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[odedro987]

Hello

I'm new here and to devlogs in general, but I decided to make one for a project that I'm working on.
This project is mainly for educational purposes, both on the game engine with which I'm working, as a genre of game I'm yet to tackle and pixel art.

Now for the interesting part:

So currently this game has no name, I hope to come up with one as I go. But basically this game is an RPG adventure game which is going to be influenced by a nostalgic game I used to play called AdventureQuest.

The planned features are:
- Turn based battles.
- RPG elements such as: levels, jobs, skills, items and so on.
- Shops.
- Pet system.
- Quests.
- Pixel art graphics.

What I'm currently working on:
- Battle scenes.
- UI.
- Some sprites and animations.

One thing I want to ask is please do suggest things/features. I want it to be as educational for me as possible and so that I can use it for future references. I will take any reasonable suggestion into consideration!

And of course some media:
This is how the battle scenes themselves are going to look like(at least as of now):


Some enemies sprites I've made:

And a little gif:


I will keep updating as I implement more features.

[The Armorman]

I love your avatar.

[Stricle]

Man, those sprites of yours look great!
I don't know what I can suggest right now.
About the educational part, I'm curious. How will you teach the players stuff?

[odedro987]

I love your avatar.

Thanks

Man, those sprites of yours look great!
I don't know what I can suggest right now.
About the educational part, I'm curious. How will you teach the players stuff?

Thanks, they weren't easy to do at all!
And about the educational part, I think you've misunderstood or I wasn't clear enough. I want it to be educational for me, to get familiar with Godot(the engine I'm working with), with this type of games and to improve my pixelling skills.


I still don't have any new feature, but I'll explain how some of the current ones work:
So basically I'm making this game as dynamic as possible(kinda habit of mine) so that it will be easy enough to add pretty much anything that should be diverse. Let's take the monsters for example, I'm basically using a JSON like array of properties:


And with that, if I want to add a new enemy, all I need to do is put some properties and an animation sheet.
Which is really cool and easy to use if you ask me

That also goes to the battle scenes(or foreground), all I do is make another sprite and a name, and I can switch them as I like.
I'm going to do this also to the skills, weapons, armors, pets and so on.

Now, some things about damage which is something I'm going to tackle soon:
As I see it there are 2 types of attacks(weapon and magic attack) and 8~ types of damage or respectively attributes(grass, fire, water, ice, earth, lightning, holy/light, dark).

With magic, the type of damage depends on the magic type, and with weapons it depends on the weapon attribute.
I still haven't come up with just how much exactly each attribute is going to affect the other, but it will also depend on the attribute of your armor/shield!

[Stricle]

Thanks, they weren't easy to do at all!
And about the educational part, I think you've misunderstood or I wasn't clear enough. I want it to be educational for me, to get familiar with Godot(the engine I'm working with), with this type of games and to improve my pixelling skills.

Hmmm, well, I really need to improve my english comprehension... even because I making a game in english XD.
I'm glad it's educational for you, because the way was thinking it could draw back your game's potential.

Looks like the system you created make it easy to have plenty of enemies. I'm making an RPG as well, and even though I tried to make it easy to create new foes, I still need to change/add lots of lines every time I want to make a new one.

I'm curious about how your game will turn out... Following your project.

[odedro987]

Thanks, they weren't easy to do at all!
And about the educational part, I think you've misunderstood or I wasn't clear enough. I want it to be educational for me, to get familiar with Godot(the engine I'm working with), with this type of games and to improve my pixelling skills.

Hmmm, well, I really need to improve my english comprehension... even because I making a game in english XD.
I'm glad it's educational for you, because the way was thinking it could draw back your game's potential.

Looks like the system you created make it easy to have plenty of enemies. I'm making an RPG as well, and even though I tried to make it easy to create new foes, I still need to change/add lots of lines every time I want to make a new one.

I'm curious about how your game will turn out... Following your project.

Thanks :D

A Small Update:

So I started working on the HUD because it's a pretty small thing to make, this is what it looks like:

And in-game:


The first bar will show you\the monster's name and level.
The last bar is for EXP.
I'm still thinking on a formula for each bar, I might resort to AdventureQuests's formula though.

