Lands of Treasure - 2D (pixel art) Action/Adventure RPG

Thank you very much Great to hear that! Exploring will sure be a big part of the game

I don't have that but I can always tweak the speed and intensity of the lighting some more Maybe when there's more to see on the screen, like enemies, NPC's, scenery,... you will focus less on the lighting effect

 

I really like how you achieved the fake lighting, but how do you manage with different resolutions without having problems on performance with SetPixel?

 

Thanks Glad you like it

The native resolution of my game is 320x180, That's also the resolution of the lighting overlay texture. Everything in the scene just scales when the resolution gets higher (Unity does that automatically) So even when the resolution is 1920x1080 (6 times the native resolution) the lighting overlay will just be a scaled up sprite with resolution of 320x180.

That's it really, nothing special

 

Nice to see some progress on this : )

 

There's always a little bit of progress each day Even though my full time day job is already 100% PC work, I always try to work some more on my own projects in the evening

There'll be one more little update before I switch to artist mode to do some more graphical stuff. Going to make a candle item that when you place it in the world creates a light circle (useful for lighting up a dark cave you want to explore) I'll also add that the semi transparent black box behind the "Take item" text scales according to the length of the text Or I might remove the black box and see what black letters with a white outline looks like

 

Oh so you have a fixed resolution already in 16:9, but how will adapt on 4:3 or 5:4 resolutions, will cut stuff off?

 

I think I'll just add black borders when it's 4:3/5:4/16:10/... Or maybe a nicer, more graphical border

 

Heey, i Always made some pixelart for fun on paint, I think they are pretty good, i Dont know what others think :S But maybe if you ever need someone to make like, the base of sprites no added movement but just the begin concept you can ask me id love to show you some of them and i could make requests from you Im not good in really making a game, i thought about it but... never did it. So if you need help with pixel sprites and stuff, you can ask me and i can show you a couple i made here are 2 i made:

 

Those sure look fine and it's nice you offer help but for now I don't need any I love doing sprite work myself and letting someone else do it would take away some fun for me

So even though I said I would switch to artist mode I'm actually still programming... As I said, I wanted to add a Candle item that would have a light circle around it when placed in the scene but when making that I realized I hadn't thought of how to manage an animation for an item (I want to animate the flame of the candle) So now I'm extending my item class a bit. I wrote a system that reads all data for the item (name, description, value,...) from an XML file, this way I can also easily say if an item should be animated or not.

Almost don't with that so look forward to an updated demo soon. And hopefully then I'll be able to work on some art

 

Added the candle with animation

Check it out here: http://siegfriedcroes.com/landsoftreasure/



I also made a little change to the outlines of the objects. I put them on the UI sorting layer so they are not affected by the darkness. Of course this also means they are on top of the player character, even when the player is in front of the item... To me it looks a bit weird but at the other hand I like how it shows a recognizable outline of the object even when the player is in front of it and blocking the view.

I would love to get some feedback on this from you guys!

 

No suggestions or feedback at all? ^^'

 

I've been refining my character the past few days, trying a lot of different color schemes and I got to something I'm happy with This made me look back at a character I drew almost 5 years ago and I'm happy with the progress I'm making with pixel art ^_^

Here is the evolution of my character in 4 steps:



1) The hero of a minigame I made a few years ago called "The Colour Sword".

2) A reworked version of the previous character, it was meant as a template, that's why it doesn't have hair or clothes

3) The character that is currently in the game. I started from the previous template character but made the proportions of the body a lot better, cause the template was fat and his legs are too short

4) My new refined character. Gave him a more interesting look with more detail. I also got rid of the black outline. I hope you all agree this is the best looking version

In the next few days I will refine the remaining walk directions of the male hero and after that I'll work on the female character
Look forward to it!

 

I like the idea of the overlay, but maybe render it a little more trasparent, or if you want to maintain the full color something like a light grey. It may be something to see how it goes on the long run with other items overlays too.

 

Thank you very much for the feedback. I might look into making it a bit transparent. Now it also looks really bright but that's mainly because the background is so dark, which will not always be the case.

 

Haven't been able to work much on my game lately... I did add something that isn't really important to the gameplay or anything but still ^^'



I'm quite happy with the result Of course it will look even better when I have some nicer graphics for the scene itself ^^'

 

Is a nice effect. To change the "lighting" mood, do you put just a trasparent overlay?

 

Thanks And yes, just a grey semi-transparent overlay. I was thinking of adding some cloudy texture on the overlay and make it move but don't know yet if that will look any good (maybe I'll use it for misty weather).

 

Another little update

Character (walking) graphics are done.
Added 2 debug buttons to toggle rain and the light effect.

http://siegfriedcroes.com/landsoftreasure/

I'm going to concentrate a bit more on coding again in the coming weeks. Look forward to more soon

 

Graphics are really nice I've tried the demo test and I find the way of pick up objects quite annoying because you've to be just in front of an object to pick it up. Maybe you should enlarge the pick up area.

