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[metagrue]

Hey guys,

Figured it was well past time to pop in. I'm not sure Jon is doing the best job explaining the lore of the game. Knowing him, he's saving a lot of that for later.

The game world has quite a bit going for it.  It does borrow a few elements from high fantasy, but I know for sure as things get revealed you'll see Jon's influence on the traditional lore. After all the main character is... well... a stick-man. For now.

You should see the art we doodled up for the prototyping. I have already shown this one on my twitter feed.



Yea, no Jon's a weird guy. Heck, I am too.

[oldblood]

I think the effect of impaling your enemies to help deter further attacks is kind of lost when the art utilizes a stickman... More on that later though...

DEVLOG IV.

Wanted to do a quick update to cover some of the topics from the last devlog. The days this year are absolutely sailing by. If I'm being totally transparent, I've been really struggling with things moving slower on this project than things did with Masochisia. But, obviously-- that was a much simpler project where the prototype was pieced together in just a matter of days. Have to get my mind in a different place for this game.

     ● Physics: Michael is still working his way through this but its coming together. Rag-dolls are one of the next items on the list, so it should be pretty fun to start getting that implemented in the very near future. More details on that soon.

     ● Buildings: Some rudimentary building mechanics are in. Rudimentary meaning that you can select a build option that presents a simplistic menu where buildings that use up resources can be instantaneously constructed. They include super basic colliders in place to detect when they're being hit or prevent you from stacking buildings on top of each other.

http://gfycat.com/DisgustingQueasyHydra

Sample of building walls and colliders.

     ● AI: More rudimentary work, but we have the beginning of something that will hopefully one day be intelligent. Currently they're simply clones of the player colored as Red (friendly) and Blue (enemy). Currently, they don't really... do much... But they exist.

http://gfycat.com/MajorGivingHarrier

AI approaches enemy walls... And stares...

     ● Animation: I'm spending a lot of time getting more and more familiar with animation in Spine. I'm not putting much effort into the placeholder stickman animations at this point since its all placeholder and frankly speaking, the stickman dont have enough bones to really be able to do much with. I've instead been practicing with other art from old, unrelated projects.

For those unfamiliar, Spine is a skeletal animation system. While it will never be able to replace the quality you find in frame-by-frame animation, it does allow you to quickly put together high-quality animations in a matter of hours. I had a break-through this week when I was able to wrap my brain around meshes binding to bones and having weights. This allows a single sprite to be able to semi-realistically bend without needing to replace the sprite. Here is a rough test on a foot I was able to do:

Art from old project. Bending feet in action...

[saluk]

1. It's great to see you doing a new project! I loved Masochisa and this is... not that. Which is very cool. Stretching yourself is a worthy endeavor. Looking forward to following this through all of it's ups and... hopefully not very many downs

2. The charity fund sounds really cool. I hope it goes well.

3. Melee combat. You know how in Thief, ideally you never are even in a situation where melee combat is necessary, and you probably aren't going to go through the game beating everybody up, but it's kind of there, so that when you are spotted you can at least make an attempt to fight back? I could see melee doing well in that kind of spot in this game. Ideally, the opposing forces are not going to come close enough to you where the battle becomes fist-to-fist. If they are that close, chances are you have already lost. But if you are overrun, it will be nice to at least have the feeling that "I'm still in this, I'm gonna punch you in the face!"

And you can put as much effort into the system as is warranted for such a role. I think it could be argued that Thief perhaps put too much effort into it's melee system for how much you are intended to use it.

[benjkers]

Something new to follow - and so different than Masochisia. Great to see such deviation. We're using Spine too. Will be interested to see what you can milk from it.

The year moves swiftly indeed...

[oldblood]

@saluk: Thanks sir. I tend to agree on your feelings on melee combat in that it should be something that is really only used to turn the tide of a battle or a last ditch effort to protect yourself. I see ranged combat and magic as more likely sources of combat for the player. We'll see as it evolves.

@benjkers: Thanks for following! Glad to hear others are using Spine, now I know who to ask questions if I get stuck on something...

DEVLOG V.

This is moving really slow. I know.

Will keep this post short. Slow because I've been distracted and getting comfortable with features that neither Michael or I have done before has taken more time than anticipated. Mix in some out of the ordinary opportunities that have arisen the last few weeks, been a slow 2.5 weeks...

