Hey, want a Pumpking map?

Posted: August 20, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Patreon | Leave a comment »

I’ve been meaning to make one of these since I finished the game and finally got around to it today, it only took me a month 😛

(to be fair though, these are a real pain to make, I had to stitch it together from ~70 screenshots! D:)

Anyway this month has been pretty tough for me creatively but your support has definitely made it significantly easier to get through, so I wanted to give you a little something as thanks! 🙂

If you haven’t played Pumpking yet; I posted about it here, made it playable on my itch.io page, and put a version on the pico-8 forum (scroll down if you want to test the 60fps version!)

Oh make sure to download the map from this link below, patreon mangled the map for the post’s banner image 🙁

This content is available exclusively to members of this creator's Patreon at $1 or more.

Sophie’s Screenshot Saturday #1

Posted: August 20, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Patreon | Leave a comment »

 

It begins!

I am still very much in the planning stages of this project, but I have made a start. Mostly this has involved jotting down every random idea into a notes app; this is building up an idea of characters, world, the kind of story I want to tell. I’m not committing to any idea yet, just adding them all and seeing what comes out of it. There are also a bunch of tech notes and reminders to myself in there, things I think are important. Anyway I’m just going to copy/paste those notes below, I will probably have to find a better way to keep them organised sometime though, perhaps a workflowy list I can share with you?

Also lately I’ve been studying tech to render interiors in blender, so I can cut away walls to show the inside, but without light passing through the cut-away as if there isn’t a wall there. I was really worried about this one tbh but I managed to find the solution relatively easily!

My current notes file:

 ———————————— 

Names?

  • Composing Destiny
  • Shminal Shmantasy
  • Role Prayers
  • A group of badasses have grown tired of your shit and they have swords so watch the fuck out asshole
  • Courageous 

The core HAS to be about educating yourself, not trusting authority, and FIGHTING for truth when you find it.

I picture a lead character yelling at a group of people discussing a serious topic when nobody in the group is actually going to check what the deal is, they sit around making decisions based on assumptions

–

IF A CHARACTER’S MOTIVATIONS AREN’T SECRET, MAKE THEM CLEAR!

–

Could be the lead character is someone who is afraid of everything ALL THE TIME but they try to be brave to live up to the legacy of a good friend they lost?

“Why do I have to do this?! I’m afraid to meet a stranger at the door, it should be someone else! … but no one else would come… it has to be me. I hate this.” *goes forward*

They don’t have the energy for the adventure, they want to be at home, but they know that if they don’t help they won’t be able to live with themselves. By (much!) later on they are destroying themselves just to do what others SHOULD be doing, perhaps they need to learn to lean on the friends they found, to ask to take a break. To recognise that they deserve to not be tearing themselves apart, that if they do the fight will be lost too soon.

How does this character react to meeting someone who is not afraid and runs into danger to prove themselves?

Possible intro: the ground shakes the village, in the village meeting later, an elder says the monster in the mountain must have awoken, that it will come and attack the village. But everyone prefers to believe it was just an earthquake, already behind them. The monster of the past was probably just a myth after all. When called upon by the elder to go see for themselves, nobody goes, except the most fearful person in the village. They eventually find out the monster in the mountain is real, that people want to assume terrors from past ages are gone, so they do, but the brave continue to fight because they must.

Facing the monster in the mountain, who mocks the trembling would-be hero, it takes several turns of “too scared to move!” Whilst the monster uses their turn to break the seals/chains holding them back, before our hero finds the nerve to move themselves and fight the monster of the mountain before it can regain its full strength. (Perhaps the finishing blow should be indirect? Like hitting a support beam causing large rocks to crush the monster? – the character shouldn’t be super powered and capable of anything just because they found their nerve for a moment, they have a long way to go before they are really strong)

*thinking to themself, after coming back to the village and everyone wants to praise them and is all ‘we can leave the scary stuff to them’ ‘we can rely on them’* “What? Brave? A hero? I’m not! I just did the things you should have done! Don’t act like all the problems are for me to deal with now! Why don’t you ever face them?!”

