This week we’re doing more evaluation and discussion. But since it’s Eid holiday, we’re a bit slowing down. I’ve been finding a bit difficulties in feeding myself since my usual food stall is off lmao. Anyway, Eid Mubarak!
Rico’s evaluation on story is that my story/writings doesn’t have enough depth, and still feels too hurried on the intro. Well I was expecting that because I want players experience the combat ASAP, since narration wouldn’t be the hook of this game. Also, grammar errors lol. Well yeah, as you’ve noticed my English is only as much as these devlogs’ level, so yeah we’re gonna drill on that later.
As my evaluation towards the combat, I see the sprite was lacking of contrast between in or out of combat. So I was making these not knowing it will work or not since we haven’t implement it yet:
That’s all for this week. I caught a cold so I had so need more time to rest today, haha.
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Hi there! It’s Rico this time, I’ve been working on implementing Fungus to Unity for the past few months it’s been quite ovewhelming to me but now we have a solid workflow for story stuff!
This week I’m focusing on establishing workflow for dungeon, we’re going to ditch roguelike element since it’d be pretty hard for us. And I’m also going to tweak heavy attack a little bit, have a lot of fun ideas, can’t wait to show it next week!
Anuchard: devlog ~17 - Polishing time but not much
Not much for this week since I got an accident and hurt my (working hand) wrist. :(
But yeah, managed to do this from my past streams this week:
Currently I stream per Tuesday and Friday, 8PM UTC+2 / 6PM UTC on twitch.tv/lazcht (give it a follow for a realtime notif to your mail whenever I go live.)
Schedule might change someday if I got better time to stream! :)
This week's summary was...Rico focusing on revisiting combat and game design, so I’m a bit stuck at continuing the story since it’s requiring more technical concern like “in order to face the boss, what do we need next?”. Since the game is about retrieving villagers and get upgrade (unlocking gameplay feature), I’ll need him to conclude the game design at least until the first checkpoint; the boss.
remember this one?
So what did I do instead? Well nothing more to do so I continue on map polishing. Lot of them still looked like draft and jagged here and there...
Beach area before-after:
Village area before-after:
It’ll still work in progress until they look pretty neat on fullscreen.
Also now I do some devstream at twitch quite regularly! currently would be rendering maps, animating pixel sprites, and drawing foods for Anuchard’s promotional images.
I’m trying to find a good schedule but for now I’ll do once per 2 days between 8PM UTC+2 / 6PM UTC or 5AM UTC+2 / 3AM UTC, my current schedule can be seen at the bottom of my channel tho.
Let’s chill and fool around in chatroom (or I don’t mind if you don’t feel like chatting) when you have some leisure time to accompany me working on this shit :>
Care to follow me?(人◕ω◕) >>> twitch.tv/lazcht
That concludes this week’s mini devlog. OH YES I made a cat (or is it dog????) too!
While last several weeks I’ve been talking about Orchard, I want to talk about something different (as I’m running out of topic too;;). It’s been months I’m dealing with story writing and finding best (and efficient) way to tell it, and I’m beginning to face some problems.
Lately I’m a bit frustrated as I don’t want to make players endure long dialogues (and forced event), well in my case is because I’m not confident with my writing, plus this is not a narrative-heavy game that I have to restraint details. I’ve been warned by Rico several times about being ((accidentally)) upping the narrative benchmark so I had to be careful about my own rules.
At first, I aim the narrative style like old games Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past; which the dialogues are very minimum. NPCs only said things necessary (that has to do with gameplay), and the short prologue makes players get in control right away, I think that’s ideal for Anuchard.
Compared to more modern Zelda like Minish Cap, I kinda annoyed by its long intro events, when we can’t move freely and being forced to go here and there.
But as I then played Soul Blazer, I learned that I have to add a bit of character development somehow, I make this game as major reference because the gameplay flow and feel would be similar, we both look for missing villagers and when they came back, things change. I also appreciate the light humor, while I can’t avoid being cliche, I really hope I can put some lighthearted funny or deep memorable dialogues for Anuchard.
Soul Blazer screenshot credit to http://operationrainfall.com/2017/04/13/tbt-review-soul-blazer/
Currently I’m in the middle of playing Illusion of Gaia (which said to be sequel of Soul Blazer), when the dialogues and plot turned out becoming more complex compared to its previous title and the story has more depth, while I hate long flat dialogues on action game (no face or sprites expressions), somehow I can enjoy the scripts written, because lot of time, we don’t have to stay still to read dialogues overflowed in one long event, they separate the information on NPCs in the room, and only certain NPC can proceed the storyline. So you split important information in small chunks. I guess it gives us more freedom?
