formal wear animations

Hullo,

I've been raking through my old hard drives tiding stuff up and getting rid of some unnecessary gigabytes when I came across these.

Made for a wedding themed project that never made it off the starting line (the marriage did however and is going well :¬)

IT LIVES!

Hello people!

Apologies, not checked in here for waaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. Checking my analytics I'm surprised at the number of page views this blog gets, considering how long its been since I added any content. Now I just feel bad.

Anyway I'm working on 3 separate game projects at the moment, only one of which I am at liberty to blog about, but I'll do my best to share what I can here. If I post a few old odds and ends I've got lying around, maybe I can start blogging again reasonably frequently. Wish me luck (or motivation)

Anyway,

First up, I have recently purchased SPINE a slammin' skeletal animation tool. It's really going to open up the sorts of things I can create and I am pretty excited about it.

Here is my first ever swing with it, pretty ropey, but great things will follow!

He gets about for an old fella.

Here are a few more animations - it's rather satisfying making an image move, and then there is another thrill when you get to control that creation in game. Yes, fun stuff this game malarkey.

I'm not dead!

Hey amigos.

...not dead, just busy (or should that read lazy?)

anyway I have been up to various game related bits, and I will blog them over the next few weeks.

Nothing more on the 8² tileset (booo, hisss) - one day I promise I'll get back to it.

In the mean time check out the moves on this old timer! pretty sharp, amiright?

lo fidelity castro

Hey hey amigos,

Here is a something I did, trying my hand at some animation. I very much enjoyed the additional possibilities of describing form through motion. For example, the individual frames for the dog's running animation look like nothing, but some how it comes together and evokes dogishness when animated.

Anyway, this might turn into something. fingers crossed.

Heroes

Here are four Heroes (click to see full size), depicted carrying a range of weapons. from left to right: unarmed, club, crook, fork, staff, spear, knife, sword, bow, crossbow, hammer, axe, mace, flail whip.

This is a bit of a fools errand but was quite entertaining. Next I get to try and add a shield to each of these poses.

Clothes

Here are a small selection of clothes to go with the small items I have made. The top row consist of various peasant and warrior outfits, the second row are just a few slightly silly costumes. Can I get a 'hell yea!' for my red warrior bikini set?

I originally had trousers in the set and was considering making some gloves as well but have decided there isn't much point - Aside from being pretty dull to draw, Three armour slots seem to be sufficient for a player to customise their load out (would those plus 1 leather pants of the dragon really add that much?)

Anyway - at some point I still intend to make multi tile weapon and armour graphics - in which case the most generic of these items would be used to represent items of their kind in the play field. I guess it all depends on what kind of a game you want to make....

v0.3 ready to download

Hi all,

Version 0.3of the tileset is good to go. To save you from playing spot the difference the change log is as follows:

Level assets

Brightened floor tiles

Fixed campfire animation

Added gold brasiers

Added anvil

Added gold doors

Added water barrel

Removed duplicate drawers

Added sideways lectern

Added small table

Added animal rugs

Darkened spells

Added blood spatter

Added weapon racks

Monster sprites

Adjusted colours on devils

Added colour variant knights

Added winged apes

Bellhop monkeys

Added  6 boss monsters

All new item and interface tile sheet - this includes single tile items and some basic interface elements.

All new ttf pixel font - I am new to making fonts so let me know if you find any issues with the ttf. At the moment it's just basic Latin glyphs, but I will expand it over time.

In previous downloads I have included a plain text index for each tile sheet. I ran out of time this time round so I have included a copy of my index spreadsheet instead - let me know if this is more or less helpful.

Over and out!

New Bosses

Got a couple of new bosses here. I'm not making these in any particular order, so I still have most of the obvious creatures to do (dragons, cyclops and whotnot).

It occurred to me that these large monsters could act in more ways than being harder than average enemies, they could also serve as vehicles or avatars for the player - It's an obvious thing to say about the giant robot suits but it could work quite well for other creatures as well. I'm thinking about the hobbits riding Treebeard in the Lord of the Rings, or the mounts in Goldenaxe. I'm not making any promises mind you...

Small Items

Hullo,

It just occurred to me today that as some of you fine folk may be planning 7dRL entries for this year, I should make a last ditch attempt to woo you! With that in mind, I'm going to try and get the next release of the tileset out this weekend.

One of the main things that the tileset lacks at present are items. While I still intend to soldier on with my grand plan for a System shock inventory system, there will always need to be symbols for the stuff that is actually on the dungeon floor. While I'm never going to depict 50 different swords within the space of a single tile, I at least need a symbol for swords as an item type.

Anyway, here is what I have so far, If you cant make out what something is, or if you have any specific requests leave a comment and I'll try and get a reasonably complete set of bits and bobs ready for the weekend.

Fun with monkeys

Hullo,

I've just been tinkering with the monkey sprites I already had to make some cheap (but fun) variations.

Whats more terrifying than a vicious blood thirsty ape? A bloodthirsty ape with wings! I might do a colour change on these to make some gargoyles or something later on.

...I don't know how you could justify the bellhop apes in game, but I'm sure someone will find an excuse.

Setting the Scene

No real topic for this post, I've just been playing around with the tiles.

I quite enjoy setting up little dioramas using the various charicters and scenery, I don't know how hard it would be to duplicate this kind of theming using procedural generation techneques but I think it would be worth the effort. With a well made quest generator, it could breath a lot of life into a tiny game.

There are a few extra bits and pieces in these images that i haven't blogged yet, some from V0.2 and some that will be in the next release.

Raising the alarm

I'm sure alarms are included in a fair few roguelikes, and if not they should be. A simple thing like having to fell a monster before he calls his mates, or drawing a tough beast to one side of a level while you sneak down a side passage adds a great deal of immersion and drama whilst playing.