–

DON’T LIMIT YOURSELF! COME UP WITH AN IMPOSSIBLE IDEA AND *THEN* FIGURE OUT HOW IT CAN WORK

–

It’d be cool if the battle system was dice based, but passively – no waiting for dice it roll etc, just see the dice pop out like RPG damage numbers normally pop out, along with the sum damage. Expose what weapons do what damage etc – have a fully working pen&paper battle system with rule descriptions all come together, but playable without needing to think so much about the *system* or values just like a video game RPG.

–

Use proper version control FROM THE START!

–

Don’t use legacy animation system!

–

“This world has monsters in it.

That means that part of living in this world, is fighting monsters.

We don’t concede to them, we don’t placate them,

Each and every one will kill you and the ones you care about,

So we fight. We can’t live in this world if we don’t fight.”

–

A character who can speak to their god by entering their own heart, but their god turns out to be just a reflection of themselves, only as pure as their own conscience, only as kind as their love – and just as lost as them.

“Why don’t they hear my voice? My teachings? Naive child: they do hear, and they hear in their own voices. I speak to all, and all speak as I.”

–

Trains are cool, cooler than airships even.

–

Must have absurd extensive exposition guy (who expos it’s JUST A MOMENT AFTER IT’S OBVIOUS just like no no kuni movie king guy)

–

Needs collectible mini-game to play with NPCs!!!

–

Needs cute friendly creatures! (I think they say “Nar!” Like Narrrrrr to purr or NARRR to growl or naaaaaar to howl?)

–

FISHING!

–

Can’t trust prophecy – you need to act as if fate is working against you, because it is. Without preparation and dedication a prophecy cannot come true.

“Things didn’t happen as they were supposed to! Your prophecy was wrong!”

“Pah! “Supposed to”! “Supposed to happen” is the things you don’t allow to happen any other way. They only ACTUALLY happen when you don’t screw it up! My prophecy was perfect until you half-assed it!”

–

For the world map, it could be cool if it was literally like a map, eg wainwright line work, maybe with some light watercolours to make it pop?

–

Dice components: collect different dice, apply them to spells/weapons/abilities to optimise as you want, the dice will be automatically rolled when you perform the action to determine the outcome

Alternate: you have a ‘hand’ of dice, and when choosing an ability, you roll a die from your hand. When you run out you reshuffle and get a new hand, or get a new hand anytime but at a cost

–

Could have multiple points around a battlefield, and be able to move to them on your turn. Option of area/spatial tactics but without a grid and worrying about speed etc. Places will depend on battlefield too, and enemies might move and need to be cornered or something?

–

A stopwatch boss, if you clear part of the game WAY too fast for a casual run, you are attacked by the stopwatcher, who is invulnerable for 5 minutes and you can’t escape from the fight either. They say things like “slow down!” “Take a toilet break!” “Respond to chat already!” “Have you tried counting steps?” And maybe suggests other things to do to pass the time until the game can resume. This boss should be mandatory for speed runs somehow, that is, not so long to fight that it’s better to run other parts of the game slowly to avoid triggering it. Try to put it about halfway through a run so it comes up when speedrunners could do with a break.

–

Things relating to magic could be “faeried” – spells are fairy words, seals are faerie walls, fairied chains? Is this super rubbish? Why would magic stuff be called that?

–

Battle transition ideas

  • couple of random slashes through the screen, segments fall away?
  • Burn away as though the screen is made of paper?
  • Flash freeze and shatter?
  • Roll up screen like it’s a scroll?
  • Page turn?
    • (Could kind of zoom out to see the screen as just an illustration in the book? Could even have text on the pages relating to the story at the time?)
  • Have each enemy tear through the screen in their own way? Would probably need to have all possible battle scenes and enemies for a location pre-loaded for this to work
    • Could have this just for bosses?
    • Maybe it wouldn’t be *tooo* much work? it’s maybe 1 extra animation per monster, and the screen pieces & camera can be part of that animation
  • Gunshots shatter the screen?
  • Screen tears up like paper?

