The SCND Genesis: Legacy

edited in Projects
Hi guys.

Let me start by saying I've been looking for a place like this for a while. A place where African game developers can collaborate and share ideas. You seem to have a great community and I hope you push makegamesSA further.

Ive been drawing comics for several years and created a series I called The SCND Genesis, originally known as AK (Action Kid). Around 2012 I turned one of my arcs into a simple 2D game called SG Legends. It started out as an experiment but ended up gathering over 10,000 downloads in over 120 countries. Inspired by this I began working on a sequel, Legacy.

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Its written in Java 8 and uses OpenGL 3.3 and OpenAL for graphics and Audio respectively.

The game is currently in a playable state and will be ready to download as an alpha soon. That said I feel its release is far off (Q4 2014) and Id like to use this time to incorporate player feedback into my current game play mechanics. I hope I can do that here with you guys. Ill be updating this thread with links to downloads and information on changes made to the engine.

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You can download my first game from the official site here.
http://www.scndgen.com

Thanks
Thanked by 1Bensonance

Comments

  • @SubiyaCryolite This looks interesting. At first glance it looks like a Mortal Kombat style game? Let us know when the demo is available. The art looks great, but it would be cool to be able to see it all in motion... ;)
  • Art is pretty cray cray. Keen to play the game.
  • edited
    Its finally ready, playable alpha available here, http://www.scndgen.com/downloads/ScndGenLegacyAlpha.zip. Please give me feedback :)

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  • If the link is giving problems just right click and save as.
  • Is there a particular reason you used Java 8? I see the runtime is not available from java.com and still in CTP


  • I must admit I had no idea what I was doing, I was just clicking the buttons
    Thanked by 1SubiyaCryolite
  • edited
    Fengol said:
    Is there a particular reason you used Java 8? I see the run-time is not available from java.com and still in CTP
    Yeah, I was primarily using it for parallelStreams to help with loading and the like. However, I recompiled it to use Java 7 for the sake of Ubuntu users as their repo is stuck on 7.
  • edited
    Fengol said:
    I must admit I had no idea what I was doing, I was just clicking the buttons
    I need to put up a proper tutorial XD. Change the difficulty to easy and try gain. Basically you have to manage your speed and paradigms to launch attacks effectively against your opponent.
  • May I ask how does it run on your machine, and what are its specs?
  • edited
    It seems to run fine on my machine. I'm using a Dell Vostro 3750 with 6GB memory.

  • Hi everyone,
    the game is now on Steam Greenlight. Please vote yes if you feel like it :)
    http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=277453062
  • Is there a new prototype to test?

    I'm worried you're doing yourself a disservice announcing so early on Steam Greenlight when the graphics and gameplay don't indicate the final game. I see you're already getting negative comments from Steam users based on the videos and screenshots you presented.
  • Fengol said:
    Is there a new prototype to test?

    I'm worried you're doing yourself a disservice announcing so early on Steam Greenlight when the graphics and gameplay don't indicate the final game. I see you're already getting negative comments from Steam users based on the videos and screenshots you presented.
    You raise valid points. I guess I acted in haste after being accepted on Desura. The good news is I've been aware of the games lacking character art/animations for a while and contacted a 3D modeller to create some meshes a few weeks ago. I'm in the process of adding skeletal animation to the engine as well. Basically the idea is to keep the environments as is and have cell shaded 3D character models instead.
  • Before you hire an artist, get the gameplay working.

    The last prototype I played I couldn't figure out what I was doing or what was going on; and weren't you supposed to have some elemental mechanic because I didn't see it.
  • edited
    Fengol said:
    Before you hire an artist, get the gameplay working.

    The last prototype I played I couldn't figure out what I was doing or what was going on; and weren't you supposed to have some elemental mechanic because I didn't see it.
    Yes they are, the problem is there was no tutorial. When you right click or press 1, the paradigm switch screen comes up. The paradigms are:

    Mage - Enhances Celestial attacks. Weakens other attacks. Slows down player
    Tank - Enhances Physical attacks. Weakens other attacks. Slows down player
    Alchemist - Enhances Hybrid attacks. Weakens other attacks. Slows down player
    Speedster - Weakens all attacks in return for incredible speed
    All Star - Simultaneously enhances Physical, Celestia and Hybrid attacks to a lesser degree. Slows down player
    Augmenter - Enhances buffer attacks. Weakens other attacks. Slows down speed.

