Latest Posts by alkaliii - Page 3

UI

Ignore the character art...

Shader Bugs

The top image was a bug with my outline shader when I tried to replace it for another since it's not very performant and the second is a bug with my chromatic aberration shader that appeared out of nowhere after an engine upgrade.

I hate shaders so much. It is so hard to programmatically describe visuals. I am so jealous of people who are good at this. I've been getting better but like damn.

Support Action

This is a gimmick I've been looking into, at the cost of a turn you can bank an action to use later immediately after someone else. This seems pretty useless but could be helpful in applying status effects that can combine, I still need to think about it lol.

Miasma

if youre a gamedev please please please read this article i need to feel like im not insane (skip to the frictionary if you want to get to the point asap)

Kotaku

In Praise Of Sticky Friction

I've always been quite sensitive to certain types of friction. (I considered writing that sentence 10 different ways, and simply couldn't ma

Platforming

i feel like Mario as a metroidvania is a concept that hasn't been explored as much as it should

i feel like it's rich with potential for that

I don't think you could implement anything like the standard upgrade treadmill without doing violence to Mario's basic idiom. When I picture a Mario game with a large interconnected world, I see something less like a metroidvania and more like the sub-game "The Great Cave Offensive" from Kirby Super Star; i.e., there'd be no permanent upgrades, but a wide range of temporary, mutually exclusive powerups, most of which can only be obtained in particular regions of the map, with the open-world traversal being purely a challenge of routing – identifying an obstacle at point A as requiring a powerup which can only be obtained at point B, and figuring out how to travel between those two points using the capabilities that powerup provides.

Finally, put these guys back in here. They all have names, although I haven't brought it up much. Up front with the black hair and a weird mask is Alice Nor, Behind her in the poorly drawn armor is Jordan Flibeki, and lastly underneath the large hat is Phoebe Quin. These three are the first of 7 playable characters. I haven't really drawn the other 4 yet but I do know what I want them to look like. You can find the names of the other 4 on my very broken website which is not mobile-optimized -> https://pearlessential.webflow.io/

(Article) Dialogue Box with Simple SFX and Parsing for Pauses

This is a tutorial for Godot 3 I used to make part of my dialogue manager. It gives me animal crossing like SFX and the ability to have short pauses.

(Video) Loading JSON files for Dialogue

This is another tutorial for Godot 3 that comprises the other bit of my system. I cobbled together a few more features using my poor understanding of the documentation. I believe the author of this video has a more advanced JSON dialogue setup that might fit what you're looking for.

My system boils down to a state machine where each line in a dialogue is a unique state. The JSON file signifies all the states in a scene and alongside what should be said I can define other things I want to happen when a line is played, The most I've done with this is change an emote image or display additional text but I plan to base my cutscenes around it too. But instead of changing an image I might call for the camera to move, the game to fade to black, or for an NPC or Some other game object to play an animation. It's a bit messy right now but I've come to realize a lot of game programming is just a state machine in different contexts.

I wouldn't be scared of making a brute-force attempt either. Iterating is part of the creative process and even if it ends in failure you'll learn something new even if that's how not to do something.

Anyone know any good tutorials on creating dialogue/cutscene systems for RPGs? Preferably Godot but if there’s other ones with easily applicable universal principles that would work too. This is something that I feel like has lots of different approaches and I wouldn’t want to just brute force a really cluttered system for it.

Snow

Proof of concept, not sure if it will have any mechanical functions beyond maybe decreasing movement and jump speed and removing the ability to dash. I really need to get on making assets for snowy areas... I need to make more assets in general actually. Thank you to the super genius who posted this shader on godotshaders.com. This is practically witchcraft to me.

Obscured Objects

Not sure how well this will pan out but since the environment is in 3D and there is hella depth to work with I want to try hiding some interactable objects behind stuff or in an obscured fashion. Since you can't rotate the camera and the scene is orthographic I need to notify the player somehow that they have stumbled upon something hence the cool x-ray effect when you get close. I could add this to NPCs also which could be interesting.

