next »

[StephenAnthony]

Hi everyone! I just recently started posting here... figured I'd go ahead and get some feedback on the game I'm working on.



This is an attempt to create a western console style RPG. I plan to have 50 hours of gameplay, some 30+ sidequests, alchemy and item crafting, an ATB System (Active Timer Bar) modeled after Guild Wars' skill selection system and Zelda-style action adventure elements. Most of these systems are already mostly programmed in, just so I don't get accused of offering a bunch of crap that won't be delivered on. =P

We're focusing a lot on atmosphere and aesthetics and hopefully that's visible in the screenshots... I think that's about all I have to say! Here are some more screenies!

[Guert]

Looking quite good!
Do you have anything we could try? I'd love to see this in action!
Later!

[StephenAnthony]

I'm actually putting together a tech demo that will hopefully be ready soonish... I'm not sure whether or not I want to make it totally public though, as it's just going to be to have the various menu systems and pixel-movemented tested. (Pixel movement as opposed to block movement.)

Anyway, we'll see. Thanks for the compliment, anyway!

[Guert]

Yeah true, I understand the position you are in. Perhaps some action sequences on video?

A bit of criticism... The backgrounds look nice but the characters look like they could be a bit more natural (ie not mirrored) and less slapped on (ie not displayed on the grass). I also feel like we can feel the grid a bit too much, perhaps rounding up the corners or adding more natural effects on the edges would help... Like right now, the edges of the dirt plateforms are very straight and clean while they could be alittle more "dirty".

Anyway, good job!
Later!

[handCraftedRadio]

Looks awesome, can't wait to try it out!

[Derek]

Very pretty!  The pixel art does look a bit (very very slightly) incoherent, as if there were multiple artists doing different parts of it.  The trees might be the most noticeable.

But as I said, it's quite slight.  Overall, it very much makes me want to run around in it.

[StephenAnthony]

Thanks, guys! The I think the characters will look more natural when we get their shadows added in...

I think the reason for some of the inconsistency is because the artist keeps getting better... those trees were some of the first things she did, and the city and dungeon were some of the latest. I think their perspective might be a little off too... I told if she felt like redoing the trees, I'd pay for new ones and if not, it's really  not that big of a deal.

There are some things that I'd like to fix, but our engine just won't let us do it effectively... One of the first things I wanted to do was make it look like you're walking "through" the grass instead of on top of it, but that would need to be done for all animals and NPCs to look right and I'm just not sure that's worth the time investment it'll take to program it in and make the graphics... though there may be a simpler way of doing it I haven't thought of yet.

All of our "adventure" elements have been disabled until we get pixel movement work... so once that's debugged and the adventure elements have been added back in, I'll get some videos up for you guys!

Anyway, thanks for all the feedback!

[SplinterOfChaos]

Excuse me if you've thought of this already, but I think how that's typically done is by adding another layer to the character sprite that draws some grass at the bottom of the sprite, but I don't know that I've ever seen the background grass actually partially clipping the sprite.

[StephenAnthony]

The grass is actually animated (blowing in the wind), so we'd have to add an animated sprite to the bottom of every sprite as they enter and exit the grass, having it ignore birds and butterflies... If that's something we end up being able to do (it's definitely possible, but maybe not terribly efficient), I'd love to, it's just a lower priority right now.

We have only one programmer and this game has a lot of relatively complicated systems that work independently of each other, so I don't want to overload the guy.

Having read everything I just wrote, I'm really just making excuses. =P

Assuming we can do it without it lagging, there's no reason not to make it happen. So thanks for bringing it up guys, we'll get it done.

[Zaphos]

If you added depth information to the animated grass, and use the Y position of the characters to determine their depth, then rendered grass and characters that interact with the grass in order according to depth, you wouldn't need to do anything for each sprite specifically.  In order to be efficient you probably don't want to add depth info to each grass pixel, but rather can do it with several depth layers, so each tile is broken into two or three pieces representing different depths.  The important thing is that a given blade of grass doesn't cross depth levels, since then the grass could intersect with a character.
If you additionally want the grass to rustle as a character walks you can trigger a 'rustle' animation as the character moves nearby a given grass tile.

edit: oh, and for feedback: Not much to say except it looks pretty   Looking forward to seeing more of it!

[SplinterOfChaos]

Another solution I thought of.

I'm assuming that you have efficient sprite-spawn code. Every game needs it, so if you don't have it, I'm really interested how you make do. I really am!

