Maidens of the Kaleidoscope

~Beyond the Border~ => Akyu's Arcade => Topic started by: Suikama on December 11, 2014, 05:00:07 AM

Title: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight
Post by: Suikama on December 11, 2014, 05:00:07 AM
(http://i.imgur.com/x4tqSDn.png)

PLAY IT HERE (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/30588726/ACKnight/index.html)
Last updated: May 3 - final version

Wtf is this game?
An RPG where you beat up evil rocks for money.
Alternate between buying and building up a set of weapons to use to fight against dark crystals that threaten to corrupt your town.
As time passes more and more crystals fall from the sky, each with it's own unique attacks, so you'll need to simultaneously build a up a large arsenal and also be tactful with which weapons you pick.

Upcoming Stuff
?   RIP for now
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.1)
Post by: Suikama on December 11, 2014, 05:00:45 AM
I'm posting the changelog and bug list in a separate post so it's easier to read and easier for me to edit.

Changelog
v. 0.0.3
?   Revamped almost everything. Too many changes to list. :V

v. 0.0.2
?   War Flag Rally no longer lasts for more than a turn and cannot be stacked. It can however be used again once the buff is consumed with an attack.
?   All Block-type abilities cannot be stacked, but now only loses durability on a successful block.
?   Fixed win condition bug.
?   Various other minor tweaks and bugfixes.

v. 0.0.1
?   Initial alpha release woo!

Currently known bugs
?   
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.1)
Post by: Chaore on December 11, 2014, 05:08:24 AM
time to play the shit out of this

Edit:
(http://i.imgur.com/sVfxTM8.png)

time till break: 1 minute

EditEdit: result- 415 left on the crystal, had I prepared/been a bit more risky I could probably one shot it wave 1 with the right items spawning

the war flag is broken, basically. you should probably fix that.

EditEditEdit: Also, defeated crystal to -8 hp, end turn and game freezes.

no real other bugs found so far.
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.1)
Post by: Suikama on December 11, 2014, 06:19:37 AM
ahaha holy shit i should have known something crazy would be happen by having an ability with no durability cost

the game freezing is probably the same bug as the mashing end turn one

did it still count as a win in your records though?
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.1)
Post by: Chaore on December 11, 2014, 06:25:01 AM
ahaha holy shit i should have known something crazy would be happen by having an ability with no durability cost

the game freezing is probably the same bug as the mashing end turn one

did it still count as a win in your records though?

yeah

it's solvable enough by making the effect only last till turn end tbh, it'd still be really god damn strong imo but it wouldn't be broken, the problem is just it stacks infinitely atm

it didn't count as a win

edit: also reloading is after crystal death, and all i can do is end turn to freeze again
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.1)
Post by: Suikama on December 11, 2014, 04:01:27 PM
yeah

it's solvable enough by making the effect only last till turn end tbh, it'd still be really god damn strong imo but it wouldn't be broken, the problem is just it stacks infinitely atm

it didn't count as a win

edit: also reloading is after crystal death, and all i can do is end turn to freeze again
okay so it turns out im really dumb and deactivated part of the win condition just before exporting

you can still win but only if you win off an attack...

which makes be curious how did you get stuck in the first place? did you do another powered up attack but then nothing happened after the crystal hit 0 hp?


Also I'll probably nerf both the durability cost and the duration of the rally buff because yeah it's still pretty op because it's basically free damage as long as you can stay alive. Or maybe I can make it cost more, although there is still a guy who gives you flags for free :V

Okay even with the double nerf it's still pretty strong :V
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.1)
Post by: Chaore on December 11, 2014, 05:27:07 PM
okay so it turns out im really dumb and deactivated part of the win condition just before exporting

you can still win but only if you win off an attack...

which makes be curious how did you get stuck in the first place? did you do another powered up attack but then nothing happened after the crystal hit 0 hp?

I just...kinda attacked :v

Nothing special, just a TOTALLY NOT SUSPICIOUS RIPOFF sword to the face.
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.1)
Post by: Bio on December 12, 2014, 03:20:43 AM
recent GvG Hearthstone expansion has some crazy effects while the original basic set had mostly vanilla monsters
Will there be a weapon that summons a load of 1/1s.
Because now that I think about it a few cards do that in GvG.

Tooltips for Corruption and Energy are drawn outside the window for me.
Combat is kind of basic right now, but can only improve really.
Dodging attacks seems to just be random?
Also buff stacking rally kind of looks weird when those +10s start going through the text, stack numbers would be better.
A hotkey for ability would also be nice (like E)
Goddess healing also doesn't scale depending on how much health you have lost (is this intentional design?)
Empty item slots have a ? on them. Shouldn't they just be empty.
A toggle-able combat log would be nice so that players could be reminded of how much damage they're potentially taking a turn.
No player model, so no hats.

Didn't find any bugs in my first playthrough because I didn't get very many items. Might try again later and see if I can break the game in other ways.

Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.1)
Post by: Suikama on December 12, 2014, 03:48:47 AM
Will there be a weapon that summons a load of 1/1s.
Because now that I think about it a few cards do that in GvG.

Tooltips for Corruption and Energy are drawn outside the window for me.
Combat is kind of basic right now, but can only improve really.
Dodging attacks seems to just be random?
Also buff stacking rally kind of looks weird when those +10s start going through the text, stack numbers would be better.
A hotkey for ability would also be nice (like E)
Goddess healing also doesn't scale depending on how much health you have lost (is this intentional design?)
Empty item slots have a ? on them. Shouldn't they just be empty.
A toggle-able combat log would be nice so that players could be reminded of how much damage they're potentially taking a turn.
No player model, so no hats.

Didn't find any bugs in my first playthrough because I didn't get very many items. Might try again later and see if I can break the game in other ways.
Yeah those tooltips are a bit too close to the edge of the screen. You can make them visible by holding your cursor up higher, but I'll fix it so it's more convenient.

Yeah the crystal attacks have less than 100% accuracy. The attack that hits for 10 has 95% accuracy and the one that hits for 20 has only 50%. It does feel kind of weird right now though. I'm guessing it's because there's no attack animations and the attack messages go by really quickly.

Hmm that's a good idea for buff stacking. Rally stacking is getting nerfed, but as I add more abilities things might get cramped.

Right, don't know why I didn't add an ability hotkey as well.

Yes healing is just a full heal by design. This could change though. The balance of the Goddess' healing abilities is going to need a lot of tuning depending on how things end up going. Like right now town healing is ridiculously expensive, but if later on in the game it gets easier to obtain more and more shards then you might be able to reach a point where healing the town to full is trivial.

Yeah empty weapon slots it should be blank oops

Okay so combat log. So I kinda figured that since games like Pokemon and Puzzle and Dragons get away with having no combat logs then I could too :V I suppose I could do something kind of like Hearthstone's log, although the main thing is I'm not sure if it's really necessary since all lingering effects show up as buffs.
Oh yeah I will be making it easier to tell how much damage you take. Originally the "You took damage" messages were supposed to include the amount of damage you took, but it got messed up. I'll definitely fix that soon. Either that or I'll do the Puzzle and Dragons thing where every time you take damage it's shown on your healthbar for a second or two before vanishing.

No hats unfortunately :V
Actually funny enough, once upon a time there were going to be hats, but then I realized it would take way too much time for something that's already been overdone in a ton of other games. I might consider having more art for the characters though so that everyone isn't just a faceless icon, but that will come way after everything else is done.



e: okay so in retrospect holy shit the topic post is just a wall of text so i'm going to clean some stuff up for the next release
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.1)
Post by: Suikama on December 14, 2014, 10:26:48 PM
FIRST UPDATE! :toot:

Version 0.0.2 is out!
Here are the changes:
?   War Flag Rally no longer lasts for more than a turn and cannot be stacked. It can however be used again once the buff is consumed with an attack.
?   All Block-type abilities cannot be stacked, but now only loses durability on a successful block.
?   Fixed win condition bug.
?   Various other minor tweaks and bugfixes.

You can get it on the new webpage for the game: http://suikama.itch.io/anticrystal-knight-alpha
I've also got a tumblr up and running for updates: http://anticrystalknight.tumblr.com/

I'll still update this thread as well. I think for minor updates like new versions that have just a few minor changes like this one I'll post mostly here, but on the blog I'll have updates for things like major features that are in the works. I dunno I'll figure out something :V

Also the first post has been cleaned up a bunch so you dont have to read an entire essay just to figure out what this game is :V

Anyways please give it a try and tell me what you guys think :3


Also on another note, I managed to make myself salty with my own game
(http://i.imgur.com/QrgEodf.png)
I don't know what to feel about this



edit: WELP
okay so I've run into a bit of a problem

can anyone try downloading the game and tell me if they get some kind of malicious file warning or something like that
for me, chrome is giving me these issues but firefox isnt

google pls
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Chaore on December 15, 2014, 01:35:02 AM
Chrome went YO when I downloaded it the first time myself, so yeah.
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Suikama on December 15, 2014, 02:18:47 AM
Alright so I asked the itch.io site guys and they said thier site is correctly confirged with google but it takes time for google to verify stuff so hopefully it will fix itself.


Also what do you think of the balance changes? :derp:

imo war flag is still pretty powerful since it doesn't take any durability so you just tack it on every single hit for free damage. Because attacking takes durability which costs gold to repair, there's a cost tradeoff to every attack, but that's not the case with the flag's abilities. It might fall off later on though if power creep starts to happen though since it's still only 10 damage. It's really hard to tell without having every weapon available to mess around with directly (so I guess I should hurry up with the updates :derp:)

Blocking was kind of screwed up before because you could waste a lot of durability only for the enemy attack to miss. Also by not allowing stacking prevents you from going invincible mode for a few turns.
The shield is supposed to allow you to last longer in fights so that you can get off more damage and so you can build up more energy for using heavier weapons. If you could stack blocks in combination with not losing durability on misses then it would kind of trivialize stalling for the first few turns (image if you could do that in pad although I guess skill boosts is kind of the same thing :V) and it also would make Great Block kind of useless for how expensive it is.
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Moogs Parfait on December 19, 2014, 05:51:16 AM
Okay! My thoughts! I'm a bit drunk but I'll try to be coherant.

