Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[GoblinGrotto]

GoblinGrotto Hello /vrpg/ fren.
Don't post there again, it lowers your RPG cred.

The hell is /vrpg/?

 

[hacknhack]

It's a shame that the tactical battles are not included yet. That would be something that really differentiates the product from RPG Maker. I don't know if it's already possible to build your own tactical Battle System in architect. Maybe it is.

It's most definitely an interesting project. Thanks for posting. I'm pretty tempted to give it a go as is. RE: Tactical battles, the dev posted this a year back:

It's feasible, probably even now, but it would honestly be a lot of scripting/a nightmare. I wouldn't advise it unless you're stubborn and WANT to do that.

That said, Tactics-battles have been requested a LOT. After we break from Early Access into "full" release (roughly a year), the first big MVP planned is a tactical/sim RPG battle system.

I don't know how easy or hard it will be to customize, etc, but Final Fantasy Tactics, Shining Force, and classic X-Com/Fallout are some of my thoughts on what a "tactical" battle system should feel like.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/2158670/discussions/0/3834297685604496639/

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

It's a shame that the tactical battles are not included yet. That would be something that really differentiates the product from RPG Maker. I don't know if it's already possible to build your own tactical Battle System in architect. Maybe it is.

It's most definitely an interesting project. Thanks for posting. I'm pretty tempted to give it a go as is. RE: Tactical battles, the dev posted this a year back:

It's feasible, probably even now, but it would honestly be a lot of scripting/a nightmare. I wouldn't advise it unless you're stubborn and WANT to do that.

That said, Tactics-battles have been requested a LOT. After we break from Early Access into "full" release (roughly a year), the first big MVP planned is a tactical/sim RPG battle system.

I don't know how easy or hard it will be to customize, etc, but Final Fantasy Tactics, Shining Force, and classic X-Com/Fallout are some of my thoughts on what a "tactical" battle system should feel like.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/2158670/discussions/0/3834297685604496639/

It might be worth playing with but TBH I've done this sort of thing a lot and if there isn't a sample project or some project that proves its possible, I wouldn't waste my time. Of course, someone always has to be the first to do it.

But these kinds of engines, especially for slighty divergent projects are probably gonna be quite funky with touchy devs who don't or won't be adding x or y feature you need for quite some time. You get the dev types that don't like to say no, because they don't want to close the door, but its as good as closed.

 

[NotSweeper]

GoblinGrotto Hello /vrpg/ fren.
Don't post there again, it lowers your RPG cred.

The hell is /vrpg/?

Good question. No idea.

 

[Zeusington]

It does not seem fully developed nor isometric friendly. But an alternative to RPG maker at some point in the future.

Isometric is already definitely easier in comparison to RPG Maker because of diagonal movement and grid-free placement of your assets.

The only real challenge with isometric is figuring out A* on a voxel grid, which isn't too bad. It's dead easy if you don't have a z-axis to speak of, or you're simply using a heightmap instead of true voxels.

I even just googled "monogame a* pathfinding" for funsies and there's a video prototyping it.

 

[baboogy]

Haven't had time to work on my game for a few weeks, came back to it today, and man, all I can say is, I've hit that point where I'm really starting to regret working on a project of this scope (for my relative abilities) only in the evenings, after work, kids, etc.

It's starting to congeal into a spaghetti nightmare of half-baked brain-fried decisions made when I'm too tired to even watch TV, much less try to design something that's clean and easy to continue adding features onto

Thinking maybe it's time to take a page out of the advice I've seen on here before and start waking up an hour or two before work to work on this when I'm wide awake instead of leaving it for the hour or two before I go to bed.

Does anyone else have any advice for other good passion project working practices for people who have jobs in a similar domain and find themselves feeling burnt out juggling the two at the same time?

 

[Zeusington]

Haven't had time to work on my game for a few weeks, came back to it today, and man, all I can say is, I've hit that point where I'm really starting to regret working on a project of this scope (for my relative abilities) only in the evenings, after work, kids, etc.

