Q-gallery V

[qoxolg]

I agree! The human touch on a game is imo what can make it look great, not technically, but more so artistically. Thats why I also make al content myself instead of buying content packs from market places. At least my game will be totally the ultimate expression of ME! ooooh! that sounds so wrong!

Anywhat:
New artwork of my third armor concept. I swear I will try to finish the actually concept pieces soonish. I already have 6 armor designs sketched out so far that are on my iPad and I still need to add some colour to them. These paintings are more some extras for the art gallery in my game! j/k



Here is also a version with just the BG, because the character covers a lot of it. The BG is a new concept for another world. I am planning on 4 worlds for now. This will be sort of the style of the third one.

https://q-arts.deviantart.com/art/Ok625bg-730921794

[Zorafim]

So you'll be able to change your character's looks? Won't that add a lot of extra work?

[qoxolg]

Maybe? I think making these mechanical parts will be easier then clothing, and there is basically only a frame underneath the armor. The idea is to have head, body, arms and legs armor that you can mix and match. I don’t think I can implement character creation type of system yet, simply because I have no idea how that would work. Changing colors like casts in PSO2 is something I can pull off. So yeah customizing looks and combining interesting armor for the stats is what I have in mind.

[Zorafim]

Well, cool. I love changing armor more than I love customizing characters, so long as the character has a personality and name. I look forward to seeing your clothing options in 3D.

[qoxolg]

Here we go!



This time I have mostly worked on the first real map. It currently has two streaming levels: The base and the first area. Lots of stuff done in terms of new meshes and textures. Didn't work on much gameplay related stuff, other then the dialog system and some tweaks on current systems.I haven't done any optimization on the assets yet, so frame rate isn't very good.The teleporter at the end is just some missing material. I guess I forgot to add it.

Next up I will probably work on some new enemies, some new systems and hopefully concept art for the spaceship interior.

[Zorafim]

That slowdown is pretty frustrating. Hopefully it doesn't give you too much trouble.

Even in 3D, your environmental work shines. I can't wait to explore this area for myself, it looks gorgeous. I can't wait to see your monster designs.

Did you work on legwork for the claymore? It looks pretty awesome.

How do you do the level ups? Do you just add certain values to each stat? Or is there a table you look up? That's always been something I've been curious about.

I like the quest end. It looks like it needs work, but it looks very promising. It adds a lot of life to the quest.

I'm curious. If I wanted to add an asset to your game, how much work would that be on both our ends? I don't have the faintest idea how that would work.

[qoxolg]

Nah, just need to optimize my asssets. Mostly LODs for the meshes and probably to many dynamic lights. Also, keep in mind I am running 1080p in Ultra settings here on a GTX970. I plan to release this thing by the end of 2020 so 30FPS on ultra on the 970 should be decent. I am planning to do the optimization part much later, because I will be changing stuff anyway.

I don’t recall changing the animations of the Sword much. Those animations are still the first iteration. The saber animations are the second iteration. Maybe I’ll add a new melee weapon this month, or maybe add a ranged weapon, though that will be a ton more work.

level ups work with a pre defined data table. Weapons actually work the same. There is just one table for weapon stats for all levels of the weapon. Differences in weapons are made by multipliers and their animations. This will make it easier to do level scaling later on. Level scaling will only work one way (player gets leveled down to the level of the enemy, but enemies CAN out-level the player. This will keep old content more fun to replay and can keep old equipment relevant in content that doesn’t take level into acount (like time attacks and such).

you’d be surprised how much of my content is driven by data tables. Quests, dialog, enemy spawns, items, weapons, doors, etc all dont require any programming when adding new content. It’s just some entries in data sheets in combination with the assets like models and animations.

