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.
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.
You can download my first game from the official site here.
http://www.scndgen.com
Thanks
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.
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.
You can download my first game from the official site here.
http://www.scndgen.com
Thanks
Thanked by 1Bensonance
Comments
I'll have a demo for the game out by month end! Here are the stages that will be available.
http://www.indiedb.com/games/the-scnd-genesis-legacy/images/stage-ibex-hill-academy
http://www.indiedb.com/games/the-scnd-genesis-legacy/images/stage-the-scorched-ruins
http://www.indiedb.com/games/the-scnd-genesis-legacy/images/stage-the-smoke-that-thunders
I must admit I had no idea what I was doing, I was just clicking the buttons
the game is now on Steam Greenlight. Please vote yes if you feel like it :)
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=277453062
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
Good luck and see you soon soon!! :)
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.
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.
http://www.digitalskyit.com/downloads/ScndGenLegacyAlpha_1407.zip
Awaiting feedback.
Cleaned up a bit. Tweaked legs slightly.
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.)
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.
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 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
Still tweaking AI, Balance and trying to make the experience more engaging overall.
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.
"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.
"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.
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.