[odedro987]

Hi!

So another update:

I pretty much done with the HUDs for now. And I implemented the leveling system and the fleeing system.
The fleeing system basically works on that "BaseFleeBlock" you saw in the monster properties, the higher it is, the harder it is to flee(I generate a random number from 1 to 10, if it is equal or less than the BaseFleeBlock property of that monster, you failed fleeing, and vice versa).


The HUDs with the numbers on them look like this:


And when a battle is finished you get the "Won The Battle" popup and respectively when you lose you get the "Lost The Battle" popup:


After some battles you naturally gain some EXP:


And when you do level up you get this popup:

 
And your HUD updates as well:


Next thing I'm gonna work on is basic attack with some weapon I still have to draw, as well as the attributes and a text indication of the damage you've made/received.

[Excy]

Hey man! Looking really good so far.

Looking at your first images reminded me of something I couldn't put my finger on, then you mentioned AdventureQuest, yes! I used to love AdventureQuest when it was BattleOn, oldschool times.

To be honest, there's not much feedback I can give at the moment other than this is going the right direction. What future plans do you have? How will players progress through levels? Will there be an overworld?

[odedro987]

Hey man! Looking really good so far.

Looking at your first images reminded me of something I couldn't put my finger on, then you mentioned AdventureQuest, yes! I used to love AdventureQuest when it was BattleOn, oldschool times.

To be honest, there's not much feedback I can give at the moment other than this is going the right direction. What future plans do you have? How will players progress through levels? Will there be an overworld?

Yeah, I used to play it so much in elementary school haha super nostalgic!

What exactly do you mean by plans?

And well, I guess the main focus of the game will be quests, and dungeons(I picture it as a series of battles with a boss at the end, after which you will be rewarded). and you just as in the game, you can also just grind your way through levels by battling monsters in different areas.

About an overworld, I'm not sure. Which it would be nice to not have a static image of a village or w/e, I don't see how an overworld would fit in this game.. it is already pretty side-scrolly so an overworld would have to be kind of a platformer city? I don't really think it would work. Unless I can come up with a creative way for it, I think I'll stick to an image-clicking kind of interface.

[odedro987]

Hello again

Another small update:

I've made some weapons and armors, the weapons are still kinda WIP, not sure what style I'm gonna go with them, I kinda like them though.
The armors I've made a couple of days ago, though I wanted to post them together with the weapons.




I've also already implemented basic damage, with a temp punching animation, as well as a "hurt" animation to indicate when you\the enemy are\is actually being hurt:

[odedro987]

Hi~

So I've been kinda busy the last few days but I did make some progress!

So I've implemented the weapons already, although they are still in their early ages.
currently the only thing relevant to them is the damage they do.
This is a little preview of the rough variables of the weapons:


I also had the menu let you switch between the weapons you've got, as well as a rough attack animation:


I do however plan on making the menu more neatly and user friendly, by showing you the damage and attribute of the weapon.
Also making a proper pixel style texture for it.

Other than implementing the weapons I did a quick fading damage indicator because of obvious reasons:


I currently only have a rough icon for the fire attribute, but of course I'm gonna make one for each and then I can also make the attribute of the weapon visually matter.

Next things on the list is finishing the above, and making some enemy attack animations instead of just triggering the player's hurt animation, and making the attribute matter in the damage(I thought of 50%, 100% and 150% for not effective, neutral and effective respectively).
Afterwards, I'm thinking of either start working on spells, or the armors which isn't going to be too hard, because all I have to do at least code wise is pretty much what I did with the weapons, though making all the animations for them will take time.

What do you think is more urgent?

[vitorlanna]

Cool!
I like the sprites.
I'd suggest using a pixel art font and adding some juiciness (maybe screenshake when attacks hit).
Also, something that is usually a good idea in pixel art is to keep pixel size consistent.
In the HUD when it shows King Slime it shows his whole sprite inside the hud, and his pixel size is much smaller than the HUD, which looks pretty odd. Also, I noticed that the sword is shaded with lighting coming from above normally, but coming from below when the character is hit. I dig the colors and the floor tiles, though!

