Tcrakman stuff

Hello, its been a while huh....I´ve been working on the game for these past months, here´s the current progress on “Project Another”.

Title screen! For now i only use it for debugging purposes :)

Characters: The player can now swap to at least 4 different characters at any moment. Each character has its own strenght´s and weaknesses to help the player overcome puzzles or exploit enemy weaknesses.

The Sewers: a main hub like town where the player can rest in-between the dungeons as well as interact with all the different folks the player has rescued through these dungeons.

Here´s my twitter where i´ve been logging most of the current progress :)  https://twitter.com/Tcrakman

Hello!

Im aware of the tumblr situation, literally, in a few hours, they gonna shot themselves in the foot...

Im still going to post here, (i dont think i have anything that can be considered of sexual nature?) but im going to be more active on other platforms too.

Heres my twitter for a start! https://twitter.com/Tcrakman 

I´ll let you know if i get to post in other sites as well (plan to make a facebook page later so i´ll post the link here when its ready).

...

Also, here´s some of the things i´ve been working on for the game! (sprite animation, mostly), theres a ton more but i still want to leave most of them as a surprise.

Well, if something happens to my blog in a few hours im glad i´ve had the opportunity to share my work with other people (not that i post as much as i want to, sigh...) and also. follow their works as well :)

These are some of the main character attacks! Well actually, theres only 2 special attacks for now, the first one (left in top) being the “Thypoon” attack,  when the character is in air it can quickly fall in a downward thrust motion to smash the ground and create a spiral energy current that damages all nearby enemies, (or objects). The second one (right top) being the “Cyclone” which is a projectile attack that the character will launch if he has enough energy, the cyclone will impact anything in its way being enemies, objects or walls and explode damaging nearby things.

Here´s some animations of Char :)

Been working hard on the dungeon tilesets for the demo!

Been trying to define a style for the game, (it´s been months actually, i ended up scrapping more than half of the stuff i did since i didn´t liked how it ended looking).

Learned a few tricks along the way though! (which now saves me a lot of time doing things with some stuff that took me days before to do...)

Im sure a lot of people already knew about these beforehand but, i didnt... so im just putting these here in case someone needs a helping hand with these issues, or just wants to save time, a lot of time...

Here are 3 advices of art for gamedev i can give based on what i´ve learned through this year:

-Dont go TOO BIG for pixel art! try to make your resolution no more than 960*540 (that´s actually the res i use), you´ll save a lot of time, you´ll enjoy the process more and most importantly...you will not burn yourself out :D

-Try to make your assets fit within a grid. What i mean with this is try to have all your characters, floor tiles, trees, houses, boxes, fences, etc.fit in a power of two size. Like this floor tile is 32*32, this tree here is 64*64, this house is 128*128, this character is 16*16 and so on. This way you´ll have a better time placing all your props in the game engine editor you´re using (im using Game Maker), since they will all fit nicely in the grid.

-Speaking of assets.... Make assets to make your levels! dont make yourself burn out by trying to make (draw, model) every level to look different. Hm... how do i explain this one. When i first started with this project i tried to hand draw every level or room to look different from each other, though it would be cool and more “artsy” to have each level have its unique assets, floor, walls etc. Problem is...it took me a long time to get ANYTHING done. Since im making this game solo i really need to find ways to optimize the developing, i already knew that most if not all games use pre-made assets to build the entirity of their levels but i didnt listen :D, perhaps this is the dumber thing i did and it cost me MONTHS to realize i was doing things the “hard dumb” way.                                                    Just claryfing some things about this! you can build of course every level to be different with just premade assets!                                                                          You can mix and match your floor tiles, trees, walls, platforms etc to create interesting looking and playable levels, its all about creativity :)                              There, of course, can be levels with assets that cant be found in any other part of the game, maybe there is a special boss in this room, maybe this room is different than anything else and it has like a sanctuary, a secret groove, the tree of life, the dreaded chaos ultima machine...                                                           Another good thing of building a library of premade assets is that you can make more levels, dungeons, towns, castles for your game since you already have build a lotta bunch of these assets, so you can have more game in a lot less time than trying to make everything to look different, so....

Well, right now these are the 3 biggest tips for game dev i can give for saving time (based on experience), also here are some other small ones that can also save you time:

-Its a good idea to rough the levels before making the assets for them, i´ve found planning and having a clear vision of what i want is the best way to actually accomplish that vision.

-BRUSHES!!! seriously, try these! you can make your own sets of grass, wall textures, debris, floor patterns, flowers, bricks, tree leaves, bushes, rock textures... well ANYTHING really. (If you´re making pixel art in Aseprite, you can select an area you want a brush of and just press ctrl+b).

-Finally, getting your game to work first is more important than getting it to look good, really, you really want to get the mechanics first more than anything else! Getting a playable prototype of your game is very useful, since people will tell you what they like, dont like, they will give you a lot of valuable feedback on how your game plays, it doesnt need to look good, hell, it can even be squares and circles! 

Also, of course, there are a lot of free assets in the dev stores you can download and use to help you build that prototype! (just please... try to have all the final art in your game to be your own.)

Well, having said all that, i thought it would be cool to share how the playscreen has evolved in these past few weeks, still work to do with the gui (healthbar, icons, etc) but im liking how the latest is looking! the one in the top.

Well, look who´s back from the dead!....

Been months since the last update but still im working on the game. 

Long time no post! been doing a lot of things and one of them is draw a lot, sketches and whatnot, sooo...Here are some garde´s designs cuz reasons! 

Man, apologies for the inactivity, been planning a lot of stuff and haven´t really done that much (new content speaking)

EXCEPT, now the player can fall into voids, abyss, pits, traps, the universe itself so now.. gotta watch your step!

This mechanic was something that was circling around my head through these past weeks, i thought it would be damn hard to implement but turned out to be the easiest thing! The player auto jumps when it reaches the edge of the ground so its super easy to traverse through these treacherous enviroments.

Also, worked on a couple of enviroments too, still need a lot of polish but they are already in the game so thats a good thing.

If you want to watch these new additions here´s a new video showing these new stuff!

Here´s this week update!

I worked on the main character remaining animations, mostly all of the animations when the character is facing up or down. I also worked on the AI of the crawlbots a lot, to make them not so aggressive and only attack the player if it is on their line of sight and at a certain distance of them. If the player is not in the vecinity, the crawlbots will just fool around, jump randomly (occasionaly bumping on their allies) and doing little (and if they find a plant pod or a crate they will sure charge at them, they love doing that). As a last thing, i started making props that the player (or other entities) can destroy hehe, these are fun!

Here´s a video showing better the new stuff!

Here it is this weekend update, A NEW ENEMY APPEARS!

Well, been working on the conversations for a while. Still no proper textbox or animated portraits but... im having a ton of fun just making these! 

Im still deciding on a lot of things forhow the conversations will unfold i mean, how everything will be displayed be sound, animation etc... but here´s a rough version of how is it looking right now.

OKAY...big update, this is the thing i´ve been working for like months, is not done yet (still a TON of work to do) but neverthless im confident enough with it to share it!

Here´s a video showing better this area with sounds and some other new stuff!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbZ79OT1KVc