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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsAzure Jaegers, Red Foxes - Galactic Espionage Action
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Author Topic: Azure Jaegers, Red Foxes - Galactic Espionage Action  (Read 2862 times)
SaberVS7
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« on: June 06, 2017, 09:18:10 PM »


A top-down 2D Stealth-Action-Adventure inspired by Castle Wolfenstein and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
Programming, Game design: Robert "SaberVS7" Schroeder
Pixel Art: Carrill Munnings
Portraits: A.P. Jeffin

An overview of the game:
Azure Jaegers, Red Foxes is a story-driven science-fiction Stealth-Action-Adventure game built in GameMaker Studio 2 that depicts the story of a lone field-operative on the energy-exporting colony of Inaro at the edge of a politically-unstable galactic republic in the late 25th century.

While the game's most direct inspirations are the Stealth genre's defining games of the 8-bit era, other influences were taken from more modern titles like Arkane's immersive sims such as Dishonored and PREY (2017). The player will gain and upgrade five main abilities that include warping, radial-attacks, time-stopping, hacking, and absorbing attacks that will add to the player's options out in the field. While the world is structured in a Metroidvania-inspired manner, this is a label I would distance the game from due to progression ultimately being linked directly with the story rather than finding abilities or equipment - Hence the label of "Stealth-Action-Adventure" instead.



Screenshots:

A conversation at the insertion-point:


Inventory UI:


New Save Menu:




Look forward to sharing future updates as development progresses!
« Last Edit: June 18, 2018, 10:35:40 PM by SaberVS7 » Logged

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SaberVS7
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« Reply #1 on: June 07, 2017, 07:02:24 PM »

Took a day to focus solely on art, and pumped out a decent tileset for the ISV Ironside which should also serve as a decent template for building tilesets for further areas. Might as well tick the Art counter up to 5% just for the hell of it. The tyranny of Programmer Art may soon be over with.



Also, some animated clips, which I will be using WebM for from now on - Because oh my god they process so much faster than GIFs.

Strolling around the new Ironside (Still WIP): https://files.catbox.moe/drsp6y.webm

Same conversation as in the OP, but animated: https://files.catbox.moe/bmyt3v.webm
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SaberVS7
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« Reply #2 on: June 15, 2017, 08:48:01 AM »

Took a few days off for E3 to de-stress and reevaluate some of my design decisions. Definitely feeling it again after I was starting to feel a bit sluggish.

Anyway, made some changes to the AI that should improve their pathing ability - Just a week ago there was an issue where if a loud noise was made near a wall, it would be interpreted as being inside of the wall itself (Outside of any pathing nodes range) and be subsequently ignored. This was especially problematic for doing things such as knocking on walls to grab a guard's attention. All fixed now!

Also changed was the Spawning system for backup. Previously I relied on a fixed set of nodes exclusively placed at the entrances to a map, however that became problematic for large maps or ones without many entrances - As such, I have came up with a new system that still uses fixed spawning nodes, but can now be placed all over the map - As such, instead of having backup spawn at a door that could be on the opposite end of the map and require them to run all the way to the action (Which was biased towards the player's advantage), Guard backup will now spawn at the nearest node outside of a certain range of the player (In this case right now, a roughly 2000 pixel radius, which puts the range to be just outside of Kaufman's viewing area) - Which also compensates for using binoculars and other view-enhancing items so an enemy will never spawn inside of the player's vision. Functionally, this works just like how Guard spawning worked in the Metal Gear games for MSX as well as Metal Gear Solid on the PS1.

But as for a more graphical preview of what I've been working on, have a editor screenshot of an area the player will visit in the early-game that introduces all the "mundane" mechanics in a soft-tutorial before Magic is introduced.



Victory Tower Suites (149th floor).

The visual assets certainly aren't there yet - This will represent more of a luxury apartment building once it's done, with carpeting and other amenities inside of the four apartments at the center, as well as a proper set of doors for the Penthouse Suite entrance at the top, and of course things to make the elevators at the bottom actually look like elevators.

If you're curious, the blue dots represent spawning nodes under the new spawn system, and orange ones are patrol nodes followed by enemies. They're relatively simple for this level in order to be simple to figure out, as this is the very start of real gameplay and ideally the only challenge here should be to guide the player towards learning the mechanics instead of testing knowledge they should have been building.