–

Perhaps a character who has had other people’s crap imposed on them (part of a cult? Regular shitty culture?) and their body was changed in a way that was pretty devastating for them, they have begun remaking their body as they want using cyborg parts? They stay as cheerful as they can but get FURIOUS when people are doing stuff that negatively effects others for any reason.

Picturing a spunky kid that beats up bad guys using awesome legs they build for themself?

–

A royal character who doesn’t totally suck? “I stepped back to allow democracy, I thought it was right, but they did not help the people, and tried to have me killed when I objected. I will reclaim my title and save my kingdom. A monarchy can be good, but until there is not a single person suffering in my kingdom the monarchy is a failure! I am a failure! I will right my wrongs! And the wrongs of those I granted power!”

I imagine them living in hiding, on the run from assassins? Maybe they have a really stupid disguise.

Maybe they later realise the real reason their “democracy” didn’t work was that it was just claimed by rich nobles, it should have been for the people of the kingdom?

–

Consider; Make it fucking metal.

–

Using MSAA should hide weird edges where real-time geometry masks stuff over the pre-rendered BG? Expensive for mobile tho… make it a toggle able option? Battery save option? Maybe just a generic unity quality option.

–

Don’t forget to brainstorm awesome fantasy location possibilities! Don’t leave it too late!

 ————————————  

And that’s all I have to show for myself right now!

My plan for the next week or so is to continue to jot down EVERY idea that interests me (trying to stop myself from stopping myself too – I’m writing down even unfeasible ideas because I want to go into this project with COURAGE! I’ll decide if they are *really* unfeasible later), and to try putting together a test scene with several camera shots – I want to confirm that I can do as much on that third page of my notebook as possible. The more of it I can do, the prettier a game I can make and the more visually varied it can be.

Thanks so much for your support!

This content is available exclusively to members of this creator's Patreon at $1 or more.

Sophie’s Screenshot Saturday #2

Posted: August 20, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Patreon | Leave a comment »

Hey so it’s been another week of work on my RPG project! The first big news is I grabbed a subscription for the Substance Suite, thanks to a few new patrons I was able to justify this pretty easily, and so making detailed and interesting materials is SO much easier now! I think even in this week’s screenshots you can already see how much of a quality bump things like this can give!

Being able to make quality stuff like this *quickly* is going to make a HUGE difference especially with a project that could become so big and require a lot of assets! I think this is a perfect example of how much your support helps me so THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH! <3

There are a few other tools/systems/packs etc that I have my eye on and may grab in the coming weeks/months but we’ll see! I’m not going to go on a spending spree getting cool stuff I only *think* I might need and then find out I can’t get the stuff I *do* need.

~

Anyway, this week has mostly been about working on my blender-to-unity pipeline and all the key stuff there is DONE! I can render a scene in blender, import it to unity, I have a script to set up the cameras to match, shaders to draw everything, I know the settings for rendering reflection probes in blender and having them match in unity… it’s all there!

Well, I say *all* there, I still have to work out some tech (eg; reflections) but that is the kind of thing I can work on once things are actually underway.

~

As part of making 3D renders with fancy materials this week, I did a good amount of FREAKING THE HELL OUT.

Seeing high quality details and such was really intimidating – can I make good-enough realtime models that don’t look out of place? Can I make HUNDREDS of them for all the NPCs and monsters???? It’s terrifying to think about!

But as the week went on I started to chill a bit, if things become a problem, I can solve them. Otherwise I’m just gonna have confidence in myself because I am awesome 💪 (I hope)

~

Anyway here is the note-dump from the week, (as an FYI I’ve started moving my notes to a workflowy list here. This way they are more organised, and collected in one place rather than a series of posts);

 – – – –

A legendary fisher character!

–

Learn new input system!

–

Learn new animation system!