It’s kinda basic (as I’m a noob on storytelling, that is), but guess I’ll be using this technique to prevent dragging (like some of Legend of Mana’s event and dialogues, EXCEPT they have dazzling sprites animations and effects to keep us entertained *^*). You see:
*sweats vigorously in gamedev*
Bleh, here’s how I make myself feel better: you can’t compare a 3 people indie dev to work of a big company (at least when you want to release it quickly). ╮( ◜◡‾)╭
Back to reality, this is the most crowded room (with interactive NPCs) I made so far, haha, but this is far more manageable than programming a long event (even with lesser character) with some forced movements.
Okay this is all for this week. Hope I can supply better GIFs next week (I miss doing combat-related stuff o_o).
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Hey, it’s weekend already. This week’s progress is quite good, but as I’m still working more on the Orchard’s NPC and story programming, I can’t really share interesting new GIFs, so I’ll share what I got in past progresses.
This is the rough concept for villagers houses:
My vibe and feel benchmark?
Easy right? It’s Chrono Cross. I might not be able to pull the quality (artstyle direction will be different too) but at least I can make it feel similar, green, fresh and sunny. I’ve covered about general universe design here though.
I mostly take reference from Mongolian tents, Viking houses to make them housings, though I personally think I haven’t researched enough of both housing architectures and its culture, yet since I need to proceed to make assets, so I look as much references as possible for me to mix and match and quickly be done with it.
Here’s the steps of MC’s post (will be the first place after game starts) which located there:
At first I’m just aiming for a comfy home like Serge’s home (refer to indoor Chrono Cross pic above). It’s not final however as the MC’s ended up aspired as historian, I need to update it with bookshelves, ancient reports or scrolls, journals, and lot of ancient stuff, so it could sync well with the story. Right now it’s just looked like a normal treehouse or a hut without telling any further information. Also plan add basement later on.
A post shared by stellarNull (@stellar.null) on May 4, 2018 at 10:06pm PDT
Back on me, Laz again. Continuing the last post about the Orchard, I will cover more on Orchard development. That’s what I currently been doing this week too (except rather than the maps, I work more on narrative and NPC--both graphics and “programming” implementation)
By “programming” I’m referring to creating events with Fungus (what do they say and how they move, how certain event follows to another), then also decide on the position they will appear in, on what timeline, and in what state.
This is what Rico’s NPC scheduler looks like:
Before that I plan the timeline and event dialogues on FreeMind (a freeware program for flowchart making, very useful and light! except it’s old looking and I had to change the background to dark mode to prevent tired eyes.) thanks to @mojikenstudio to let me know this badass tool.
It really helped me to see overall story before go straight to implementing which is pretty tiresome to revise later. Also helped me to restrain myself to go overboard with detailed events while the others are neglected because my stamina has depleted. I’m still doing that unconsciously by the way.
This is a screen capture before it was gone complicated like now haha (still using default background). Before I found this I used google docs and I find it way too linear(?) and hard to review.
Haha, looking too nerdy? Right, let’s have a map making steps instead.
I guess it’s enough for this week, gotta save topics for next log haha.
check out other posts about Anuchard! if you like what we’re making, please do reblog or fav!! <3
Hello, it's clea again. Today I'm going to talk about SFX in Anuchard. I start from basic sounds like light hit, heavy hit, dash, impact, with 2-4 variations of them each. Why? So that I can randomize them on each trigger and make things sounds richer and more natural. As for the methods, I combine recorded sounds, samples, and sound design vsti available on my arsenal. freesound.org is my main source for recorded sounds, as I don't record my own voley. I'd like to express my thanks to the website and generous people who contributed there.
The vsts I use for this project are Minisynth from Imageline and FORM from Native Instruments, aided with mixer effects such as reverb, delay, flanger, chorus, EQ and limiter.
What's the challenge? It's not easy mixing diverse sounds that came from totally different sources. I had to be quite careful with volume balance, panning, EQ, noise, etc. For example; Light Attack Hit1 has 3 layer of audio clip, so I must tune their volume, EQ, pan, pitch, length etc so that they will sound good and perfectly timed when played together. Of course there are fun and happy times too, like when I browse plugin presets while hitting my controller and find something that's instantly inspiring and fitting for the project!
That's it for today, sometime later I will talk about SFX categories in Anuchard and their implementation in Unity. If you like my sounds and you want custom sounds for your game, hit me up because I still have commission slot available! Lastly, thank you for supporting Anuchard and stellarNull, see you next time!
