brb, Texas

This next week is pretty much shot, I'm working weird hours in Texas. This means travelling, working weird hours, and stumbling back home somehow. I expect to accomplish very little until the weekend. Good news though. I only have six characters left to illustrate!

If you haven't noticed, I'm only doing two still images for each character. I'm only one man, and pixel art eats free time. Each character has a front side and a back side, and the images are flipped as needed. Basically I have six front sides left. Luckily the back sides go a lot quicker, I have 12 so far, and they took much less time. For the initial drawing, I have to do some research and get an idea for the character, and then translate that into a character that is unique and identifiable. I don't have to do the research and play with colors for the backs, all I have to do is continue the style I already created. Easier, if a bit mindless.

While I can go in any order, I've been working through the characters in order. I'll finish the last 6, then do all the back images. Put the resources in the game, add in the character stats, name, etc. Then I'll work on giving all the characters their attack set. Along the way I'll have to create art for the summons. (I'll find out as I go, but it looks like I have 11 summons to make. In terms of technical art quality, none of them should pose a major challenge, though I still haven't decided how to approach a few.)

Meet the Bard

As opposed to accomplishing nothing since the weekend, I've actually done quite well. I think I've only got 9 or so more classes to illustrate! Almost forgot to write this up, so it's a bit short.

Anyway, this is the bard. As you might expect from the fantasy archetypes, he plays his instrument and sings great songs of heroes and all that stuff. He's probably the most stereotypical character. He's unlocked from the beginning. His attacks:

• He isn't much of a fighter, but he does carry a little knife. It's more of a last resort, or eeking out that last point of damage sort of thing.
• The bard knows when to get out of a fight, he can flee, which gives him a speed boost, and cures any status effects he might be suffering.
• He's can carry a tune, but he really only knows two songs. The first is a cleansing song. It cures any status effects anyone nearby might have.
• The second tune is a rousing chorus, which heals nearby friends a bit.

The Bard is rather unashamedly a support class, as you might expect. He doesn't exactly hold up too well in combat, but he can get out of tight spots and his songs are incredibly useful. For a while he won't seem too important, since he's lousy in the smaller, early fights, but when the fights open up to four or more, he really shines. There are very few classes that can heal, and I think fewer that can effectivly remove status effects. He can do both well.

Weekend Update

Lame. I have a rather large amount of stuff to do at work, and just have not been in any mood to work on the game all week. I did create two more characters, maybe I'll finish another one tonight.

Lame.

I really wish I eventually could support myself developing indie games. I developed a list of game ideas over the years, and I finally went through and looked at it. I've got 37 ideas, 23 I still like (I started the list > 4 years ago), and 16 I think are realistic for me to create on my own.

I would love to work for myself. I could set my own schedule, and work on basically whatever I wanted. I'd love to have a second project to switch to when I feel like a change of pace. I have to say it would be awesome to be able to do this all day, and then have to force myself away to play video games, head out on the town, or watch TV. Full time I could probably release 3 games in a year, and have more free time than I do now.

My real job, while nice by all measures, just isn't what I'd really love to be doing. This game has to be pretty successful for me to justify quitting to "explore my passions," but XBLIG sales are generally depressingly low. Quick math, it would take ~30,000 sales to make me consider going full time. Extrapolating from XNA sales figures, I'm expecting ~262. So yeah, probably better learn to love my day job.

Ahh well, a man owns nothing if not his own dreams.

Phoning it in

Shit just got real at work, and will probably remain real for two-three weeks. Until then, I'll be doing what I can. Ran out of time to finish the Metalurgist, so I'll cover a character I finished a while ago, and never covered.

Meet the Berserker

This guy is a bit fragile like the monk. Perhaps if he wore some actual armor, he might survive a little longer. Unlike the monk, The Berserker isn't just a glass cannon. He is best getting into a tight grouping of enemies and hitting several at a time. He's one of the fastest characters, and can easily make himself faster.

• His first attack is a common attack, take a wide slice with his sword. This hits up to three guy in front of him.
• His second attack whirls the sword around, hitting everyone nearby.
• He can get himself angry. He pushes through the pain and gets an attack buff. Effectivly it heals him and gives an attack bonus.
• He can sprint. This gives him a speed boost.
  

You might think that like a berserker he should use his speed to charge in and hit before the opponent is ready. Usually this is not the best idea. He's fragile, and without any support it's a pointless suicide run. (Found that out by experience, seemed like a good idea at the time.) It turns out that a good strategy with him is to position himself where he can hit multiple enemies. When they turn on him, sprint out and recover for bit.

(Post) Weekend Update

I forgot to do a lot of things yesterday, and figured I'd make up the lateness with screen shots tonight. Unfortunately for my game, real work is getting a bit more involved than it used to be, and I find I don't want to spend all my free time programming and doing painstaking pixel art. Funny that. Anyway, expect to see gratuitous screenshots sprinkled ahead (if you didn't already notice).



I realized this week, that my development schedule for the rest of this game is very free-form. If I made a Gantt chart, it would be very tall, and there would be very few dependencies. I have to create and program the attacks before I can work on the associated animation, and the main menu and world map have to wait until I have all the battles in place, but other than that, I can really go in any order. I think a more useful way of tracking my own progress will be in how many levels are made, and how far along various characters are.



Battles complete: 4
Characters (mostly) Drawn: 24
Characters in game, with working attacks: 13
Characters fully animated: 5
Total attacks coded: 39



That list doesn't look as good as I hoped, but I think this will be a good way to track progress at least. As I progress, adding new characters and maps *should* get easier.