Adding assets to my game depends on what kind of asset and how much of the creation you want to do yourself. If you want to make a weapon, will you do concept art, stats, background story, special attacks, etc? I assume you are not gonna do the 3D part, because that requires a lot of learning of new tools (but if you want to learn, I am not gonna stop you). My time spend is not very relevant. I need a ton of assets anyway. Cross game equipment sounds like fun. Like it’s some relic from another dimension or past times. A planet in my game could very well be a creation from Zoreal in the past.

[Zorafim]

I vote spear or daggers!

I think tables with scaling is my favorite way to see level ups done. I hate being screwed out of stats. But at the same time, static stats are pretty boring. It's more interesting if there's an intentional flaw in your current stat setup, which is easily done with scaling.
Scaling level is interesting. Intuitively I don't like the idea, because what's the point of getting better if you can't compare yourself to things that used to be strong? But at the same time, shrugging off attacks and oneshotting enemies is no fun. Maybe if you're back in an area for a few minutes as a "Look how much stronger you are" section.
I think my favorite thing is stat ups that are noticeable, but not overwhelming. Like say, you do two or three times more damage fully leveled than you do at the start. Which, I guess can be done with level scaling too.

I was more curious than anything else. A question to begin thinking about future work. I wanted to get an idea of how much work you're putting into each object.
Lorewise, Zorael only made the one planet. And though you're free to use it, I'm not sure how interesting a water filled planet with a single (though arbitrarily gigantic) building would be. He has helped other planets get back on their feet, but that doesn't sound very interesting as a planet concept. At most, having a few temples devoted to him (warped due to variations of myths, perhaps).
I guess nothing's saying that he can't have had a few playgrounds though. But I have nothing immediately usable.


And as far as weapons, I only have the two. Zorael's spears and Levia's blades. Nothing I can really add off the top of the head, although helping with some weapon designs would be fun.
Now that you're mentioning relics from another dimension though, there are a few neat things you can do with that. Some outer god weapon of madness and darkness, or a weapon of shining light with flavor text saying it can't harm the innocent. Maybe add some checks if you try to use it against enemies or targets that aren't evil. But that's just me spitballing.

If I did make a weapon, I would draw some concept art (I can't do much more than 20x20 pixel art, sorry), try to balance the stats out (having a demo of your game would help with that, so I can see how it compares to different weapons), background stories, and special attack concepts for sure. If 3D is going to be a noticeable amount of work, then unfortunately I can't do anything with it. I have a tough enough time with just my own work, and that seems like nothing in comparison.

Something I was thinking during your play demo, what do you think about retracting the weapons when they aren't in use? They're more impactful if you don't always see the photon blade out. Would that be a noticeable amount of work?

[Zorafim]

Oh. Something that didn't occur to me when watching your video or responding, but should be worth saying.

Your health regeneration system. Right now, it looks like you find items from enemies, you pick them up and use them, and you go.
I feel like you didn't think much about it, but it seems genius to me. Maybe that's a bit too strong of a sentiment, but I like it. Here's what I figured in my game.

If I start each level at full health and have no way to regenerate health, then I may find that I lose a lot of health early, get far in the level, and then find myself in a situation where I can't progress due to my low health. So I want some kind of regenerating health.
I don't want a system that encourages you to do something boring, like kill respawning enemies. And I personally don't want to encourage players to kill enemies in the first place. If possible, I want to make them feel a bit bad about killing things. But still, I need a system that's fun and fair.

So back to your game, your enemies just drop health. To recover that health, you just use the item. Since you'll be killing enemies anyway, that's a good way to incentivize players to do well. And as long as there aren't any abusable situations, it'll be a fun way to keep the player going.

Now, this is all assuming the game works like what I saw. Which I'm almost certain it will not. I think, if you make it so that players can have an unlimited amount of healing items, the game will become less fun. If they can just heal damage, why bother dodging? And if you don't worry about defense, that gets rid of half the fun of the combat.
So I think, having a low cap of healing items which is regenerated at around the speed you need them to will keep the combat fun. If you don't worry about playing well, you should be able to run out of health.

