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[Pixelologist]

I think the title is annoying and makes no sense. It's just 3 copied words, is it supposed to be describing an animal's paw? Why would you repeat it 3 times?

[io3 creations]

Couldn't you have set up the animation in a way to allow "simple" swap of the images?  That's what I would've done!

that's what I did at first, the original intro doesn't really have much animation, mostly just panning the camera around, zoom in zoom out that kinda things. but with the placeholder arts, it looks like crap, and I kinda need it to look somewhat passable for demo purpose. So I thought 'hey, you know what looks good with this placeholder arts? popup book animation!'.
So basically this is a poor decision making on my part. 

Well, it was a 50-50.    If the pop-up book approach didn't look good then you could've *saved* on the full set-up time.

But regarding replacing the images, I still don't exactly understand why you can't replace the placeholder images.  If the images are in folders, then replacing What I mean is, why can't you replace the placeholder images - i.e. the ones in folders outside of Unity?  You mentioned using sprite images.  I'm not familiar with those so maybe those can't be edited easily?  Or does the animation use image properties that are different for the new assets?

Oh, how did you create the animation?  With an asset or custom script?

For this particular animation, we don't use custom asset or script. They're all actually just sprite that I rotate and scale around in 3D space, animated using the native animation system in Unity.

I saw Mecanim before but didn't think you were referring to that and was going to ask what animation system you were referring to.  But then I thought that I could probably find it.   I already set up things that are similar to that and the "legacy" animation system seems more complicated than what I have already.  But it may be useful for certain things.  I've seen a few posts that mentioned that the legacy animation system might be depricated.  But if only Mecanim remains, then setting up the same type of animation will be more complicated.



I like the trailer for the most part, but there are a few issues:
-Seemed like there were 3 different types of fonts used (not including in game dialogue). 
-Some of the text is quite small and hard to read - mainly when watching the video in the 360p view or on a mobile device.
-The story and player motivation setup was a bit confusing.  In the beginning, the trailer mentions that the is forcing everyone to wear pants.  Then gameplay action footage is shown raising the questions of who is the main character and why is he fighting.  Since the other characters aren't wearing pants, are you playing the role of an enforcer?  Then the next on-screen text says "Slay your way throughout the kingdom".  The questions again: who are you and why are you doing that?  If you are trying to fight the "pants law" and the king, then based on the original premise, why do you have to slay your way throughout the kingdom rather than just going directly to the king?  Only at the end is mentioned that you are playing as the Antipants.  At first, when I saw the dark (Antipants) figures at the end, I wasn't sure if those were the same characters that you showed before or not.  Perhaps, if the characters had been shown with full lighting then darkened that connection would've been more obvious.  Overall, it almost seems like that the King with the pants wearing and Antipants ideas were tagged on at the end and perhaps replaced the original idea of why you were  fighting originally. 


On a side note, is it a coincidence that there's a Captain Underpants in the recommended videos? 
http://i.imgur.com/W0Ms2H3.png

[mochakingup]

Loving the trailer! The game's environments are awesome 

Thanks, MereMonkey! we are fortunate to have a great environment artist

[mochakingup]

I think the title is annoying and makes no sense. It's just 3 copied words, is it supposed to be describing an animal's paw? Why would you repeat it 3 times?

Hahaha, that's unfortunate. I thought it'd be easy to remember, but yes it is based on animal's paw. It's like 'pew pew pew' but with 'Paw'. It's stupid, I know 

[mochakingup]

But regarding replacing the images, I still don't exactly understand why you can't replace the placeholder images.  If the images are in folders, then replacing What I mean is, why can't you replace the placeholder images - i.e. the ones in folders outside of Unity?  You mentioned using sprite images.  I'm not familiar with those so maybe those can't be edited easily?  Or does the animation use image properties that are different for the new assets?

The main problem is the images' shape, count, placement, and animation is not the same between the originally planned intro, and the placeholder one. To give you some idea, the original intro will look like the start of the trailer (with the kingdom) it wouldn't fit on the placeholder animations.