(Poor Papyrus haha)

[odedro987]

Cool!
I like the sprites.
I'd suggest using a pixel art font and adding some juiciness (maybe screenshake when attacks hit).
Also, something that is usually a good idea in pixel art is to keep pixel size consistent.
In the HUD when it shows King Slime it shows his whole sprite inside the hud, and his pixel size is much smaller than the HUD, which looks pretty odd. Also, I noticed that the sword is shaded with lighting coming from above normally, but coming from below when the character is hit. I dig the colors and the floor tiles, though!

(Poor Papyrus haha)

First of all, thanks

And yeah I already have a font, got it after I posted here.
I don't know about the screen shake, I might do it and ask here what you think about it.

Now, about the HUD, I know the pixel size is different but I can't really think of a possible solution. With monsters such as the small slimes/skeletons I can just use their whole sprite/head as the HUD avatar, but when it comes to the big guys, especially with no face, I can't possibly fit them there... If you have any ideas, please do tell ^^

And currently the weapon in the hurt animation is procedurally rotated, I have 2 solutions in mind though:
1. Putting a dark alpha on top of it(like the player being hurt) which will make it not stand out so brightly.
2. Actually making another animation frame for it, my problem with that is that I would have to make one for each weapon and in the long run it might take time. Still, not a no-go yet.

Thank you very much for all the suggestions!

[foofter]

I love the undead blob with a bone. It managed to make a blob enemy new and interesting!

[odedro987]

I love the undead blob with a bone. It managed to make a blob enemy new and interesting!

Thanks, I didn't want just to recolor it so I added a little feature.
I'm glad it worked

[aamatniekss]

Looking great so far! Following!

[odedro987]

So another small update

So I've found a nice pixel font, instead of the default one. Also, I've made a little function that lets me color particular parts of a text, which is really nice, I can color the things that need more attention:



Moreover, I've finally implemented the attribute effects(currently I use some temp icons, just for indication):


The current effects are as shown in this little chart that I've made:


The attributes from left to right are: Air, Earth, Fire, Grass, Water, Ice, Lightning, Holy and Dark.

The attack is multiplied by the attribute effect of the weapon/skill on the enemy's attribute.
Currently I've made each attribute to have 2 other which it's stronger than and 2 which is weaker than.
All except Holy and Dark which are both strong against the other but weak against themselves.
This can of course change in the future.

[smartyMARTY]

This looks pretty neat. I like the work you have done with the characters, UI, and the combat system. Any games inspire your current controls? I have never seen a game where the combat controls are in the center - which actually makes a lot of sense as it should be the primary focus.

[odedro987]

This looks pretty neat. I like the work you have done with the characters, UI, and the combat system. Any games inspire your current controls? I have never seen a game where the combat controls are in the center - which actually makes a lot of sense as it should be the primary focus.

Yeah, as I mentioned in the first post, my inspiration is AdventureQuest.
Also, glad you like that! :D

[odedro987]

So, more progress today :D

The last couple of days I worked on implementing spells to the game, and I like how it's turned out
I also added description to the spells and weapons menus:


As you can see the weapon which is currently used is blacked out.
This also works for spells whose mana cost is higher than the player's current mana value:


Now for the spells I've currently made 3 quick varieties of spells:


And in game it looks like this:


With spells implemented, I can conclude that I'm mostly done working on the battle scenes. All that's left is to implement armors and draw the enemy attack animations(at least as for the most basic features).
Also I've updated the icon to 20%, not sure how much is really is, but it with the battle scenes almost done, I feel like it deserves that progress update

Which brings me to another thing I've found out recently, that is Taiga.io, which is an issue tracker kinda thing.
Basically it helps me keep the development nice and tidy, by letting me track the progress with a simple kanban board and an issue tracker. It looks like this:


As you can see, I've already put some stuff in my todo list which I'm going to work on sometime.
The In Progress and In Stack are the more urgent features/tasks I have to do.
It's really nice and free which is a bonus I do recommend it if you don't want to pay for services like JIRA and so on.

That's it for today, if you have any suggestions/comments please do tell~