–

Start thinking about what challenge/conflict can bring a party together, develop relationships, and be cool as fuck to fight

–

What if reincarnation is real in some form,  it it’s understanding is suppressed, and exploited by the powerful for their own benefit?

–

What if there are lots of hidden underground caves/temples that are like other worlds?

What if these are gateways to other worlds? What if a character was taken from one and is looking for the right gateway to get back home?

I like the idea that each world has some great power that can be bestowed upon a character, party members can each claim one of these powers?

–

Tools/tech to look into:

  • substance suite
  • Uv pack master
  • TexTools blender
  • Decal machine
  • Extreme PBR for blender
  • Retopoflow? (2.8 remedying good enough maybe?)
  • Speed sculpt?
  • Edge flow
  • Box cutter
  • Mesh machine

–

A cat person with a catapult!

Wait, isn’t that a dark cloud character?

Yup 100% it is. Tbh tho that’s just proof it’s a good idea.

–

Figure out a way to refract through a pre-rendered foreground element like a magnifying glass?

–

For battle scenes, maybe just… bake all the channels? I dunno maybe full PBR stuff is easier and better looking but single unlit texture materials will load WAY faster and be kinder on mobile? But maybe it will be negligible compared to pre-rendered textures anyway…

–

Experiment with blender compositor! It could be cool to get an NPR effect but even if sticking with realistic BGs, colour adjustments and such are important! (If making look-up tables, those should be able to be used in unity, right?)

–

Keep this link handy! https://rsci.app.link/IntBAke0L3?_p=c71d29c59b1c66f2eb038cf4

–

“Bellows” could be a cool name for someone?

–

If I did paintovers of renders, it could really fix the “rigid” realistic look and make something more stylistic characters could exist in, but it more than doubles the environment work for each shot…

Perhaps with the right shaders and compositing I can achieve the same goal?

–

Think about using detail contrast in shots – limiting areas with lots of texture detail to make them stand out in a composition rather than having high detail textures everywhere making for busy images

–

Maybe just ditch the principled shader and try others for more stylistic effects?

–

Accessibility:

  • make sure all dialogue and menu selections are output to text files that can be read
  • Full UI scaling
  • Be able to skip/auto-win battles
  • Mode where all interactive things & entrances/exits at a location are listed, described, and selectable through a menu – the character can then run to each and interact as needed
    • Don’t forget descriptions of scenes and key events!
    • These can appear in the stage manager system but are passed over when the mode is disabled
  • Make a Sinput-style wrapper for the new input system if necessary. Rebinding is a MUST.

–

Making monsters, things to incorporate/experiment with:

  • insects!
  • Mix animals
  • Classic cryptic but DON’T USE THEM IN CLASSIC WAYS/APPEARANCES
  • Eachies!
  • Tizzy-whizzies!
  • Think about locations
  • Evolution
  • What kind of fear/dread or other feelings it should evoke

Locations:

  • think about what locations inspired by forms of random things might look like? A city with architecture like a keyboard? Like a hairbrush? Like a ladder?
  • Think about all the places there could be
    • Underwater
    • Seaside
    • Built into a cliff
    • In mountains
    • Underground
    • In the sky
    • On a bridge
    • In space
    • In unreal places like dreams, memories, ideas
  • Think about age
    • Ancient (ruined? Preserved? Updated constantly over the ages?)
    • Decrepid
    • New
    • Under construction
    • Abandoned
  • Think about how a place gets used, what for, by who, why, where is it relative to other places? Does it hold a value in culture.
  • Time of day
  • Weather

–

New input system is gonna need some WORK, I might have to make Sinput2 whilst putting this game together?

–

Reflection probe setup:

  • camera, facing -y in blender
  • Panoramic, equirectangular
  • Cube texture shape, lat-long (cylinder) mapping in unity

Transparent occluded setup:

  • project UVs from camera
  • PrerenderedBGtransparent shader, transparent queue

–

RESIDENT EVIL HD USED PRE-RENDERED DEPTH MASKS!!?!!

