Characters

Development Progress 12/30/18

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Okay, so this time I decided to take some footage from a couple of weeks ago to showcase some things that I’ve gotten done for the month of December:

I enjoyed putting this video together more than I thought I would and it took a lot less time than I anticipated as well so I’m thinking it would be a good idea to make more videos for future dev progress updates.

There was a lot of progress made this month even though the project’s not exactly where I’d like it to be right now.

Besides what’s shown in the video, here’s a quick breakdown of what all I’ve gotten done this month:

  1. All male and female custom player character hairstyles, skins, attachments, outfits, and faces ready for the demo.
  2. The design for the gameplay Hud UI.
  3. A few buldings for environments.
  4. The design for the character creation GUI.
  5. At least one digitally painted weapon type for each class.
  6. The GDD 90% completed (almost 80 pages)!
  7. The new title logo.
  8. The calm and battle tracks for the final stage in the game.
  9. The cannon attack animation for female characters.
  10. The female ADOL idle animation.
  11. Documentated abilities (for a new “trait” system) and Section ID names.

Some of these things took more than just this month alone to work on like the GDD and the composite character stuff for custom player characters.

It was pretty awesome how PSO included the afro as a hairstyle for custom characters despite it not being my personal preference. It felt iconic at the time to have an MMORPG include something like that so Astraverse is bringing it back!
It was pretty cool how PSO had the afro in it despite it being a hairstyle I personally didn’t prefer.  It felt iconic to have an MMORPG include something like that.

As for the game’s character creator, I didn’t finish it as soon as I hoped. A storm hit my area causing a power outage for several hours yesterday, so I wasn’t able to work on the game, unfortunately.

But, that’s okay. Game development is usually a very long and involved process so unexpected setbacks and delays shouldn’t come as a surprise. Besides, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a “perfect” development process for any game up until now.

In my honest opinion, the closest one to being “perfect” in recent memory would’ve been the development of Divinity Original Sin 2 but even Larian Studios experienced a power outage on the game’s launch day.

Any delays here right now are minor compared to that. But, as long as I’m getting at least one thing done (whether big or small) once a day, I’m making progress and I think that’s really the important thing.

– LB

Races of the Ze’re System

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Yep, that’s right–we have more lore in this post but a small update, too.

In Astraverse, there are 3 races: Humans, ADOLs and Neomans.

Male ADOL.png

ADOLs were the first race to be created by humans. The name ADOL is an acronym which stands for “Artifical Design(s) Of Life.” To put it simply, they’re androids–but in Ze’re, if a person calls them an “android” it’s like a negative racial term. ADOLs excel in physical strength but they are the weakest when it comes to using “Formulas” (which is Astraverse’s science-fiction equivalent to most RPGs’ “magic”). Unlike most robots in science-fiction stories, Adols are very human-like in that they can understand and feel emotions.

Female Neoman Adept2.PNG

Neomans are the youngest of the 3 races and they are made up of human DNA enfused with a form of energy called “plasma”–the same energy that is technologically altered to create “Formulas.” Because of this genetic alteration, Neomans have a much stronger connection to plasma allowing them to create stronger formulas. A side-effect of plasma mutation is a weaker body, so Neomans have less endurance and strength than the other 2 races.

 

Human Male

Humans are (obviously) the default/regular/normal/typical/average race with balancedabilities and appearances. Pretty much nothing notable here besides their back story. The humans of Astraverse’s story created the other 2 races and because of that, they tend to think they are better than the other 2 races.

 

 

 

 

I will make posts that showcases the ADOLs and Neomans as individual races.

Here’s a small update:

I’ve been working on a lot of GUI-related stuff this week. I kind of underestimated the need for that which is funny because the game is an RPG. I think this is because my last game was developed in the RPG Maker engine so I didn’t really need to worry much about UI stuff outside of customizing system and dialogue windows.

Here’s what a character’s basic gameplay hud will look like:

Astraverse gameplay UI final (blank example).png

The 4 hexagons at the bottom represent the “button palette”. This is where weapons, skills and items will be equipped. There are 4 more button palette slots available for when a player holds down the “R” trigger/button and also 4 more for when they’re holding down the “L” trigger/button. Altogether, there are 12 different button palette slots available.

I’m choosing to place this hub at the upper left corner of the screen for the first player and for other players–at the other 3 corners of the screen. I wanted to reduce as much UI clutter as possible on the screen because I want the environments to be very visible and the gameplay to feel as immersive as possible.

This week, I’m planning to finally finish up the character creation as I got a bit “sidetracked” with this hub stuff. Hopefully by the time I next post here, I’ll have a video showcasing it!

– LB

 

Character Creation & Stuff

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Ever since my wife and I came up with a decent number of outfits and hairstyles for the characters in the game, I decided to focus my efforts into finishing up the character creator.

Here’s the song I composed for the character creation:

The funny thing about making a character creator is that it’s not really hard to design. But, it can get pretty complex to implement once you start adding more possibilities for the characters that are created.

For example, a lot of games (especially in 2D) tend to have a simple editor where you can change your character’s class, palette colors and his/her name.

Not with Astraverse.

Because the game is 2D, I could’ve probably gotten away with a simple class, name and palette editor but I wanted to make it feel more like a personal experience so here are some things that are ready and being implemented in the character creator (and what’s already possible so far):

Custom Hairstyles

Custom Hair colors

Custom Eyes/eye colors

Custom skin colors

Custom colors for make-up (girls only)

Custom outfits

Of course, there’s more–like race-specific stuff such as skin types for the Android race (we’re calling them ADOLs–I can do a lore post later on). But that’s the stuff that’s mostly for every race.

Anyway, the toughest part (in my opinion) has been setting up the character creation menu. It’s funny how things that sound simple in theory are harder to program than things that sound complex. The character creator is just a menu but after programming it, I’m starting to see why a lot of games don’t bother with the feature.

Here’s what the menu should look like in-game (hopefully by the end of next week):

character creation class menu example

Once the character creator is finished, I’ll also have the character saving system ready to go, too (as they will need to both be implemented at the same time). Then, I’ll move on to the character data selection screen and then to fixing up some UI-related stuff.

 

For you guys who are following, thanks a lot for the support! Right now, I’m experimenting on when’s the best time to post here. So, at least, for the first few weeks, expect some changes in the time I post updates and stuff.

And if anybody is into the idea of a 2D (offline) Phantasy Star Online inspired co-op experience–subscribe here to stay updated on Astraverse’s development!

– LB