Eventually I'll write the victory screen, I swear. I also have to write in a whole bunch of help text. Well, I don't have to, but the game would suffer greatly without some description of what some attacks do (hell, I forget what some of them do). Writing the text won't take too terribly long, writing the code to display it with some sort of navigation menu and testing will probably take longer.

The Historian

I was hoping I would have a summoner done, and I do, so today I talk about the Historian. Yes, the Historian. All the classes up until now have been somewhat sensible, and this one seems to come out of left field. As odd as this sounds, he's a better example of what I'm trying to go for. He's themed interestingly, and isn't someone you see in other games.

 

(No, the one on the right is not the historian. The character on the right is a ghost)

So the historian is a scholar dedicated to the study of history and the very nature of time. He studies time closely enough to learn a little time magic. Here's his moveset:

• His first move is to manipulate one person's time stream, effectively aging them rapidly. Not much mind you, but enough for them to feel like their heart skipped three beats. It does a little bit of damage and weakens the target, for a little longer than normal.
• The second and third moves are closely related. He can create a time bubble to slow down everyone in a rather large area.
• Alternatively, he can speed everyone up. Both moves have a bit of range, and affect a rather large area.
• The final move is to summon an anchient ghost. He can summon more than one, but it takes his entire turn and a fair bit of magic.

So, he's a summoner, he can create a new character on the fly. There are a number of these guys slated, with various types of summons and different rules on when/how they can summon a new creature. Some can only have one summon in battle at a time, others can only have one of each type they can summon. There are very small number that can summon creatures repeatedly. The summoned creature fights for his master, but is not directly controlled by the player. They have only one move, and are not as strong nor as durable as normal characters.

So there's the historian. I think I want to put a book in his hand, I think I'll do that before I do a final release. Next week, I'll pick another "out-there" character class. I'm thinking the Metalurgist or the Inquisitor. Until then you can try to imagine what they'll look like / what they can do.

3 Day Weekend Update

I completely ignored my list of stuff to do, and just worked on whatever I felt like all week. I worked primarily on new art - new characters and new terrain. I also created the battle maps for the first 4 levels. This week I'll post some screenshots of the new maps and some of the characters.

The rest of this week is mostly code-based enhancements.

Plan for the week:
Summon support (I have to do this tommorrow so I can introduce one of the summoners)
Victory and failure screens
Unlocks

Game saves
With whatever time is left, start filling in the map, one battle and one character at a time.


It occurs to me that after these enhancements, the game will be functionally complete. The only things left to do will be content creation, some miscellaneous cleanup, and multiplayer.

Aside, in which I talk myself out of extra features:
I'm actually tempted to leave out multiplayer for the sake of getting to market sooner. Indie games are exploding at the moment, and we're finally seeing some REAL gems. This release season is suprisingly lacking in traditional games. All this means is the little man in the business suit on my shoulder is telling me that it's ok to strip some features for the sake of releasing sooner. I know the indie games release procedure takes a few weeks, and I know I won't be finished before November 1st at this rate. I am SORELY tempted to cut multiplayer, and strip out a few character classes. If the game is sucecssful, I could then make a second release with extra features (local multiplayer, challenge maps, and online multiplayer).

On the other hand, the code is already flexible enough to do local multiplayer with some ease. I mean the game is not exactly a model of a party game - diving into the game without spending significant time with single player is difficult; combat is slow and turn based; it's not exactly riveting for onlookers. I don't know of too many remotely similar games offering local multiplayer. The closet I can think of are some portable games, and some traditional strategy games. But with the portable games, both players have invested in the system and know to play, and most strategy games have simple and forgiving enough mechanics and few enough units to make it easy to pick up. I place a lot of stock on character selection and you need to really know who's available and what they can do. If you pick without that knowledge, it will be a very one sided fight.

The game would benifit from online multiplayer, no doubt, but that requires a significant amount of time to create and debug.When I started, the little man in the business suit on my shoulder determined the risks were not worth it. I told myself before I started that if the game was successful enough for me to afford a second 360 for testing, I would definitly create an online version. So like ~400 sales at 80 MS points.

I think I just talked myself out of local multiplayer support...

Meet the Legionnaire

I have my domain again! The name had grown on me, I was rather annoyed at the possibility of changing.

This week I want to talk about the Legionnaire. The Legionnaire is a front line soldier, he's one of the sturdiest units in the game and he hits hard.

• He can attack with his spear. His spear gives him reach and lets him hit two people at the same time. It is one of the more damaging attacks in the game.
• Shield Wall can offer a defensive bonus to all of his nearby friends. Unlike just defending, the skill he uses lasts longer than a single turn.
• He can throw a spear at range. Not as deadly as his spear is at close range, but still a useful tool to hit anyone that tries to flee.
• The final attack is Spear Dance. This hits everyone who got too close, for about as much damage as the throwing spear.

The Legionnaire is not exactly the most versatile of classes, but he's sturdy and a good damage dealer. His biggest weaknesses are that he is very slow, and does not manage buffs or status effects very well. His Shield Wall skill really helps survivability, but if you get him stuck or slowed, he's in trouble.

Currently, the Legionnaire is the second recruit-able class. I'd used the starter classes in other situations, usually in larger groups with other classes, and thought they were quite good, and I thought the Legionnaire was underpowered. The first time I tried the Legionnaire battle I failed horribly. I had to scale it back, the two starter classes just couldn't handle a pair of Legionnaire's.

Next week: I have no idea who to introduce. I want to cover either one of the casters, or one of the summoners. It'll be a suprise for the both of us.