Tiny Places (Working Title)

Re: Tiny Places (Working Title)

Postby Vandar » 01 May 2020, 21:00

I feel uncertain what to write today ... I sure would like to write about big plans and a glorious future for the project. But it becomes harder and harder to motivate myself to work more on it. Sure there are some things which are missing, but on the other hand I feel kinda satisfied with what is there. Particularly in the graphics and sound department this surely is my best RPG attempt yet and besides the two public domain patterns that I used for the inventory view, all assets were made by myself, which kinda feels good.

So here is a video that shows everything that is in the game right now (except the map editor, which only is shown at the beginning but not demonstrated):

https://youtu.be/OlaBlbhhYMQ

Even that is is designed to be multi player and everything is made this way, there is no way to log in to another server than "localhost" and with a default account. So that is just for me to feel satisfied with, but doesn't make any difference to a single player game.
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Re: Tiny Places (Working Title)

Postby Julius » 02 May 2020, 01:23

I think you are being a bit to harsh to yourself. Looks pretty neat already.

The problem might be that you have put your own goals to high with a full Diablo like ARPG.

This seems like a nice start for a single screen twinstick shooter already. How about adding controller support (should be easy with Love2D) and maybe support for two player on the same screen?

Once you have that working, you can always add more RPG elements to it.
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Re: Tiny Places (Working Title)

Postby Vandar » 05 May 2020, 21:50

A big problem is that I just don't have the "hardness" anymore to stay with a bigger project ... my interests change so much and every few weeks or months.

I already had tried to simplify things as much as I could. Use enemies which don't require much animation, didn't write any code for items and stats yet, just tried to have the very barebone core of a multiplayer, let's call it arena-shooter. Didn't even bother to make a scrolling map.

I have that now. And suddenly each further step seems to be so gigantic, so hard. Add a new monster? Uh ... hours ... don't want to do it again. Add a new spell ... same. Will take hours of tuning.

If I could think, plan for more than a few days or weeks, sure it would make sense to go through these steps and have a bigger goal in mind. It seems I can't do it anymore. The lifespan of each of my projects became shorter. This one started and grew amazingly fast, has the best visual effects I ever made and ... well died as fast. I'll go back and practise drawing, make art for other peoples games, take care of the garden, if I can, dabble in music, and eventually "art for arts sake".

I'm sorry. It was nice, I feel kinda proud on this one. But it also feels good to end it here. Continuing would be a torment, I'm not the sort of person (anymore?) who can stay long with one project. Maybe it's my mental illness, maybe it's bad life experiences ... there was a point where something came to my awareness - "Do it while it's fun. If it begins to feel like work, when the fun stops, rather look for something that is more fun."

Software projects, at least mine, have proven to be unrewarding, to the point where I got hurt really bad by some people. Fans of an old project of mine, and people who had taken over when I had to leave due to mental issues. This thought often returns to me - I don't want to spend that much work on something again just to be hurt in the end.

Making art is different. Most artworks are finished quicker than software projects. Also, there is less "wrong" or "right" in art than there is in programming. While my education is all technical, I think my mind is more made for art, even if my skills are, lets say, average. I'm getting better there, and I have more options. I can try new things more frequently. And there is no obligation to maintain, fix something or stay with a project for a longer while.

Thanks for the attention, and sorry to disappoint.
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Re: Tiny Places (Working Title)

Postby dulsi » 06 May 2020, 11:56

Vandar: No worries. You aren't required to keep working on games. If inspiration arrives, feel free to pick it up again. If not maybe someone else will find it interesting to work on.
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Re: Tiny Places (Working Title)

Postby Technopeasant » 10 May 2020, 01:10

Certainly don't work on something if it makes you unhappy.

The great thing about it being free software is that someone else could turn it into something grander should it catch their fancy.
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Re: Tiny Places (Working Title)

Postby Vandar » 14 May 2021, 18:03

Recently I felt bored and went back to work on this project some more.

Since then I've been working on some changes, and tried to set a different focus, in order to make some things easier.

Once, there was and is, a change away from nature, typical RPG style maps, towards more technical looking maps. This is because I am bad at making animated things, particularly animals or typical RPG enemies. Drones, robots, crafts and vehicles all will be suitable enemies and work with very little animation.

The emerging theme, that is will be a crossover of an arena shooter and an RPG with loot and development, upgrades through loot will continue. Also, for the time being, the tiny maps will stay with the idea to give the player one challenge per map, be it a fight or a puzzle or something else.

This video shows the first two technology-styled maps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyslPO9fBdI

This video shows the newly implemented ability to pick up powerups and items which will go into the inventory. The coins are just a sort of placeholder treasure for demonstration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce2uAxPWEnE

The empty area at the bottom of the screen will home additional controls once the functionality is there.
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Re: Tiny Places (Working Title)

Postby Vandar » 26 May 2021, 20:21

To more maps came into existance. The "crystals shards" map was something that seemed to be great as an idea, but in reality it is way too busy and makes it hard for players to see items on the ground or enemies. The original was brighter and had more contrast. I tried to reduce brightness and contrast in the hope that it would help, but now the map looks uninteresting and still convoluted.

Image

The next map, "Craterfield" I kept very simple, to circumvent the problem.

Image

Besides that, I tried to finish the player/account management. Players can now set up new accounts, log in and also choose the server to connect by entering the IP address in the game (had to edit a text file before). Also found and fixed a few movement related bugs in multiplayer mode.

There is a problem though that puzzles me cause I cannot track the cause. Players and projectiles on the server seem to reach their targets faster than on the client, even that the time says that they are actually a tiny percentage slower. But the "death animation" that plays on hit (and which is triggered by the server) plays on the client screens before the projectiles hit the target. And it should have the same network latency and the move ... so if the move starts later on the client due to latency, the command for the animation should be delayed as much. Meanwhile I have checked the code several times and repeated timing checks ... seems to be all good, still the problem persists.
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Re: Tiny Places (Working Title)

Postby drummyfish » 27 May 2021, 17:06

It looks very pretty, but you can also make cyclic animations of smoke by procedural generation: make 3D Perlin Noise that wraps around, take one dimension as time and make 2D slices along that direction (some video). Ofc you may use other types of noises too.
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Re: Tiny Places (Working Title)

Postby Vandar » 29 May 2021, 17:55

Thanks! And yes, perlin noise and related noise functions are very useful for texture generation. Luckily my graphics tool has an inbuilt generator so I can access noise functions in up to 3 dimensions. Used it to make some sort of portal animations,

https://opengameart.org/content/animate ... l-variants

The first rottate in additon to the cyclic swirling, the last 4 or 5 only show the cyclic animation. Haven't made any smoke or fog like that yet, though.
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