BUT--

There is semi-intelligent AI. At least the foundation of it. The stickmen now target enemy NPCs, structures and the player:

http://gfycat.com/ShrillGlumEasternnewt

Still very buggy but its the foundation of something. Once the melee AI starts to come together, will be on to some fun things.

1. First clean up the melee AI.
2. Add in ranged AI.
3. Ragdolls!

Will hopefully start feeling chaotic when lots of stickmen are running around flailing swords, firing arrows and getting tossed around... Hopefully more stuff to post next time around.

[oldblood]

DEVLOG VI.

I vaguely referenced some unique opportunities that had arisen that were impacting my schedule in the last devlog. That opportunity was a discussion I was having with a large indie developer who was interested in prospectively helping finance "Masochisia 2". I spent a bit of time the last few weeks concepting the story and working on business plans and financials but-- despite some very positive feedback from the developer, they decided to pass. I believe the content may have had some impact on that decision.

With that officially on the backburner, I'm able to shift my focus back to this prototype properly.

     ● Ranged AI: This has taken a bit longer than anticipated but is slowly starting to resemble archers. I don't have any gifs to share just yet as there are a few bugs still popping up (see below) but I'm feeling confident that we should be in good shape later this week. I'd like to also have the player's hordes behave differently than your human attackers. Humans in example, would be more organized so you should expect them to fire in volleys whereas the creatures under your banner are much more likely to fire at will.

Still a few kinks...

     ● Physics & Ragdolls: Still high on the priority list, but haven't moved too far in this direction with the AI taking a bit longer than expected. Once both the ranged and melee bots are in a decent position, then this will be the next item and it's one I'm really looking forward to.

     ● Art Style & Aesthetics: This is something I've been proactively avoiding since we started work on the prototype as I tend to get too deep into this area when the game itself needs more focus so I've been attempting to hold off on this for as long as possible and just focus on the prototype. With almost 3 full months down, I do think it's almost time to start opening this can of worms.

My goals are to start moving into at least concept phases by as early as next week. This means that hopefully my devlog posts will start getting more interesting. Or at least, more colorful. Aesthetically speaking, I'm very interested in the idea the style taking a more painterly approach that has the feeling of brush strokes and focuses less on intricate details (as scale is an important part of this game) and instead focuses on shapes, silhouettes and finding ways to visualize unique characters without getting lost in their detail. I feel the style should match the game's grimmer mood without being overly reliant on bright colors. Ideally, the game would feel like a painting of large battle that has sprung to life...

...This is very challenging to describe, and the end result may end up no where near what I've just described as this style may be very ambitious but I wanted to be transparent on my goals before I started to dive into the concept stage.

***

Hopefully my next devlog will include some gifs of the polished ranged AI and some rough ideas on early art concepts and style tests. Stay posted...

[oldblood]

DEVLOG VII.

Development continues on multiple fronts. We're still in the process of refining the bots (which will be an ongoing process it seems) and have been trying to get a better handle on documenting out the milestones on the development side. Documentation is an area where I've kinda fallen off with this project. I was very meticulous in documenting Masochisia-- and I haven't been that good with this project. I think the vision of what I was making was creating previously was very clear for me, whereas this game has a lot more blurry areas and will evolve as the development continues. Regardless, I need to make some improvements on better documenting out what we're doing and where we're going...

Stickmen behaving slightly more intelligent than the previous update...

     ● Physics & Ragdolls: This is temporarily on hold while we waiting on a few hiccups with ragdolls and the current Spine runtime. Definitely something we want to implement. Just temporarily moved down the totem pole.

     ● Art Process Begins: Proud to announce that I will be working with a friend of mine named Brad who I've had the pleasure working with on other small games in the past who will taking the lead role on the art for this game. At this early stage, we've really just been experimenting with character perspective, character discussions and the scope for the project.

Color tests after nailing down perspectives...

First thing I'd like to point out is that I'm beyond thrilled at the concept of looking at something that isn't a stickman in the prototype...