I saw Mecanim before but didn't think you were referring to that and was going to ask what animation system you were referring to.  But then I thought that I could probably find it.   I already set up things that are similar to that and the "legacy" animation system seems more complicated than what I have already.  But it may be useful for certain things.  I've seen a few posts that mentioned that the legacy animation system might be depricated.  But if only Mecanim remains, then setting up the same type of animation will be more complicated.

Yes, I was referring to Mecanim, I'm not even sure what legacy animation is.  sorry for the confusion 

I like the trailer for the most part, but there are a few issues:
-Seemed like there were 3 different types of fonts used (not including in game dialogue). 
-Some of the text is quite small and hard to read - mainly when watching the video in the 360p view or on a mobile device.
-The story and player motivation setup was a bit confusing.  In the beginning, the trailer mentions that the is forcing everyone to wear pants...

I think there were two, I was trying to differentiate between narration and things that you can do in the game/bullet point. But then it seems I broke my own rule. So you are correct, it could be done better. I was hoping to replace the narration text with voiceover eventually, and then show the text as simple subtitles? not sure yet.

You are playing as the resistance member, (for some reason) the base of operation of the resistance is kinda far from the main city. We don't always fight the king, the footage doesn't show any of the kingdom's army/royal guard because we haven't work on that part of the level, haha. What we have shown in the trailer is what we have right now, still a long way to go...

There is actually a story (a stupid one) that tie the journey together level from level. But again you are right, this trailer doesn't do a good job of telling the whole story. I was more focused on showing the combat and a little bit of back story.

all in all, these are great and thorough feedbacks and will be really valuable for the next trailers 

On a side note, is it a coincidence that there's a Captain Underpants in the recommended videos? 
http://i.imgur.com/W0Ms2H3.png

That is gold! I wasn't even mentioning pants in the video description or tags, hahaha

and btw, I really like the terms "pants law" might use it in game   

[io3 creations]

and btw, I really like the terms "pants law" might use it in game   

Sure!  For a certain percentage of the royalties, of course.  We're gonna be so rich!   


After thinking about it, I was guessing that you are part of the resistance and probably the main goal is to get to the king and defeat him.  To do that, you have to travel through the kingdom (hence "Slay your way throughout the kingdom"). 

So, right after the enforcing of the "pants law" is mentioned, the trailer could mention something along the usual lines of "But some prefer to remain *FREE* (there's gotta be a good pun here ) and decide to challenge the King.  In order to reach the King, you have to "Slay your way throughout the kingdom".
These lines could be shown mixed with action scenes and would give the player a clearer idea and motivation as to why they are fighting.  At least that's how I would do that. 

[io3 creations]

Yes, I was referring to Mecanim, I'm not even sure what legacy animation is.  sorry for the confusion 

Actually, it was good because it allowed me to find and look into the legacy animation system as well.  While the legacy would be somewhat better for my purposes Mecanim doesn't seem to be easy (or even possible) to use it with code only (i.e. without the Unity Editor). 

[mochakingup]

alright! tiny update time!

Just finished animating the skills for Ranger class. here's one of them



ignore the static enemy, it's just for testing and positioning 
the first hit will stun the enemy and the final shots will knock him back.

pretty satisfied with how it turned out

[mochakingup]

Oh geez, it's been a while hasn't it, where did the time go? 
I keep postponing to update this thread and look where it got me. 

We've been attending local events and participating in a local game competition. We've received a lot of feedbacks and encountered even more bugs.
Not sure where to start, there've been a lot of changes, tweaks, and some new stuff as well. But most of them are something that we can't show easily with pics or gifs.

So let's pick up right where we left off! 


Ranger

Ranger skills are fully implemented and working!

The first skill is called 'Aerial blade'.



This skill will extend the range of your melee attack for a period of time, which can be very useful at keeping the enemies at bay.