"Oh, great, another game falls prey to Yellow Paint Syndrome" well, gee, my guy, maybe if we didn't demand hyper-photorealism in every game regardless of context, modern platformers might be able to develop a visual language that doesn't require painting a sign on every single interactable feature to render it distinguishable from the clutter.

Oh nyo

Just some old Juice FX testing I found on my drive.

Result Screen (again!)

All I really did was move it to the left of the screen compared to the one the older version of the game had. I like though since you could technically get back to what you were doing on the overworld while the game celebrates your victory (or uh discusses your loss) of to the side.

Xray Shader

Now it's really hard to get lost behind something. Not sure about the colour... Maybe I should use one from the 4 tone pallet...

Stun

I need to implement health in the overworld to complete this feature. I am also considering a hurt sprite but I'm lazy...

Box

You can lift it, and you can smack it. Maybe I should put more velocity into the smack.

Battle Transition

So I was really happy with this. Then, I spent some time on other stuff. And when I came back, I found one of my shaders was broken... So the current version is a tiny bit different.

Battle Parallax

making this background was kinda hard. I think it turned out alright.

I'm developing a game called Vividerie.

Here's a tiny video about it :3

What's an adventure without fishing??

📚 A List Of Useful Websites When Making An RPG 📚

My timeloop RPG In Stars and Time is done! Which means I can clear all my ISAT gamedev related bookmarks. But I figured I would show them here, in case they can be useful to someone. These range from "useful to write a story/characters/world" to "these are SUPER rpgmaker focused and will help with the terrible math that comes with making a game".

This is what I used to make my RPG game, but it could be useful for writers, game devs of all genres, DMs, artists, what have you. YIPPEE

Writing (Names)

Behind The Name - Why don't you have this bookmarked already. Search for names and their meanings from all over the world!

Medieval Names Archive - Medieval names. Useful. For ME

City and Town Name Generator - Create "fake" names for cities, generated from datasets from any country you desire! I used those for the couple city names in ISAT. I say "fake" in quotes because some of them do end up being actual city names, especially for french generated ones. Don't forget to double check you're not 1. just taking a real city name or 2. using a word that's like, Very Bad, especially if you don't know the country you're taking inspiration from! Don't want to end up with Poopaville, USA

Writing (Words)

Onym - A website full of websites that are full of words. And by that I mean dictionaries, thesauruses, translators, glossaries, ways to mix up words, and way more. HIGHLY recommend checking this website out!!!

Moby Thesaurus - My thesaurus of choice!

Rhyme Zone - Find words that rhyme with others. Perfect for poets, lyricists, punmasters.

In Different Languages - Search for a word, have it translated in MANY different languages in one page.

ASSETS

In general, I will say: just look up what you want on itch.io. There are SO MANY assets for you to buy on itch.io. You want a font? You want a background? You want a sound effect? You want a plugin? A pixel base? An attack animation? A cool UI?!?!?! JUST GO ON ITCH.IO!!!!!!

Visual Assets (General)

Creative Market - Shop for all kinds of assets, from fonts to mockups to templates to brushes to WHATEVER YOU WANT

Velvetyne - Cool and weird fonts

Chevy Ray's Pixel Fonts - They're good fonts.

Contrast Checker - Stop making your text white when your background is lime green no one can read that shit babe!!!!!!

Visual Assets (Game Focused)

Interface In Game - Screenshots of UI (User Interfaces) from SO MANY GAMES. Shows you everything and you can just look at what every single menu in a game looks like. You can also sort them by game genre! GREAT reference!

Game UI Database - Same as above!

Sound Assets

Zapsplat, Freesound - There are many sound effect websites out there but those are the ones I saved. Royalty free!

Shapeforms - Paid packs for music and sounds and stuff.

