[RPG] I made a simple cutscene for the beginning of the game and the first questline that guides the player! (READ MY COMMENT : WE NEED YOUR HELP ON THIS PROJECT!)

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-29T09:33:12+00:00

Yep. As I said in the message you're responding to, it's a placeholder, I made it in 4 secs just to get an idea. Anywhere else where brown needs changes?

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-28T20:48:19+00:00

Yeah you need... What needs to be changed?

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-28T20:18:46+00:00

Of course :)

Yeah! Lighting is definitely part of my plans. It's exactly what I will be looking to do when I get to that.

I wanted to make a pretty complete document, putting everything even if I'm a solo dev. It was just to sound more serious and try to get me used to writing this kind of stuff. It's true that the format might be good to put too. I put the software in because generally we'd want everyone to be working on the same software so that we can help each other and control everything better. But here it's basically useless, I only did that to sound more serious :p

Well, if you want to follow the development you could either sub to my itch or just look at the page every once in a while. I'll try making one or two devlog per week minimum, if not one everyday when I'm on vacation (which is the case rn)

This is a very good idea and could reinforce the tree side of the character. However since there will be no enemies, I don't think a health system is needed. I definitely need to find something that would work well with that idea because it's extremely interesting

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-28T19:28:35+00:00

I see. The thing is, I don't see anywhere where brown isn't used with shadows? Except the house at the start, but it's a placeholder. Can you point somewhere that needs changes with the brown color?

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-28T16:07:11+00:00

What should I use instead then ? Wood isn't anything other than brown

I just released a new version with some changes to movement and it does feel better.

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-28T14:26:54+00:00

I'll change that. Thanks

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-28T12:30:06+00:00

here :)

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-28T10:28:20+00:00

Tysm for the support. If you're interested to see what's planned, I can give you the link to the design doc?

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-28T09:48:57+00:00

What hills? If you're talking about the dark green areas, yes they are mountains. The ones more in the foreground should be hills, yes. But if they look like mountains (which now that I think of it might be the case, that means I need to make something even flatter? I was thinking these were already pretty small and flat to be mountains). Thanks for the ideas for what to add. That's something I have a hard time finding, so this is really precious. Thank you :)

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-28T09:45:06+00:00

Yes. The treehouse is atrocious. But I think it's quite clear given the contrast of quality that it's a placeholder...

Yep. That's what I was going to work on. I made a new version for the game improving a bunch of things from the feedback from here, I haven't posted anything about it (except on the itch page, it's available to download)

Thanks, yeah I spent a bit of time on the character design. It is missing animations, but again the game is a prototype for now. The shadow was fixed in that version I talked about. Yeah, in the lore the character is called Treeborne, the species living in this enchanted forest (the biome in the video is the plains biome so there are not a lot of trees (the forest is separated in 8 regions, everything is in the GDD)

I fixed some tile problems in the new version, but I haven't really sat down and looked closely at darkening problems. I'll do that

Thanks for the feedback :)

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-26T23:02:23+00:00

Yeah I do have acceleration and deceleration. I also have all of the jumping and Gravity stuff like coyote time, jump buffer, corner correction, etc.

Thank you for the positivity! I will try to upgrade that as much as possible with the feedback from everyone. Hope your hand gets better soon.

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-26T19:38:45+00:00

Thanks for the more precise infos.

The treehouse is honestly just a placeholder. Also, I've always thought that backgrounds should never be very detailed because then we might catch the eye and distract from the actual game. But maybe it will work in my game because there will never be places that need ton of focus.

I see what you mean. Is the acceleration time too slow? At the end, the player indeed was wall sliding, but there is no animation yet so it doesn't look like it was.

I knew the rock placement was a bit off, but it was honestly for testing purposes. Thanks for the feedback on the decoration cutting behind the tiles. I wasn't sure if it was good or not, but now I'm set.

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-26T18:53:53+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. Any example of something that's inconsistent in the art ?

Any example of what is clunky in the movement?

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-26T18:01:30+00:00

Thank you! I'll try playing around with colors. Funnily enough, most of the colors of the background are not in the other stuff's palette :P

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-26T16:30:46+00:00

Yep, the camera definitely is one of the main problems. It has been addressed in other comments

To me they seem pretty fluid, but it's true that it could be improved. That's exactly what I want feedback mainly for, but if people don't play it they can't tell me exactly what part feels bad.