However, you may be able to get away with too many healing items by having some kind of punishment for healing. Right now, it looks like you have to navigate a menu in order to heal. While frustrating, this makes it so that you can't just heal whenever you want. This way, you still have to get through combat, or find a safe spot during combat, to heal. This keeps the game exciting. If you decide to make this easier for the player (which will reduce frustration), then adding some kind of delay to the healing would provide the same thing.

These are my thoughts on the subject. You're still a far ways off from balancing the gameplay. But it's fun for me to talk about.
By the way, I came up with a solution for my situation, if you're worried about it. It just wasn't useful for my point.

[qoxolg]

Good news! I managed to fix the performance issues quite quickly. I simply had to many dynamic lights. I also added LOD's for the large rocks. The game now runs smoothly between 60 and 100 FPS on my system on the ultra settings, so still quite some headroom in some parts of the map. Thats quite a relieve, because I am still not fully there what I want in there graphically.

I haven't sorted out scaling completely yet, but it will work kind of like this: Equipment has absolute stats and relative stats. The absolute stats are bound to the level scale table. The relative stats are distributed over a weapon. Say a 1 star rarity saber can distribute 50 points over 5 stats, so stats could be 10 impact, 10 speed, 10 weight, 10 sharpness, 10 recovery. Another 1 star saber could have 20 impact, 3 speed, 15 weight, 6 sharpness, recovery. So difference between weapons will not only be determined by level, but also by stat distribution. There could very well be a level 200 1 star weapon in the game. These stats will be used as relative multipliers. So 10 could be 1 == no multiplier. 5 would be a .5 multiplier, so it will halve that stat of the weapon. 15 would be a 1.5 multiplier, etc. etc.

Now, say we have a 10 star weapon. This weapon can distribute 100 points over the same 5 stats. Not only does this 10 star weapon have higher relative stats but it will also have some special perks and/or special attacks bound to it.

Say the 1 star saber has a max level of 80 and the 10 star saber has a max level of 40. The 10 star saber will outperform the 1 star saber in all content up till level 40. Beyond level 40 enemies the 1 star saber starts catching up in damage, by simply the absolute stats. This will make an interesting dynamic where old higher rarity equipment will stay relevant in certain content. There is no fun in your favourite toy getting obsolete the next day.

I like the idea of having the change of finding this 15 star weapon during the very first quest on the very first enemy if the stars align with the RNG gods, with it being capped at the level of the normal difficulty.


Making 3D assets isn't as hard as many people think, as long as you don't expect AAA quality. I learned all these 3D skills in a couple of months, and I almost started from zero, so yeah. It's just a little time sink in the beginning and you need to be eager to learn a TON of new stuff. Programming is definitely harder. I always use the 20/80 rule for my assets. I spent 20% of the time to get to 80% of the quality. Thats where I differ from a AAA studio. AAA's usually go for the 100% and invest that other 80% of time. I see no point for some lousy indy title like my game is gonna be, to spent 5 times as much time for little benefit.

Time to make assets depends on what I make. Some easy stuff take maybe 2 hours. More complex stuff maybe 4 hours. Enemies and Character somewhere between 8 and 20 hours, depending on if you also count animations and rigging. The modelling and texturing doesn't take super long. it's usually animation and gameplay stuff that eats the time.


Retracting the weapon? yeah, I could do that. I can simply make a second version of the model and show that one on the back of the player.


I indeed didn't think much yet about the recovery system. I simply needed it to be able to get trough my quests and to test some stuff with my inventory system. I do prefer games that are more on survival then one-shotting. Of course some bosses should have dangerous attacks, but just regular enemies should deal moderate damage, that will become a problem if you can't heal or if you get overwhelmed.

There will be inevitable recovery spells for the magic class, though I might make them quite expensive. MP will not auto recover like in PSO2, but will be refilled like ammo, like in shooters. I don't like the one button skills spam fest that was PSO2.