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[Kakapio]

Really nice! I'd definitely buy it if it were released!

[MiNTO]

This looks amazing! I have to get this when it's out. 

[motionTwin]

Hey there all,

Thanks for the ideas for the "Mass Grave" level. We also had The Ossuary as an idea which sounds pretty good, but i think that goes the same way as "catacombs", that's to say a little towards the religious/contemplative side of things. Definitely want to avoid all references to WW2 but at the same time this is going to be a more open level, not really the enclosed feel of catacombs... Hmmm will think it over and let you know what we end up going for.

Steve.

[Superb Joe]

to me mass grave recalls any number of modern conflicts moreso than world war 2 and carries an atmosphere with it that is lost with all the alternatives suggested. also i like strider 2.

[deepnight]

Didn't know there was a sequel to Strider (only played the first one) I'll definitely have to check this out!

[blip]

I think "charnel pit" works well, but I'm sure can't go too far wrong with such beautiful art.

[Nugget Team]

W-O-W

This pixel-aesthetic is simply wonderful. Looks dynamic and funny as hell. Keep working, you're doing it really, really well.

Can't wait to see it ended!

[indieCatapult]

Heyho thanks for all the encouragement!

Would love some feedback on this Greenlight concept page. We're going to do the real greenlight on Thursday of this week, but we have been showing this concept page to some of our friends in the industry over here, as well as family and whatnot, just to get the maximum amount of eyes on it before we go live.

So what do you think?

NOTE: The trailer is not the final version, we're holding that back till Thursday for dramatic effect...

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=843664646

Thanks heaps!

Steve.

[Superb Joe]

it may be a cynical necessity of the green light process, and my objection may solely be an artefact of being the most intellegent and graceful human being to ever live, but to me it seems a bit clunky to compare yourself to no less than 3 games in such a short paragraph

[maruki]

I love the idea of an ever-changing castlevania-like castle, and you guys seem to be designing a fair rogue experience for it, but permadeath? Well. From my perspective, one of the things that makes Castlavania games appealing is the fact that you keep the character and what I achieved with it during my gameplay even if you die (some people categorize it as "the rpg elements"). I see permadeath's appeal today with certain audiences, though.
If only the castle factor is taken from Castlevania, maybe there's no need to keep it on the greenlight description. Also, it may help your game stand out, if it's not being based on other games.

[motionTwin]

Thank you both for your comments!

Name dropping is an easy way for us to convey our vision of Dead Cells in the least amount of words. But yeah, we definitely need to be careful with all the references. Otherwise it sounds a bit like we're claiming to be as good as Castlevania or Dark Souls. We're not that pretentious...


@maruki: Nonlinear progression and the interconnected world are the main elements that we're adapting from Castlevania. But we think it captures the whole 2D action, medieval/ fantasy setting, castle thing with only one word. We love permadeath, because of the adrenaline surge we get when we are in dangerous situations. But yeah, it also comes with the frustration of feeling like you haven't achieved anything... What we're trying to do is add some mechanics that help us counter this, but we're definitely still working on that. We're kinda counting on exchanging with the community to find the right balance. 

[motionTwin]

Hello guys,

We're on greenlight. We tried to improve the text a bit, to show how our inspirations influenced us, and the elements we wanted to take from them for Dead Cells. We're still not totally happy with it though, so we might changed it again.

By the way, I edited the first page with the gameplay trailer and the new illustration.

Also, we've got a question: is it better to share the greenlight page through a classic url (like above) or to make the greenlight page directly open in the steam app? The second one seems better since more people are logged in to the steam app rather than the website, but it also seems more intrusive... What do you guys think (as users)?

 

[kkairos]

Added. Good luck on Greenlight!

edit PS if you have a way of easily providing both options, that might be best. I am much more logged into Steam itself, so that would be more convenient for me and doesn't feel super intrusive.