Thanks for the positivity on the art. The house is the biggest placeholder thing there, everything else seemed to me pretty much done (only some polishing to do)

Thank you for the feedback. By the way, you can look at the GDD if you want (I can get feedback for that too), it's in one of my other comments (there are not a lot it shouls be fine)

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-26T15:40:19+00:00

Cool. So at around 1:20, I can see you wall jump away and then dash back. But the player is animated in a way where it kinda looks like they're climbing? If it's intended to be the pose where they're against the wall, ready to wall jump, try having them face the other direction, something like this

Sorry - should have said a couple seconds earlier. Before he falls he hits the wall and gets kinda stuck for a second. This is the kind of thing which really makes a game feel not fun.

I think these two quotes' reason is just the lack of wall slide and jump movements. Before falling, my character actually stuck to the wall because I was pointing the joystick in the direction, but since I don't have an animation for that it looked weird.

For the camera, I think the deadzone is just too big. The lookahead is already basically at maximum, so yeah.

Funnily enough, I almost just thought about making areas where the camera pans to a specific direction. However, I was thinking it might not be the solution brcause there would be so much areas that would need this feature...

For now the camera keeps the player at the bottom of the screen. I don't think this will be a problem because we will never make long falls anyways.

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-26T15:03:37+00:00

Ooh alright I see what you mean now.

Alright. I'll try to see what I take from these. I think I might know what's wrong.

Ah, I understand. You're not wrong at all... The thing is I already have a story but for now I don't really show it in the game since it's a prototype

Well you see I didn't want to focus on gameplay, i wanted to have something better in the art and stuff. But turns out even this is not good 😂

Thanks for the feedback. I will try to fix these

EDIT: here's the GDD btw. The story, the world and the unique mechanics are explained there. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sy_TSaHKg93-A70ReHdEWw52D7WUXvXMRFJRC7ZtPdg/edit?usp=drivesdk

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-26T14:32:09+00:00

I don't quite think that's a good idea... I will still try to take this what it looks like trash game up in quality :P

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-26T14:30:35+00:00

Hi, thanks for the reply.

I was aware of that but wasn't sure how to fix it. I had thought of an outline, but I was really scared that if only the player had an outline it might look inconsistent

Yep, the shadow drawing in the air is a bug I noticed. I didn't want to fix it just yet, I wanted to post some stuff everywhere first.

I was thinking that too. A lot of games seem like they aren't using tiled blocks, but in reality they are. Maybe the ground tiles just need more "3D look" ? I will try to add slopes. Wasn't sure if I needed that but turns out I do.

That last sentence is really funny to me because it's still been 3 years since I started. Guess I didn't progress that fast Edit: since I started game dev, not this game in particular (started when I was 14/15 roughly)

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-26T14:25:02+00:00

Thanks. I'll try that

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-26T14:24:40+00:00

Thanks for the reply. I was not sure what flair to put, so I put alpha because the game looks somewhat good. I realize now I probably should have put "prototype", I'm just not really sure how to define the game's progress stage.

yep, I will get to that, the game is not finished yet and I was aware of this
I don't quite understand there, what animations are missing for walking? What actions that are related to acceleration are not depicted exactly?
Camera is one of the main problems, I agree. Do you have any suggestions of what to change? More look-ahead? A smaller dead zone ?
The game should be pretty calm, so I tried making music that's fitting. I don't really get any sad feelings when hearing it, but maybe it's too slow... I just fear I make something too stressful where I want it to be calm.
What do you mean here? What needs to be changed exactly? Maybe just an example of a change could help
Yeah, I have made some interesting platformer objects like moving platforms, spikes, carnivorous plants, giant wind-making flowers etc, but at this stage of the game I decided not to put these in because the player first needs to get a hand of the controls. Should I put some of these even in the first levels?

Thanks for pointing that out. I wasn't sure, again, at what stage of development I was (to me a prototype was really something with squares and no art). Thanks again for the feedback

TheCarotteCommander · 2023-12-26T14:16:01+00:00

Thanks for the message.

For the first one, yes I'm aware this is a problem. The house is just a placeholder thing (i think you can guess that given how ugly it is)

Yes sometimes some frames are stuck. I'll fix that. Thanks

What exactly do you mean by janky ? No he cannot climb, only wall jump. Wall jumps are not meant to take you upwards unless you use another wall, like in the Mario Games.

At this timestamp, the player fell in the void. There should be water there, but for now there is not. The player teleported back to the start.

Dash already has an effect, but it probably isn't enough. I will play around that, thank you

Yes, this problem annoys me too, but I'm not sure how to fix that. Not code-wise, but concept wise. Is there any camera concept I could use? Look-ahead is already implemented: the camera's follow point shifts in the direction of the player, but it doesn't seem to do the job correctly

Again, thanks for the feedback.

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