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[qMopey]

I like your art Posting for follow.

[Lowbit]

can you give more details on how the combat (assuming that's part of it) works?

Sorry for the late reply, but giving more details on combat sounded like a fun post to go all-out on.

Combat







Lynn has three means of dealing damage: Melee, Magic, and Mana Crash.

They all function differently, except for one trait:
Holding down their respective button charges up the attack.
Hold down the button long enough and the attack triggers automatically.
















Melee



Covers a large area. Can hit multiple targets. Doesn’t drain any resources.

It's a good panic button, but melee attacks don't grow in power like magic does,
and you can't perform a critical hit with a melee attack (more on crits later.)

















Magic



Ranged. Can be upgraded by rank-ups and equipment, and (most importantly) allows for crits.






The attack area is actually much larger than the sprite would lead you to believe.
Less of a laser, more of a spaser.



Each bolt throws out three rays, and while all three rays search for monsters to hit,
only the middle ray worries about hitting a wall.







You can attack in 6 directions.



Why no up and down? I really like the feel of holding
the up button and throwing a 45, so I’m bending
the game’s entire design around this limitation.

There’ve definitely been complaints, but as
long as I modify the levels so there’s nothing
directly overhead that’s harassing the players,
a lack of straight-up attacks is a non-issue.





Unlike melee, magic drains your mana bar.

It recharges automatically, but you can
regenerate faster by holding the recharge button.








The most powerful feature of magical
attacks are the critical hits.


Take this frog, for example.
Normal magic attacks only do a plebeian 10 damage.



But if you can hit an enemy at just the right moment
your base 10 damage boosts up to 30.

The right moment for this frog is
the apex of its jump.



That’s a kill shot.


The catch is that every enemy is different.
For frogs, it's the apex of their jump, but
for other enemies it could be the moment right
before they attack you, or the inside of their
mouth, or when their back is turned.






No.





Yes!







Enemies defeated by crits
drop extra gems.



















Mana Crash



Extremely powerful. Can hit multiple enemies. Destroys all enemy projectiles. Doesn’t use mana.

But it only regenerates at the start of a level, and
the angle of attack is horizontal-only. No 45's.


You also have a very limited amount.




Still, it’s nice to have at least one Big Gun
that can be produced in a pinch.

[Ark]

Damn, it's so good!

[nbnt]

This is looking mighty impressive!

[Lowbit]

Null Well - More Monsters

Sprite creation for Null Well is wrapping up!

(Don't worry. I'll be modifying
the colors after I see how bad
they look in-game.)










The Ghostgoblin. Invincible, unless you
destroy the jar he comes out of.

(I'll be throwing in an alpha
fade for that death anim.)














Grumbleboots. He can almost give himself
a high-five, but not quite.






Nick and Zoggy. The miniboss.

I almost skipped working on this guy for something easier.
I'm really glad I didn't. Animating a team-up combo was
a lot of fun.

[Lowbit]

Estan Vomm WIP


I kept some WIPs of Estan Vomm.

Being able to see it all laid out
helps me better understand my own workflow.




Also, it serves as a humbling reminder
that I haven't taken a figure drawing
class in years.

Check out those wandering nipples.

[Zulabuj]

This is looking really cool!! The visual effects and screen shake are like the gifs have sound.
How did you go about choosing the sprite size for the character and native resolution?

[interrit]

This project looks brilliant, I love the monster design! Keeping my eye on this!

[Lowbit]

How did you go about choosing the sprite size for the character and native resolution?

In order for me to decide on the resolution of my current project
I had to fail spectacularly on my last one.




















Screen Resolution (and Jet Girl)




Before I began development on Red Magus I
spent a few months working on Jet Girl.











I wanted big, beautiful sprites, tons of
original levels, dozens of unique enemies,
and an endless library of smooth animations.
I wanted to go all-out.





256x256p - 2x resolution








32x64p - 2x resolution


That frame for Jet Girl is 32 times larger than Lynn’s,
and believe me, when you’re filling in those
individual pixels, you can feel it.


From the outside looking in, I’m sure
my mistake was obvious, but at the time
I didn't see a problem.

Nothing but green lights for Jet Girl.











After a few months of work I did an inventory
of how much I'd created and realized my mistake.

Even if Jet Girl was a fraction of my original vision,
It was going to take years just to hit asset completion.





Instead of redesigning Jet Girl into a more reasonable project,
I hid the folder from view and started a new game.


I called it Red Magus and dropped the resolution so low that
I was 100% confident I'd finish development in six months.
No problem.

Nothing but green lights for Red Magus.




Four years later...























Steering back to the topic of screen resolution,
the native resolution of Red Magus is 1280x720, but
if you count the pixels you're only getting 640x360.