Second thing to note on the colors is that I was inspired by my friend Matt Luard over at Cranktrain who is currently working on The Eldritch Zookeeper (which you should read about here https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=50658.0 ). His creative use of randomizing park visitors could make for an interesting way that I could add diversity to the characters (particularly the army you're recruiting) by having varying skin tints in addition to weapons or possibly armor. And no, pink likely wont make the cut...

I'm really looking forward to fleshing out these characters and art style... this is where it gets really fun... I honestly can't handle the stickmen much longer.

[Cranktrain]

Second thing to note on the colors is that I was inspired by my friend Matt Luard over at Cranktrain who is currently working on The Eldritch Zookeeper (which you should read about here https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=50658.0 ). His creative use of randomizing park visitors could make for an interesting way that I could add diversity to the characters (particularly the army you're recruiting) by having varying skin tints in addition to weapons or possibly armor. And no, pink likely wont make the cut...

Well, if the pink one won't make the cut, maybe you won't mind if I...

[Alex87]

Hi, this is my first time posting on this forum. I hope this isn't too out of place but wasn't sure where would be best to post. I found out about you through Masochisia on GameJolt, I got hooked and bought your game on Steam and then I stumbled onto your DevLog here while searching for more information about that incredible and unique game.

I hope to be following the development of your latest game closely I enjoy a good tower defence game and the setting you've described sounds great. When it's at that point I look forward to hearing further about the Lore behind this idea. I know it's early days but are you intending for this latest project to be available on Mac? Because that'd be awesome.

Thanks,

[oldblood]

Well, if the pink one won't make the cut, maybe you won't mind if I...

Haha! Good old fashioned cross-promotion... I can totally see the Behemoth as one of the creeps roaming around... Haha.

Hi, this is my first time posting on this forum. I hope this isn't too out of place but wasn't sure where would be best to post. I found out about you through Masochisia on GameJolt, I got hooked and bought your game on Steam and then I stumbled onto your DevLog here while searching for more information about that incredible and unique game.

I hope to be following the development of your latest game closely I enjoy a good tower defence game and the setting you've described sounds great. When it's at that point I look forward to hearing further about the Lore behind this idea. I know it's early days but are you intending for this latest project to be available on Mac? Because that'd be awesome.

Hi Alex, welcome to the forums and thanks so much for supporting Masochisia. I ran a devlog on here that chronicled the whole development of that game and will hopefully do the same with this game here. I definitely plan on having some devlogs that outline a bit more of the lore and backstory to the world in the future, and yes- it will definitely be available on the Mac!

[oldblood]

DEVLOG VIII.

As alluded to in the original posts, the player's avatar will be a Troll on a quest to unify the various tribes and creatures under a single war banner. These creatures include other trolls, orcs, goblins and other creeps.

The trolls are a hunter race, generally nomadic and easily identifiable with the large horns and affinity for wearing the furs and skins of those they've killed or eaten. During times of war, the trolls wear masks of creatures or enemies they've slain to scare their foes. They view wearing the face of a human no differently than wearing the coat of wolf, it's all just the skins of those they've slain. Some suggest they wear these skins as a barbaric ritual to utilize the dead's abilities...

The player's avatar will be customizable. We are doing this for several reasons, one of which is rewarding the player. As you play (and die) you will gain experience which will unlock random aesthetic upgrades for your character. The second reason is that I'd really like to implement a co-op feature into the system and the ability to differentiate your create from another will be beneficial to the players and give you a chance to "show off" the loot you may have unlocked.

The Troll & Unlockable Content Example

Some of the content that will be unlockable will be: 1. Armor for various body parts (arms, legs, torso) 2. Clothing 3. Troll Skin Tone 4. The Horns 5. Weapons and 6. The Masks. Something I'd like to implement in the future (but will not be a part of the core minimum viable product I'm working on currently) will be for the player to be able to unlock alternate troll types that alter your gameplay style with various positive/negative characteristics.

The Orc

Orcs are one of the first races you will be able to recruit to your cause. These brutish creatures serve the "blood god" (more on this later) and will quickly align themselves to you when they see who you serve... Powerful warriors, the Orc is a war-like race who focuses primarily on melee combat as they only find true satisfaction with a kill when they can see and feel up close. The Orcs will make up the backbone of your armies and will need to be a key cog in your war machine...