–

Could divide screen into tiles, each one being a depth mask. By having tiles offset in the scene and of varying depth, could get around the bit-depth depth mask issue and pre-render a whole shot’s depth some? Would still have granularity issues *within* tiles covering large depth changes tho…

–

Party member who turns out to be a (not obvious) bad guy, they become a serious opponent, genuinely believing that they are making the right choices and doing good but eventually reach a point where they *are* aware they are wrong but can’t admit it. They could become a serious endgame threat, fuelled by anger at their wrongness and utter denial of it, they lose all ability to see sense.

–

Evading a global manhunt?

–

Super duper gay boys rescuing each other

–

That’s it for now! For the next week I’m probably going to do most of my work lying down listening to music because for one, my back is fuuuuuucked up rn, for two, I need to just brainstorm a whole bunch more story stuff, but also how I’ll approach the next few systems. Pre-rendered third person stuff is easy enough because I know how it’s going to be for this game, other systems though I don’t have a CLUE yet, and I can’t make them until I know what they want to be.

This content is available exclusively to members of this creator's Patreon at $1 or more.

Curse of Greed Ultimate!

Posted: August 20, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Patreon | Leave a comment »

♥ Hey, I made a new game for you! ♥

I originally made this for Ludum Dare, and then I spent the week adding to it and fixing it up (like, a LOT of adding and fixing up!)

If you want to play, > here’s a secret web link for patrons <

Or you can download the files attached below 🙂

I’ll probably talk more about my process with this game and what I’ve done for this Ultimate version another time, rn I’m hecka tired.

Off-topic but I’ll say it since I’m here; I am aware of the changes patreon is making to fees and how they are gonna impact patrons with smaller pledges the most. I just want you to know that if you need to delete your pledge for this reason (or any other) I totally understand, I’m grateful for all the support you’ve shown already and I hope getting this game early goes a little way as thanks <3

update: they aren’t making those fee changes! also the game is now free for everyone <3

All the stuff!

Posted: August 20, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Patreon | Leave a comment »

So this patreon has been going for a while, it can be hard to find all the stuff. So here is a post listing all the stuff:

Games for Everyone:  

These are games anyone can play that were made possible thanks to all my wonderful patrons! (Some might have been Patron-exclusive for a time, which is why they may have the ‘Games for Patrons‘ tag)

  • Endless Library 
  • Little more than a prototype tbh, explore an unending library and read the spines of the books

  • Froggi 
  • It’s like Frogger, but in pico-8, and with a 9-hour realtime making-of video

  • Pumpking 
  • pico-8 game; You are a pumpkin, but can you become PUMPKING?!

 Games for Patrons: 

These are games and things you just get if you’re a patron, as thanks for your wonderful support!

  • Waitress for Zombies
  • Your customers are hungry for brains, feed them fast or they will take yours!

  • Mega Star Ball 
  • Honestly this game is not good, but sometimes you gotta make something rubbish to break out of a funk

  • Ducksnaker PRO 
  • Not even a game, you can make ducksnakes with this

  • StreamBall 
  • An experimental game, you can only play this game by streaming it on twitch, or watching someone stream it!

  • Dusk Child HD 
  • I remade Dusk Child with TWICE as many colours and FOUR TIMES as many pixels

  Games for $5+ Patrons:  

A little extra stuff as thanks for the extra money <3

Dice:

I spent like a year and a half working on a dice app, all patrons can get it >> here << (other folk can find it on one of the stores linked here)

Tools/Systems:

  • Sinput
  • Input Wrapper for unity, allowing remapping and lots of other stuff

  • Palutte 
  • Effect to colour image using a palette look-up table

Monthly Builds:

For the past couple of years, I’ve released a work-in-progress build of something (not necessarily a game, not necessarily my current project) for $5+ patrons.

Misc stuff you might be interested in:

I’ll try to keep this page updated as I add new stuff, but hopefully this is enough to keep you occupied for a little bit 🙂

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