Second skill is 'Trick Shot' (I'm bad at naming things.. name suggestions are welcome  )



This is a pretty straightforward skill. It stuns and damages your enemies.

On top of that, Ranger has a passive ability 'Execute', which grants 30% crit chance when attacking enemies with low health.


Outposts

One of the new features that we've been working on is the outpost.
The outpost is basically a different type of stage that you can access on the world map.



There are multiple outposts spread across the world.
you can tell by the wheat icon, unlike the swords icon of generic combat/mission stages.



So what can you do in an outpost?
It acts like some kinda hub for the players. This is where you resupply, buy items and equip your weapons.

There are three types of shop that you can find in an outpost:

First is weapon shop.



Some weapons can be bought in the weapon shop. Once you bought a weapon it'll show in your armory.

Next is Item shop.



You can buy items here (duh).
currently, only health potions and orange juices are in the game.

And the last one is a recruitment board/companion shop



where you can recruit a companion that will follow you around and join you in battle.
we'll talk more about companion in another post.

Now that you've spent all your hard earned money on various shops, you can visit the armory to change your weapon.



The weapon selection was already in the game before, but previously after you choose a character you immediately choose your weapon.
This has always been a temporary behavior to test the weapon system.
And I also created a short animation when equipping weapons.

There's one last thing that you can do in outpost:
Skilltree and leveling up your character!
which I'll cover in the next post, because this one has become too long already 

So until then, thanks for reading and stopping by.
and as always, cnc are welcome.

[mochakingup]

Exp and Level Up

As I said in my last post, today I'm gonna write a bit about the leveling system in Paw Paw Paw.

It's pretty standard actually. Currently, we set the level cap to 30, and use a simple curve to determine the exp needed to reach the next level.



Exp points are handled through a simple system. Characters gain exp from each successful hit to the enemies. A killing blow will net bigger exp, defeating bosses will also grant extra exp. There are of course some pros and cons with this system.



Pros. We don't have to specify exp value/drop for each enemy. Tougher enemies automatically net bigger exp since they need more hit to kill them. And in case of co-op play, exp are distributed fairly through the players, depending on their contributions.

One of the most obvious drawbacks to this, though, is that stronger characters tend to level up slower than weaker ones. Weak characters (by weak, I mean has lower stats on strength) deal less damage, thus require them a lot of hits to defeat one enemy. whereas stronger characters would require less hit, and so gain less exp.

For example, at the end of stage 5, a weak character already reached like, level 4, while stronger character just barely reached level 2.

I'm not sure how to address this problem yet, or if this is something we can get away with? 


Skilltree

Each time you level up, you get a skill point to spend on the skill tree. You can access the skill tree by talking to an NPC in the outpost.



and this is how it looks (this one is the archer's skill tree):



First of all, let me get this out of the way. The skill tree is not actually a skill tree, you don't get to unlock new active skill. But it looks like a skill tree so I'm not really sure what to call it other than that. Sooo what does it do then? It mostly serves to increase your stats, but you can also unlock other things.

Every character starts with 1 passive skill and 2 active skills depending on their class. these are already unlocked from the start.



You can't learn new skills, but you can upgrade them (not implemented yet, though). Each skill will have 2 non-incremental upgrades. These upgrades can range from wider area of damage, longer active time, or additional effects like bleed or burn. Skill upgrade node represented with the same diamond icon as the active skill, but smaller.

Excluding those, there are two more node types in the tree.

First is traits. These are the purple circle nodes. Unlocking traits will improve your character stats, ranging between 2-6 stat increases each. here are some examples of the traits:



and the second is training, represented by hexagonal icons.

training nodes are broken further into three categories
- Combo: unlocking this will grant you access to a new move/combo.
- Weapon Mastery: increasing weapon mastery will allow you to equip higher level weapons.
- Inventory Space: will allow you to bring more items.



So that's how our skill tree and level up system currently works.