First of all: The fact that I have to click Cancel and End Turn at various points when there's nothing for me to do in the current menu is kinda aggravating.  For a point and click game it should move to the next phase when your options are exhausted.

I want attacks and abilities to be separate on the UI.  Each of the 5 items having a possibility of 2 actions associated with it.  With a longer game your 10 actions would mostly be full as high end items have both attack and abilities or maybe even two abilities.

When buying or selling items, the price should be prominant on the UI. 

Fragile items should just break when they reach Durability 0.

The Flag item seemed to work for an endless number of turns and battles until I de-equiped it.  I have no idea how it's supposed to work from your posts and the ingame text.

After losing once, I caught on to all the mechanics pretty quickly, I can see you needing to add some tutorials or such as the game gets more complex and reaches a more developed stage.

Healing the town with shards seems a bit pointless to do more than once, you don't get many shards to have much affect at 1% each. On the other hand healing just once gets you an entire extra "loss" when fighting against the crystal.  Once you're further along in development though, clever managing of the town's corruption level could be a thing.  The shady merchant could get better stuff for instance.

I've never had enough gold to buy one of the weapons from the D Master.

Edit: On the whole it was pretty fun.  The single enemy represented a challenge that I had fun overcoming.  Something I think you've done well is that the game doesn't feel too much or too little RNG.  Working with what you get in the shops is very much a thing, but while I did feel pressured it hasn't felt hopeless.
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Suikama on December 19, 2014, 01:49:44 PM
Okay! My thoughts! I'm a bit drunk but I'll try to be coherant.

First of all: The fact that I have to click Cancel and End Turn at various points when there's nothing for me to do in the current menu is kinda aggravating.  For a point and click game it should move to the next phase when your options are exhausted.
The problem with auto End Turn is that sometimes there will be situations where it's ambiguous when you are truly out of options, such as if you have weapons or abilities with 0 energy cost. There will also be future mechanics that merit ending your turn early. I will try to have something like Hearthstone's end turn function where the button alerts you when you don't have any actions left.

For canceling, I guess I could make it so that clicking outside the shop's boundaries auto closes. That might get kind of annoying with misclicks though hmm.
I want attacks and abilities to be separate on the UI.  Each of the 5 items having a possibility of 2 actions associated with it.  With a longer game your 10 actions would mostly be full as high end items have both attack and abilities or maybe even two abilities.
Hmm yeah I was thinking about ditching the 'click to equip' function and making it so that if you click on a weapon it attacks and then if you click on a separate button beside the weapon it uses it's ability. That way I can also just have 10 different hotkeys, one for each attack and ability. I'm not sure if I'll do multi-abilities. Puzzle and Dragons managed to get this far with every monster only having a single ability so I think I'll be fine.

When buying or selling items, the price should be prominant on the UI. 
Yeah that's on my to do list. The whole weapon info system needs a revamp so that all stats and abilities are more obvious.

Fragile items should just break when they reach Durability 0.
Break as in they're just deleted from your inventory? There will be a use for broken junk later on (I think :V). I will make it more obvious when you have a broken item in your inventory though.

The Flag item seemed to work for an endless number of turns and battles until I de-equiped it.  I have no idea how it's supposed to work from your posts and the ingame text.
Traits are passives so they work as long as the weapon is equipped. It probably shouldn't keep working when it's durability runs out though but I'm still figuring out how to get that to work.

After losing once, I caught on to all the mechanics pretty quickly, I can see you needing to add some tutorials or such as the game gets more complex and reaches a more developed stage.
I think I'm okay with people flubbing their first few games as long as it's obvious what you need to do after a few tries.

Healing the town with shards seems a bit pointless to do more than once, you don't get many shards to have much affect at 1% each. On the other hand healing just once gets you an entire extra "loss" when fighting against the crystal.  Once you're further along in development though, clever managing of the town's corruption level could be a thing.  The shady merchant could get better stuff for instance.
Yeah healing is something I still haven't fully figured out how to balance yet. I'll just do everything else first and then adjust healing around that  ┐(?ー`)┌

I've never had enough gold to buy one of the weapons from the D Master..
That weapon is completely OP and is supposed to be difficult to get anyways (and it's getting nerfed, it's just a bit of a joke item right now :V) It's not impossible though cause I managed to get in once by saving my shards until the pawn shop offered a really high rate for them.
Hmm I should probably make it more obvious that the weapon is a rare "Legendary" item though.