***

We're also in very early progress for trying to determine the "look & feel" of the environments that help set the mood for the tone of the game. To start, we will likely just focus on a single environment (or biome) but in the future, it would be interesting to be able to provide unique and random environment settings each time you play.

We're aiming for a rustic painterly style set in the late fall. A time when most of nature is dead, the colors gone save for a few vibrant trees and plants that are holding on for dear life as winter looms...

Environment Test

As a 2D side-scroller, you will only be able to move left or right in-game so it will be interesting to work within these limitations and still find a way to make the world feel alive and have depth. I'd love to hear any feedback you all may have on the lore, early character art or environment tests.

[Zorg]

In my eyes The Banner Saga did a great job in the art section adding depth and a sense of scale to the 2D environments during the convoy scenes.

I alyway enjoy your updates and really like where the game is going.

[Alex87]

I like this way this is unfolding so far. The character models and ideas look and sound great, particularly the scarification on the orc. Are there any thoughts of female models as well as male? The customisability is a great idea so your Troll can be as dapper as you want and the hinting barbaric dead rituals sounds cool. The harsh look of the environment will look great for a battlefield, Winter is coming!

Do you have any particular inspiration for the trolls and orcs? The trolls aren't quite the huge, lumbering Tolkien-esque style some might be accustomed to, more the slim style of maybe European folklore, especially with the human looking faces. Whereas the Orcs definitely feel a little more Tolkien, and maybe Warhamme-esque with green hues and brutal, melee orientated, bloodthirsty combat style. I could be be wrong of course, just my thoughts so far. And I'm looking forward to hearing more about the 'other creeps' and the Blood God, Blood for the Blood God! And whom the Trolls serve that worshippers of the Blood Good would want to align with .... So much to know!

I hope this is the sort of feedback/questions you're after, looking forward to the next DevLog!

[oldblood]

In my eyes The Banner Saga did a great job in the art section adding depth and a sense of scale to the 2D environments during the convoy scenes.

I alyway enjoy your updates and really like where the game is going.

Thanks zorg. Means a lot! And yes, the Banner Saga is one my favorite 2D environments, they certainly mastered depth and scale in that game. Looking forward to the sequel. It also helped I'm a huge fan of the artist they based their aesthetic on, Eyvind Earle.

I like this way this is unfolding so far. The character models and ideas look and sound great, particularly the scarification on the orc. Are there any thoughts of female models as well as male?

Interesting idea, definitely something to consider but at the moment- I'm working off a super tight budget so I'm just focusing on the core components for now. I'd love to really flesh out the options for customization, but to start with- it will be basic and then hopefully expanded once more mechanics are in place.

Do you have any particular inspiration for the trolls and orcs? The trolls aren't quite the huge, lumbering Tolkien-esque style some might be accustomed to, more the slim style of maybe European folklore, especially with the human looking faces. Whereas the Orcs definitely feel a little more Tolkien, and maybe Warhamme-esque with green hues and brutal, melee orientated, bloodthirsty combat style. I could be be wrong of course, just my thoughts so far. And I'm looking forward to hearing more about the 'other creeps' and the Blood God, Blood for the Blood God! And whom the Trolls serve that worshippers of the Blood Good would want to align with .... So much to know!

I appreciate the interest and questions. There's a lot to flesh out and I will probably dedicate a devlog or two into the backstory/lore behind both the creatures and the humans. As far as inspirations go, its hard not to take some from Tolkien for a fantasy game. I definitely want to put some unique changes to some of the races though, either visually or in who/what they are. Trolls have hundreds of different descriptions depending on lore and author so it seemed fitting to put another spin on them. My version views them as more akin to being half-elf or woodland but with a stronger penchant for violence... More on that later.

I definitely want to really flesh out the darker side of what you're doing with the "blood god" (should you choose to go down that path) and its benefits and consequences... So much to do, I should get back to work...

[A Strange Bird]

I'm loving this so far! Even if tower defense games aren't really my thing my interest for this is growing rapidly. I love lore and the fact that you play as, well, not a human, is beyond cool. And well if I could at one point in the game play a bad ass Orc lady I'd be even more pleased hehe

Looking forward to see more!

