Sugar and Spice

Screenshot of sugar in-game

All of Sugar's Sprites

Boss (Spice) and beginning enemy (Cakey)

 

 

Spice Sprite

I am making a Mario clone because I CAN'T DO SIMPLE....

and I need to do something simple to start.

It is coming along -very- well, I am almost finished with the first level. I will only work on things for that level until it is finished, I made the Spice sprite to be my basis for all other enemies. Other than her, the rest of this is needed for the first level. =)

Will update with more as it comes along.

Art Dump the Second

Pardox concepts

Dyre WiP

Chibi concepts

Robot concepts for Chibi game

New Glimmer style

Some things I forgot to put up. ><

Glimmer is the more important of them. I've decided on a style and will be able to work on it again. - without the nagging voice nagging about the monotone boxy environments and blank character-shaped things.

So there's some things.

Oh Brother art will likely pick up again after I get more work done on Glimmer. Been a bit out of sorts lately and need to get back to being productive.

Remnants Concepts

Quick sketches and colors for some enemies in two of my game worlds. Because I needed a break from learning Construct. ><

The little pink one is the lowest level of them, the green the second and the purple the boss.

More Mock-ups

Possible boss

These take a few minutes, so I keep doing them. I'll need to figure out how to properly handle the tentacles if I want to do this, but it seems like a neat thing.

Tomorrow I plan to work on enemy AI, as I haven't done much with that yet and I have all of the hero's moves down already.

Not Dead

I haven't had a lot of time to work on anything, been doing a lot of sleeping, mostly.

I have been fiddling with Construct and Glimmer when I had the time and wasn't too tired, and have figured out a few things.

Many of my old writing projects have taken a back seat to my art and game projects, so instead of trying to write for National Novel Writing Month - I'm going to work on this game. It's small and simple and if I really focus, I should be able to finish it by the end of the month. That's the plan anyway.

Today, for about ten minutes, I managed to get my hands to draw something. So here's a mock-up of a possible level. My last post shows I have working in-engine mostly. Save the animations, this is the first real art I've done for this. I didn't want the world to be blank backgrounds and square platforms. This is just a mock-up of course, subject to change (I think more can be done with the background), but it's something to look at when building levels.

The ball of light is the goal, the little eyes are there to see to it she doesn't reach it.

A Thing!

Glimmer (wip)

Simple platformer as practice and transition to the more difficult ones I keep coming up with. Because I am crazy.

This one is about a little girl made of light in a land of shadows. She must progress through the levels, pacifying or hiding from the inhabitants to find her way back home.

The circle of light in her health, it shrinks when damaged by enemies. When it depletes, she is transported to a room of doors. It will save the progress of completed levels, but she'll have to redo the one she was in when she died.

So far I just have the shadows and movement, sort of. It's coming along though.

For those interested, to prove I am doing things, what I have is in the image caption. Ready to play, but not much to actually do.

Her abilities are not in yet, but she will be able to charge her light to damage enemies and snuff her light to hide (turning her three-hit health to one until she turns her light back up).

The enemy only moves back and forth, but touching him will damage her. I have a lot more to do, but the graphics will be monotone and basically what you see here. Only nicer, hopefully. She'll be all white with black eyes (inverted while hiding) and enemies will be black with white eyes (inverted while pacified). There will be more to the background too.

Not sure how to handle the tips for controls yet, and what the intro will be, but it's a start. And in-engine, at that. = )

Nini Walk Cycle - Pixel Roughs

Still rough, but it's getting there. And Colors! Those are there.

...Now to figure out ...all the other animations. Also, give her a doll.
Still not sure how I'll handle those, I know how she will hold them and whatnot, just not how to get the dolls in her hand to move properly.

Nini Pixel

Concept for sprite style, and a new outfit

Nini's folks are the wealthy family in town, Father is the Mayor after all. So, I thought she needed a better dress than the plain one I had her in. Things are subject to change, of course, but this is nice and symmetrical. ...I mean pretty. Yes.