We've thought of getting rid the level cap and allowing some kind of reset to the skill tree in case we want to do something like hardcore/nightmare mode of some sorts. but not entirely sure yet how to approach that. 

thoughts?

[Pixel Noise]

Been a while since I've checked in on this. It's looking great!

To address the leveling concept - I think it's fine. That's how Final Fantasy Tactics worked - your units only got experience when successfully performing an action (any action, other than basic movement).

[mochakingup]

Been a while since I've checked in on this. It's looking great!

To address the leveling concept - I think it's fine. That's how Final Fantasy Tactics worked - your units only got experience when successfully performing an action (any action, other than basic movement).

thanks, Pixel Noise!

ahh, pretty sure I've played that briefly, so does it have the same problem where stronger characters have a harder time leveling up? I should definitely check that game again.


On another note, I've just updated our website a bit. It's nothing new, just a short post explaining about the starting characters and their skills. not sure if I should post it here as well. I think I'll just leave the link here for now,


http://simpleton.rocks/meet-the-bears/

[Pixel Noise]

I was going to write up a response explaining the system...and as I was writing, I'm realizing it's been ~15 years since I last played it, and I'm probably going to misquote some details. So you probably want to look in on that yourself, but from what I remember, each successful action earned you JP (job points) which you could then spend how you wanted to unlock abilities. I believe characters also earned experience after each battle - that's how they leveled up, but the levels were just stats, and the JP went to abilities. Higher level characters earned more JP from actions, so higher level characters weren't stuck slogging through 3X as many battles for the same amount of JP.

I think.

[mochakingup]

I was going to write up a response explaining the system...and as I was writing, I'm realizing it's been ~15 years since I last played it, and I'm probably going to misquote some details. So you probably want to look in on that yourself, but from what I remember, each successful action earned you JP (job points) which you could then spend how you wanted to unlock abilities. I believe characters also earned experience after each battle - that's how they leveled up, but the levels were just stats, and the JP went to abilities. Higher level characters earned more JP from actions, so higher level characters weren't stuck slogging through 3X as many battles for the same amount of JP.

I think.

haha yeah, the thing that I worried about is if it's gonna end up too grindy, but then again I can't really know until all the stages completed. We've been testing some more since, and so far it's working just fine. Will definitely revisit this again later though.


small gif update



We've completed the character unlock system, this is the first pass of the UI/notification. The plan is to have each unlockable character specific set of challenge/achievement to unlock them. So far, we have 3 unlockable characters, one will be unlocked as part of the story, one when you defeat certain numbers of certain enemies, and the last can be unlocked by discovering a secret pathway of some sort.

[danresn]

This reminds me of a much more gory version of the Redwall books by Brian Jacques.

[mochakingup]

This reminds me of a much more gory version of the Redwall books by Brian Jacques.

Oooh, never heard that one before, thanks for mentioning it!
a quick google image search already sparked my imagination 

[danresn]

This reminds me of a much more gory version of the Redwall books by Brian Jacques.

Oooh, never heard that one before, thanks for mentioning it!
a quick google image search already sparked my imagination 

They were my favourite books as a kid. Completely different vibe to this game though.

[mochakingup]

Been working on some more weapons, a couple of new legendary sets.
here are all the current weapons in the game right now.



about 100 weapons total give or take, halfway to the initial plan!

[mochakingup]

First test on obligatory train level 



Still a bit unsure on how to do the looping background properly, gonna need to do some more test on that.

[io3 creations]

First test on obligatory train level 

Looking good!

When I first glimpsed at the words "train level", I thought you were referring to a train-ing level.

Oh, if you're going to have an obligatory train level, then you must have an obligatory elevator level as well.

Still a bit unsure on how to do the looping background properly, gonna need to do some more test on that.

Sometimes it's enough to have background images that can be looped (i.e. large-sized tiles).   
Other times it's better to have separate images that can be placed randomly (e.g. hills, mountains).  Some of those can be combined to create a mountain range, etc.   The second approach can avoid the issue of repetition that comes from using tile images.