[oldblood]

I'm loving this so far! Even if tower defense games aren't really my thing my interest for this is growing rapidly. I love lore and the fact that you play as, well, not a human, is beyond cool. And well if I could at one point in the game play a bad ass Orc lady I'd be even more pleased hehe

Thanks Shalott! Duly noted on bad ass orc lady...

Devlog IX.

This will be pretty GIF-heavy so I will keep this short. Since these two characters have been created, I've been working on testing out setting up their rigs for skeletal animation in Spine. One of the key things I needed to be sure to do was to insure that it would be setup in a way that would make it easy to be able to swap out or remove customizable parts on the skeleton:

Swapping out parts...

Then obviously setup the skeletons with some basic IK. The main character/troll will have some additional setup as some of his parts will also be meshes to add for additional animation detail but he will be one of the only characters with mesh animations as this can impact performance...

Testing the skeleton...

Also doing my first-pass on basic animations like walking and idling. One of my challenges as a non-animator is trying to find the right mood, weight etc. for different characters so you're not recycling the same basic movements across diverse creatures. The combat animations will have me a bit worried as well as they will be considerably more complex but we'll see how it goes.

WIP Walk-Cycle Test

[Alex87]

A lot of this stuff goes over my head, as I'm more of a gamer than a developer or animator but it all sounds cool. As for the walking animation would it possible to have the model leaning a little forward? To show intent and deterimination? Like a predator stalking prey? While the animation looks great and is fluid it just seems a little too passive, like someone walking to their doom instead of a brute off on a hunt. Hope that makes sense, I tried to find some examples online but my searches were pretty much fruitless.

Also I'm not sure of what the software you're using is capable of but could you have models perform random actions while moving? Like waving their weapon or clanging it against a shield or just howling? I've never really thought of orcs in particular as unformed, with military precision, just a horde of individuals. If there was a way that they could all act slightly differently every now it could help add a bit of character. Although I have thought that with that being a test you may have already had these thoughts yourself and just and my at the point to implement them .... Anyways hope this helps.

[oldblood]

Thanks Alex. Yes, that animations very much WIP and I've redone it about 5x since. My animation process seems to just be an endless series of iterations until I hit a point where I can't tell if I'm improving or getting worse... Definitely been interesting thus far to push myself in an area where I really don't have much experience at all.

Also I'm not sure of what the software you're using is capable of but could you have models perform random actions while moving? Like waving their weapon or clanging it against a shield or just howling?

It's actually funny you've mentioned this, something I've been considering is working in an RNG-style animation system where characters could have 3-4 walk cycles, idles etc. which are used randomly. Since these characters will usually be in groups, finding ways to add some variety and randomness to their movement could go a long ways in diversifying the visuals. It adds a lot more work to the animation side as you'd imagine- but it may be worth doing.

For now though, I'm just focusing on getting one of each type of animation in, but I have a feeling the RNG animation is going to end up in the game simply because I'm fairly certain it will look too repetitive "as is".

[oldblood]

DEVLOG X.

Got the first batch of some of the environment assets, things like trees, rocks, sun/moon etc. It's certainly challenging in this day and age to find a unique perspective on a game's aesthetic but I'm hoping we will be able to put something together that will be unique for a side-scrolling game.

The overall "mood" I'm aiming for on this first environment is Fall and the feeling that winter is around the corner. Here are some of the asset tests:

Some trees, post leaves...

Some ever-greens and rock variations...

Will need some more variance to things of course, more variance, more vegetation etc. I very, very quickly threw together a mock-up with the handful of assets that I have available:

First-pass environment/scale mockup. Very much WIP.

This is really just a test to see how the visuals are looking/working. I do think its creating a unique aesthetic but there's certainly some room for improvement. I've already gotten some great feedback on making sure to work in some "Fall Colors" to add more life to some of the scenes and generally try and make sure the assets are all balanced in terms of their levels of detail.

I hope though that this will help give a better idea as to the style of visuals that the game will be using and give a better impression of how the game could look (just better haha).

Have feedback? Would love to hear some suggestions or ideas...

[Greipur]

The mockup is promising, but I would advise that you take more control over saturation and environmental haze. Usually you have more saturation the closer you are to the camera or viewpoint.


In my example I've simply axed up the foreground and the background and given a stronger blue tint to background and increased saturation by 30% on the foreground.