Keep up the good work!

 

Thanks for the feedback It might be kind of weird when you can pick up objects from even further away ^^' It might be silly and cheap of me to say but I think it's just a bit getting used to At this moment the pickup area is a bounding box around the object and collision is checked with Physics2D.OverlapPoint, that point is the position of the dot of the cursor that gets displayed when holding down S.

 

Actually the only problem during the demo is active/inactive the item grab context.
Is complicated to stay exactly on the position to get the items in screen.
Good work !

 

Would it help if I add a collision to them so you can't walk over them? I still don't understand, I can pick up any item with ease, you just have to stand in front of them, not on them, that's all there is too it ^^'

 

I'm going to admit about trying your thing. Almost everyone here has mentioned the item pickup as being a problem and you can also add me to such a list. The action of picking up items isn't smooth nor accurate with regards to player/item placement.

I think you should either have items automatically picked up upon walking over them (it could easily work in tandem with your menu system) OR go and experience other games that have similar item placement that requires manual pickup (I've never had problems picking up items in Animal Crossing; similar game mechanics here).

 

I'll try and see what happens when I add a collision check underneath the character, so you can also pick up items when standing on them. Maybe giving the item 2 states so it knows if it's lying on the ground or on a table, Then it'll be more like Animal Crossing where you can only pick up items on the ground when standing on them and pick up items the old way when they are lying on a table. I just hope it will work alright for items that are lying close to eachother cause unlike Animal Crossing, my items placement is not grid-based.

 

Alright, I changed the item pickup system so now you have to stand on an item to take it Please let me know if this works better (it really should)

http://siegfriedcroes.com/landsoftreasure/

I'll have to find a solution for the white outline now cause it doesn't look that great... I wonder if it would work if I only make the outline appear when you are in cursor mode. What do you guys think?

Oh yeah, I also added a basic dialogue/textbox in this update, just check the sign

 

Just wanted to note I'm aware there are still a few bugs/glitches with the new way of item picking ^^' I'll be rewriting that part next

 

Not really an update but just to say I haven't worked much on my game in the past few days... Not because I'm giving up on it or something don't worry I've just been doing some digital painting (another hobby of mine).

In the meantime I hope to get some feedback on the new item picking, still don't know if you guys find it easier now ^^'

http://siegfriedcroes.com/landsoftreasure/

 

It works much better now.

 

Yay, really glad about that!

 

Hello! So I checked out your demo and i picked up ALLLLLL the treasure. =)

You really nail the pixel nostalgia with the look of the game, and everything is very clean looking.

I'm guessing eventually there will be a way to split a stack of items. I also couldn't figure out what exactly the cursor is for yet. (No mouse support?)

I really like the outline on the items. How did you do that? Did you also use GetPixel() to find the outline? Or do you have a second image premade of the outlines?

Very cool!

 

Thank you very much for the feedback

I'm glad you already like how it's looking so far even with most graphics still being placeholders (it will all look (even) better in the future)

Exactly, I just quickly added the dropping of items as a test, When you own more than 1 of a specific item there will be some kind of popup to choose the amount you want to drop If you meant splitting stacks inside your inventory, I don't know about that yet, I wonder if that would be useful...

At first I thought I'd let it be generated automatically but then I have to add some extra empty space on the spritesheet for the outline to be generated so I thought it would be easier to just draw the outline there myself from the start

So you didn't mind that the outline was in front of the character even when the item was behind him?

 

Worked a bit on my game this weekend

Rewrote the item picking code so now it should work perfectly. I made it so that the priority goes to an item that is lying underneath you, so if you are standing in front of a table with an item on it and there is also an item underneath you it will be the latter that gets picked up first. Do you guys agree with that or should it be the other way around?

I also added basic day and night. Just wait about 30 seconds and it will start getting dark then after about 10 minutes it will start to get light again (1 hour in the game is 1 minute in real time).

As always you can check it out here: http://siegfriedcroes.com/landsoftreasure/

 

Little update to tell you all I'm reworking the scene graphics of my game a bit (they have been placeholders from the start) The grass and earth already look A LOT better, now working on some fences and then I'll rework the stone walls (going to turn them into a rocky wall).

I could already show you a bit of the progress but maybe it's better to wait till it's all done (so all graphics in the test scene are (near) final) I got a 4 days weekend this week so hopefully lots of time to work on my game

Look forward to it

 

Quite a while since the last update... I've been busy with other things so not much new to show...

Just wanted you guys to know the project is not dead Made the fences like I said in the previous post and made a few changes to the character to make it fit better with the new tiles. I've also been thinking a lot about how I'll be creating my levels and how item placing will work (especially with saving/loading of a scene). I'll be creating my own Level EditorWindow Script, that'll be fun

 

Hello everyone

Finally I can show you some progress on the scene graphics in my game



These graphics are not final, I'm still playing around with the color palette some more, trying to make the colors feel more unified I hope you like it so far, I sure think it's a nice improvement over the placeholder stuff you saw in previous screens

As always you can see it in action here: http://siegfriedcroes.com/landsoftreasure/

 

Any comments / suggestions / feedback? ^^'

 

So is this going to become a game or what? It looks like it's been 5 months since you've started.

