Dev log for my game. Working title: "Not the Hero"

[RM5998]

EDIT: I was unsure about whether to put it in Offtopic or Recovery. I decided to put it here because I'm using this to keep my mind off CTBing.

So I decided to make this here so that I don't go backsliding into apathy again. A reminder of why I'm doing this and a way to keep going. I'll be posting stuff about where I'm at with the game, as well as the things I'm learning on the way. Doesn't clog up other threads that way. I might start up my old Wordpress blog at some point, but I'll be sure to continue posting here.

For now, the title is "Not the Hero". It takes the roguelike genre's core ideas as a jumping-off point to explore how the game's structure affects how people view its story. Currently, there are 3 acts planned:

1. Act 1: You play as the sidekick of a hero, who's on a quest to save the land from the evil that has befallen it... or something. The details don't matter. The game's survival condition is that the hero lives - once they die, you need to restart your campaign. If you, the sidekick, die, the game resets to the last checkpoint, and you get replaced by a new sidekick. When at last, the hero's final mission comes up, it's structured so that they die, but you, the sidekick, get to continue on your own. (NOTE: You can't control the hero, only the sidekick. And the camera itself is centred on the hero, to show that they are the centre of the story.)
2. Act 2: You play as the sidekick-turned-hero, who's now the centre of the story (literally too, the camera is now centred on you). You can build up a team of sidekicks to help you with missions. You can have upto 6 sidekicks, and if one dies, the game goes on. You can't control them. If you die, the game resets back to the beginning (of Act 1). And when you get to the final mission, it's structured so that you die, but this time, the game doesn't end. Your sidekicks barely escape.
3. Act 3: The game is now an XCOM-style RTS where you manage what used to be your team of sidekicks, now heroes in their own right. If a member dies, the game keeps going. If all members die, reset to beginning of Act 1. You can pick up up to 6 reserves, to fill slots if a member dies. And this time, when your team gets to the final mission, they can succeed. Defeat the overlord, save the realm, whatever it was.

I'll probably post videos about how it's going from time to time. Right now, I got 2 gifs which contain mostly stuff that will be discarded henceforth (mostly because they're filled with shitty art and the shadow direction doesn't exactly match the lighting implied by the object texture). I'm hoping to finish my Blender tutorial run in a week or so and get a new version of whatever these gifs contain.



Hope this works out.

EDIT: Just to add... I've been trying to use a popular Blender tutorial to learn the ropes of that software, and I made a doughnut. It looks like this so far:

 

[Deleted member 1465]

Nice donut. Are you going to keep this updated here then?

 

[one4all]

I thought it might take you longer for the doughnut in the blender. Nice job!
Keep up with the game please and keep us updated.
BTW are you still working on your paper?

 

[RM5998]

Nice donut. Are you going to keep this updated here then?

Yeah, I think so. I'll probably be doing daily updates (or close enough). If I haven't made progress on actual content (sprites, code, etc.) I'll talk about what the game itself is going to be like.

I thought it might take you longer for the doughnut in the blender. Nice job!
Keep up with the game please and keep us updated.
BTW are you still working on your paper?

Well, the doughnut was simpler than I thought - that biggest time sink turned out to be the rendering process. (Since my GPU is busted, it's really slow. Shouldn't be that slow once I'm working on sprites.)
And yeah, I'm still working on that paper. Should be done by tonight, or tomorrow evening at worst.

 

[one4all]

Well, the doughnut was simpler than I thought - that biggest time sink turned out to be the rendering process. (Since my GPU is busted, it's really slow. Shouldn't be that slow once I'm working on sprites.)
And yeah, I'm still working on that paper. Should be done by tonight, or tomorrow evening at worst.

Hmmmm you been bit mining lately? LOL J/K
Sprites and blenders are not my forte. I never did any graphic programming. Just the old shit.. punch cards, cobol, fortran, assembler and shit like that.
I'm glad you are making progress though. Good luck!

 

[RM5998]

Spent most of today writing my modern politics paper, so didn't have time to go back to the doughnut yet... But I guess the time for that will come sooner or later.

Meanwhile, been experimenting with low-poly rocks in Blender, and this is what it looks like:




Yeah, there are several kinks to be worked out there... I guess I'll need to go further with the tutorials.