Edit: On the whole it was pretty fun.  The single enemy represented a challenge that I had fun overcoming.  Something I think you've done well is that the game doesn't feel too much or too little RNG.  Working with what you get in the shops is very much a thing, but while I did feel pressured it hasn't felt hopeless.
Funny think is I kind of want the game to have a lot of RNG :V But not so RNG heavy that the player feels like they have no control of the situation and they just have to wait until they get lucky in order to have a chance to win. I think Binding of Isaac strikes the best balance in this regard since it's really RNG based and yet with good decision making and dodging skills every single run is winnable no matter how unlucky you get.

I might be kind of tricky with this kind of game though since unlike Isaac, there's no physical skill component to the game. So whereas you can beat Isaac even with shitty items if you have Touhou Lunatic dodging skills, in an RPG it's possible to have situations where the player is legitimately screwed by RNG and there's nothing they could have done better to avoid it. So I dunno we'll see :V
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Moogs Parfait on December 19, 2014, 05:58:19 PM
What I meant about two abilities is more moving to a two actions system.

Every item would have a primary and secondary action. Some items only have one like you do now, but the primary action isn't always whacking the crystal with the item.  For example a glove called the Pacifist could have a generally useful heal ability and a situationally useful blocking ability
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Bio on December 20, 2014, 02:06:04 AM
Yea I don't really see the point of whacking things with tomes other than for fun.
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Suikama on December 20, 2014, 03:26:22 AM
It's silly but I intend the game to be a bit on the silly side :V

Also right now it's intended as part of the balance where you'll have some weapons that are utility based with the draw back of being terrible weapons and thus eating up equipment slots, although who knows how that will turn out in the long run


First of all: The fact that I have to click Cancel and End Turn at various points when there's nothing for me to do in the current menu is kinda aggravating.  For a point and click game it should move to the next phase when your options are exhausted.
Okay so yeah after playing some other games you're totally right, I don't know why I thought clicking outside of the inventory to close it wouldn't work because it works perfectly fine in other games. :V End turn I'm still trying to figure out though.

And yeah UI could really use some smoothing out in general. Some of the stuff I'm changing are:

right now though I'm just slacking off cause Holidays and all :derp:
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Moogs Parfait on December 28, 2014, 06:53:33 AM
It's fine to have an end turn button for ending early!

On ending turns automatically.

As part of your action validation, whether or not that item can be used, you should check several things.

1. If you have the energy
2. If the item has the durability
3. If the item's effect can be applied at all.  For example buffs that don't stack.

If an item's action doesn't meet all those requirements then it is unavailable. 

In the case of stacking buffs either they will always block the automatic end turn function, or eventually run into another fail condition such as 0 durability. 
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Suikama on January 16, 2015, 07:58:12 PM
Quote
Warning: this topic has not been posted in for at least 14 days.
Goddamn time flies quickly :<


Anyways I've been working on trying to make the game look a little less uh, terrible. I messed around with some stuff and ended up with this:

(http://i.imgur.com/VGiRznT.png) (This is just concept art so it's missing stuff and some stuff is just borrowed for now)

So uh does this look a little too Final Fantasy-ish? I tried to make a bit different but I guess the style is really similar. Well it's not like styles are copyrighted right? :derp: i could be terribly wrong though :ohdear:

I dunno I think I need a bit of outsider opinion on this :derp:


At least it looks way better than right now

(http://i.imgur.com/EK2WOgH.jpg)
lol

Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Moogs Parfait on January 17, 2015, 02:31:29 AM
Well, I for one didn't notice until you said something
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Suikama on January 20, 2015, 10:35:53 PM
Well that's good :V

I tried some other designs but didn't like any of them so I think I'll stick to it for now.


On another note, I've been considering ditching the mana system for a cooldown based one.

Right now I don't think mana actually works that well for a bunch of reasons. For one, it's rather tedious when you have 10 mana and a bunch of 1 cost skills and attacks, meaning you have to make a whole bunch of clicks every turn even if you're just doing the same attack plan as last turn.
The biggest reason though is it's supposed to be a limiting resource, but actually it isn't. Rather it's a limiting gate. My mistake was taking mana from hearthstone to work as a resource when actually cards are the resource and mana is just a gate so that people don't drop ragnaros on turn 1.

On the other hand, a cooldown system kind of like PaD's works far better as a resource because it's something you can 'spend' and then have to slowly gather back. There's also some risk/reward with every turn where you can choose to either try to stall on the crystal for your skills to come up or just use them right away which might become a problem in later turns.

I guess this kind of make the game more like a roguelike pad where there's no puzzle aspect but instead you get random stuff and have to figure out builds on the fly.

Unfortunately this means I have to redo a lot of things, including all of the stats of the current weapons, but hopefully this will change things for the best.
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Drake on January 21, 2015, 12:55:30 AM
TBH using a Final Fantasy-esque motif is fitting considering half the concept of the game is reversing the crystal trope anyways.
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Suikama on February 10, 2015, 04:10:42 AM
The quest to make things look less ass continues. :V

Still just messing around with mockups for now. It's a lot easier to drag around and mess with stuff in photoshop without having to worry about code stuff being messed up. I guess I might as well show some progress.