Bobble-head Nini - Walk WiP

Quick use of copy-paste makes wobble head

Her legs are the only bit I was paying attention to, which turned out perfect. Now to get her head straight and make those arms/torso sway.

Then I get to start the other movements, and give her a doll to drag around. Just wanted a simple walk so I wasn't staring at a stiff sprite in Construct. ><

Mock-up - Chelestra Household

I'm thinking just Nini's room will be on screen, if that helps for size.

 Chelestra home. Nini is in her room (dressed and headed for the door), Fluffy is in his little bed (he's supposed to be out on a walk, but I wanted to see if the bed looked silly - it does), Nini's Mom is doing dishes (you'd think a powerful witch would be doing something more important, but she is also a housewife), and there is a kitty on the couch (they didn't have one before, but I think it'll add to the witch image if she has a black cat).

In case it is not obvious, the white outlines of doors are there to represent foreground doors.
-

Turns out "Kitten Quest" will be the thing I work on when I need a break from this one.

I need to work out how, the Demo at least, content will look and play before I actually fiddle with stuff in Construct. I understand now why some developers prefer to have the graphics done before they work on the code. Place-holders are just not good enough.

A mock-up, however, can be used as a background to work out size, location and maybe even flow.

Kitten Quest - A Mini Adventure

An old animation, the walk is very wrong

The ENTIRE MAP (roughed out anyway)

The beginning area (some stuff is still missing)

"Oh, Brother" is turning into a much bigger project than I anticipated.
I'm still learning Construct and trying to solidify everything for it, and as indicated by the dolls in that room mock-up, I am always thinking about it. However, since I'm still learning the program, I thought I'd try a super simple little platformer to get me started.

It's an idea I'd planned long before I wanted to make "Oh, Brother". A simple game about a Kitten on a quest to find his lost toy. I was going to use it as one of many little platformers to work up to the Metroidvania "Starfall" that I still hope to make someday. "Oh, Brother" was actually going to be one of the stepping stones as well, only it was to be pure RPG to teach me how the hell to write a game. Since it's morphed into something both simpler and more complicated than it's original incarnation - I am going back to the Kitten game. 

I need to know how Construct works and trying to make a, relatively, complicated action-adventure platformer is not really helping me learn. More it's driving me nuts and draining my motivation. Which is bad.

Kitten Quest wont be complicated in the least. Mainly exploration and platforming. No Menus, no real quests to speak of beyond the main one and enemies will be of the "they touch you and it hurts" variety. With attacks being close and simple.

NPC interaction will be limited to asking for hints to the main quest and requesting assistance opening doors, both of which will be handled without dialogue. I'll toss up a mock-up of how I hope to handle the communication in a little bit.

For now, here is the basic story -

"You are a kitten. You've woken up from your Mid-day nap to find your favorite squeaky toy is missing. It is very important to you, so much so that you actually roll your fluffy butt out of bed to look for it. After a lazy search of your surroundings, you lament the obvious. You'll have to leave the room. And on such a warm, lazy day..

Of you go to begin your adventure!"

Kitten (as yet unnamed) is a pampered house cat. He does not like water, he is not much of a hunter and he certainly couldn't stand being outdoors for more than a minute (especially with the family dog out there). Throughout the game he will have to toughen up and learn to behave a bit more like a cat and less like a fop if he hopes to get his toy back.

As for Health, I'm going with a fairly simple Hearts and Lives system. Kitten begins with three hearts, each hit takes half (some meaner things take a whole one). Once his hearth are depleted, he loses a Life and hurries back to his bed. This means a possibly long walk for the player, but no other progress is lost. If he loses all of his Lives, however, it's Game Over.

There will be ways to gain extra Hearts and Lives (max 9 for each, because cat), and ways to recover Hearts.

Other than that it's basically run around, figure out how to get the doors open, follow the hints to the Squeaky Toy, get the Toy, go back to bed.