It's starting to congeal into a spaghetti nightmare of half-baked brain-fried decisions made when I'm too tired to even watch TV, much less try to design something that's clean and easy to continue adding features onto

Thinking maybe it's time to take a page out of the advice I've seen on here before and start waking up an hour or two before work to work on this when I'm wide awake instead of leaving it for the hour or two before I go to bed.

Does anyone else have any advice for other good passion project working practices for people who have jobs in a similar domain and find themselves feeling burnt out juggling the two at the same time?

For context, I work from home doing Support / IT stuff on a computer 90 degrees to my right. I'll easily spend 14+ hours a day in this office of mine, and I'm actually making remarkable progress on a game I intend to release on Steam.

You can wake up early to use your best hours on dev, but don't do this more than once or twice a week unless your normal sleep schedule allows. This will make the evening hours even less productive if you're not careful, which you should commit to your family.

The best thing you can do is do a sort-of "slow hype" throughout the work day where you think about the one or two smaller things you can knock out in an hour or so and make them seem achievable. Then, when you have a moment after work, knock 'em out and pat yourself on the back. This is good, consistent motivation with some bonus progress on the side.

Similarly, throughout the work week, you can also plan and hype up something more substantial for the weekend. Then, wake up early on the weekends when everybody else sleeps in and get a good four hours of uninterrupted dev done. That's 8 hours a weekend of pure progress if you go in with a goal. That's about 400 efficient hours a year on a project, which is plenty if you scope appropriately.

tl;dr daydream up a plan, then stick to it, then make sure to pat yourself on the back for good time management to stay motivated.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

It does not seem fully developed nor isometric friendly. But an alternative to RPG maker at some point in the future.

Isometric is already definitely easier in comparison to RPG Maker because of diagonal movement and grid-free placement of your assets.

The only real challenge with isometric is figuring out A* on a voxel grid, which isn't too bad. It's dead easy if you don't have a z-axis to speak of, or you're simply using a heightmap instead of true voxels.

I even just googled "monogame a* pathfinding" for funsies and there's a video prototyping it.

I dont follow. Why would A star be any different on a voxel grid (whatever that is)? The search just works off distance so it doesnt matter if its 2D, 3D or 10D.

Encoding game geometry into a searchable graph thats a good fit to the visual representation can be challenging...is that what you mean?

You either have to encode your graph in isometric space somehow, OR change the distance metric to calculate isometric distance.

 

[baboogy]

Haven't had time to work on my game for a few weeks, came back to it today, and man, all I can say is, I've hit that point where I'm really starting to regret working on a project of this scope (for my relative abilities) only in the evenings, after work, kids, etc.

It's starting to congeal into a spaghetti nightmare of half-baked brain-fried decisions made when I'm too tired to even watch TV, much less try to design something that's clean and easy to continue adding features onto

Thinking maybe it's time to take a page out of the advice I've seen on here before and start waking up an hour or two before work to work on this when I'm wide awake instead of leaving it for the hour or two before I go to bed.

Does anyone else have any advice for other good passion project working practices for people who have jobs in a similar domain and find themselves feeling burnt out juggling the two at the same time?

For context, I work from home doing Support / IT stuff on a computer 90 degrees to my right. I'll easily spend 14+ hours a day in this office of mine, and I'm actually making remarkable progress on a game I intend to release on Steam.

You can wake up early to use your best hours on dev, but don't do this more than once or twice a week unless your normal sleep schedule allows. This will make the evening hours even less productive if you're not careful, which you should commit to your family.

The best thing you can do is do a sort-of "slow hype" throughout the work day where you think about the one or two smaller things you can knock out in an hour or so and make them seem achievable. Then, when you have a moment after work, knock 'em out and pat yourself on the back. This is good, consistent motivation with some bonus progress on the side.

Similarly, throughout the work week, you can also plan and hype up something more substantial for the weekend. Then, wake up early on the weekends when everybody else sleeps in and get a good four hours of uninterrupted dev done. That's 8 hours a weekend of pure progress if you go in with a goal. That's about 400 efficient hours a year on a project, which is plenty if you scope appropriately.

tl;dr daydream up a plan, then stick to it, then make sure to pat yourself on the back for good time management to stay motivated.