    When you switch paradigms it affects the effectiveness (damage and recharge speed) of certain attacks. The attacks themselves are colour coded.
    Red - Physical Attack
    Green - Celestial Attack
    Orange - Hybrid (Physical and Celestial combined)
    Blue - Buffer attack.
  • edited
    Using this as an example image

    If I wanted to use "X Fist Assult !!!" Id have two things to consider.

    1. I only have 3 active slots (green). The attack requires 3 slots (3 exclamation marks, more slots represent more powerful attacks).
    2. The attack is a Hybrid type (yellow bar).

    I could fire this attack in my current paradigm (Tank) but it wouldn't be as powerful. So the best thing to do is switch to the Alchemist Paradigm and then attack.
    At that point my character wouldn't be able to attack as all of his slots are full of attacks in cool down. “Left Punch!”, “Flame lvl.3 !!!” and "X Fist Assault !!!" in particular would hold up all action slots.
    If I switched to the Speedster paradigm, all 3 attacks would cool down much faster freeing up my characters slots. I could then switch back to Tank and launch an effective “Uppercut!” attack.
  • edited
    So instead of exclamations next to the action button label you should use the same symbol as the slots so a player can identify the 2 as related; you should also move the slots from the centre of the screen to just above the action buttons so the player doesn't have to look in 2 different places for related information.

    The same goes for the paradigm; I have to look on the top left of the screen to know what paradigm I'm in for buttons on the left of the screen. You can also convey the paradigm to the player by changing the paradigm indicator on the action buttons e.g. double the thickness of the colour bars for the actions that match the paradigm so the player is guided to use particular actions.

    If you can do that you'll do a lot to convey how the game is supposed to work.

    I'll play the prototype you've shared again to see how you're doing the cool down.

    There are a lot of gameplay things you can do without resorting to an artist yet; I haven't even mentioned the tells the characters need to show before they perform their action so you can anticipate and counter them.
  • Noted, thanks a lot for the feedback.
  • Alright,

    Seems I vastly underestimated the insane amount of traffic Steam gets. Only 15 hours in and its already 6% towards the top hundred and has 1089 votes (30%yes, 70%) no.

    I've decided to freeze the games Greenlight page until its actually ready for release/out on Desura. Steam Greenlight is a a popularity contest and its much easier to get votes with a complete product/existing fanbase. Its comforting to know that even with so many flaws (MS Paint: The Game) its possible to get many yes votes, but I can do much better. Thanks for the valuable feedback guys, I'll be able to make serious progress and put up a better showing.

    Lesson learnt, chaotic but educational.
    Arnie voice "Ill be back".
  • Stay on the forums here and post regular updates to get feedback. You can get a lot from the designers, developers & artists here.
  • Yeah man, don't disappear to work on the game in isolation, show as often as possible, that's how you get feedback, and as you can see feedback is the best way to get better, not genius, not talent... Feedback. And tons of it.

    Good luck and see you soon soon!! :)
  • edited
    Thanks guys,

    Already working on the UI changes. Last night I changed all my textures from PNGs to DXT5 to reduce the GPUs memory footprint (from 1300MB to 370MB). Should run a lot better on integrated GPUs now.
  • @SubiyaCryolite: Don't worry too much about optimisation right now, focus on that UI and gameplay introduction stuff. It sounds like you've got a pretty deep system planned for this game, make that explain itself to players at a glance and really sing in terms of game feel before you put time into optimisation. The biggest issue with doing it the other way around is that you're going to want to make less changes than you might need to, because you've "already got this part running fast", that's very poisonous.
    Thanked by 1Fengol
  • Not quite there yet, but progress >_>.

    I just spent some time playing Transistor (fantastic game) and once everything is in place that's the kind of cell shaded look I'll aim for. It also did a fantastic job at introducing its mechanics, I'll make sure not to overlook that in the future.

