whole A.I. for the Goblin and add unique responses to the player's moves. (In Tiny Little Bastards, enemy encounters are not so easy. It's hard to defeat more than 3 enemies banded together. Battles are an important event in the game and enemies must not be underestimated!)
 
I want every enemy to have some kind of personality and what I mean by that is almost every enemy will behave in an unique way that will be defined just before the battle through a series of calculations that will define some variables such as chance to evade attacks, chance to perform combos, chance to morph into an Elite form etc. I believe I can achieve this kind of behavior in a week or so! I'll make sure to post any news here!


By the way, I need a software to generate large GIFs with quality... I've been using a small software called "ScreenToGif 1.4.1" and it works well for small gifs but the frame rate drops a lot when recording a large portion of the screen. This is what I can do with it:

Talk to you guys soon! 

[YanMagalhaes]

Update 3

Hi, my name is Yan Magalhães, Tiny Little Bastards Level Designer.


I'm here today to show you a little bit of how the level making of the game is progressing. At this point, my work is focused on understanding how Ivarr will be able to behave in combat with his enemies and move around the level itself. I'm also trying to understand what I can do for the Goblins to use the level during the battles to give the player a feeling fulfillment.

I've been creating temporary levels to experiment with different battle regions (since the players, when in a battle situation, will be locked in that level section until he finishes the combat). I hope to achieve good results after concluding this analysis phase. In the image below, for example, the battle will happen in a "fighting pit" way. (the red lines show the areas that will be blocked during combat). This battle style is the most simple of all and I hope to develop more complex situations as the game progresses.

This analysis process is in course because of some changes we made to the battle system a few weeks ago. By doing so, most of the levels will have to be adapted or completely remade for the new system to work in a more organic way. The decision to change the battle system came from the perception that the game was not yet sufficiently fluid.

See you soon !   

[ernanir]

Amazing work so far guys...or how we would say...DUCARALHO! 

[joaorequiao]

Hahahahah Thank you, man! I've been following Turtles of Destiny for a while now! It's great to know you like our game! Foda! ahahaha
 

[ernanir]

  HUEZERA United :D

Great surprise that you already know our game. Colares is a friend over facebook, great guy.
Best of luck to you guys, if you need anything from out team...let us know.

 

[oasix]

Just awesome dev ! Wait for more !

[joaorequiao]

Update 4 - Some A.I.

Hey there folks! Last week's development was a little complicated because of all the changes I made from the original idea. I spent most of the days thinking about the A.I. for one of the goblins and came up with a few ideas. At first, it would just patrol a defined area and hit the player only if it was right in front of it. But this kind of behavior is too simple for a goblin... maybe a slug could use it, but not a Goblin.

After a lot of thinking I have designed a simple goblin that follows the player while in combat and has a chance to double hit. It also moves to the back of the player after attacking. The design is something like this:

The chance to double-hit is controlled by a small function called RollDice that works basically as a dice roll, taking a percentage that represents the chance to double-hit. In this case, the function is working with a 50% chance and a D10 (10 sides dice). The code is something like this:

Code:

public bool RollDice(int chance) 
{
	int diceSides = 10;	
	Random random = new Random();	
	int diceResult = random.Next(1, diceSides);	

	return (chance / diceSides >= diceResult) ? true:false;
}

Currently the Goblin can only walk straight lines and fall from ledges, but in a near future I'll add a pathfinding module to the walking process so the enemies are able to jump and follow the player in a more complex environment! I'll probably use the A* algorithm with some node path division to allow the enemy to change destination while following a path (create an array of destinations and make the entity follow it one by one [2 or 3 tiles by node, for example] with the possibility to repopulate the whole array at any given time and restart the movement process).

After the implementation, the battle is looking like this (with variation in the double-hit bit... sometimes a Goblin never bites and sometimes it bites all the time!):

The damage reaction and knockbacks are the subject of another post! Every player's attack will trigger a different part of the action tree so the goblin can respond in different ways. There will also be a chance to block or evade an attack and everything the game requires to have a good battle system!

In case any of you can give me the name of a gif recorder or something that can make high quality GIFs I would be very thankful! I have a few problems with the one I'm usign (ScreenToGif).

That's all for today! I hope you enjoy it!

On to the next challenge!

[ernanir]

Hello,

Have you ever tried Lice Cap?

Other than that...keep it up the awesome work

[crbonilha]

Nice graphics, and interesting approach on the AI.

[joaorequiao]

Thank you for the comments, guys!

Have you ever tried Lice Cap?

Actually, no! I'll give it a try! Thanks for the tip!

[ernanir]

welcome 

[Igor Sandman]

Your animations are super dynamic! I love it.
Also like the original art style. I'll be watching this.

[ThilDuncan]

This looks super cool, loving the weight of the animations. Also loving how the lighting changes the colour of the line work on the characters, makes them really feel like part of the world!

Great work : )

Also if no-one has mentioned it, I've been using Giffing Tool (http://www.giffingtool.com/) for making gifs. Not sure what the framerate will be like but I love being able to quickly trim the start and end!

[jctwood]

I love tiny animations that feel so alive!

[skaz]

Great art overall! Yeah I'm a bit biased, I mean your character is CLEARLY a Dwarf to me :p And the title is composed of tow word out of 3 describing smallness, that's 66%. You can tell me, I won't repeat it.

He defends his BEER . I can only relate to that.

I'll keep an eye on it!

Keep up!