Not visible in plain view is which doors are locked, among other minor things, but if you look closely you can see vents along certain walls that the player can crawl through to bypass locked doors...

Oh, and those black cubes are enemies. Art for them isn't ready yet, so they'll be DebugCubes for now.
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SaberVS7
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« Reply #3 on: June 24, 2017, 10:19:47 AM »

Crawling now has proper animations in place that slot in perfectly when the player crawls into a vent. Well, at least for north-south vents. Handling east-west vents might need some collision-detection work to look right, though I might just follow my source-material's examples by limiting the amount of east-west vents.



As for stuff that I can't effectively demonstrate in screenshots/don't want to spend ten minutes compiling GIFs in the background while trying to program and test:

*Added a Lock-On function to the crosshair that should make controller support much more viable when I get around to it.

*Minor hitbox improvements that match up more effectively with character silhouettes

oh, and here's the Radio Menu. Still needs to be populated with further characters and of course making sure characters Kaufman doesn't know the VOIP address of don't show up, but it's working so far.




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SaberVS7
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« Reply #4 on: June 25, 2017, 05:45:26 PM »

Took a break from working on levels to instead program in the remaining items for REDFOXES I hadn't done yet, as well as writing their inventory-menu descriptions. Ok, one weapon remains to make, but it's so irrelevant to 99% of the game and will be considered a Joke-Weapon by most Until they figure it out that it's so infinitely far down my priority list right now until the 1% of the game that it is absolutely necessary for is ready.

Oh and, have an embarrassing typo I made while hastily parsing item descriptions into the UI.



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SaberVS7
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« Reply #5 on: June 30, 2017, 09:15:11 AM »

Not sure if this is really the best "Tutorial" to just be listing controls in a box in the pause menu and letting people figure out the rest of the rules in the sandbox that is Inaro, but I honestly don't have it in me to be making a discrete tutorial right now.



Anyway, just need a few more character-art assets to be finished to finally get rid of Sir Debug Cube the Third, as well as some portrait-sprites for a few characters, and finish things up to the first boss-battle, and I should be set for a "proper" gameplay unveiling soon.
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« Reply #6 on: June 30, 2017, 11:17:26 AM »

Great stuff, as stealth games fan can't wait to see more  Kiss Hand Thumbs Up Right
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« Reply #7 on: July 03, 2017, 09:53:48 AM »

Owo, what's this mysterious button here that's popped up in the main menu?



Oh, that's right. Remember VR Missions in Metal Gear Solid Integral and MGS2 Substance?



There's currently nothing here yet, but soon I will be populating this menu with a series of tutorials that explain the various mechanics, as well as puzzle/challenge levels that will give the game some life beyond just the main story content that are also much faster to create since I don't have to worry about where in the contiguous world these rooms are and what equipment the player might or might not have on them. This will most likely be the subject of the first public playable demo of REDFOXES I release, ahead of anything related to story content.
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SaberVS7
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« Reply #8 on: July 10, 2017, 10:22:58 AM »

Finally got the basic enemy sprite sheet in place for REDFOXES. Credit to Carrill Munnings for her hard work on character sprites thus far.



Anyway, still have some work to do before I put an initial demo out - Lots of janky enemy behaviors to clean up, fixing sprite-origins, and have to make artwork for all the items, among various other tasks to make first impressions be the best they can (Also removing debug text that the player won't need to see, hah). But there'll be something playable sooner rather than later.

...Also, does anyone know a host that doesn't nuke GIFs? I'd use WebM, but almost none of the forums I frequent (including this one) support it for some reason.
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SaberVS7
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« Reply #9 on: July 17, 2017, 08:06:22 PM »

Well quite a bit has changed since I last posted:

Added Emotes to NPCs since last time I posted that should communicate their state effectively now without Debug text at their feet. Should be hopefully self-explanatory, if not, tell me. Oh and so help me God if that last one has to be replaced for any reason *Shakes Fist*.




(That Alert! one gets nuked by compression when videoing it, so I'm afraid all you'll get for now is a GIF of the raw Emote itself for you to imagine being over an NPC's head.)

Oh, and lastly, replaced the old crappy Raidho effect with a proper trail via particles.