Other

CloudConvert - Convert files into other files. MAKE THAT .AVI A .MOV

EZGifs - Make those gifs bigger. Smaller. Optimize them. Take a video and make it a gif. The Sky Is The Limit

Marketing

Press Kitty - Did not end up needing this- this will help with creating a press kit! Useful for ANY indie dev. Yes, even if you're making a tiny game, you should have a press kit. You never know!!!

presskit() - Same as above, but a different one.

Itch.io Page Image Guide and Templates - Make your project pages on itch.io look nice.

MOOMANiBE's IGF post - If you're making indie games, you might wanna try and submit your game to the Independent Game Festival at some point. Here are some tips on how, and why you should.

Game Design (General)

An insightful thread where game developers discuss hidden mechanics designed to make games feel more interesting - Title says it all. Check those comments too.

Game Design (RPGs)

Yanfly "Let's Make a Game" Comics - INCREDIBLY useful tips on how to make RPGs, going from dungeons to towns to enemy stats!!!!

Attack Patterns - A nice post on enemy attack patterns, and what attacks you should give your enemies to make them challenging (but not TOO challenging!) A very good starting point.

How To Balance An RPG - Twitter thread on how to balance player stats VS enemy stats.

Nobody Cares About It But It’s The Only Thing That Matters: Pacing And Level Design In JRPGs - a Good Post.

Game Design (Visual Novels)

Feniks Renpy Tutorials - They're good tutorials.

I played over 100 visual novels in one month and here’s my advice to devs. - General VN advice. Also highly recommend this whole blog for help on marketing your games.

I hope that was useful! If it was. Maybe. You'd like to buy me a coffee. Or maybe you could check out my comics and games. Or just my new critically acclaimed game In Stars and Time. If you want. Ok bye

Dialogue Box

Holy shi* the frames on this recording. Anyway, here is my dialogue box! it reads a JSON file with all the lines a dialogue has and plays them with a silly sound that I might change... It has support for some cool stuff although it's not implemented yet since I'm really lazy and suck at writing.

Don't mind the other things in the background... However, if you can't control your curiosity, listen closely. I heard there is a hidden archive on a particular discord server full of other development snippets, including snippets that haven't been posted here!? If anyone asks you didn't hear it from me (plz join, k thx bye)

Liftable Objects

Super quick and basic implementation that just tells the object to follow the player's position with a bit of an offset. I use a ray cast to check if there are colliders where the drop area is and change the drop location to behind the player if that is the case... It uh sometimes crushes you or your party members but that's no biggie, right? It also sometimes gets glitched into things but that's an edge case that won't be abused at all.

You know... looking at it now, it might be a little buggy... But it's fun and brings a bit more interactivity to the overworld/field so I'm happy it's implemented haha.

Wonky Battle Scene Camera

Math is really important in game development. I'm trying to organize my battle scene similarly to how it's done in a PSP game known as Grand Knights History. My version is a bit rough, to say the least... Is it just me or does it feel like the UI on the bottom is sticky?

Water Shader

Shaders are literal witchcraft, although getting this one to work was a bit of a hassle since a lot don't play well with an orthographic camera. Don't mind the jesus tech, It get's patched out later.

Battle Scene

Since I had to rewrite everything while porting to Godot 4, I decided to make some tweaks to the battle scene. The UI changed a bit but float text is mostly the same...

New Chests!

Compared to the 2D ones getting this 3D one up to snuff was a bit of work. I still need to retexture the inside of the top half and add some glow effects maybe. I'm slowly getting a hang of blender and 3D workflows but I don't think I'm ready to do a house just yet... Maybe I should make some variants... I kinda want to make a minecrafty one that's super cuby.

As for why I decided to model a chest instead of billboarding one like the trees... So you can stand on it! I have some level design ideas in mind where a chest or some other small object is required to reach locations but for now, it's still just an idea.

More Terrain Stuff

More models I ended up scrapping. 3D modelling is very tuff.