As promised, I've been finishing up some more creatures that'll fit right into your Halloween festivities!
Pictured above, I've also given the player the ability to deflect certain projectiles with a shield bash, making the projectile dangerous to enemies
That's all for now - thanks for reading and see ya next update!
-Matt
Apologies for the radio silence through August! Long story short: a series of obnoxious and painful mouth problems culminated in the removal of my wisdom teeth. I expected there to be a degree of recovery time, but it hit me harder than I anticipated. Anyway, good riddance!
I did manage to get a few things done through August along with a bunch more this month - so, onto the good stuff!
So - a LOT done, but still tons to do content-wise. I'll keep you all posted as I continue to flesh this game out!
Thanks for reading!
-Matt
Since the last update, I've been in mega content-grind. What I have been focusing on for the most part is rooms. Rooms and rooms and rooms and ROOMS! All the pieces that will make up randomly generated encounters and mini-stages (including dungeons and caves).
One of the challenges presented with these "sections" is that they all need to match up - ground levels and ceiling levels need to be on the same coordinates from screen to screen, so the player's character doesn't get "stuck" in a solid during a room transition. This is all handled during the stage randomization, right before the area is loaded. Rooms are tagged with a base coordinate, so that the algorithm knows which batch of rooms it can choose from... like a giant grab bag of rooms stamped with a number, all shuffled and mixed up, and then slotted into a randomly chosen sequence.
Another thorn in my side has sadly come from Game Maker: Studio's room creator/editor. Doing so many of these, I started to get really worn out - the user interface is a bit challenging to work within, especially quickly! BUT - I found an alternative in a piece of software called Tiled.
Tiled is freakin' awesome! It has (just about) everything I have been craving that's missing from GM:S's room editor - fill commands, randomizers, line tools, buttery smooth UI interactions - it's seriously good stuff. It has cut my room production time waaay down - I am able to crank out a room in a quarter of the time it was taking me in GM:S! This is especially handy since each room needs to be "skinned" several times over with location and biome specific tilesets. Highlands need to look like highlands, swamps need mud and vines, mountains need snow and tons of rocks - you get the idea.
If you're interested in checking out Tiled, you can grab it here: http://www.mapeditor.org/
There's also this brilliant little program created by someone named Pasty on the GM:S community forums that will convert your Tiled files to .gmx files (asset files used by GM:S) which can be enthusiastically enjoyed here: http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=583235
These two programs have made my life about a billion times easier - yay!!
I've also been cranking out all of the remaining environment art that still needs doing. Things like props, varied backgrounds, climbable bits, and so on.
Here are some composite test shots with some of the background and parallax scrolling assets:
One last thing for anyone interested in project organization and the like - My good friend Tim (of Boss101 and Donley Time Foundation) introduced me to Cloudforge and TortoiseSVN. You see, GM:S had recently kinda melted on me (MY FAULT!)- Savage WOULD NOT compile! The last week has been quite the nightmare, pulling my hair out trying to figure out what the heck was going on.
I had been going about managing my backups very stupidly - creating a brand new project file every time I pumped out a new iteration, with titles like "Savage - the Shard of Gosen_a 7-27-2015". Somewhere, somehow, GM:S's streams got crossed and assets were overwritten or deleted. Trying to compile resulted in GM:S not being able to find things like sprites, backgrounds, rooms, or whatever, and causing it to crash when I would try to compile the game for testing.
I ultimately managed to fix things by digging around in a backup's asset directories, and overwriting my working directory's asset folders.
What TortoiseSVN and Cloudforge allow me to do, is have this sort of live project folder that keeps track of EVERY change I make every time I choose to update to the repository created on Cloudforge. If I need to, I can delete my entire project file locally, and grab a previous build from the repository, while also monitoring every single modification made to the project! BRILLIANT!
Things like this have slowed me down somewhat, but I am in a much better (and more stress-free) position to plow ahead.
There's still a lot to do, but the game is getting beefier and more exciting all the time - it's become a ton of fun to run around the worldmap and see what sorts of stages are generated when you run into a baddie or a dungeon!
Talk to you soon, and thanks for the support!
Last week was a bit brutal - I got smacked square in the face with a flu bug that took me out of commission for a good seven days or so. I'm pretty sure somewhere within that time frame I smacked it back in its stupid face since it isn't here anymore. So, um... victory!!(?) But, on a super positive note, last week I also got to hang out with the magnificently talented bunch at The Milkshake Boom and talk about three of my favorite things: barbarians, video games and movies (maybe probably in no particular order)!
In particular, we chat about Savage and the 1982 film, Conan: The Barbarian. You can check out the discussion here: http://www.themilkshakeboom.com/2015/04/02/episode-011-conan-the-barbarian-1982/
I just finished ALL the game art for one of the most complex bosses in the game, In'D'Ok - King of the Frost Giants, so I figured it might be a fun thing (maybe?) to share some of the mega-magical-behind-the-scenes-type stuff with you!
