Re:creation - a top down action adventure about undeads [hiatus]

[Elias Daler]

Making walking animations.



I've made enemies more detalized. I'm a lot more satisfied with how they looks now.


I need to draw three attack animations (up, down, side) and then I'll work a lot on the battle system. I'll try different stuff.

In most games like top-down Zeldas enemies can attack you in two ways: either by running into you or shooting/throwing some stuff at you.
I want to make attack animations for enemies who carry swords. Zelda doesn't have them, enemies with swords just run into you. But making sword attack work good is harder. I think I'll try to create some pre-attack animation which will indicate that enemy is going to attack so that the player can dodge. Any thoughts on this? I can't think of top-down games like Zelda which had good real time battle system (I want to see how other people have done it)

[shadowmouse]

Those animations and new sprites are really good. I like the idea of adding sword swinging as the zelda enemies often look like they have some sort of pike or something and can't swing it, which is stupid (either than or they're just trying to stick you with the pointy end). As for the pre-attack animations, maybe they move their sword arm out, then swing it across they're body to attack? Are you making multiple versions of the knight armour? Like maybe a commander with a different helmet in each group. One suggestion I'd have is to actually draw several versions of the knight (by copy and paste) and give each different hair (black, brown, blond and the occasional ginger), then in your files which hold the data for where you place knights (I'm presuming you didn't hardcode this) you can specify a hair colour, or by default it could be black. This would mean that large groups of knights won't look like clones. It's a similar idea to in Besiege where each time you kill someone, it tells you their name so as to give each enemy some individuality.

[dabbertorres]

For the attacking, an event/message/etc might work well. Play the attack animation like any other animation, but, make it send a message at the point when you want the attack to damage something.
Have some sort of listener that checks if there is a damageable object in range of the swing. If so, damage that object. If not, do nothing.

Though, that would only make the swing damaging at one point in time. If it's a wide swing, for example, technically it should damage anything it intersects at any point during the animation. In that case, maybe a collision box around the weapon would be good. Then you can just use your existing collision system, probably.

[Hapax]

Looking good

[Elias Daler]

@shadowmouse No, the armor would be the same for sword guys, maybe some colors will differ. Making different hair is a good idea, but I need to create some system which will replace colors in sprites, because copy-pasting sprites by hand is a waste of space and time

@dabbertorres The problem is not technical, I'm just thinking what would feel and play the best. It's a game design problem.

@Hapax thanks!

[shadowmouse]

Maybe make a version of green screening and colour the hair a colour that isn't found anywhere else in the sprite then you can pass the exact value of the green colour and its replacement? You might be able to find a standard green that you can use as a default.

[Elias Daler]

Maybe make a version of green screening and colour the hair a colour that isn't found anywhere else in the sprite then you can pass the exact value of the green colour and its replacement? You might be able to find a standard green that you can use as a default.

Yeah, this should work, thanks.

[Elias Daler]

New character! A mysterious cute cat with no name. (yet)


I'm also drawing sprites for Undead Bar. Lots of cool stuff is drawn already will show off soon!
Here's one of the sprites. I love how much depth the shading adds.

[SpeCter]

I'm also learning some OpenGL. What are some books/tutorials would you recommend? (Preferably OpenGL 3.x because my graphics card doesn't support OpenGL 4, heh).

I'm a fan of https://open.gl/. It even has a guide of setting up an OpenGL context and input handling with SFML (along with SDL and GLFW).

I prefer http://learnopengl.com/ it starts out almost the same, but has more stuff to do.

[namosca]

I would really like to download the game, but I really didnt manage to find the link?

Could you post it to us?

I would prefer (if possible) to have the binaries for windows, instead of having to compile everything myself. I am tiring of compilling errors all the time.

If the game is fun, I would also like to have a look at the source if you can make it available for us!!

Thanks!!

[Elias Daler]

@SpeCter thanks, I'll check it out!

@namosca The game is not out yet. When the public game is released, you'll know about that either by this thread or my twitter. There will be Win/Linux/Mac OS X binaries, of course.

I'm thinking about open sourcing my game's code, but I think I'll do it after some time after release and if the code is good enough for other people to look at.

[SeriousITGuy]

Thanks for the progress update and the LUA articles. Exactly the thing I want to learn right now. Keep up the great work. Maybe one day you can actually sell this already cool looking game (Steam Greenlight, Itch-io or similar).
And I am very interested in your code, from what I've seen from your articles it must be good quality, so I would be very glad to work through your code base. Maybe you could also right some articles on key points of your engine.

[Tank]

The cat is great! Nice work.

[Hapax]

The cat is too cute. Take it away or I may have to steal it and adopt it! <3

[shadowmouse]

Have you thought of a name for it or will you be taking votes?