Yo! It’s me Laz again. Having good weekend? Honestly this week wasn’t really good for Anuchard because:
BLAARR!!!
Good grief, sun’s heat was so OP past days. Some folks at Java Island (Indonesia) reported to experience similar condition. But currently the temperature is getting better because it’s been raining randomly.
Well since I still have lot of stuff I haven’t posted here, now I’m going to share early version of Orchard (whole):
Here is my first attempt on the Orchard map, as you can see, I didn’t plan to have lot of map set for the hometown, I thought it’s gonna be a small island with 1-2 tents, and that’s connected to the dungeon.
I didn’t want a real top down city map because it would look boring and all houses will face downwards. I did try to recreate this concept art--
--into a tile-based map, this is how it looks like, haha. Messy huh?
...but then frustratingly, I decided to move on to a non-tile based pixel art map...
--which is lot less-frustrating on the creation process, but still unable to pull it. This version of Orchard looks too small and cramped. Therefore I thought of dividing the Orchard into several set of maps will be good idea (also I believe will improve player’s experience).
But instead of going for all handcrafted-pixelwork, my next attempt, is converting digital painting into pixel art (mostly uses posterize filter + TONS of manual render).
But as I covered in previous post, some of the objects are modular, so yeah current version is pretty much convenient.
Note that all of above’s work are not finished assets. Still loads of endless work for me!! SHIT. (but let’s try to enjoy that!)
Wow it’s quite long for a minidevlog. Peace out.
check out other posts about Anuchard! if you like what we’re making, please do reblog or fav!! <3
Hi, clea here, bringing you update on anuchard audio! Today I'd like to talk about ghost music which currently sounds like this:
This song was made quickly due to sudden inspiration(under 1 hour maybe?) when rico and laz tell me they needed this music for a spirit/ghost encounter. They explained the backstory, mood and sent me some cool references as well!
The piece I created was very short and simple back then though; I have updated it 2 times since, adding second part which brings percussion and choir to the song, and third part that brings a new motif, chord set, and low strings, all while constantly polishing and tinkering with the mix.
Right now, I'm quite happy with the song, as it managed to evoke that elusive ghostly mood, mixed with warmth, cold, and sentimentality. Maybe I will expand the third part sometime in the future, because that part is ripe with beautiful chord opportunity, and the loop can be made even better than it is now. EQ ing the main bell synth was a challenge though, I wanted it to be duller and smoother, and luckily succeeded in doing so!
Now I'd be very happy to hear some feedback, what do you like or dislike about this song? You can be as broad or detailed as you like, and feel free to ask me if you have any questions! Thank you for reading and see you next time!
check out other posts about Anuchard! if you like what we’re making, please do reblog or fav!! <3
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Hello! Since this week I went back to my home city for personal needs, I couldn’t focus much for Anuchard.
Actually we’re about to re-launch Frontgate Fighters Jump (previously Frontgate Fighters) to Google Play Store, see here for details: https://www.facebook.com/FFJumpgame/
For this session, we actually were planning about covering audio but @leshlick isn’t ready to blog this late at night, so I would share something else instead.
For you guys following our feeds on our twitter, these ain’t new stuff, but yeah I’ll go compile some of interesting ones I can find in case you haven’t seen ‘em. These are mockups (all of them in Flash) I had to show Rico so he can implement on his side:
1. that GIF on the top was planting UI/UX mockup (the feature currently is canceled, but will be reused for cooking later) assets of course are still dummy.
2. mockup for last sequence of light attacks combo, a boomerang like attack:
3. teleportation event mockup (this one was not too old compared to others above):
4. mockup for kick move. haha quite fun looking but not gonna get implemented:
That’s all for the filler this week haha.
Oh here’s a bonus because THIS is what I’ve been working on this week mostly out of my unproductive week, I hope you’re not bored yet of me posting Orchard’s pond:
check out other posts about Anuchard! if you like what we’re making, please do reblog or fav!! <3
Anuchard: devlog ~08 - Benchmarking and Optimizing I
Yo! Saturday comes so fast. Lately I've been working on Orchard maps. Well Orchard will be the only town in this game, so we had to push this one out.
So before, @ricolemba is the one who implemented every assets on Unity, (even with events and dialogs) but lately I’m also working simultaneously with story eventing and maps implementation (while he’s working on anything else) since his workload is already too bloated compared to the others, usually ended up in bottlenecks. Also the plus side is I can nitpick map implementation myself until I’m satisfied haha (a bit control freak here).
