Author Topic: Touhou SRPG - Story of a Lost Sky [Update 1/22/11 - Version 0.6.0] (Thread 3) (Read 156760 times)

Elcura · « **Reply #90 on:** August 27, 2009, 03:23:30 PM »

Slightly bad news, seems that my C: is corrupted beyond repair... trying to salvage as much work as I can (again, fucking PC) and reformat. Might take a day or two (again... =( ).

If I used facebook, my status would be DEPRESSED.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #91 on:** August 27, 2009, 04:31:50 PM »

D: D:

Hope you get your computer back and running soon. Good luck!

Another new feature finished:

It is an autosave function that has a queue of two autosave slots (Gekko's suggestion). An autosave is created at the start and conclusion of every mission and when an autosave happens, slot 1 replaces slot 2 and new data is saved into slot 1. Also added a comment to each save telling you when it was made.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #92 on:** August 30, 2009, 04:34:49 PM »

Major tweaking of the unit deployment screen last night:

This addresses some suggestions that Gekko brought up:

# 8/29/09 - Deploy screen big tweaks
- [Issue #24] Placing a unit in deploy mode returns you to the character select level
- Added a max number of units allowed to deploy
- Updated the XML data to reflect max units by adding another required element in the deployment info.
- Added a display for number of units deployed / max units
- Added directions to deploy menus
- First time the max unit cap is hit, the player is automatically returned to the front menu
- Tweaked handling of unit placement:
--- Units may now replace already deployed units
--- C key deletes the unit underneath it if one has been already deployed
--- Units can now be moved directly without needing to delete it

RuneDevros · « **Reply #93 on:** September 06, 2009, 04:33:47 PM »

Next up is the AI upgrade. Since BBM29 disappeared, I'm taking over development of the AI. The approach I have is to use Finite State Machines (Link goes to a powerpoint file). I have so far reimplemented the current AI and will work from there. We'll hopefully get Range Limited Attack, Healing AI, and Spirit Source Capture AI.

I've been playing with the survey functions on Google docs. Here's the draft of a survey that I'd like to include with the public release.

Survey

Psieye · « **Reply #94 on:** September 06, 2009, 04:41:18 PM »

One alternative to google docs for surveys is this site. Otherwise, the survey looks fine since not all the large textbox questions are mandatory to answer.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #95 on:** September 08, 2009, 03:09:02 AM »

KirbyM made us a create.swf version of Asa based on the concept art.

The AI is slowly making progress. Improved targetting selection has been implemented. It uses a weighted average of various stats and is described in detail here. An experimental version of the AI is in the internal repository.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #96 on:** September 11, 2009, 03:26:52 AM »

Script for CH4 is up on the wiki.

Will be working at the AI this weekend.

Elcura · « **Reply #97 on:** September 11, 2009, 11:20:41 AM »

I just had a quick idea I'm going to work on. When reading the script, I noticed some things like elipses and times where some emotes would be nice. Personally I think it's silly when I character says "..." when they don't actually say anything, so instead I quickly made this to put over the character's head.

Some things still need to be worked on, like whether the bubble fades in or just cuts in, whether we use the bubble as a base and the effect animations are overlayed on top or if we treat each animation seperately.

I guess they can be used along with speech as well. Anyway, I'd like to know if that's possible and if this size is too big or too small (doubtful). Other icons can be:

Sweat drop
Angry
Blush (Alice much?)
Panic (not in a speech bubble)

Come to think of it, anything from RO that I can emulate lol.

Since my computer is dead, gonna use a friends and work on field sprites.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #98 on:** September 11, 2009, 11:41:15 AM »

This is a really good idea! It'll add some flavor to the conversations. Another one I would like to suggest would be a (!) emote when someone is surprised.

The ... bubble is a little too big considering that our map sprites are 35x35. Maybe a size around 32x32 would work well. As for image format, pygame can't (?) read in animated gifs, so you will need to make it frame-by-frame on one image like with the battle animations.

Elcura · « **Reply #99 on:** September 11, 2009, 12:17:00 PM »

I'm not the best at English, but I figure another perspective would be helpful when it comes to the script. Feel free to ignore me or refute me. I'm basing this off the scripts on the wiki, not in-game stuff.

Scene 1 - "Many hundreds of years ago"

Quote

Akyu: Our world's name is Gensokyo. Long ago, we were separated from the rest of the world by a great magical barrier which has allowed our realm to remain untouched by influences of the outside. Our world is home to both humans and youkai, those beings that people would also call playful fairies, energetic spirits, and whimsical ghosts, and other things. Those things that the outside world refers to as fantasy and myth are well alive here.

I think it's weird to open with "Our world's name is Gensokyo," is there nothing more natural to open with? Considering we're in Akyu's study, maybe she should open the map earlier and introduce the world from there?