EDIT: Made a rough rock... still looks like shit. Can't get the lighting to look anywhere close to good.

 

[Brick In The Wall]

Ah the doughnut tutorial, I remember making that one a long time ago. Blender has come so far since then. Keep up the good work on your game!

 

[RM5998]

Made some progress with learning Blender... here's a coffee cup I made today.



Also, I'd like to thank @Inferdan for their help with discussing the ideas of the game. It's been great to have someone to discuss this with at length, and getting a clear image of what's done and what needs to be done. Not to mention that said discussion led to a bunch of cool ideas and important decisions.

In other news, I used our college's offer of free Coursera courses till July to sign up for a game design course. Who knows, might be useful.

 

[Epsilon0]

Wow!
So this is the famous "doughnut in a Blender" @RM5998

It looks great, you got the sprinkles and the shadow in there as well. Congrats

Now here's a cup of Darjeeling for your hard work.

 

[Deleted member 1465]

I'm tempted to download Blender again now and make a donut.

 

[Epsilon0]

I'm tempted to download Blender again now and make a donut.

Or a potato, or a carrot. Or better yet ... a cellery stick. The possibilities are endless.

You can then bombard us with Veggies by Underscore. :-)

 

[Deleted member 1465]

Or a potato, or a carrot. Or better yet ... a cellery stick. The possibilities are endless.

You can then bombard us with Veggies by Underscore. :-)

Lol handcrafted 3D veggies. Don't you think I have anything better to do? I'll probably stick to making new avatars with GIMP

 

[namelessX8]

Spent most of today writing my modern politics paper, so didn't have time to go back to the doughnut yet... But I guess the time for that will come sooner or later.

Meanwhile, been experimenting with low-poly rocks in Blender, and this is what it looks like:

EDIT: Made a rough rock... still looks like shit. Can't get the lighting to look anywhere close to good.
View attachment 31534

Hmm that looks like a rock of crack

Are there any open-source codes you can make use of? It is inefficient to write codes to perform certain actions if someone else has already done it and the code is publicly available. The game looks intriguing though...

What language do you use?

 

[RM5998]

Hmm that looks like a rock of crack

Are there any open-source codes you can make use of? It is inefficient to write codes to perform certain actions if someone else has already done it and the code is publicly available. The game looks intriguing though...

What language do you use?

It was supposed to be a low-poly rock at first, then I decided to add roughness later. Ended up becoming a pastel painting at the end.

About using open source tools - It's more of a learning experience thing at this point. But yeah, it would be pointless to write my own engine, so I'm using Godot. Which comes with GDScript, a Python-like programming language. But I'll be using open source tools whenever something irrelevant but complex comes up. But I do want to make the art myself. That's the only exception to that rule.

And finally, about the game being intriguing - thanks a lot! I hope I can make it live up to expectations.

 

[RM5998]

Yet more attempts at a rock... ended with this:



At least I got freestyle to work in Blender. I don't want to be drawing those outlines later in PS.

This shit is going to take ages.

You know, an idea struck me. Why not have more than one rock?

Got this so far...



Need to put the outlines in all the right places, to get a good render. That's going to take an age unless I reduce the number of polygons. I'll look into that option sometime tomorrow, I think. Thankfully it's a holiday.

 

[RM5998]

Decided to go back to a single rock, since the number of edges to shade was getting out of hand. Got this:



I'm considering moving to an isometric tileset, so I've been considering different angles as well.



Well, time to move onto doing something else for a while... I'm kinda tired of looking at just grey and yellow for so long.

 

[RM5998]

Didn't do anything useful today... so I'll spend a bit of time talking about what I'm thinking about the gameplay.

I'm thinking that there should be turn-based combat, with 1 hero, 1 player and N enemies. Everybody gets an action bar, of 100 points. Every action costs some number of points. Say moving a tile costs 50 points, and attacking costs 50 points. During your turn, you spend your points to act. At the end of your turn, your points are set to zero, even if you have some left. Then, based on your speed value, your action bar fills up. If you have a higher speed value, you will have turns more frequently.

I've been trying to work out a way of making an isometric map with different height levels properly. It's been confusing so far, but at least that's a game engine issue. I get those. I can work those out.

Once I get off my ass and stop watching Steven Universe, that is.