Simple, hopefully short, and with enough basic things to teach me how to work the engine. = )

I hope to paint it all out like the images above, so it shouldn't take too long to get it all sorted, at least. Getting things to work will take a bit longer, but I believe the tutorials I found cover all of what I want to do (or give me the information to figure it out).

I'm going to try and finish this as quickly as I can. Taking time to do things correctly, but I want to challenge myself to get something done in a short amount of time. A month, at most.

Wish me luck!
====

Long Update is LONG!  I am sorry...

Title Screen Mock-up

Nini sits in her special place, Fluffy at her side, Diary open and ready

Possible Title Screen.


I'm thinking the title screen will scroll down to this shot, showing a big blue sky and clouds first, then the horizon with the glowing city in the distance, then the big tree and finally down to what you see here.

The menu options haven't changed much from the demo. I still want it to read like a diary entry.

--
The background will be made up of many scrolling layers, with this view being the one from the top-most area of the first town map. 

Other areas, further down, will show more of the tree-line and mountains in the distance, without the water or the reflection. Even further down will have a frame of leaves and the tree-line in the distance.

 I'm shooting for something close to the brilliant look of the backgrounds in Iconoclasts. I've never seen such beautiful backgrounds and I honestly didn't know that was even a possibility. So now I'm going to play with that and see what I can do to add more depth to my maps.

More Nini Concepts

Playing with style still

The start of a walk cycle, her hair still need some bounce

Still trying to figure out a style. I need to figure out how she'll hold her dolls, and nail down the look of the varying costumes still.

I think they'll work a bit more like the suits from Metroid now. Instead of equipping them, she'll put them on when she earns them and they will stay on until she gets the next one. This way I'll know around when she'll be wearing what and can plan the areas better. Not to mention a new look for each Chapter, keeps it a little more interesting. And I wont have to worry about the cutscene images being out of place, so I can have her wearing whatever costume she's in for that Chapter without too much hassle.

Will play with monster designs in the side-view next. Also need to do more environments, I have little experience with them so I keep putting it off.

There's also the matter of the dolls. Still not sure if their special abilities should be things she just gets to do when she earns them, or if the doll will do it for her. I've decided how they'll work as weapons, and want the magic to work a bit like Fortune Summoners. Easy changes between spells, and combo buttons to press for some. She'll just have more spells to choose from, being able to switch dolls to access different elements (a bit more like the beam weapon in Metroid).

My goal is to keep everything quick and easy with as little need to go into the menu as I can manage. At least for the combat areas. She'll still need to go into the menu to save, check Star pieces, current quests, map, look at everything she's found and whatnot. But for combat and exploration, I want to make sure there's as little break in the action as possible. And no need to equip things. She'll have a button to switch between dolls and her costumes will merely add abilities and not take any away.

Lots of stuff running through my head. ><

Hopefully it all works out and ends up fun.

Sprite Tests!

I do not like that tree. That tree is not final.

I cannot make trees. =/

I like the lineless style though, going to go with it. Just have to figure out backgrounds.

Decision, Decisions - seriously..halp.

Lineless, high contrast, bright, cute, simple

Lines, even toned, not as bright, still pretty cute and simple

Ahh. Which one. I like them both...

Maybe I should try it with a monster too. Keep using Nini for tests as she's the most important to nail down. But...now I don't know.

Construct has opened so many doors and I'm pretty overwhelmed with just learning the program. The -design- aspect is amazingly fun but also incredibly frustrating. The chance to design everything myself is exciting, but it's not exactly easy to figure out -how- to do these things.

So. Many. Choices. ><

Concept Times - Map

It's VERY ROUGH

Can you tell I referenced Minish Cap? ><

I'm learning the ways of boxy action map making. This is the world. Sort of. there's obviously a lot missing, but it's meant to be the barebones layout. I've started filling bits in on the bottom left, as that's the starting area. (It is very small to force myself not to get carried away)

Just posting to show I'm not dead, still working on things. Side-tracked a bit by the Monster Girl challenge over here

It's helping me in the way that drawing everyday helps. Also, I'm not big on monsters, haven't drawn them all that much, so it's good practice.