[ShuddaHaddaLottaFun]

just saw a post of this game on Kotaku! 

http://steamed.kotaku.com/1791404085

congrats! it looks really good!

[Fenrir]

Good luck with the Greenlight, it should be a matter of days.

[motionTwin]

Howdy folks. So we've been greenlit... All in all it took five days, so we're pretty stoked about that. You can see the stats below. We're also doing our first focus test in our office tonight with some players that we think will be able to give us some roguelike specific feedback so we'll let you know how that goes.

Anywho thanks for the feedback on the Greenlight page!

[kcbanner]

Congrats on being greenlit! This looks really great, the pre-rendered sprite technique is looking super good!

[lithander]

Drawing inspiration (excuse the pun) from King of Fighters, Blazblue or the last Guilty Gear, the smartest way to go seemed to be making the most of 3D animation. Start with a rough draft in pixel art, then move on to the modeling, skinning and rigging, before adding the animation and exporting a 2D spritesheet. This allows you to make super fast changes to the pixelart animation while maximising reuse of existing assets.[/size]

Can you elaborate on the process? I can't really imagine how the animated 3D character would look like in the 3D animation software (which one btw?) and how you render it to get the pixelalted, paletized look.

[Carduus]

Hi Lithander!

I’m the guy in charge of the animations, among others things. I’m not an expert, so we designed a method to get nice animations without committing an unreasonable amount of time energy  to the process. We’re planning to write a blog post about it, since it’s working pretty well for us and we hope that someone else will be able to get something out of it.

Although, I’m not sure when I will have the time and motivation to write it cleanly, with sweet screenshots and gifs to make myself clearer, so here is a quick answer in the meantime.

Warning: boring post ahead. Read it at your own risk.

The first step is to draw a very basic 2D pixelart model sheet. I use this as a model to make the character in 3D and its skeleton (with 3DS Max), this is then exported in fbx format. A little homebrew program, developed for this very specific task, will then render the mesh in a very small size and without antialiasing, giving us that pixelated look.

At this point, most of the work is done. We export each frame of the animation we made with the 3D skeleton to a .png (I just don’t have the time to hand draw the sprites, to my great regret). Each frame is also exported along with its normal map, allowing us to render the volume using a basic toon shader.

This method gives us several advantages: the animation I do for a character can be reused for another one. Retakes  are super quick and easy. And finally, we can hit 30 Fps for the animations, which doesn’t cure cancer, but at least helps a bit with the flu (as everyone knows).


I hope the process is a bit clearer now, but let me know if you want more details.

Carduus

[Fenrir]

Hi Lithander!

I’m the guy in charge of the animations, among others things. I’m not an expert, so we designed a method to get nice animations without committing an unreasonable amount of time energy  to the process. We’re planning to write a blog post about it, since it’s working pretty well for us and we hope that someone else will be able to get something out of it.

Although, I’m not sure when I will have the time and motivation to write it cleanly, with sweet screenshots and gifs to make myself clearer, so here is a quick answer in the meantime.

Warning: boring post ahead. Read it at your own risk.

The first step is to draw a very basic 2D pixelart model sheet. I use this as a model to make the character in 3D and its skeleton (with 3DS Max), this is then exported in fbx format. A little homebrew program, developed for this very specific task, will then render the mesh in a very small size and without antialiasing, giving us that pixelated look.

At this point, most of the work is done. We export each frame of the animation we made with the 3D skeleton to a .png (I just don’t have the time to hand draw the sprites, to my great regret). Each frame is also exported along with its normal map, allowing us to render the volume using a basic toon shader.

This method gives us several advantages: the animation I do for a character can be reused for another one. Retakes  are super quick and easy. And finally, we can hit 30 Fps for the animations, which doesn’t cure cancer, but at least helps a bit with the flu (as everyone knows).


I hope the process is a bit clearer now, but let me know if you want more details.

Carduus

Thanks for the details, it's a super interesting workflow and the result looks great!
Could you post a screen of the model in 3DS Max for comparison?