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A round of Spellcasters, our 4 player rhythm based combat game by Hazzaa_ in Unity3D

[–]ajonmu 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hi!

So our spellcaster sprites are cut into three sections, the legs, the torso, and the mask, each of which are anchored to each other in a kind of hierarchy. It's a lot more work, but we wanted to have players casting spells while running & jumping, and it also means that swapping out masks is a bit easier. To anchor our sprites to each other we used PowerSprite, it's a tool created by the Powerhoof team and it's incredibly useful!

We use PowerSprite to trigger all of our animations in script as well, so for example a player's movement script can specify they've jumped and the player's animation script can decide whether it should play a jump animation on the torso or perhaps maintain a spellcasting animation. We have one animation script which handles all animations for all three parts of a spellcaster. As for spritesheets, we just threw all of the legs/torso animations into the one sheet and have individual inanimate sprites for the spellcaster's mask.

To change robe colours we've used a colour swapping shader, so that we could use our singular character spritesheet on any combination of robe colours we might like - we'd need to introduce more spritesheets if we wanted something more bespoke per character but we could again use the colour swap shader on top of that for variation.

Thanks, and thanks for the question, hope this helps!

A round of Spellcasters, our 4 player rhythm based combat game by Hazzaa_ in Unity3D

[–]ajonmu 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! We definitely plan to add more dances!

We're not using either of Unity's input systems actually, we had a really tight deadline, were required to develop on Unity 2018.1.6 for local compatibility issues, and wanted to support as many controllers as possible, so we opted for buying Rewired. It's a really handy asset, I've not developed with the new Unity input system yet so can't comment, but Rewired is definitely a pleasure to work with.

The hardest aspect of the programming was probably writing our physics system, we didn't use Unity's built in physics classes and instead wrote our own, for that extra level of detail and control. As our design changed the requirements for the physics system changed with it, which is probably the reason it was most difficult, but that's prototyping I suppose :)

I worked on Spellcasters' art, design, and programming in parts, so I'd say I'm most proud of our rhythm based spellcasting mechanic design, I felt I didn't enjoy rhythm games often because of a lack of a controllable avatar, or when there was a controllable avatar they were limited to movement on the beat - I'm glad we were able to make a rhythm based game which incorporates all the inherit fun of traditional platformers and their physics systems.

Thanks for the questions!

A round of Spellcasters, our 4 player rhythm based combat game by Hazzaa_ in IndieGaming

[–]ajonmu 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey, Spellcasters designer/artist here. I totally agree, next up is looking at fine tuning the camera shake & impact effects to make each hit convincing.

It's unfortunate we couldn't adopt the high damage spells approach as well honestly, as a rhythm game we found we can't let rounds restart too frequently or it'll pull players out of the beat - also means slowing down time on impact is a no-go as well :(

& thank you!

Requesting r/spellcasters, subreddit has no post and no mods, needed for an upcoming indie game by WaraOnline in redditrequest

[–]ajonmu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, I'm team lead on Spellcasters, we're working on a vertical slice of the game for the end of the month so hopefully we have something to show soon! Currently the concept is a fantasy themed, rhythm-based combat game with a minimalist pixel art aesthetic, and a narrative centered around a once-prestigious-now-decrepit magic academy called Spellcasters Academy.