Here's a comparison of old vs new: (click for bigger images)
Title
(http://i.imgur.com/UhYFaNAl.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/yusHl4A.jpg)
Some notes:

Battle
(http://i.imgur.com/wRSyOWyl.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/xfxpStn.jpg) ()
Notes:
Town
(http://i.imgur.com/gHGXDjSl.jpg) (http://i.imgur.com/reR8HJD.jpg)
Notes:

Okay so before I retreat back into my devcave, some stuff on future happenings:
My current goal is to keep working to make the game look better. This is a part of a larger goal which is to make a trailer for promotion/kickstarter stuff. Since kickstarters aren't allowed here anymore, I'll probably only share the trailer for feedback and stuff.
I'll also need to update the alpha build with all of the new graphics and mechanics. What will probably end up happening is once it's updated I'll do some playtests, polish it up, then release it as the official "demo" for the game. From then on out the alpha will switch to a closed alpha/beta that people will have to pay for, but maybe I'll let some people here in for free if they give good feedback and stuff :3.
Also I'm ditching the blog for now. Juggling too many things is hard. :derp:


Oh yeah almost forgot to say, feedback on how stuff looks right now would be much appreciated :V
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Bio on February 10, 2015, 05:03:41 AM
Dark color schemes look a lot more serious than green ones.
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Suikama on February 10, 2015, 04:32:39 PM
yeah I think I'll try some lighter colors in town since everything is so dark

picking colors is hard :<
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Moogs Parfait on February 12, 2015, 07:57:24 PM
I kept repeating "I think" in a previous edit of this, so please understand this is all opinion.

Your clock really clashes with the new UI.  On the other hand I don't think the dark UI detracts from the silly tone you're going for, the thick lines on the item really show what kind of game it is.  I expect 90% of the item descriptions will contain a joke.

The drawing style of that Miku really suits the tone and you should go for that kind of thing in the final.

Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Suikama on February 12, 2015, 08:21:34 PM
The clock is part of the "not done" stuff don't worry. Actually it's just cut out from a really old concept art pic. :V

Quote
I don't think the dark UI doesn't detract from the silly tone you're going for
Wait does this mean it does clash or it doesn't? Double negativesssss

Quote
I expect 90% of the item descriptions will contain a joke.
you know me well :v

The drawing style of that Miku really suits the tone and you should go for that kind of thing in the final.
Good to know :3 I think I'll experiment with thicker lines on the characters as well to make things look consistent
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Moogs Parfait on February 12, 2015, 08:26:28 PM
I meant to say "I don't think the dark UI detracts from the silly tone"

Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Suikama on March 03, 2015, 07:28:55 PM
we got moving things (http://gfycat.com/ThunderousPerkyDassierat)
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Suikama on March 06, 2015, 03:50:27 AM
aw yiss battle animations (http://gfycat.com/FrankInferiorCoqui)

Alright so uh what's a good screen capture program? I used HyperCam for the video above, but the problem is it's really compressed and the worst part is the framerate sucks. If I try to record uncompressed footage with it, it comes out terrible with dropped frames everywhere.

Normally I'd use fraps but for some reason it doesn't seem to work with the program I'm using anymore :/


edit:
aw yiss now in HD (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUQ4qG8b2ZA)

okay so I tried OBS and it works great. Only problem is the sound is way off sync though. Guess I just need to fiddle with it more.


edit2:
and now OBS is giving me laggy recordings. bluh, is it just my computer or what?

no doesnt seem to be that cause i can record other games with fraps at 60 fps
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Suikama on March 07, 2015, 03:14:10 AM
Alright found a program called "Action!" and it seems to work great

But now i get "The video has failed to process.  Please make sure you are uploading a supported file type." when i try to upload to youtube, even though they're .AVI files which it says are fine...
 

why ._.
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Moogs Parfait on March 07, 2015, 03:37:45 AM
Do you know about codecs and stuff? That could be your issue. And you might try dxtory too.

I don't know much about video capture, just bits and pieces I picked up from youtubers and streamers chatting
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Suikama on March 07, 2015, 03:48:16 AM
Do you know about codecs and stuff?
Sort of. Can't seem to find any info about what codecs Action! uses

One thing I did find though is the files it outputs have a bitrate of 1769472kpbs, which seems quite high I guess? I don't know enough about this stuff to know if that's what's causing problems, but I'm guessing it might be since I'm having trouble uploading these clips into gfycat as well. In both cases they seem to fail after the files has been fully uploaded so maybe the bitrate is too high for them to uh do whatever?
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Delfigamer on March 07, 2015, 10:55:30 AM
I've had good experience with ffmpeg (http://ffmpeg.org/), but it's 1) console UI; 2) do we really need 'two'?