Currently we've been passing over the Unity project remotely (without using bitbucket because lazy) by only copying Assets + ProjectSettings folders, or patching things that changed inside Assets (surprisingly after trial and errors, this workflow is quite good).
based on Rico’s base project, I learned how to update or implement minor things myself. I begun to change 2-3 layers-system map to modular map which I separated the reuseable objects like trees, rocks, or bushes. We decided to keep this workflow in the future because we can then easily revise or edit the boundary (hitboxes or colliders) as needed.
from this:
to this:
I've also managed to try to animate objects and sunbeams, still basic and unpolished but here are the result (also see the GIF on the most top):
Have a fun weekends and don't forget to rest properly (if necessary) or do something you really wanted but couldn't in weekdays haha.
P.S. : I’m gonna revise the water glitters (and obviously the sea waves) as a dev fellow commented that it looks like the water is looking too foamy (like soap water) lmao
P.P.S. : We’re recording GIFs with ShareX. Nice and free tool! Sehr gut.
check out other posts about Anuchard! if you like what we’re making, please do reblog or fav!! <3
Actually we were working on this while ago, but I wanna share how this GIF above gets made. Firstly this:
i was thinking it probably easy to make a diamond transition that’s quite common in video games, so i made this:
and i never been so wrong...
then a bit more thought poured and tried to use fix numbers on grayscale percentage:
still too jagged yo wtf.
oh probably it’s better if i add gradient to each of the diamonds, this should work.
hahahahahaha!!
as someone a that’s bit stupid, it was quite frustrating you know!
lastly i got help from a programmer partner to help me figuring out about the logic between the timing and the black and white value. then i realized that what i need is a transition inside each diamond because i need them to shrink and swipe:
getting close to what i wanted but still looking glitchy!
here is the last one that we agreed to use, i totally forgot how did i manage to make this (most likely it’s not my idea at all), so don’t ask me to reproduce this lmao.
yasss <3 (it’s a perk of having a friend that’s not as dumb around)
okay that’s it for this week haha.
check out other posts about Anuchard! if you like what we’re making, please do reblog or fav!! <3
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Hi, last time I was sharing about world building, and as promised, I’ll share another story concept, about the main character on this session.
Faceless
MC (stands for main character) doesn’t have name yet nor their gender. Not that i’m intend them to be a non-binary, ambiguous or genderless character, but i just prefer them to be more abstract character. Not to mention I didn’t draw the face at all. Also yeah it’s apparently will be a silent protagonist.
I want players to be able to blend or immerse within this simple character, that answers why the simplicity and lack of design detail (apart from my laziness). I don’t know though, whether it would work in modern gaming days compared to classic games 20 years back.
pls click “Keep reading” to continue! (just had to shorten posts so it doesn’t flood tumblr’s dashboard/ reblogs)
MC mostly seen as female as the skirts and the bob-style hair, haha. Personally I believe anyone regardless of sex or gender could wear anything or any style they want, not to mention the universe’s cultural aspect is not something we would experience in real life or present day.
but anyway, development wise, we refer MC as “Dora” haha. you know why.
Bellwielder
Moving to story once again, MC is a Bellwielder (terms may change in future, and the weapon IS a bell, okay? XD). Bellwielder is a role, a quite sacral one, compared of many other occupations in Anuchard, there are lumberjack, farmer (food and fabrics), animal tender, builder, housekeeper, teacher, artist, etc.
About week ago, we’ve been discussing things around the story, ending and about who or what Bellwielder is. We’re still unclear about how things should be, but I can share what we already think is good.
In present day as the game set, a Bellwielder is regarded as a myth, that most of people know so little about or even forgotten all along. As the people are ditching their gods, years after the fall of Anuchard (the world’s name), so is their worshipping altar and altar keepers. No one but several curious kids are interested on “cults” like Guardians, spiritual ceremony, and miracle.
Traces of Bellwielder’s existence was actually drawn on the wall of the Main Altar, but went unnoticed by most of people; the citizens are too busy rebuilding their house, gathering woods, stones, as they prefer to stand by their own feet. They use altar as public kitchen, Guardian statues are abandoned and moldy, walls drawn by kids.
A post shared by stellarNull (@stellar.null) on Mar 3, 2018 at 7:23am PST
Elders believed Bellwielders as a godsent chosen one who fights evils, a savior you can reply on, when disaster comes.
As I mentioned in last post, I aim for a simple “chosen one” trope. This Bellwielder, simply is the servant of Guardians.
Mission
What actually this Bellwielder does on the entire playtime? Currently we think about MC’s main purpose is to restore the fallen and fragmented Anuchard to its original form.
