Witch Blast (dungeon crawl shooter)

[Cirrus Minor]

You mean I cannot use standard strings for UTF-8 ?
I'm quite confused with encoding, but I have to understand how it goes - I'm trying to use iconv in my *real* job to convert latin strings to UTF-8 (for EPGs), but I have troubles with it...

[achpile]

You mean I cannot use standard strings for UTF-8 ?
I'm quite confused with encoding, but I have to understand how it goes - I'm trying to use iconv in my *real* job to convert latin strings to UTF-8 (for EPGs), but I have troubles with it...

Hmm, it was just a suggestion firstly came in my head. I have never did any stuff with UTF 

[Cirrus Minor]

Now, I'm using UTF-8 for the text now, with the help of a dev (I don't know if is on this forum too).
I've integrated Spanish (thanks AFS) and Russian (thanks achpile) languages.

I'm now working on spells. Spells are available with the right item (at the moment, only dropped at "challenges" area), can be cast with a "spell" key, and have a cooldown.
We can have one spell at a time.

Here a video with the fireball and the teleport spells.

[Cirrus Minor]

Hi !
Tonight, a video with the new "message box" system.
It will be use for the story and the tutorial.
It's non intrusive, as it will pop on the interface and not on the main game area, and disappear after a few seconds, or while pressing the [return] key.

The text on the video has not been corrected yet, and will probably change, it's only a demo.
I also changed the color of the "item info box" to match it.

[p5ych0]

Reminds me of The Binding of Isaac. 

[Cirrus Minor]

Hi p5ych0 !
At the beginning, it wasn't suppose to be a game, but just a BoI-engine, for fun.
Then, I've drawn some rats and bats, the wizard... and Witch Blast is born !

[Cirrus Minor]

Witch Blast v0.3.7
_____________
Download: https://github.com/Cirrus-Minor/witchblast/releases

Hi ! Today, a release with the spells and the new "text" system.

I have to thanks a lot Geheim, achpile and AFS, for the German, Russian and Spanish versions of the game and their support !

Changelog (from v0.3.3 to v0.3.7)

- ADD New monsters (snakes)
- ADD New items (spell orbs)
- ADD Poison
- ADD Cold bolt (generated with an unloaded ice shot)
- ADD Spells (5 different ones)
- ADD Translations: Spanish and Russian
- ADD New art for bats
- ADD Texts "widgets" for story and tutorial
- MOD Vibration Gloves are now Displacement Glove (player's velocity impacts bolt velocity)
- MOD Items presentation windows colour has changed
- MOD Repulsion improved
- MOD Giant Slime HP decreased
- MOD Cyclops melee and missile damage decreased, now repulse
- MOD A merchant on each floor > 1 now
- MOD Force Challenge room for each floor > 2 if no spell is equipped
- FIX Texts are now in UTF-8
- FIX Monsters out of the game zone
- FIX Persistent particles on some machines/systems

Gameplay video


Enjoy !

[Mörkö]

The perspective doesn't make any sense to me. It would look better if everything was drawn the same way. At this point I guess it would be easier to make the environment have the same sideways angle as the enemies and player, rather than making them be top-down like the environment is.

[Cirrus Minor]

Hi Mörkö!

Yes you're right about the perspective.
I know it'd make sense to change the perspective of the environment, but I dunno how: I don't like to have walls that "hide" the character or the monsters...
The alternative is to make new sprites with the right perspective, but I'm a pixel-art and drawing beginner, I don't have the skill to do that 

[Hapax]

The alternative is to make new sprites with the right perspective

Don't do that. Top-down graphics are generally less aesthetically pleasing but characters are horrible from that view.

Maybe if you just brought the top of the lowest wall to reach the floor (i.e. so you can't see the wall but all of the floor is still visible) then that might help. I guess that, technically, all that involves is removing the graphics from the bottom of the floor downwards. You could move the info bar higher to cover/replace it.

[Mörkö]

Maybe if you just brought the top of the lowest wall to reach the floor (i.e. so you can't see the wall but all of the floor is still visible) then that might help. I guess that, technically, all that involves is removing the graphics from the bottom of the floor downwards. You could move the info bar higher to cover/replace it.

I agree with this. As an experiment try to make it so that only the top wall is visible. It's a small change, but it might be enough to create the illusion of a consistent perpective.

[Hapax]

I just covered the bottom wall with a piece of paper (yes, those things still exist) and it makes a big difference.
The only problem I foresee is how you deal with not being able to see the door on that wall.

[Cirrus Minor]

I would need to do something like that, but I may have trouble with the doors, as Hapax said.
I could try to do some mockup...

[select_this]

This perspective seemed to work well for A Link to the Past:



Personally I don't have a problem with it.

[Dark2Dragon]

The perspective for your game is great.

At the first moment when i saw your game, it remembered me on the old zelda games.
As select_this said, they have the same perspective.