I've been trying to do something similar on workdays to what you mentioned. Mulling over something during the day that I can add or refine in an hour or so in the evening, the problem usually is, when I get home from work, it's really not until 10 pm that I can actually sit down at a computer with free time where I can consistently focus without getting interrupted. By the point I'm just fried and more likely than not whatever I implement will end up taking longer to make clean and pretty down the line.

Waking up (even earlier) like you mentioned on the weekends is probably what I'll try, thanks. And most likely I'll save the hour or two on weekdays I work on it on doing something less mentally intensive but still needed for the project, like continuing to teach myself art.

 

[Zanzoken]

Good news, I was able to link up with the artist who made the character model I like so much, and he made a few custom edits for me. Here's what it looks like with textures and paired with the helmet asset I bought.



This is still WIP and needs more work but it's definitely on the right track.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Good news, I was able to link up with the artist who made the character model I like so much, and he made a few custom edits for me. Here's what it looks like with textures and paired with the helmet asset I bought.



This is still WIP and needs more work but it's definitely on the right track.

Why dont you make the upper body proportional?

 

[baboogy]

Put in a satisfying amount of work into the software renderer for my blobber today. Animated textures, skyboxes, did some prototyping of lighting, ironed out some glitches. Though there's still a lot more I need to fix, and a lot more I want to add. But overall, I'm feeling very satisfied with the visual aesthetic that the game is starting to take on.

If I can embed this right, here's a webm of it in action:
Looks like it didn't embed right, here's the link
https://i.imgur.com/4ldf1di.mp4

 

[Zanzoken]

Good news, I was able to link up with the artist who made the character model I like so much, and he made a few custom edits for me. Here's what it looks like with textures and paired with the helmet asset I bought.



This is still WIP and needs more work but it's definitely on the right track.

Why dont you make the upper body proportional?

The game will have a 2D top-down camera, so the characters will be somewhat small on screen. I think the emphasis on the head / upper body / arms makes the characters and their attacks more readable from that perspective.

I also think placing more emphasis on the character faces (which aren't done yet) makes it easier to identify and connect with them. I want the characters to be memorable like they are in Battle Brothers, so it feels like you are leading a brotherhood. That's also why the setting will be fictional... heavily reminiscent of but not actually Rome... the gladiators aren't slaves in this setting, they are guys who sign up to fight for wealth and fame in the arena. The gladiator games in this world are more like modern day boxing, MMA, or pro wrestling... entertainment events put on by promoters to make money.

 

[baboogy]

Good news, I was able to link up with the artist who made the character model I like so much, and he made a few custom edits for me. Here's what it looks like with textures and paired with the helmet asset I bought.



This is still WIP and needs more work but it's definitely on the right track.

Why dont you make the upper body proportional?

The game will have a 2D top-down camera, so the characters will be somewhat small on screen. I think the emphasis on the head / upper body / arms makes the characters and their attacks more readable from that perspective.

I also think placing more emphasis on the character faces (which aren't done yet) makes it easier to identify and connect with them.

I agree, there's a lot of merit to this line of thinking if you look at real world examples. Looking at 28mm tabletop games or wargaming, it used to fairly common for miniatures to be sculpted with dramatically bigger proportionally to the rest of the body hands, arms, heads/faces, and sometimes upper torso. The idea being that while it might look goofy if you pick up the mini and put it right next to your face, when you're actually playing with them at arms length or further on a big table those important details/features pop out instead of blending in with the rest of the sculpt. And it worked great, it was far easier to pick out hand/face details in a game at a glance on minis proportioned like that vs ones that tried to go for an anatomically correct realistic sculpt of the human body.

 

[PlayerEmers]

GoblinGrotto Hello /vrpg/ fren.
Don't post there again, it lowers your RPG cred.

The hell is /vrpg/?

its a relatively new board on 4chan (and by new i mean its almost 4 years old)
it was created at the same time as /vmg/ (mobile), /vst/ (strategy) and /vm/ (multiplayer)

 

[Sukhāvatī]

heavily reminiscent of but not actually Rome... the gladiators aren't slaves in this setting, they are guys who sign up to fight for wealth and fame in the arena. The gladiator games in this world are more like modern day boxing, MMA, or pro wrestling... entertainment events put on by promoters to make money.

That happened in Rome too btw.