This gives the sprites breathing room.
Screen-scrolling and camera effects are a lot
smoother than if the resolution was actually 640x360.

But a lot of other effects (screenshake, particles, UI)
are locked to a per-pixel grid, making them move
relative to the mock resolution.






The horizontal screenshake is per-pixel. The zoom-in is not.

[Zulabuj]

Oh I see!

Four years later...

Those deadlines are always tricky to predict. xD

But the game is looking really cool, looking forward to playing it!

[Lares Yamoir]

I like how much thought was put into the combat system.
Also I have similar experience with making pixelart myself and choosing the wrong resolution. Though in my case, 32x64 was too much for the player character xD
But it seems to work for you, the graphics look good. Keep up the good work.

[litHermit]

Since this is a Unity project, I'm very curious if you've got any "must have" assets recommendations?

[Franklin's Ghost]

Love the style of this one, the character animations are fantastic.

Will definitely be following this.

[elosociu]

Wow, this is a really well-made devlog!! I loved scrolling throught it!! Everything looks great, all the enemies and their animations are really nice! Can't wait to see more progress!

[VitaliusSch]

what components do you use in the unity? Looks cool!

[Lowbit]

Since this is a Unity project, I'm very curious if you've got any "must have" assets recommendations?

I stumbled through a pile of map editors when I was getting my bearings on this project, but I didn't stick with a single one.

I used iTween a lot at first, but that asset came with its own complications. I'm planning on (eventually) removing all instances in favor of my own code.

The only asset that's survived is a tiny auto-grid-snap script, and I'm not even sure where it came from.
When I'm doing a lot of tile placement it's nice to just drag stuff around instead of holding down Ctrl for literal hours.

Not really a "must have." More of a luke-warm 'kinda nice at times' asset.

Just do that a billion times and
you have a video game!

what components do you use in the unity?

Do you mean GameObject components, like SpriteRenderer, RigidBody2D, and BoxCollider2D?

It's pretty much those three all over the place. More SpriteRenderer than anything else, and the box collider often gets swapped out with circle and polygon.

Almost all of the animations rely on my own scripts, but I did use the Animator a bit on Lynn when I was first starting out. That was a huge mistake. Getting sprites to work in Animator is like shoving a square peg into a round hole.

Two seconds after finishing this I thought to myself, "Y'know. If I'd written my own code I could've been done two months ago."

[Lowbit]

Gear Up







Welcome to the Sentinel Menu.



Let’s talk about numbers, and stats,
and min-maxing, and all that jazz.











There’s no traditional leveling in Red Magus,
so equippable items are where most of
a player’s stat muscle comes from.




All gear is equipped willy-nilly to a 3x5 grid.












But despite having 15 slots available,
the Equip Capacity bar is the hard limit.












All equipped gear adds to that bar, so, early on,
only 2 or 3 of the 15 slots can be utilized.

















Adding some breathing room to the equip bar can be done in three different ways.





 +1 equip capacity per crest.










 +1 equip capacity per rank.










-1 equip cost per ‘quickening’.













Equipment is set to a grid because all gear grants either an adjacency bonus or a penalty.


So The Void becomes even more powerful if you place the proper gear next to it.










But connecting Hermit Blade with anything is a bad idea.



















You've probably also noticed that this is a very
large post just to explain how equipment works,
and that's what I'm really worried about.

Complicated systems are fine, but not if all this
information gets dumped on the player's lap in
the first ten minutes.

So I might be looking for ways to introduce all
of these features in digestible chunks.

Or maybe it's fine as-is. Right now I can only guess.







It all depends on how the playtesters react.

[Lowbit]

Stormgallows Remodel












Stormgallows has entered the ‘polish’ phase.
I’m prepping it for playtesters so they can tear it all apart.

Right now, my main focus is the level layout. It’s dull.









That’s the original level. Nothing but critical path.

All bones. No meat.









Solution:







The first half of the level is becoming a secondary route,
and the weaker parts of the vertical rooms are getting axed.

It’s a small change, but I’m hoping it’ll do the trick.
Otherwise, I’ll need a solid month to tear out the foundation.










Just for fun, here's the original sprite sheet.
Stormgallows is full of weirdos.

[Lowbit]

Stormgallows Scrobat




Look at this Scrobat.






A frustrating target if there ever was one.

It's too small, too fast, and the hitbox is constantly changing shape.

It was supposed to be the easiest enemy in the level.
Instead, it's the most frustrating.




Is there a way to fix this?

I could change its attack pattern, make it more predictable, slow it down,
remove it entirely, make the player's missiles a lot more forgiving...











Or I could just make it a lot bigger.







Problem solved.



Nobody is going to miss that target.

[Lowbit]

Stormgallows Hat Goblin








Mostly complete.

I'm working on sound effects for this guy.
Lots of dumb fun.