I think you could rearrange this a bit, "remain untouched by influences of the outside." To something like, "remain untouched by the influences of the outside world/realm/land/whatever"

"Our world is home to both humans and youkai, those beings that people would also call playful fairies, energetic spirits, and whimsical ghosts, and other things." Something about this doesn't flow right, "Our world is home to both humans and youkai - beings that people in the (real?/outside?) world would call fairies, ghosts and demons." I think having spirits and ghosts together just says the same thing twice.

"Those things that the outside world refers to as fantasy and myth are well alive here." I would rework this to be, "The things that the outside world thinks are merely myths and fantasy are all too real here." Maybe add in something that suggests that normal humans are afraid if that hasn't been portrayed. Since I'm a fan of show and don't tell (for the most part), maybe we could have the screen sweep by places and characters that are relevant?

Quote

Akyu: Our world is vast and diverse. A Shinto shrine stands at the border with the outside world, the old Hakurei Shrine.

For the "Our world is vast and diverse", maybe add a few things to stretch the sentence out? Like "Our world is truly vast and diverse"? I don't care, I just have an image of a scrolling/paranoramic background shown while this is said, perhaps even showing the Hakurei Shrine. I'm not much of an enviroment artist, but an image like that I would love to give a try.

Quote

Akyu: To the western edge, the Forest of Magic is an ancient woodland filled with dangerous beasts and magical creatures. Did you know that among the beings in our land of Gensokyo, that the trees and their protector spirits are those who have been witness to our entire history?

"To the western edge, the Forest of Magic is an ancient woodland filled with dangerous beasts and magical creatures." can simply be "To the west is the Forest of Magic. An ancient woodland filled with dangerous beasts and magical creatures."

"Did you know that among the beings in our land of Gensokyo, that the trees and their protector spirits are those who have been witness to our entire history?" This needs changing, since it sounds pretty awkward to me. "Did you know that among(st?) all the beings in Gensokyo(,?) that the trees and their protectors have been witness to our entire history?"

Quote

Akyu: Within Gensokyo, there exist distinct worlds for the living and the dead. The spirits of the Netherworld are managed by the master of Hakugyokurou, the ghostly princess Yuyuko Saigyouji. The ghosts and spirits at Hakugyokurou idle their time with revelry in the majestic garden, which is tended to by the dutiful Saigyouji retainer, a half-ghost by the name of Youmu Konpaku. Talented in the arts of swordplay, this Saigyouji retainer is also the vigilant protector of the realm. It is from this world of the dead that our story begins.

"Within Gensokyo, there exist distinct worlds for the living and the dead." Maybe change this into more of a question, like "Did you know that within Gensokyo there exists distinct worlds (or realms) for the living and the dead?"

"which is tended to by the dutiful Saigyouji retainer, a half-ghost by the name of Youmu Konpaku." Could be changed to, "which is tended to by Saigyouji's servant. A half-ghost who goes by the name (of?) Youmu Konpaku."

this Saigyouji retainer is also the vigilant protector of the realm." Can be, "Youmu (Konpaku?) is also the vigilant protector of the realm."

-----

Will edit this and do more as time allows. Actually, I'll just post again.

Quote from: FawkesGarde on September 11, 2009, 11:41:15 AM

This is a really good idea! It'll add some flavor to the conversations. Another one I would like to suggest would be a (!) emote when someone is surprised.

The ... bubble is a little too big considering that our map sprites are 35x35. Maybe a size around 32x32 would work well. As for image format, pygame can't (?) read in animated gifs, so you will need to make it frame-by-frame on one image like with the battle animations.

I forgot about that lol. And yeah, I can do an exclamation point as well as seperate out the images. I wonder about the tweening...but I'll just do that manually.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #100 on:** September 13, 2009, 04:17:12 AM »

About the opening... I don't know if our opening shot should be that of Youmu in the garden. I had wanted to do a flashback to Fuyuhana/Ayaka at the very start but we don't have their designs done yet. I'll sit down sometime in the coming weeks and see if I can work in some of your suggestions to the prologue.

AI update!

Good progress made today. We have a working Finite State Machine setup with state switching implemented. See the example battle below.

Initial conditions: Asa is at 1HP, Wriggle is at full HP and moved up to the front. A Firefly is in charge of healing.

1. Firefly starts in Healer Standby mode and heals Asa. Healer Standby state uses an equal average of both nearness and weakness to prioritize its target (Rather than a weighted average like the attacker AI).

2. Youmu makes her second attack on Wriggle. This brings her below 40% HP.

3. HP below 40% kicks the attack AI into retreat mode. It sends and SOS signal to the nearest healer and moves towards it. A retreating AI will not actively attack anybody on its retreat except in a counterattack.