 

How rude!

 

Hey, you have to remember this is a hobby project I'm a full time Multimedia Designer so you can imagine when I get home in the evening I might like doing other things than do even more of the same work I already did during the day! Id love to be able to work on this game full time but that's not a very realistic thought ^^' You'll just have to be patient

 

I don't see how this is rude. Does the developer have any intention of making this playable build an actual game? I don't know. I'm sure you don't know. Does the developer himself have any idea on what they'd like to do with this playable build?

You can't really give any feedback or suggestions on a game development project that isn't much further in development. At least I can't. Although, I could come up with a game idea from what I've seen even using the limited mechanics in the demo. Still, how long can you work on this one hobby project until you decide what its future will be?

 

Let me start by saying that I make games because I enjoy doing it, and I like sharing hat I work on I put a new build online from time to time to show off to friends and other people who are interested. I don't think there's anything wrong with sharing it here too, even though there isn't any real gameplay yet.

If you read some of my other posts in this topic you'd know that this is meant to become an RPG. That might be a bit (too?) ambitious but I don't mind, as long as it's fun and challenging

I know more or less where I'm going with this game, I got a lot of ideas but I won't be writing it all down here cause half of it might not be in the "final game".

You also have to remember I'm a single person doing everything (graphics, programming, designing) and I can't do all of that at once and I won't be asking others to help cause that would take away a lot of the fun for myself I do everything cause I love doing everything

 

I love the way it looks and feels! Great job so far, keep it up!

 

Thank you very much Comments like these keep me going

At the moment I'm taking a short break from this project to do some other things like renewing my website

 

Long time no update ^^'

As I said, I was doing some other things, now trying to get back to the project. First thing I want to add are NPCs (walking around randomly or following a certain path + textbox triggering like the sign) to make the world a bit more alive. Hopefully that will be done by the end of this week

On a side note, my friend Sarah Stowasser made a color version of the male character artwork



Hope to show you guys something new soon

 

This looked great, but don't stop after finishing with the webplayer - Siegfried has all kinds of awesome art and stuff in his site. Pixel work isn't the half of it.

 

Looks excellent! The rain effect is nicely implemented as well. Reminds me a lot of the SNES and Genesis adventures. Keep it up!

 

@DaveDexterMusic: Thank you very much And nice to hear you checked out the rest of my site even though it's really outdated ^^'

@GarBenjamin: I still have to program the weather system so that it can randomly start raining I want to do it like this:

At first it's sunny, then randomly it might get cloudy (shadows of clouds moving over the screen), those clouds might go away again but it might also get complete clouded. Then there's the change it starts raining, and maybe even some lightning!

But the weather system is a nice extra, it's not that important for the gameplay so I'll do it later on

So this weekend I added an NPC to my game

http://siegfriedcroes.com/landsoftreasure/

He's not very smart at the moment He occasionally walks against the walls and things like that, I might add some extra lines of code to force him to stop walking when he hits something and walks in the opposite direction afterwards.

 

I really like the work you've been putting into this, keep it up!

I was actually quite curious as to why you decided not to use the lighting system that comes with Unity. I know it has it's issues with draw calls . What made you end up deciding to ditch it in the end and make your own ?

Did you also code all the GUI yourself ? I'm waiting for the Unity 4.6 to really start digging into the GUI, even though I've been messing around with NGUI ( which works very well )

 

Thank you very much

I tried using the Unity lighting system but it just didn't fit in my opinion, it was too smooth for a low resolution pixel art game like mine so I went for a custom pixelated effect I might alter the light circles a bit but for now I'm happy with it

Yes, I just programmed it from scratch cause it's all quite basic. As my game is retro styled I don't need any fancy effects I'll take a look at the new GUI system when it's available though cause it might make putting the UI together a lot easier. At this moment, most of it is generated through code ^^'

 

Been working some more on my game the past few days. Cleaned up some code and added some new things.

First thing is that I wrote a simple Sprite Animation System so I don't need Unity's build in one anymore (it's not very suitable for sprite sheet animations in my opinion). You can't really notice much difference except for the added idle animation (just the character's eyes blinking).

The second addition is switching scenes. I added a door in the test level, just walk up to it and (as always) press X to interact. The screen will fade out and in again and you'll be in a different scene When switching scenes it's important that the placement of items get saved and that is also working already (Try taking items in the first scene and dropping them in the second, it should all be working correctly) Only temporarily though, I still need to implement an actual Save function.

As always you can try it out here: http://siegfriedcroes.com/landsoftreasure/

Next up I'll be adding some more things to make the scene more interesting and alive. I'll be adding trees and some high grass (you'll be able to cut that with your sword).