Other than that, I've been playing a lot of the 2D Zelda's and looking for others for ideas/reference and to show me how the hell these things are done. I'll try to get more concepts up soon, going to try and rough out the starting town/houses, and some NPCs. The starting monsters are figured out, and I have a basic idea of how the beginning forest areas will look.

More arts to come while I'm figuring out how to make things work in Construct. Following a nifty tutorial right now, but it's lacking in a lot of the things I want to do. So I have to figure those out myself. 

Menu stuff

Menu, first page

Reworking some stuffs, no arrows on this one yet.

Now there is a spot for collectible/trade-able items and the selection box is less ugly.

Trying to shoot more toward the "this belongs to a little girl" look. But keep the colors from frying the eyes and keep it readable.

New Mock Ups - Color play

Lighter, softer colors

Darker, more saturated colors

some basic poses/movement for Nini

Just wanted to play with the color of everything a bit, and see if I know what style I'm going to work with. Kind of like the swirls and squares, but not sure how well they mesh.

Also decided to play a bit more on the world's history. Might throw in some areas that look a bit...artificial. The shapes in the grass, for instance. I don't know how much I want to play it up, but I like the little bit of pattern there.

It's fun figuring out a style for this. I want something bright and sunny looking for the beginning areas. I see a lot of bright palettes in games, especially ones of this type, but I'm not sure -how- bright it should be.

Deciding between these two. I'm partial to the top, softer colors.

More Mock-ups

Hurling fire at a voidthing

Quick mock-up of some battle action. Not sure what I'm doing, and perspective is a little wonky. But hey, it's something. The thing she's setting on fire came out looking like an evil eggplant....I am okay with this.

Some Big Changes

I may be moving my game to an entirely different engine. Away from RPGMaker, and it's many limitations. As fun a program as it is, my ideas just aren't fitting in it as well as I'd like.

So I'm planning to move to Construct and build everything myself.

This doesn't change the story, artwork, or what the dolls/costumes do really, but it does change how the overall system and mechanics will function.

I've put together a couple mock-ups for what it may end up looking like. 
It will be more action-adventure, similar in many ways to Zelda, but hopefully unique enough to stand out.

Figured I'd share the mock-ups here, but I'm avoiding putting them up elsewhere.
I want to make sure I know I'm doing it this way, and can handle it, before I go telling everybody.

So! Mock-ups!

Basic HUD and Concepts

Map, Items, Collectibles, Upgrades

Equipment and Descriptions

HUD-

Top-left is Health, The large Star is divided into six pieces. Nini can obtain smaller stars that line the three bars to the right. These act as health tanks and refill the large star when it's empty.

Top-right are the buttons. Basic Fire spell on the left, on the right is the spell her Doll grants her and the big button bellow is for Items.

Bottom-left are more buttons. Diary/Menu and Chat, which will allow her to talk to her Dolls at any time. It will light up and animated the ellipse when they have something specific to say.

Bottom-right are currency counters. Keys on top, Monies on bottom. Keys are not consumable but one key is not enough for many locks. Dungeons have their own keys and are consumable, those will replace the normal ones on the HUD while in dungeons. She has a cap of three digits on the money, there will not be a way to raise this.

Menu -

The Menu will be contained in her Diary. The third and fourth pages, which I haven't designed yet, will be for the Quest Log and Notes. The Quest Log is hopefully self-explanatory, the Notes section will be for any little notes she's collected. There are five squares on the first page that will house a special collectible tale, those will lead to the pages in the back of the Diary (beyond the Notes ) to read them.

The Arrows on the menu are for turning pages (left, right) and Saving/Exit Menu (up, down). These will be on every page.

Next up I get to figure out how the message boxes will look and how I translate all of this into the engine. ><