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    Thanked by 1konman
  • Still going it at, next step beyond tweaking the UI is improving on animations. My previous attempts were quite lazy

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  • When are we getting another playable version?
  • Let me build one right now, I tweaked several mechanics. AI is more responsive. ADSL is spotty so come back in an hour
  • Only 50MB (amazing compression from 226MB >_>). This version has no audio to reduce the upload size but you can place "jenesisEngineAudio.jar" from the last download into the lib folder to enable it. This version jumps straight into the match but once its over you can configure characters, stages and options.

    http://www.digitalskyit.com/downloads/ScndGenLegacyAlpha_1407.zip

    Awaiting feedback.
  • Aaaand my scanners having a fit

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  • image only 12 frames [70ms delay/ 14 fps]
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    Cleaned up a bit. Tweaked legs slightly.
  • edited
    And that's a wrap
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  • I like the colours. :)

    I'm not really an animator, but I'd highly recommend that you try and position your frames so that the feet that are firmly on the ground stay in the same place between frames. It's super jerky otherwise. You also jump straight from one step into the other, so the movement is hard to follow. An in-between frame where the leg that's moving forward is lifted and overlapping the other leg would make that more clear.

    I also strongly, strongly recommend that you take some reference footage. You can use a camera phone or a webcam or whatever, but just record yourself doing the motions, so you can get a feel for the timing and weight. You could paint over some of the frames too, to reference them in some of your keyframes -- and it'd definitely help with the problem with the feet. At the end of the day, especially for a fighting game, you're not necessarily going to want "realistic" animation anyway, especially with moves that have to feel very responsive, but having that as a reference would likely fix most of the problems going right now.

    I mean, if you're going to spend a lot of time making cool sprite animations, you might as well take all the shortcuts you can and make it look really good. (Of course, if you don't really intend on becoming a really good artist/animator, then perhaps you should work exclusively on the gamplay and try and make such a cool game that artists are excited to want to contribute.)
  • Of course, if you don't really intend on becoming a really good artist/animator, then perhaps you should work exclusively on the gamplay and try and make such a cool game that artists are excited to want to contribute.
    Good advice!

  • Fengol said:
    Of course, if you don't really intend on becoming a really good artist/animator, then perhaps you should work exclusively on the gamplay and try and make such a cool game that artists are excited to want to contribute.
    Good advice!

    Thanks, I'll consider that. I didnt get your feedback on the latest build. To be clear I wanted this game to play like Final Fantasy XIII but much lighter with focus on 1 to 1 battles.
  • Also, perhaps I'm biased towards my work but how can I improve my art? I wanted a style similar to comics or anime and I've never experienced criticism (on Ubuntu, gpwiki or fam/friends) until Steam Greenlight. I look at my screenshots and think they like fine, Im not trying to be Limbo or Bastion. People on Steam obviously don't feel the same way.
    Is it really so bad that I need someone else to do it? In an ideal world Id like my sprites to look like this, I'm not into pixel art or oil paintings. 3D would be too much hustle considering everything Id want to do with a story campaign.

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  • I'm going to be brutality honest and say your submission currently looks like programmer art (also called dev art); but that's not the problem. The real problem is the gameplay is still very immature and I think you should be focusing on that instead of the artwork.

    The benefits of working on the gameplay instead of the artwork is that developers and artists can see through dev art to the game beneath and if it's compelling people will want to work with you on the game. Potential customers and the core fans you will establish can also see through dev art and provide the enthusiasm and market your game for you. But this all depends on having a fun game rather than a good looking game.

    It's clear that you enjoy the art side of things and it's your passion but if you work on the gameplay and make that fun you will attract artists who share in your artistic vision and will help you get the style you want. You want it to look something like Blazblue or King of Fighters and that's totally possible; there are some local artists with a brawler on the burner that's got some amazing 2D art done called Clash (I'll try to find some links).

    MakeGames is the best place to share your work-in-progress and get help; and I suggest if you stay near Cape Town or Johannesburg to come to one of the community nights and show off your game and get advise in person.

    I haven't played the latest version of your prototype (my daughter has been sick so I've had limited time) but I soon will and I'll definitely continue to provide as much feedback as possible.
  • Here's the video from the community night showing off Clash

  • Thanks, I really appreciate the honest feedback . I'll try my best to refine my current battle-system into something enjoyable. Unfortunately I live in Zambia so I wont be able to attend any events in person.
  • edited
    Also, perhaps I'm biased towards my work but how can I improve my art? I wanted a style similar to comics or anime and I've never experienced criticism (on Ubuntu, gpwiki or fam/friends) until Steam Greenlight. I look at my screenshots and think they like fine, Im not trying to be Limbo or Bastion. People on Steam obviously don't feel the same way.
    Is it really so bad that I need someone else to do it? In an ideal world Id like my sprites to look like this, I'm not into pixel art or oil paintings. 3D would be too much hustle considering everything Id want to do with a story campaign.

    image


    Here comes some honesty, and I'm gonna preface this by saying that it's not intended to discourage - the point of the below is really just one thing - focus on what you want to/should be focussing on.