4. Firefly receives an SOS signal and changes state to respond. In SOS response mode, it has a longer pursuit range (30) rather than 10 for the standby mode. It moves towards the first unit in the SOS queue.

5. Once Wriggle is healed above 80%*, she drops back into standard attack mode and goes back to fighting Youmu. The Firefly without anybody in its SOS queue returns to standby mode and heals nearby units again.

* I'm thinking of tweaking this to something like 60%

Elcura · « **Reply #101 on:** September 13, 2009, 11:15:54 AM »

Quote from: FawkesGarde on September 13, 2009, 04:17:12 AM

About the opening... I don't know if our opening shot should be that of Youmu in the garden. I had wanted to do a flashback to Fuyuhana/Ayaka at the very start but we don't have their designs done yet. I'll sit down sometime in the coming weeks and see if I can work in some of your suggestions to the prologue.

Hmm? I don't remember mentioning anything of Youmu in the garden for the opening shot... My suggestions occur after Ayaka and Fuyuhana have their conversation - where Akyu starts talking about Gensokyo.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #102 on:** September 13, 2009, 07:44:53 PM »

Ah I was referring to the current builds and how the prologue is presented there. When I was making those, I didn't have Akyu or anyone else, so the opening shot is in the garden. I guess with a placeholder for Akyu now we can build that part of the story as it was meant to be.

Psieye · « **Reply #103 on:** September 17, 2009, 11:19:16 AM »

The first post of this thread hasn't been updated with 0.4.0's explicit download location. I just checked some statistics while renewing my online file storage contract and found that people are still downloading 0.3.1 to this day. Yes I know you provide a link to bitbucket where they can eventually find it, but there's nothing under the "Builds" list which is where people actually look to find download links.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #104 on:** September 17, 2009, 11:44:05 AM »

Ah yeah. I had some trouble with my internet connection here at the apartment trying to upload to 4shared. I'll upload it this weekend when I go home to a better internet connection.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #105 on:** September 19, 2009, 03:26:20 AM »

Releases uploaded to 4shared. I'll upload them as soon as possible next time and try to be around a decent internet connection. My apartment runs at sub-DSL speeds.

So here's a little sprite I worked on last night for the Wind Weasel enemy:

RuneDevros · « **Reply #106 on:** September 20, 2009, 04:03:20 AM »

Revised AI algorithms page for targetting / movement selection. New movement selection only works for standard attack AI right now.

http://wiki.featheredmelody.com/Story_of_a_Lost_Sky/AI#How_does_the_AI_work.3F

universalperson · « **Reply #107 on:** September 30, 2009, 04:52:55 PM »

Good luck with this! I tried the demo, and it was fun!

RuneDevros · « **Reply #108 on:** September 30, 2009, 09:45:09 PM »

@Universalperson Thanks for the support. We really appreciate it! If you have any suggestions for improvements, we'd love to hear from you.

Last weekend, I updated the media list with what I think is 90% of what's needed to make a complete game. (Mainline story only) - Updated Media List The list of sprites and art is huge, so I think we need to find more people on the art front.

This weekend, I may not have a lot of time, but I will try and get AI working that will seek after spirit source points.

Elcura · « **Reply #109 on:** October 02, 2009, 08:27:09 AM »

more art support would definitely be great. Mostly a decent spriter because while I can do it, it's not my main field. I'm much better at things like portraits, GUI/etc, and in some ways map sprites.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #110 on:** October 04, 2009, 03:35:58 AM »

Are there any spriters here who would be interested in joining us? We already lost Water and Wind and I think others are occupied with their own projects.

Progress on programming front:

Rearranged the way that stats were displayed on the battle screen. There has been a problem where equipping two traits with long names is too long to fit on one line.

I also was able to get SSP seeking AI working for the attack AI. It's demonstrated in CH2ST1.

Elcura · « **Reply #111 on:** October 04, 2009, 02:29:32 PM »

A Yuyuko appears! And fuck, I really need to redo that fuzzball sprite. Jesus what was I smoking when I drew that...

Yukari next.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #112 on:** October 05, 2009, 03:11:18 AM »

Yuyuko sprite is very nice! Good job!

Added her in game and committed to internal repository. It looks like bitbucket was having some problems lately, but they have been resolved.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #113 on:** October 12, 2009, 01:45:40 AM »

Rough draft is done for all the missions and story scenes in the main story.
http://wiki.featheredmelody.com/Story_of_a_Lost_Sky/Script

Few things I'd like to add are a scene at the end of CH1St4 with Youmu and Ran discussing Youmu's worries about the journey and obligatory tea party scene at the end.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #114 on:** October 18, 2009, 03:46:54 AM »

In case anyone is able to play and give me some feedback before the end of the month, here is an early alpha version of 0.4.1 - (Win) http://bit.ly/12c0aK ; (Src) http://bit.ly/456hJo

Please report bugs to Bitbucket: http://bitbucket.org/featheredmelody/lost-sky-project-public

I am targeting a release of 0.4.1 by the end of the month.