  • "Informative toolbar" for tooltips rather than a floating box that blocks everything. Still no one will read it though. :v Weapon stats will still get their own window.
I remember tooltips from Space Rangers. They were blue, had round corners and were always in the same position near your screen's top left corner.
Notes in your bottom bar appeared near their pins, however.
...Just some ideas. Now I'll probably go and actually play the game ._.

UPD
Quote
This game is currently unavailable
:smokedcheese:
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Suikama on March 09, 2015, 03:51:19 AM
Yeah the game looks quite different now so I removed the old version :derp:

also im dumb cause Action! already comes with a built in youtube converter


okay so next question, which looks better:

A. With warpy effects (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJhR5CWJK-A)

B. Without warpy effects (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bu3xSCXnEo)

the sound effect is just a placeholder
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2)
Post by: Bio on March 09, 2015, 05:56:19 AM
It's like I'm being hit with Psychic rather than a 'Dark Strike'.
The aura matches more though.
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2???)
Post by: Moogs Parfait on March 11, 2015, 03:04:18 AM
I prefer warpy effects...but what I really think you should do is Earthbound Psi styled effects.  Like a dark type Psi Rockin'

It doesn't have to be atari style graphics and sound, but I think the sharp angles and mechanical-mysticism would work well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ42Afr_F3E
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2???)
Post by: Suikama on March 11, 2015, 03:35:59 AM
Haha yeah I was thinking it felt pretty earthboundesque as well, although I don't want to cramp on their style too hard :V

In other news I've been messing around with video editing stuff and I think I've got the hand of things so hopefully soon I can release a trailer that better shows off what the game is supposed to be like.

Unfortunately I'm not sure if I can get a demo to accompany it too soon because it takes a lot more time to fully implement features since not only do I have to make them but I also need to make them fully functional, fleshed out, and fix all sorts of bugs and all that just takes a lot of time. :<
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2???)
Post by: Suikama on March 21, 2015, 12:58:37 AM
Town animation stuff. (https://gfycat.com/SpitefulFilthyAnnelida) The effect the subtle but hopefully makes things feel more polished.

Made some other gameplay changes:

Right now though I'm switching focus back to more art stuff. Gotta replace all those old icons + add actual characters and backgrounds.


If you guys want though I can throw up the current version of the game just for fun, but it's quite rough and patchworky cause I've been tearing out old stuff to replace with new stuff.
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2???)
Post by: Moogs Parfait on March 24, 2015, 02:18:11 AM
Your posts are enough for me, but I won't stop others if they want to play the latest.

BTW what are you building this in, anyway?

Edit: Also forgot to say your animations are great *thumbs up*
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2???)
Post by: Suikama on March 24, 2015, 02:09:35 PM
I'm using Construct 2

also turns out that uh the dreaded end turn button might need to come back because of cases where you can't attack so you want to just skip your turn. I can't make the turn auto end because there's still the choice of running away.
Title: Re: Suikama makes another game! Anticrystal Knight (ALPHA v. 0.0.2???)
Post by: Suikama on March 31, 2015, 02:25:26 AM
just a little teaser (https://gfycat.com/BetterCautiousAcouchi)


Main things left to do now are character art (which is being a pain because I'm not really good at art ._.), a bunch of icons, and the town background, and then gotta polish things up so I can put together a trailer.
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Chaore on March 31, 2015, 02:27:41 AM
put mustaches, hats, and dreaded cloaks on miku

call it a day
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Suikama on March 31, 2015, 02:44:38 AM
put mustaches, hats, and dreaded cloaks on miku

call it a day
lol i should


...actually this might be a good idea for generic npcs and stuff :V
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Suikama on April 04, 2015, 03:25:22 AM
threw up a really rough playable version because the website was looking lonely :V (http://suikama.itch.io/anticrystal-knight-alpha?secret=V5W9Ncq1mq5UFqR21vWIHOaU6Hc)

It's super rough though and like half of the weapons and things don't work properly, and also the game was not designed with web in mind so a bunch of things will probably be glitchy :V


Also here's a gif of the crystal blowing up (https://gfycat.com/TornUncomfortableGreendarnerdragonfly)
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Calamity on April 04, 2015, 03:50:08 AM
I find it pretty funny that if you buy any weapons you're too poor to actually destroy the crystal because you have no money to repair anything. I'm not being sarcastic or anything, it actually made me laugh.
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Bio on April 04, 2015, 03:54:16 AM
Oh traits just don't work.
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Suikama on April 04, 2015, 04:00:22 AM
I find it pretty funny that if you buy any weapons you're too poor to actually destroy the crystal because you have no money to repair anything. I'm not being sarcastic or anything, it actually made me laugh.
Yep :V All numbers are totally out of wack and haven't had time to re balance because I've just been trying to improve the game's graphics for the past while now