    1. Your art is stuck in the middle - there's too much effort put in for it to be dev art and it's not good enough to be art.

    2. Let me elaborate on this: The trick to dev art is to make sure it looks like you put no effort in it - it is focused on design and functionality. This is SUPER important. If you put effort into the art, people will start to take it as "the art" rather than "dev art". That's when people start talking about the art rather than the game - you want people to focus on the gameplay, the design. Understanding and playing. Not the art, because you weren't trained as an artist.
    TLDR; stickmen would have been better to show people the gameplay.

    E.g. There's a trick in design we do - we could whip up website wireframes quicker with illustrator and vector programs, but sometimes we don't do that and rather hand-draw the wireframes with pencil instead - because when we do that the client gets tripped up over the aesthetics and what the vectors look like and he wants more rounded corners and the colours look wrong and etc etc etc instead of focusing on what the wireframes were supposed to do - it's about structure and flow and function. So we

    3. Wanting to improve on your art is commendable - but the way you put it, it sounds like you think there's some kind of quick trick to get it to look like the example you gave.

    There isn't.

    If you really want to improve on your art, you gotta work at it. Long hours and many repetitions. It's just like anything else, really. I had to teach myself programming to be able to make games instead of just screenshots, it's two years later and I'm beginning to be able to make stuff move without googling line by line. So if you really want your art to improve - work at it.

    4. That said, you don't have to be the artist. If you make a good game, people will eventually join your team. There are many artists here looking for "homes" - and all over the world, everywhere. Making a good game will attract talent to you. The question isn't then "how do I improve my art" - the question is "how do I improve the art for my game"! :)

    Good luck! :D

  • Thanks again guys, this is really helpful. It seems I spent a lot of time on developing the engine/"art" rather than developing what matters (the actual game). Since technology isn't a problem anymore and the engine can do anything I want it to I'll focus solely on getting the gameplay right. I'll also take a similar approach to my first game, graphics will be placeholders until everthing is actually playable. Hopefully I can make a similar leap this time around from this to this

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  • As for my "art" I plan on improving it regardless of if it ends up in the game or not. I've ordered a cheapo Walcom drawing tablet to practice properly.
  • Quick updates.

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    Still tweaking AI, Balance and trying to make the experience more engaging overall.
  • when will that be in the game?
  • I spent this afternoon's drive home and this evening thinking about your UI, the game mechanics and the type of game you want to make (a 1-on-1 fighting game with Final Fantasy style controls) and I realised you were describing Pokemon battles; and it all made sense.

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    Far from saying you should make your game look like or play Pokemon, I'm saying you should take research view of how Pokemon battles play out.

    As for SCND Genesis, the buttons are all on the right while the player's character is on the left. This is confusing as the buttons should be in relation to the player's character; either on the right or below them.

    I think you should also simplify the attacks (e.g. what's the difference between Right Punch and Left Punch) so the player has got only 3-5 choices or make at a time. What about only showing certain moves like Heal when the player is in the correct paradigm? Besides giving the player an easily digestible about of choices at a time, it gives them a good reason to change paradigms and see what each one offers. It also gives more meaning to changing paradigms than just an unseen bonus to moves.

    Finally, I think next to your gauges (at least for now) you should put numbers so players can more accurately see what's going on.

    The more I think about it the more taking queues from Pokemon battles makes sense to me and I'm tempted to make a quick prototype to explain what I mean.

    I know this isn't the final direction you want to go in but taking a step back and working from a known and understood mechanic will help give focus on what you need to do to get your mechanics just right.
    Thanked by 1Tuism
  • Thanks for your input.

    "As for SCND Genesis, the buttons are all on the right while the player's character is on the left. This is confusing as the buttons should be in relation to the player's character; either on the right or below them."