Jamuko · « **Reply #115 on:** October 21, 2009, 10:23:39 PM »

Finally posting in here =X

I hope to get some portraits done before the release at the end of the month. I'm probably redoing Youmu's because I re-thought the style I'd use for the portraits, but once I get another example done I'll post it here and see what you guys think. If the old style is actually preferred I could stick to that, but I didn't consider it enough when I started on Youmu's.

I've been doing a lot of Touhou sketching but I'll try to get some more polished examples done soon.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #116 on:** October 25, 2009, 01:56:34 AM »

Link to beta version of 0.4.1:
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/149048/lostsky-v0.4.1beta-windows.zip
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/149048/lostsky-v0.4.1beta-source.zip

Took down 0.4.1 alpha

Changelog since alpha
# 10/24/09 - Some minor tweaks to terrain / trait learning - 0.4.1 Beta
- Rearranged some info placement in move menu
- Added terrain data drawing function to map object
- Added drawing of data about terrain currently under cursor
- Traits are drawn grayed out if you don't have enough TP to buy them
- Updated the last line of CH2ST2 to correspond with version number
- [Bugfix] Trait points at top weren't updating when you bought traits

# 10/18/09 - Tiny sized fixes
- Added ability to use Left/Right arrow keys on world map top level menu
- Moved Chen's starting position 1 tile down in CH1ST1
- Added some text explaining that Marisa can't take many hits.
- [Issue 29] Added an exit option to the world map menu.

At this point 0.4.1 is mostly feature complete on the code side. I decided not to mess with the AI any further. If anyone has art/music stuff, then putting them in isn't a problem however. I'd be happy to hear what you think.

Jamuko · « **Reply #117 on:** October 26, 2009, 04:43:52 PM »

Ooh, I was thinking this was getting released at Oct. 31. I guess I took "the end of October" too literally ^^; I've been working on stuff though!

I'd be interested in some feedback on a tweaked design for Asa that I did. I know it's a bit irrelevant now when we're focusing more on the content that the game currently needs, but when looking at Elcura's design again I was struck with desire to draw from it ^^;

Here's a sorta sloppy picture of my redesign:

(She's not really faceless, I just didn't draw it in XD )

My thoughts:
-I liked the eye design on the skirt, but it seemed a little unbalanced, like it was too intricate there compared to the rest. I simplified it while trying to keep some focus on that neat eye motif, and I think having a flap in front seems Touhou-ish.
-The top with the sun emblem was cute, but it felt more schoolgirl-shoujo-heroine than Touhou to me (this might be subjective though XD ). I couldn't figure out a way to keep that sun emblem in a way I liked, so I added a pattern of it printed on the shirt. I'm not really sure if that's Touhou-esque either though, but I kinda like the look of it.
-I thought about removing the red schoolgirl-ish neckline top thingy, and changing it to some other type of collar, but for this I left it.
-I took the design from the sleeve and made ends to the sleeves with it instead.
-The shoes would be the same, sorry they're not in the pic. I made the socks a bit more ruffley though XD (ahh good ol' Touhou ruffles)
-This point is kind of weird. But I noticed with these colors and the way I drew the headdress thingy, it bears a bit of resemblance to Dawn from Pokemon. XD It shouldn't matter TOO much since the headdress probably wouldn't look like that when more properly drawn (and especially from an angle like the portraits are), but it's something to keep in mind.

My only other concern is that the design still has more interest toward the bottom, which I think looks nice but it wouldn't be seen as often as the top (because of portraits). Maybe the headdress can get some eye treatment XD I don't think it would seem like too much since I took away some from the bottom. (The more I think about it, the more I think this is a good idea right now)

Anyway, yeah. Thoughts? It was fun to work with your design, Elcura

Portraits are upcoming! I have numerous sketches if anyone's curious, but colored ones shouldn't be far along.

RuneDevros · « **Reply #118 on:** October 26, 2009, 05:50:20 PM »

It's only the beta out right now. Final version of 0.4.1 drops 10/31.

{posting on lunch break. More when I get home}

RuneDevros · « **Reply #119 on:** October 28, 2009, 02:44:36 AM »

Jamuko, I really like this iteration of the Asa design. I'm thinking we might merge the best of both designs. The sun thing looks better on her shirt as you have her drawn. I'm not quite sure how to change it, but the glyphs on her skirt remind me of the thing Ran wears too much. Elcura, what do you think of it?