To recap about last post a bit, Anuchard is now separated into two main parts, the Orchard (hometown) and the Dungeon. Orchard however is missing many parts of it, along with the citizens who lived there before the fall.
And for that, MC with the sacred bell, will need to scavenge the Dungeon to look for citizen’s souls and relics, because… yes YOU, MC are the slave chosen one.
check out other posts about Anuchard! if you like what we’re making, please do reblog or fav!! <3
last time i was writing about gameplay and progress, now i’ll be talking about concepts.
Anuchard’s Universe Design
eventhough the name -Anuchard- came from project’s codename, we thought it’s good enough as name of the world.
these two images was my first sketch for the Orchard (the home village). my main reference was Yggdrasil tree, and orchard from Legend of Mana (again). but since floating island is kinda cliche, so the other idea was a deserted island inside a cave (right one).
i intended to put baobabs and statue of owl, but ended up just using the baobab. later on i did some random research on Madagascar and African Tribes for village ideas.
what i would think first myself: “Which older games i had played back then that i find the hometown or basecamp most interesting or homey?” as project main inspiration, Legend of Mana came across first of course, later specifically, Rico mentioned about Chrono Cross’ Arni Village.
above is only a small capture of my Orchard reference map (tips! use PureRef for awesome ref board). that reminds me i have to research and play-through Bastion (as the premise might be close enough).
pls click “Keep reading” to continue! (just had to shorten posts so it doesn’t flood tumblr’s dashboard/ reblogs)
as the island inside a cave accepted as the hometown concept, then i continue to explore and get the feel of it.
this was what i get in my head BEFORE i thought about the story.
if you ask did i design without concluding a background story? NANI?!
actually yes. it sucks tho.
Background Story and Ideas
it’s hard to think or visually concept something when you have no story behind it, especially if the artist, which is MYSELF, has a minus balance on creativity bank account (i do need lot of reading and watching).
so i had to think a simple background story to connect with the gameplay aspect too. well to be honest, i think i’m the less-inspired person in team, but i tried to improve my storywriting skill so... i thought, just do it, and quickly.
then i browsed our GDDs (yes it’s multiple, blame Rico) and the project specifications. most important thing i did consider was: how many dungeons and bosses? then how to connect them with planting and cooking? and how i’m gonna connect it with the boss-feeding mechanic?
as we plan to make 5 dungeons with a boss of each one, i start to think about the relationship between people of Anuchard (including us main character), with the bosses. they’re gonna be the Gods of the Anuchard, the creators and governors. i then refer them as “Guardian”.
then i wrote this (pleasecorrect me for grammar error, i mean it!) :
Anuchard was a vast prosperous floating island inhabited by hundreds of citizen, living peacefully. Protected and guided by five ancient guardians; Green, Gold, Indigo, Red, and Platinum, people never felt any less secure, the place was said to be a true utopia.
Until one day, all the guardians decided to leave the land, without (actually with) notice, the island fell to the surface of an ocean cave, split into fragments of dungeons full of dangerous monsters and traps, connected by mystical force.
at least that settles up the premise or the game introduction.
Green (nature theme), Gold (ancient Egypt elegant theme), Indigo (Moai and sea theme), Red (oriental and hot theme), Platinum (geometric, sacred and checkers theme). the themes will also be used for the dungeon’s visual and level design.
then about the other aspect of gameplay: hometown building and the villager interactions.
i imagined this project’s feel would be somewhat like classic JRPG dungeon crawling like Azure Dreams and Chocobo Dungeon, and other games that has feature to expand their hometown through the storyline or level progression, like Digimon World 1, Suikoden series and Brave Fencer Musashi (kinda?). and later i found out older games like Soul Blazer that uses “retrieve missing villagers or rebuild your city”.
usually the plot would be something like:
Chosen one gets a sacred weapon or role,
Any brave adolescents (usually son of legendary person), trained to go scavenge the dungeon (or tower),
Beat a big threatening things to save their hometown, or your (also chosen one) girl (with healing power).
i could totally use those idea, HAHA!
anyway it’s already so long, so i have to conclude this devlog. next time i’ll be covering about our Main Character!
for closing: and THIS, is what i could pull for concept, after we made some backstory (and research, of course). see the difference?
moral of the story for myself, developing a backstory is necessary for knowing what things i need to explore and research, without them, i would put all random things i like from my unresourceful brain. *sadreactonly*
because no GIF no fun, please have this video instead:
A post shared by stellarNull (@stellar.null) on Jan 3, 2017 at 7:51pm PST
check out other posts about Anuchard! if you like what we’re making, please do reblog or fav!! <3