    The reason the action buttons were put on the right was because of the mouse. Having them on the left felt awkward when using it. At the same it's awkward if the player maps directions to WASD as opposed to the presets of up, down etc.
    Initially the action buttons were at the bottom of the screen but because of the games relatively fast pace it felt a little distracting to look up and down over and over. Perhaps I should try the bottom again as its the only sensible middle ground. That's were Xenoblade and most MMOs put their arts for example.

    image

    "I think you should also simplify the attacks (e.g. what's the difference between Right Punch and Left Punch) so the player has got only 3-5 choices or make at a time. What about only showing certain moves like Heal when the player is in the correct paradigm? Besides giving the player an easily digestible about of choices at a time, it gives them a good reason to change paradigms and see what each one offers. It also gives more meaning to changing paradigms than just an unseen bonus to moves."

    This is a very good suggestion. In the first game the player only had 4 moves under 3 menus (Physical Attacks, Celestia Attacks and Items). I could group moves into the paradigms, this has several advantages:
    1. This would encourage players to experiment as you said.
    2. The player would have to be more considerate of when to switch paradigms because different moves cool down much faster or slower in different paradigms.
    3. The speedster paradagim could be made more interesting by allowing the player to recover but with very little or no actions made available to them.

    "Finally, I think next to your gauges (at least for now) you should put numbers so players can more accurately see what's going on."

    I used to use "lvl 2 or lvl 3" before, I could revert back to those.

    That was really helpful advice. I'll do some research on the Pokemon system to get some ideas. Cheers.
  • Still experimenting with the games HUD. I'm now using icons to represent attacks, a textual representation is shown above but after some playthroughs I expect users to become familiar with each icon. I've also tweaked and re-balanced the two players in the following manner.

    Azarias affinity for celestia attacks is 1.2f, physical attacks is 0.6f and hybrid/items is 0.2f;
    Subiyas affinity for celestia attacks is 0.8f, physical attacks is 0.8f and hybrid/items is 0.4f;

    These affinities determine how effective a characters offense and defense are against attacks. These characters affinities are altered further by paradigms. When a player is in the Celestia paradigm for example their magical attacks are much stronger and they are more resistant to magical attacks. In this state their physical and hybrid/item attacks are weaker and they are also susceptible to more damage from these attack types.The same concept is true for the other paradigms (Tank and Alchemist).

    The speed paradigm is special in that it greatly enhances the characters speed (to recharge attacks) but makes all attacks extremely weak and reduces characters defense against all attacks significantly. Code snippet below.

    float paradigmEffect = 0.2f;
    switch (currentParadigm) {
                case paradigmCelestia: {
                    charEffectivenessClestial = initialCharEffectivenessClestial * (1.50f + paradigmEffect);
                    charEffectivenessPhysical = initialCharEffectivenessPhysical * (0.50f - paradigmEffect);
                    charEffectivenessHybrid = initialCharEffectivenessHybrid * (1.10f + paradigmEffect);
                    charEffectivenessSpeed = 2.0f;
                }
                break;
    
                case paradigmTank: {
                    charEffectivenessClestial = initialCharEffectivenessClestial * (0.7f - paradigmEffect);
                    charEffectivenessPhysical = initialCharEffectivenessPhysical * (1.6f + paradigmEffect);
                    charEffectivenessHybrid = initialCharEffectivenessHybrid * (1.2f + paradigmEffect);
                    charEffectivenessSpeed = (1.80f - paradigmSpeedEffect);
                }
                break;
    
                case paradigmHybid: {
                    charEffectivenessClestial = initialCharEffectivenessClestial * (0.75f - paradigmEffect);
                    charEffectivenessPhysical = initialCharEffectivenessPhysical * (0.75f - paradigmEffect);
                    charEffectivenessHybrid = initialCharEffectivenessHybrid * (1.50f + paradigmEffect);
                    charEffectivenessSpeed = (2.2f + paradigmSpeedEffect);
                }
                break;
    
                case paradigmSpeed: {
                    charEffectivenessClestial = initialCharEffectivenessClestial * (0.25f);
                    charEffectivenessPhysical = initialCharEffectivenessPhysical * (0.25f);
                    charEffectivenessHybrid = initialCharEffectivenessHybrid * (0.25f);
                    charEffectivenessSpeed = (3.0f + paradigmSpeedEffect);
                }
                break;
            }


    UI changes below. Comments welcome, will upload a new build soon.

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