Here's the original sprite alongside his likeness, the Twitch Streamer known as Indie...
... and here's the cleaned up version. Here is also where I start to separate the sprite into pieces and give them their own layers (head, torso, left leg, right leg, etc.)...
Not happy with the initial color scheme, I make a pass on color correcting the hair, and change the wraps and fur lining of the clothing. I also add additional pieces of armor and clothing, keeping each piece separate on its own layer. You can also see our naked little hero for size reference.
Having all the pieces of the "idle" sprite separated, I start his primary attack animation with some construction lines.
Editing and warping the pieces to fit the construction lines, I start to fill out the image, animating things like the torso and each leg individually (including the super sexy loincloth).
I keep animating all of the individual pieces and layers seperately, and we wind up with the non-armored version of his attack animation.
Finally, I do an alternate head sprite for when he's wearing his helmet and finish animating the other armor bits! ALL DONE!
And that is (the short version, anyway) more or less how I go about constructing and animating an enemy sprite. This particular character is super complicated because of his size and moving details like his armor bits and such.
Time to export his sprites and drop them into the game!
The rest of the game is coming along great and I am in full boss mode - only a few more remain after this one is completed!
Thanks for reading!
-Matt
Last week saw the one year mark since the Kickstarter was funded - ONE YEAR and it only feels like I've been at this for a handful of months since then - not TWELVE! Looking back on the progress I've made with the game over the past year it's hard to believe that this is the same project I started with. The improvements made to the core systems and the overall presentation adjustments make it almost feel like a sequel. The past two months have been especially juicy with the updates. You can also (kinda/partially) blame the radio silence through January on this guy:
Ok - waxing nostalgic/excuse-y sympathy vote minutiae mode OFF - time for a GIF-o-rama featuring some new bosses, biome and environment art, dungeon art, finalized overworld map, and (my favorite) corpse platforms!
Savage is also rocking swamps, frigid mountains, Gosen highlands, the Red Steppe, coastal areas and the Black Fen (oOooh, mysterious!)! The seasonal system is now working as well, with region specific overlays and particle systems being drawn appropriate to the current season (i.e. red/orange leaves for Fall, naked trees and snow for Winter), giving a pretty insane amount of variety in the types of map encounters when combined with the day/night cycle.
The game's world map is also complete! The textures are now in the game and working! Zone specific props still need to be added, as well as the actual map locations.
So, to sum up:
The game's systems are mostly working and complete, outside of some UI work and general (and necessary) polish. Environment art and assets are also about 90% finished (yay!). At this point, it's mostly a content crunch - there is still a lot of work to be done, in the form of level design, enemy art, more bosses, more weapons, armor and shields, and story elements.
I'm getting closer to completion and things are looking fantastic. Thank you all so much for the support and encouragement over this past year!
-Matt
I hope everyone's having an excellent holiday season so far! My gift to you: .GIFs!
New dungeon and stone tilesets! (With some older parallax background art - I'll get to updating those)
Raptor Throwing!
New snowy/rocky/mountainous tilesets and area art!
Horrific creatures from an alternate plane of existence!
... And here's a snazzy production screencap (and random guitar sprite - because distracted)!
In addition to new tilesets, areas, environment art, new enemies, and additional combat mechanics (picking up and tossing baddies is a blast!), I'm still working through the backbone of the game's levels and stages (or, the critical path). Once that's finished, I'll be working on some of the optional objectives and hidden areas that will be included in the game, in addition to polish and bug testing.
Great progress is being made; there are features and content that are starting to really shine, which is incredibly exciting. There is still much to do though, and I'll keep updating all of you as I slug it out in the trenches!
A very merry happy holiday season to everyone, and thank you all so much for the support this year! Here's to a very barbaric 2015!
XOXO, Matt
The game certainly has changed over the past 6 months - it feels like an entirely new experience. I have added SO MUCH new content to this thing that I'll go easy on the bullet point-y stuff and let these images do most of the talking:
Some of what's NEW in the game since the last update:
In addition to all that, I'm FINALLY at a code complete stage in the project - I am now fully entrenched in creating the critical path of the game and churning out the extra content needed to create a complete gaming experience.
I'll be releasing a final handful of alphas/demos in the coming weeks and months, so STAY TUNED!
It's that time of the year again to vote on your favorite Indie games at IndieDB! Help SAVAGE get into the top 100 by voting here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/savage-the-shard-of-gosen
Thanks for visiting, and have a great one!
xoxo, Matt
Finally - shields are working and in-game! Here's a handy list of all the new stuff you can expect to find in the latest build:
Go ahead and click the shiny image to get the new build!
Blocking and shield parry!