So far I have only thought of a few objects to act as alarms, bells gongs and horns. If I can think of more i'll add them.

Drums....that didn't take long....

The murkey depths

New year new update, and today we are going to be talking about recessed floors! how exciting.

Basically I have added tiles that allow for depressed areas of floor in dungeons, these depressions can then be filled with various entertaining elements, like flaming hot magma, fuming acid, filthy sewer water or swirling mists. In addition to looking pretty snappy, these should open up some nice new game mechanics: equipped armour could rust if you wade through water too long,  floor tiles could drop away into lava the second you step off them, yawning gulfs could be spanned with flammable rope bridges, etc etc.

In addition to the more dramatic effects the depressed tiles can also be used on top of a solid floor to create slight height difference. This could be purely aesthetic or it could give you a slight advantage when beating down on an enemy. All told these should interrupt what would otherwise be a level and uneventful playing field.

Ready to download

Version 0.1 of the eight2empire tileset is ready to download, just click the tab at the top of the blog and bring it home!

At the moment only level and monster tiles are included but I'll be adding item tiles as soon as I can. Hopefully there is enough material to get you going and keep you entertained while I work on filling out the set. As always your comments and feedback are greatly appreciated.

Magic Spells and Potions

Potions and Magic often overlap heavily in games, with many spells having equivalent potions and vice versa. I think it takes away the uniqueness of magic and prefer when there is a clearer distinction between the two, in terms of effect and usage.

Potions should include anything you can put in a bottle. From the everyday things like lamp oil, milk and soup to old favourites like poison, acid, hallucinogens, nerve tonics and antidotes. Their effects would always be direct and singular to an individual, lowering or raising a stat or causing a status effect like paralysis.

For the more exotic potions the player would need to find recipes and then collect ingredients - or purchase them directly from witch doctors or apothecaries. Potions can be held in small medium and large bottles, capable of containing 1,3 and 5 doses respectively. The advantages to smaller bottles are their use as sling ammunition and their lower chance of breaking when the player takes blunt weapon damage (Broken glass covered in poison might have its uses though).
 
For magic I prefer the pulp fantasy variety that costs its users dearly - dabbling in dark arts should not be taken lightly, and wizards shouldn't be able to walk around throwing fire like tennis balls. Spells should be cast with ceremony - laying down arcane areas of effect like protection from beasts or auras of fear and frenzy.

To reflect this I have made some spell tiles that are written in the players blood. Yes sir, our HP and manna are now one and the same, every spell bleeding a percentage of life force out of you. The closer you are to death the cheaper magic would become hopefully adding some strategy and drama to magic use. Thematically it might turn heavy magic users into Elrik like characters - addicted to restorative potions, stimulants and other concoctions to negate the crippling effects of their sorcery. Or perhaps the blood of innocents could be harvested for use in magic instead.

All of these ideas might make for tedious and boring game play, I don't know, but I like the idea of character classes created by playing styles, rather than doling out an MP meter with each wizard and arbitrary armour restrictions to archers...

Furniture

Dungeons need to be furnished to stop them from being boring empty spaces. Ideally the furniture should serve other uses besides decoration. Bookshelves can be ransacked in search of spells, recipes and maps, beds can be used to rest and fires cooked over.With a limited capacity to carry equipment the cupboards need not be so bare either. A barrel could be full of apples but a sensible adventure would only take a few.

These are just a few mock ups. I think furniture will be the most challenging areas of this tileset, as I want to provide lots of props to create engaging environments.

More dungeons

Here is a selection of wall graphics, you'll have to click the image to see them bigger (and maybe Ctrl+ a few times). I have all the shading saved as a separate layer in Photoshop, so its pretty easy to create new themes by sliding different textures underneath. I'll make some more elaborate mockups later when i'ts not 2 in the morning and my eyeballs don't feel like they are made of sand.

I am doing all this on a fairly crummy laptop, so its pretty hard to judge whether I have the contrast values right, anyone out there with a calibrated CRT wanna give me a clue?

Goblins and Mechanics

Not too much to say about these really, the goblin witch has a bone staff, the mechanic 'weldlings' have non specific weapons, maybe steam guns?

Item Inventory

It erks me in games when I can hold an unlimited amount of junk. It ruins my suspended disbelief and feels like a missed opportunity for an extra area of strategic play. Because of this I'm working on item graphics that would work with a Systemshock/Resident Evil 4 style inventory system. In RE4 95% of the tension comes from having to ration your bullets and finding room for that extra machine gun. Adding the ability to carry unlimited health or ammo would kill that game totally.

Another thing I don't like in games is grind, I don't have time for it and sometimes it can feel very artificial, especially when there are arbitrary level requirements set to use seemingly ordinary items like capes or shoes. In my ideal game success would depend on resource management and selecting the right equipment. Making sure you have enough food and light before you plunge into the mysterious depths and knowing you have the best weapons to vanquish your enemies should be of prime concern. I think having the items depicted at a larger and more detailed scale compared to the gameplay sprites adds a nice level of obsessiveness to the inventory screen, after all its all about the loot.

In addition to damage stats for weapons I would like to see Quality and Condition levels. The better quality the item the slower its condition degrades and longer it takes to break. This would hopefully disrupt the pattern of finding better equipment and dumping your old stuff without ever looking back. A trusty blade of medium damage might be preferable to a razor-sharp goblin scimitar that would quickly loose its edge. conversely, rather than use your fine war mace for smashing down a barricaded door, you would be encouraged to pick up an enemies crude hammer. Finding a broken sword of fantastic workmanship would require you to carry it to the surface for repair (at the expense of that heavy bag of coin), before it can be wielded.

I'm working up a large library of weapon and item graphics, and the following mockups are what they might look like in a mobile game...