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[andyfromiowa]

I like this a lot! The combination of pixel art, animation and small touches like animated text really come together for a polished presentation. Keep up the good work!

 

[EmanuelMontero]

@Ramos: You're totally right! Good decision-making is the meat of a good RPG so I'll try my best in this aspect in the following updates.

@andyfromiowa: Thanks! I'm so glad you like the prototype so far. More to come soon!

[Beastboy]

@Beastboy: Yeah, you're totally right! Lots of characters to animate and I'm not the best animator ever but I'll definitely try to animate them all.

I dunno how good animator you are but what you got so far is very fluid and nice to look at

[EmanuelMontero]

Here's the first iteration of the quest prototype. It's not a fully featured quest, just a small simple conflict, but it may illustrate the degree of player agency I'm aiming for. First, let's see the design specification with all possible solutions to the conflict:

Alpha and his punk gang are blocking the entrance to the beach. They demand you to pay a $200 toll to access the beach.
         + Pay $200. Alpha lets you pass
         + Fight Alpha and the punk gang
         + Talk to Alpha
            - [Intimidation 3] Threat Alpha to let you pass
            - [Persuasion 2] Convince Alpha about the lack of regulation of his toll
            - [Seduction 3] Flirt with Alpha. Go to a darker spot, bite Alpha.
            - [Lie 1] Convince Alpha that you have a safe-conduct. Alpha asks from who is the safe-conduct:
               - [Lie 1] The major of Los Angeles
               - [Lie 2] Sebastien De la Croix
               - [Lie 3] The President himself
               - [Lie 4 or Lunatic] Captain America
               - Accept you don't have a safe-conduct.
            - [Barter 1] Convince Alpha to reduce the toll.
               - [Barter 1] Reduce the toll to $175
               - [Barter 2] Reduce the toll to $150
               - [Barter 3] Reduce the toll to $100
               - [Barter 4] Reduce the toll to $50
               - [Barter 5] Reduce the toll to $1. A symbolic price is more than enough.

All dialog choices are based on deterministic skill-checks (no random dice rolls involved). Same as in Fallout: New Vegas, if you have enough skill level you can choose the dialog option to resolve the conflict using the skill. I've recorded two GIFs with different characters: The first character, Ash, has Intimidation 4 and Lie 3 so she can threat Alpha and lie about the safe-conduct for the toll. The second character, Chloe, has Seduction 3 and Persuasion 3 so she can resolve the conflict with different skills.

Still there's a lot of work to do with quests. I have to integrate combat with the quests so you can fight your way out of conflicts. Also I have to add a different route for stealth in each level so you can avoid combat using sneaking, lockpicking and hacking. And drinking blood, which is a pivotal aspect of the game and can be used on almost any NPC of the game. Lastly, it would be nice to have the character sheet fully funcional so I can show the character stats more easily. For now, I only have a quick mockup of the character sheet.

Hopefully, I'll add some of these features in the second iteration of the quest prototype.

[Beastboy]

Love it

[EmanuelMontero]

@Beastboy: Thank you! More quests are coming soon

[ChrisK7777]

This is looking really fantastic. Getting slight Maniac Mansion vibes (which is a great thing)

[EmanuelMontero]

Thanks a lot for your comment! I'm a great fan of Maniac Mansion so I'm really proud the influence is showing

[EmanuelMontero]

This week I've been working on the combat prototype. The old combat prototype code was so messy that I had to rework the entire thing from the ground up. It's been a ton of work but I've learnt a lot about Godot and GDScript in the process. Thankfully, now the code is a lot cleaner which makes it easier to add new combat mechanics like ranged attacks, status effects and maybe even stealth (going invisible, backstabbing and everything). We'll see how each of these mechanics plays out but the foundation is fairly solid so maybe I should stop calling it a prototype

Here's a GIF to show the progress so far with the turn-based combat:

[Beastboy]

With just a few pixels you managed to make each character stand out, very good job. And the combat seems very user friendly

[EmanuelMontero]

Thanks! I'm so glad it's coming along nicely. More friendly pixels coming soon  

[negator2vc]

very nice!

[EmanuelMontero]

Thanks! More combat coming soon

[EmanuelMontero]

This week I've been working on the navigation between scenarios. Now you can move with WASD and you can go from room to room by pressing E to interact with the different doors. I'm still working on the point & click movement so hopefully it will be fully functional in the following weeks. Also, I've added NPCs and particle effects to the different scenarios to spice things up. Here's a couple of GIFs to see it all in action.

[EmanuelMontero]

Another week of indie development and the point & click interface is fully functional. You can basically point and click onto things. The pathfinding is not 100% perfect (you can see some weird behaviour at the end of the GIF), but for now it will do the trick. I've finally added an inventory bar at the bottom of the screen to keep track of all your items. The inventory bar auto-hides when you move the cursor back to the scenario. And I've added a white pixel outline to highlight which objects are interactive in the scene. Of course, all these point & click actions are optional. They can also be performed with the keyboard: press I to show/hide your inventory, walk with WASD near an item and press E to interact, etc. Somehow, the mouse controls feel more adventurey than I expected so I guess I'll add an option in settings to toggle them off and go fully old-school with keyboard RPG controls.

[Beastboy]

Environment seems very interactive, i like it

[EmanuelMontero]

Thanks! I'm so glad you like it. More pixels coming soon

[EmanuelMontero]

This week I've added a very basic inventory system with drag and drop, item stacking, equipment slots and a loot container to pick up items from the scenario. The GIF speaks for itself but anyways let's dive into the little details that might be hard to grasp.

First, you can drag and drop items from the inventory to the equipment slots to equip them. Also, you can drag them the other way around to unequip them. You can also drag and drop the items from the loot container to the inventory (not to the equip slots yet). The equipment slots are very inspired by Divinity: Original Sin 2 so there's quite a few slots:

• Head: for hats, glasses and helmets
• Collar: for necklaces, amulets and neck-related things like ties
• Hands: there're two slots for hand-related equipment such as gloves and rings. Both hands are totally equivalent
• Torso: for shirts, coats and torso-related clothes and armor
• Belt: for belts
• Legs: for trousers, skirts and leg-related clothes and armor
• Feet: for boots, shoes and everything foot-related

Note that there's no weapon slot yet. I've designed weapons to use two inventory slots instead of one and there's still some coding to do to in order to make them work with the inventory. Also, note that when you equip clothes the character visuals don't update. I've done some simple math and 7 playable characters x 18 animations per character x number of clothes is just... too many animations to make. Maybe I can pull off a couple of special outfits for "complete sets of armor", but it's not possible to customize the character with each piece of equipment. It's a shame but I have to make compromises as an indie.

Lastly, I've added a super basic version of the character sheet. Most equipment items give you armor points and stat boosts and /or penalties when you equip them so I needed a way to see if the character stats were being updated properly. There's still some work to do with the inventory and the character sheet so they're going to change a bit in the following weeks. More to come soon!

[bram_dingelstad]

(replying again because my previous reply got mysteriously removed)


Had some trouble finding the notify button until I realized I wasn't logged in
Love the aesthetic, love the intended design of the game, can't wait to see where it goes.
I'm pretty experienced with Godot and GDScript, so if you ever get stuck, feel free to let me know!
There's a bunch of tricks with shaders you can do to give your assets more depth, especially the ones you don't want to redo 1000x!

I'll definitely be following along from now! Can't wait to see where this goes!

[EmanuelMontero]

Thanks a lot for your comment! It's my first game in Godot so I'm pretty sure I'll run into roadblocks sooner or later. Also, I'm very interested in the shader trickery you mentioned. It's always nice to find more fellow Godot developers!