Skellies!
Just a short (and... spooky??) update for Halloween:
I've got a Steam community page up here:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/savage-the-shard-of-gosen
And a Steam Greenlight page up ova here!
I also threw together some goodies for you (or anyone who's interested) to consume! The "bag" includes: Wallpapers, NES retro controller overlays, and a few songs from the soundtrack from the Alpha version. (no) candy. (zero) razorblades. Enjoy, and Happy Halloween!
Take your Halloween goodies bag (and my thanks) here:
Hi guys! Figured I'd post a few more screenshots here, since I've kind of been going asset crazy lately (which is a good thing - saves me from going completely insane, chopping up my hard drive into little bits, pouring them into a bowl with milk on top and devouring the soggy bits - all from spending too much time staring at walls and walls of Inventory and UI code), which - should... *ahem* should, lead to more regular devlog video posts.
I've been reluctant to make any new videos detailing the dev process with Savage, since, well, the stuff I've been working on hasn't really been all that visually engaging/interesting. Like, who wants a video of five minutes of me going, "Hey you guyzz!! I changed some buttons! LOOK."
Anyways, pictures!
More fun/cool/weird/WTF announcements concerning my personal favorite pixellated barbarian to com. As always, thanks for having a peek.
xoxo, Matt
P.S. Lord help me, I couldn't control myself:
So I'd been taking a break from coding and I started to flesh out some other area art - one tileset in particular I had started like, three years ago. Over the last couple days I've been touching it up and creating more assets/tiles to go along with it and this is what I've come up with so far:
Now with full on in yo' face Parallax Scrolling! (capital P, S).
Other than that, I've been trying to tidy things up and get closer to a fun, demo build that I can have people sit down with and put some play time into.
More updates on the way!
-Matt
Well, I certainly update this devlog a lot less than I'd like - mostly because I want to make sure that what I post here is worth mentioning. I don't want to update the thing when I do something silly, like: "Hey guys - I added tiny pictures to go in the inventory screen for the items!! K, bye!", or something... Actually, that IS one of the updates I've made, but I've been working on a number of other things, as well.
The Day/Night system is coming along pretty well - I've been doing some heavy experimenting with surfaces and color blending. Here are the phases of the day, with some place-holder backdrops 'n such:
Late Night
Dawn
Early Morning
Mid-day
Sunset
And speaking of toying around with light/color blending, here are a couple of other experimental shots of what I'm doing for some cave lighting and some CRT monitor filters, respectively:
Spewky
Made with new-tech to look old and crappy!
Everything pictured is still in a pretty rough draft-y state, but I figured I'd share some screenies of my progress so far. I've gotta say, playing with aesthetics is exactly what I needed after having my nose buried in the UI and inventory system code for so long. Still there, but I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel.
It's (Savage) shaping up to be exactly the beast I wanted it to be from the project's inception. At one point, not long ago, I thought "Maybe I should scale everything back... go for a more true blue action/platformer with stage to stage progression", so I worked on that for a bit... And then proceeded to toss that idea right in the garbage. That definitely resulted in a huge time-til-release hit, but the experiment was worth it. I guess I just have to do everything the hard way :)
Thanks for taking a look, and I hope to have more progress to report on sooner rather than later; provided I don't decide to scrap everything and do another complete redesign - ha!!
-Matt
If you're feeling saucy, Savage has a shiny new Gamejolt page up at
http://gamejolt.com/, a pretty amazing platform for games.
Seems like a super fun way to keep a devlog, and an even more super-er fun way to put playable builds of your game up on there. Speaking of, I hope to have a test drive version up soon... So, keep checking back, and eventually there will be a plate of barbarian shaped cookies placed out on the table for you to consume... with milk... mixed with the blood of your slain enemies.
xoxo, Matt
The first video footage of Savage for your ocular pleasure! And I even make the talking over it!!
Erp - Over a month since my last update on this project, eh? Heh, whoops... Who's counting, anyway.
Since this page hasn't gotten any love for quite some time, I figured some screenshots and a bulleted list of achievements (however small) were in order.
As if there wasn't enough work to do, I decided to go ahead and draw different animations for when the player character is doing something with his (or her) dominant hand to the left or the right.
So, now the little barbarian jerk has almost twice as many sprites!
-Matt
Not too many NEW newness to report on Savage today besides some gameplay tweaking and minor (but annoying) bug squashing, so I thought I would share some concept sketches from mah little pad:
Excuse the crudeness of the drawings and if they come off a bit... savage (Haha Heehee ho... *ahem*).
Anyhoo, cruel and unusual punishment aside, next up on the to do list is to inject some fight into our enemies for our barbarian to squish, get some serious AI in there, some combat (XP, stats, the like), and maybe some items... Ooh! And don't forget run-on sentences!
-Matt