Oh traits just don't work.
Yep :V Neither do most abilities :V


Oh yeah if it's not too much trouble, could you guys post screencaps of what the game looks like for you both in battle and in town? Because it would help to know if the game looks like how it's supposed to on other people's computers. I know fonts are likely messed up if you don't have the same ones as I do.
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Calamity on April 04, 2015, 04:20:18 AM
town (http://ft.trillian.im/977f4d5d850e7242b3507d3ef31c6db39e9e4fd0/6xwRApkVNwlrtn5AGeulJ8zQyygiq.jpg)
battle (http://ft.trillian.im/977f4d5d850e7242b3507d3ef31c6db39e9e4fd0/6xwRBQR0D3HMdHuR7i7yOAhz8GM3o.jpg)

One minor thing I would change in the UI is when you click on the shop or blacksmith is to make it so clicking outside the inventory box or dialogue box makes it return to the main town. Being forced to aim for the small X each time feels counter intuitive. Part of it is just me being lazy but I can see it being annoying when someone has to click in and out of each shop all the time to manage equipment.
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Suikama on April 04, 2015, 04:25:03 AM
Okay yeah fonts are screwed up. It should look more like this (http://i.imgur.com/OpvN1p9.png).

And yes clicking outside to close things is already planned :V
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Suikama on April 15, 2015, 02:13:40 AM
So this took a really long time because I'm not an artist so drawing is really slow and tedious for me :ohdear:

But we got characters now :V

(http://i.imgur.com/BoARs98.png)

Here are the Medieval, Sports, and Caveman Merchants. They each sell weapons that fit their own theme and also have a common gameplay theme.
For example:
Medieval Merchant sells weapons and items like Kite Shields and Plague Tonics. His weapons are the most basic and well rounded.
Caveman Merchant sells weapons and items like Wooden Clubs and Torches. His weapons tend to be cheap but not very durable.
Sports Merchant sells "weapons" and items like Baseball Bats and Energy Drinks. His weapons improve your cardiovascular activity which boosts your cooldowns  :V.


Stuff left to do:
Finishing Goddess' portrait
Give the town an actual background (This has plagued me for the longest time...)
Town icons
Music and Sound effects
Trailerboys
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Suikama on April 21, 2015, 02:37:44 AM
dammit my post timed out as I was typing it so it got deleted and now I have to redo it ._.

Alright so Goddess is done!
(http://i.imgur.com/HWV3SdW.png)
The Goddess (I haven't thought of a name for her yet. Maybe I'll let the player be able to name her, Gary Oak style) watches over and protects the Town and it's people. When the Dark Crystals fall, she summons you, the Anticrystal Knight, to fight back.

Meanwhile her role in the game is to protect and heal the town from the corrupting miasma being emitted by the Crystals. She can handle the defending part by herself, but she'll need shards of the crystals in order to create an 'anti-venom' of sorts to actually heal the town.

Beyond that, she has a solid in the story since she's one of the few characters that isn't randomized. You can build up your reputation with her by preventing the town from being harmed, which is important since she'll often be the first to alert you of major events and threats to the town, but if you're reputation is poor then she may be reluctant to trust you with important tasks and information. On the other hand if you have a good reputation then it can lead to boosts and benefits like improved stats, special buffs, special weapons, and maybe even a daaaate? ;V

And here's the Town now:
(http://i.imgur.com/QpFiJL5.jpg)
I went for a "town map" look because my original idea of an "in the town" angle didn't work so well thanks to my lack of ability to draw buildings. :V Well it's not the prettiest thing, but it's functional and has good clarity I hope, which is more important in the long run anyways right? :V
The Town square is kind of barren now because I'm not sure if I'll need that space for more characters later on.

Alright so just gotta polish a few more things and then it's sound design time :toot:
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Bio on April 21, 2015, 07:17:19 AM
This is our goddess whom we have worshipped and revered for millennia. Uh what was her name again?
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Calamity on April 21, 2015, 08:42:54 AM
So if you fail to protect the town, the goddess will withhold useful information for protecting the town, damaging your reputation further and snowballing so she will never like you.
Sounds fun  :V

The goddess looks like a ghetto Palutena and Isis fusion. I cannot unsee. looooool
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Suikama on April 21, 2015, 03:02:49 PM
The goddess looks like a ghetto Palutena and Isis fusion. I cannot unsee. looooool
i have no idea what you're talking about :derp: :derp: :derp:
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Moogs Parfait on April 21, 2015, 07:23:22 PM
Where is the boob string?

Can I UEVO her?

I am the goddess STINKY
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Suikama on April 21, 2015, 07:34:04 PM
Where is the boob string?
(http://i.imgur.com/T0cXFNx.gif)
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Suikama on April 29, 2015, 06:35:09 AM
Bluh so things are generally coming along...