(PS: Should I switch to Abload for future GIFs? Or will they too compress my GIFs?)
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SaberVS7
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« Reply #10 on: December 12, 2017, 08:33:01 PM »

Latest update after a long while of silence:

While the core gameplay is as-is and won't be altered, after many lessons learned working on this and growing experience as a developer I've done a hard-reboot of the level design in addition to starting on a page-1 rewrite of the game's story that evolves on the lore of written for the setting over the past several months. Several of the player's abilities are being reworked, and I intend to re-add a new Progression system to the game after originally removing RPG elements during my early prototypes.

One such ability rework is the Laguz Rune being turned from a Ping/Distraction ability into a Hacking ability, as demonstrated in the GIF below:



In the absence of an RC-Missile weapon which I wanted to put in the game but could never find a proper way to squeeze in, I came up with this, based off of Metal Gear's RC Missile puzzles that would effectively be such an ability without having to design levels around it or make a sixth weapon. When the level-up mechanics are added in, certain Hackable objects with certain Levels won't be accessible until the player upgrades Laguz to the appropriate level.

Next post I make here, I hope to be able to show you the progression-system I have in mind.

Also, a big one: "Project REDFOXES" now goes under the name of 'Azure Jaegers, Red Foxes'! You'll understand the meaning behind that title soon enough Wink And hopefully I might be able to release a pre-Alpha of the Prologue chapter as a Christmas present for you all.




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« Reply #11 on: December 15, 2017, 08:39:59 AM »

And now we've finally begun to devote time to those fancy graphics things that apparently sell games far better than actual gameplay these days. Here's a quick comparison shot of a Train Platform early in the game now vs its old Programmer Art.

New on top, Old on the bottom:
 


One of those damned "Website" things that are popular with the kids these days coming Soon™
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« Reply #12 on: December 15, 2017, 12:37:16 PM »

Indie Metal Gear Solid LOVE LETTER? Sign me UP! (FOLLOWING)
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« Reply #13 on: December 16, 2017, 12:17:40 PM »

A quick glimpse at the opening conversation with the new graphics.



Also it's not much, but the website for Azure Jaegers is now live!

https://azurejaegers.com/
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SaberVS7
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« Reply #14 on: April 01, 2018, 03:58:45 PM »

Hey, everyone. Development is still alive, and is currently transitioning to a new artstyle with character art by A.P. Jeffin!

Anyway, I've got some big news for you all!

Well, due to a variety of development difficulties for a first-time indie dev, I've made the decision to scale down Azure Jaegers, Red Foxes and reduce its scope to something more manageable along with a rebranding. It'll be returning to the Visual Novel format it started development as, and will be firmly back where it belongs in the Otome genre after a long year of being sidetracked as an Immersive-Sim.

"Azure Jaegers, Red Foxes" is now Moshi-Moshi! Intelligence Agency! Here's a sneak peak of what the game looks like now. Please be excited for Kickstarter!






april fools, but yes, development is progressing.
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« Reply #15 on: April 02, 2018, 09:25:10 AM »

I was looking forward to completely text based stealth mechanics  Kiss

This is looking nice, I like the MGS inspiration. Are you working on everything yourself?
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« Reply #16 on: April 02, 2018, 02:43:04 PM »

Aha, no. Credits for the full Dev team are at the top of this thread.
« Last Edit: April 02, 2018, 08:29:54 PM by SaberVS7 » Logged

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« Reply #17 on: April 21, 2018, 09:14:32 AM »

Not my Screenshot Saturday content (that comes later), but you all can have this for now.



I've got a ton of outdated screenshots to replace >.>
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« Reply #18 on: April 29, 2018, 07:29:32 AM »

Well, finally got around to rebuilding the game's combat systems to be properly RPG-based after a long time of using really janky Bullet-Objects.



"how do i shot gun"

Hitrate formulas are still WIP but this is still roughly what your Hitrate is going to look like if you don't invest in your Weaponskills or Attributes properly.
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« Reply #19 on: June 18, 2018, 10:37:09 PM »

About finished refactoring the Save/Load functionality (Good god it was a mess before) and so decided to start rebuilding the old Save menu to match (Will fix the Load menu to match next.)



Also, Journal Menu:



...See you soon, Space Cowboy...
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