Thursday, August 9, 2012

Polishing, polishing!

Hi everyone, :)

A lot or stuff has made its way in the repository lately :)

First of all, I changed the way the battle animation scripts are called, permitting to get a battle animation per character and per skill. That will permit to set up some great stuff when you trigger an advanced attack for instance ;)

You can already test that by triggering the Blade Rush attack from Thanis in the debug battle mode, and see him hit the enemy third times.

I also spent a lot of time in polishing the sequences in the village, preparing props (not in yet), adding houses interiors, fixing small scene glitches, ect... and added three noticeable things you might be happy to look at:
The village has now got parallax cloud shadows, light flare effect on windows and... the promised new game credits!
I'm quite glad to take the opportunity to thank everyone who somehow made this possible to happen. :)
Do you notice something new? ;) 
 Another big step done is the fact that I rewrote the way map sprite animations are loaded, permitting me to make them loaded in a much more flexible way:
Now a map sprite animation can be loaded with custom frame duration for each frames, for an arbitrary number of frame, in an arbitrary order, and one can add the same frame several times if needed.
I also made the walking and running animations factored by the sprite movement speed, which will permit me to later fine tune the frame durations and remove the roller skating impression you've got for certain sprites.

I'm now planning to finish the new houses interiors, add those missing props, add a bit more scening, add all those hidden treasures ;), and then move on to the forest dungeon scripting. :>

Best regards,

10 comments:

  1. Release early, release often. Don't wait too long to put out a release.

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  2. On a sidenote; if you want a hosted forum for this, feel free to contact us at http://forum.freegamedev.net/ and we'd be happy to oblige!

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  3. "Release early, release often. Don't wait too long to put out a release."
    Eh eh. Thanks for your interest. Yet there won't be a release before putting out the first dungeon, but that shouldn't that long before reaching that point. :)

    About the forum proposal, if you mean the featured projects sub-forums, I'd say "Wow! Thanks for the proposal :)"
    I'll make sure to contact you once the first half-episode release is done.

    Thanks again and best regards,

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  4. Btw, why am I not surprised to find qubodup there? ;)

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  5. ^^

    There's a thing I was wondering about earlier: I think the right-side guard dismisses the player character (PC), saying he's just a kid and doesn't even has a sword. However, the sprite has a sword and looks 'young adult' (16-28 years?). If somebody would be to remix the PC sprite to have no sword, would you use it in the game? If somebody would be to create a 'younger' (what age?) version of the PC sprite, would you use it? If yes to either of these, with your permission, I could ask for a remix on the OGA Resource Requests forums (or you can do that if you want, I'm just offering this so you wouldn't need to spend time on this kind of small polishing effort). :)

    Side note: is it planned to allow the player chose between different genders (or other aspects) at game start? (This is not common in JRPG I believe, I'm just being curious).

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  6. Hi Iwan, :)
    if you look at the screenshot in the latest piece of news, you'll notice that the character hasn't got a sword on the back anymore.
    In fact, I already removed the sword from him, and I must say that the evil plan is to make the sprite displayed with or without sword based on whether a weapon is equipped. :)

    But don't misunderstand me, I'm taking all help with open arms, the LPC being an unexpected one, btw. ;) And I already opened a request in the very same forum:
    http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/lpc-compatible-bird-walk-fly-and-peck-animations

    Daniel Eddeland (daneeklu) partially answered it with his chickens, that will be replacing the bird for now, I guess.

    About the sprite age, well, in fact, the PC is 16 at the time of game start and is still a bit naive, even if full of good will. It's the kind that still thinks he can get into everyone's likings, at least at start. ;) The only thing that bothered me was his soldier clothes, thing that I will explain in the story rather soon from the story current advance point.
    Another thing so far, is that the hero's portrait is being redone for the current sprite, so at least the head should then remain quite the same.
    Hence, I guess, the need isn't vital for now, but of course, if I can see something openly licensed and better looking, I'll definitely reconsider.

    Ah, also, what I'd soon need is map sprites for the country Lord (a normal looking person with a stronger armor, and in fact very powerful) and scary reusable soldiers in the same style if anyone is interested, but I'll come out with something if nobody takes it. ;)

    As for the gender (or hero) choice at game start, we've definitely talked about it very seriously, (my wife says that she prefers Kalya anyway ;]), and I'll definitely look into making the character in front of the battle formation (see in the menu [S key in game]) appear in the map mode, as soon as the story permits it.
    Yet, based on what's written so far, I need the base hero to be Bronann.

    My turn to ask: ^^
    - Would you by any chance mind making a newer video? I've been promising a video of the current engine state to several people but couldn't get around it yet, and I must say I was really pleased when I saw your latest try of it. :)

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  7. Absolutely! I will probably have time to make one in a few hours. Ask me to record videos of general gameplay or specific things at specific settings any time qubodup@gmail.com !

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    Replies
    1. Oh, thanks a lot! :)

      Just try to reach the forest entrance for now. ;)

      Btw, we've managed to hide the wood floor bug somehow, I will commit this once it's ok enough. I know it's bad to hide problems but well, it will save troubles to players now. ;)

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    2. You changed the background color? :)

      Anyways, I'll get started with the video.

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    3. In fact, no, more twisted than that ;) thanks again for the video!! Permitted me to spot two bugs so far.

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