But if you do:
I'm also assuming that you have the following z orders (and again, I'm interested if you don't): background, sprite, maybe another sprite level for birds, screen effects. Well, add another between the first and second sprite and call it foreground. Then create an anim_grass class or something. Every quarter second or so, if the sprite is over grass, spawn one at the sprite's feet. It's behavior is simply to animate for a quarter second and delete itself.

But I do understand what you mean about the priority thing. I'm surprised you got as far as you did with only one coder! If I were you (or that poor hacker), I'd recruit another one. Even if you're working in RPG Maker, still seems like a lot of work if you really want a 50+ hour game.

[StephenAnthony]

Well, unfortunately, our engine isn't coded from scratch... It's actually... (don't shoot me...) RPG MAKER XP ARGH!!!

I know, I know... but I don't really have any programming experience, so this allows me to still do most of the work and not rely -entirely- on other people to get this done. A lot of gameplay elements, like the battle system, are being coded from scratch. The only parts that we're keeping are the map editor and the database (both of which are fantastic). Regardless, I'd so switch to just about any other engine that wouldn't require someone else to do most of the work if the game wasn't already like a quarter finished. It takes forever to map things with my artist's tiles, so I'd lose like 120 hours of work just in the maps.

RMXP doesn't use.. like... ANY acceleration and it's a terribly programmed engine. Honestly, I wasn't expecting to get the support I have for this project, so I figured I'd be hard pressed to find programmers to do just a few little things for me. I also didn't know how much I'd be able to spend on the game... I thought RMXP was my only option.

SO, having said that... RMXP lags if you so much as look at it funny. =P Right now, we've got it pretty much stable, but I don't exactly what will cause lag.

I didn't initially want to admit this game was being made with an "RPG Maker". It makes people take you less seriously, even if your screenshots are pretty...

Anyway, blahblahblah...

The way our layering works is actually pretty unlimited. We have a .z axis, and you can literally have more than 10000 layers, not that you'd ever need them. So, my only hangup on the grass thing is that it -might- cause some lag... Though we're actually working on an anti-lag script that will hopefully make everything you can't see not move.

Sorry, I didn't mean to go on and on like that! >.<

I said all that to say this! The grass thing can be done. And if it doesn't lag, it'll be in for sure.

[Guert]

Well, perhaps you could look at how old snes games used to do it, Zelda for example. I can't recall at the moment but you coudl try to emulate something like that using sprites (like placing a spirte of grass moving over the walking sprites)... Or perhaps change the grass tile so it doesn't look like it's tall grass... All I can say is that if it remains as is, people will notice and it'll break the immersion.

Later!

[StephenAnthony]

Well, just for those interested, our programmer just provided a really good anti-lag script, so adding grass at a character's feet should be easy, now.

While I'm at it, I may as well try and see if we can do the same for other non-character objects that are sitting on grass... The anti-lag script makes this work for only the objects currently on the screen (Something that was apparently pretty obvious, and I just didn't think of it), so we can use something complex to take care of that.

My first thought was to have a script check the size (non-transparent pixels) of any tile sitting on the grass and display waving grass sprites over-top of it accordingly... I'll have to see how much work something like that takes to accomplish.

[Farmergnome]

lookin good for a xp game :>  Keep it up man, don't get too bogged down with details either if your going for 50 hours, shit, my rpg is going for 4 hours and im already bogged down  :D

My only crit is the characters look a tad rigid, but it might be because its a screenshot not video/ingame 

Best o luck man

[ultim8p00]

Wow. I would love to have some sexy time with those screenshots.

[StephenAnthony]

Just for the people that were interested in this project, I thought I'd throw in what we're currently working on... Sorry for such a big bump, but I didn't want to start a new topic just to show off these screenshots.

This is a random shot of the desert area that we just recently finished.

Also, here's something that may be interesting (and that I could actually use some feedback on). We've been updating the old graphics, since our artist has improved a lot since she first started. Top is before, bottom is after.

[Akhel]

Ah, cool! Looks a lot less like RTP now.

[Ciardhubh]

Woa, these look nice I'd love to see those in motion to see how much of the environment is animated. The large black areas in the treetops look a bit weird, though. As if an evil void is attacking the beauty of the graphics . How about a short WIP video?

I'm not sure if such extensive RPG content is still up to date in a single player game. It is single player isn't it? Then again that may just be my personal offline/online preference.

[StephenAnthony]

Thanks, guys! For the tree canopy... I guess we're just doing it that way because that's the only way I've really seen it done in games like this. So I just asked the artist to make it that way... It looks fine to me, but I'm so used to it.

I'd definitely consider changing it, if it's an issue.

EDIT:

Oh! Yes, it's single player and will probably be that way on launch. If we can make it multiplayer, we will and offer it as a free patch later on.