Except for the music. I feel like I've gotten over my head with this. I mean I can put together stuff to 'make' music sure, but to actually compose something good is another matter entirely. :<
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Bio on April 29, 2015, 06:45:09 AM
Just record yourself whistling or singing a random song and set that to loop.
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Moogs Parfait on April 29, 2015, 07:13:53 PM
https://youtu.be/MGPpMmXmxH0
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Suikama on April 29, 2015, 07:41:16 PM
I guess the real issue is I had unrealistic expectations going into it. I was hoping to get everything done by the end of this month but I really need more time to actually experiment and learn more stuff. I mean yeah that applies for everything but bluh. it keeps happening

https://youtu.be/MGPpMmXmxH0
Heh, funny thing is from what I've read, making sound effects with your mouth is something even professionals do. Like sometimes a jet sound is really just someone blowing into a mic with a bunch of effects and stuff on top :V
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Moogs Parfait on April 29, 2015, 07:50:40 PM
I guess the real issue is I had unrealistic expectations going into it. I was hoping to get everything done by the end of this month but I really need more time to actually experiment and learn more stuff. I mean yeah that applies for everything but bluh. it keeps happening

Humans are actually really bad at estimating but something I know that works is actually keeping track of your tasks and measuring your expected vs actual.  The problem is it takes months to start getting accurate, but over a long project or series of projects it does work.

Start with a typical task list:
(http://i.imgur.com/yBNesa7.png) (http://imgur.com/yBNesa7)

Then track these things:

Estimated Size
Estimated Effort (Time and/or Difficulty)
Actual Size
Actual Effort
Timestamp

Keep rolling averages of the first four.  Since you're a one man band on this you might include Type in your tasks

This provides a few benefits:


</unwanted advice>

Sorry
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight (Trailer coming soon-ish)
Post by: Suikama on April 29, 2015, 09:58:02 PM
</unwanted advice>

Sorry
Oh man don't be sorry, this is actually super helpful and not unwanted at all :V

Hmm thinking about it, I have sort of been doing this by keeping a calendar record of general stuff I've done, but it's really informal. Like I have down that I started working on the 4 character portraits on March 23. And then I finished the 3 merchants on April 14 and the Goddess on April 20, so exactly 4 weeks in total. But during that time I also did other stuff though like art for the crystal (https://gfycat.com/BetterCautiousAcouchi) and the town (and also I usually mess around on weekends :derp:). So I guess in reality it took around 4-5 days of work per character I guess.
I think in terms of expectations I actually anticipated around a week per character, since that one Miku drawing also took a weekish? so that worked out alright. I guess with more practice I can go faster.

On the other hand I think it kind of messed with my expectations with music. I was hoping to get the trailer track done in a week as well, but now a week has past and I'm not really satisfied with what I've done at all.
Also with art I did a shitton of 'referencing' aka 'idk how the hell this arm is supposed to go so i'mma just look for a picture of an arm in the pose I want and basically go with that' (followed by 'actually no that's not the pose I want lets try that again and again and again').
But with music it's a lot harder to be like 'oh I want my track to sound kind of like this song so I guess I'll reference it' because I need to find the right instruments/plugins and then mess around with mixing to make it sound right but then does it actually sound right with the rest of the song? No it sounds kind of off, but is it the wrong instrument? Or maybe this sound can't be effectively replicated with my plugins so I'll need a sample? Or is it the composition? Maybe I need to tweak the mixing some more? Bluh I don't knoww. It also doesn't help that most video game soundtracks are usually composed by a single person, so I get the feeling like oh well I have some music background from school so I should be able to do that too.
And on top of that I'm trying to make a 'trailer-like' song, so I'll come up with a ton of little tune and melodies, and then throw them all out because they don't feel 'trailery' enough.

Well I guess on the other other hand, looking even farther back though I've had the exact same problem NUMEROUS times with art. Jan to Mar was basically spent trying to get from this (http://i.imgur.com/EK2WOgH.jpg) to this (http://i.imgur.com/x4tqSDn.png). But even way before that, the past year of 2014 on my calendar is pretty much littered with "Art Design", "Try Art", "Art pls". Meanwhile for Music there was really only one time where I spent about two weeks trying to make some main themes for the town and for battle, and that didn't get too far so I don't really know what to expect in terms of how long it takes to make a good song.

So yeah that help me put things into perspective for myself so thanks BV
Title: Re: Beating up evil rocks for money: Anticrystal Knight
Post by: Suikama on May 04, 2015, 01:48:48 AM
So unfortunately as of now I'm putting Anticrystal Knight on indefinite hold.

I had a personal deadline to complete this game by the end of April, which unfortunately has past and I'm still quite far away from completion. I did have the idea of trying Kickstarter to get some funds to sustain me through more development, but I don't really have any industry connections or a big fanbase or anything like that so I think the odds of that working out are pretty low. Either that or I would have to aim for a really low goal, which would most likely not last me long enough to actually finish the game and I would risk joining the uncompleted Kickstarter hall of shame.

Although I've had to end things prematurely, I'm not too hung up about it. This is the first project I've done that's taken more than just a month or two and the first where I've fully created all the assets by myself, so I've learned a whole bunch of things about game development. Maybe the work I've done on this game can help me land a job at an actual game studio? Who knows! :derp: