Author Topic: Atonement of the Ancients & other projects [Danmakufu fangame]  (Read 2312 times)

Hello there!

I suppose I've reached enough progress in my little, slowly-developing project in Danmakufu to make a post about it... it's well about time, now, after several delays.

BEWARE: Wall of text ahead. You might want to skip to the screenshots and then come back.

Description


Atonement of the Ancients (reworked working title, might get further modifications in the future) is intended to be a full-length Touhou fangame, with six stages in the main story plus an Extra and (hopefully) a Phantasm stage. It's going to feature a cast of original characters (plus a few official Touhou characters as cameos, mostly). It's also a project that has taken way, way too much time for its development, due to me being busy with RL stuff and being kind of lazy. My goal is to finish it before the end of the year.

It's not really necessary (as the game's story is mostly standalone) but I intend to make a few references to ido/Oyasu Milka/etc's fangame series (mostly The Last Comer and Riverbed Soul Saver) because the story involves interaction of Western-ish characters with the world of Touhou. Thus, the (currently) planned playable characters are:
  • Reimu Hakurei
  • Marisa Kirisame
  • Michel Sant'Angelo
The three are almost completely implemented, besides fixing certain bugs. I'll probably add at least one more character to the roster in the future, but it's not the main priority.

Story

Most of the humans and youkai inhabiting Gensokyo have become increasingly more apathetic during the last few days. The people in the Human Village barely bother to eat, much less get out their houses; some even are unable to recall events from the past, as they don't have enough motivation to actually try. Simultaneously, youkai have lost all motivation to attack humans, risking their own existence. Moreover, the usual incident solvers haven't done anything about it, so the incident has progressed unchecked for a long time.

However, not everyone has fallen to apathy. The fairies, bothered by the boring state of affairs, have decided to do something about it. Cirno, Daiyousei and a few others decide to seek for the strong humans who have solved incidents before, and make them take action.

Fairies are usually seen as weaklings in Gensokyo. Yet, they're manifestations of the powerful will of Nature itself. Maybe they are the best ally at a time like this...

Gameplay

As stated, the game makes you team up with fairies. More specifically, the teams are Reimu/Daiyousei, Marisa/Cirno and Michel/Marry. The fairies will work as an "assist satellite" (more or less like Ran in Imperishable Night) and there are two systems implemented to further enhance the gameplay:

"Motivation" (inspired from Fairy Wars): Fairies gain motivation by having your playable character take some risks (moving to PoC, grazing, collecting a lot of point items at once). Fairies can block bullets, but their hitbox is small and also they lose motivation by doing so. There's also a Motivation penalty for playing too close to the bottom of the screen, dying (-100%) or bombing (-50%). Fairies will gain shot power at high Motivation percentages (above 100%), but reaching 0% motivation will make the fairy leave you alone, not coming back until the motivation reaches 100% again.

Overdrive mode: This is activated by collecting 500 Power items. It raises shot power for a short time (no autobomb, unlike Riverbed Soul Saver) and makes the Power meter quickly decrease until reaching 400 shot power again.

Resources: Being at 250+% Motivation will make enemies drop life fragments, while Overdrive mode makes enemies drop bomb fragments. 100 life or bomb fragments will produce an extra life or bomb, respectively.

All those systems will have to be balanced, of course. So expect at least some degree of rework in the future.

Since Danmakufu ph3 includes support for alternate key schemes and such, I hope I can implement a kind of co-op mode at some point in the future (fairy being controlled by a second player instead of moving automatically in a set pattern). However, this is yet to be implemented.

Progress and development

Current progress:

  • Stages: The first three four stages are implemented.
  • Bosses: All the bosses up to the first half of the final extra boss fight are coded.
  • System: A working system/pause/endgame script is implemented. A partially functional Package script is there, too.

To do:

  • Fix several known small bugs.
  • Finish implementing missing features such as replays and continues.
  • Finish writing the dialogue and implementing it into the game.
  • Implement additional dificulty levels. (Currently there's only one difficulty level implemented, which oscillates randomly between Easy and Hard; it's in serious need of balance.)
  • Remake some backgrounds.

The purpose of this post is both to receive some feedback (when I make an actual release, which'd hopefully be soon) and to find help in the remaining stages of development. Up to now, I've drawn most of the sprites and objects used in the game myself, but most textures and such are in a kind of placeholder limbo. Since I've taken several images out of Google Image and I'm not sure about the legality status of the textures and such used, I'll probably have to replace most of them at some point; I'm in the process of replacing as much of the older assets by CC equivalents as possible.

There's also the problem of me using ZUN's shotsheet plus some data from MPP/RSS/WNSP for some shots. My goal is to replace it with a legitimate shotsheet at some point before full release; I'd like to draw a new shotsheet myself, but I think that, for time reasons, it'll probably be better to use a free one with proper credit.

I also lack the skill to draw proper portraits and create music for the game.

I'm currently using free-to-use music from Cyber-Rainforce (following their terms of use, of course) as a soundtrack, at least until I can get someone to compose an actual soundtrack for the game. You probably are familiar with some of their music, since it's used in known danmakufu games such as Phantasm Romance and Trick and Treat Night.

I've drawn some rough sketches of characters in the game using Inkscape and tracing over actual portraits of Touhou characters. As stated before, I don't think those are nearly good enough for actual use in the game, but I expect them to be enough to convey my idea of the characters. Until I get in touch with an artist, I suppose I'll be using my sketches as placeholders whenever needed.

Screenshots:

Here: http://imgur.com/a/U8oWG

I have some videos on my YouTube channel, too, but most of those are from very early versions. This is the most recent one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67Up1v-AM6k

Release:

Not yet...? I have a self-contained package for test purposes, but I don't think it's ready for distribution. Then again, maybe it'd be good to get some extra testers if anybody is interested, to find bugs I'm not aware of.

Anyways, I expect to have a proper demo release at some point before June, and a full release at some point during the year. Of course, this is subject to RL issues, but I'm trying to be as generous as possible with my estimates.

[I'll reserve some space for some small projects I'm working on now besides this game and are probably not worth of a new topic.]

Well, thank you for reading and for any possible feedback!

EDIT: Gah, I proofread this three times and I find a serious grammar error ten seconds after clicking on "post".
« Last Edit: April 21, 2016, 09:58:38 PM by log(log(Rumia)) »

Re: Atonement of the Ancients & other projects [Danmakufu fangame]
« Reply #1 on: June 21, 2016, 11:37:27 AM »
Even though not being able to receive feedback (or replies) for two months, I'm gonna go say that the progress you have so far is really well made with lots of potential~ (And screw it, I am not letting this go unnoticed unless it's dead or canceled .-.) I shared this to TalsoMistake about this game, and we really like you're concepts and danmaku there~

I feel a bit pity for this being overshadowed by Other fangames and games here that are still in progress, yet so much hype about.

Maybe you could also bump the project as well to tell everyone that this project is still alive and well. And yes, more playtesters can help A LOT, Even though there are still several fangames in the works recently. or maybe ask / hire some playtesters here to help

Also, maybe also a blog here as well to keep everyone up to date with progress (If available)?

Also,
Quote
I also lack the skill to draw proper portraits
I'd like to Shamelessly self promote say that I secretly want to be your artist for this game!
I usually do non-ZUN art, I liked drawing a lot, but I rarely ever show my work in public (Which is sad for me, since I'm a bit shy at times .-.), Mainly specializing in cut-ins.
Examples:
Yi Sun Sin (LOCAA 7 entry, unshaded) - https://www.dropbox.com/s/30znjg8dp7xxom6/YSS%20Normal.png?dl=0
Momiji (Mobile, also rather lazily shaded)- http://mahran19.deviantart.com/art/Fanart-A-Petty-Patrol-Tengu-613788752
Sanae Kochiya (Sketch, Traditional) - https://www.dropbox.com/s/vixjrp3pqyfn0m1/SANAE012.jpg?dl=0
Hong Meiling (For a WIP LOCAA 8 Entry) -

Please note that I have school a few days from the day this is posted, But I have progress every now and then since I use a mobile device now to draw things, but I also use Stuff like Sai and Photoshop to help edit things out.
If you're interested for me as an artist, contact me on skype @Mahran-Gaberson