game development

Setbacks and “Throw-away” BGM

/ Last BeNeVoLeNcE / Leave a comment

The funny thing about game development (and pretty much any sort of creative project) is that there are almost always things that get cut from the final version.

Even though it’s quite early in Astraverse’s development, I’ve already chosen a couple of tracks to cut from the project–at least for now.

Now, a lot of people would probably disagree with me on this but there are a few reasons why I’ve cut some music stuff so early. For one thing–I’ve already composed about 60% – 70% of the entire soundtrack–Another main reason I’m making decisions on what goes and what stays is that my external hard drive just stopped working out of nowhere so I lost all of the project files for Astraverse’s music (along with all of the project files for the music I’ve produced, composed, recorded and released since 2010).

Fortunately, I had already saved every track that I had composed for Astraverse so far on to my local drive and a cloud drive. However, this means that I either have to re-do every track from scratch (if I ever wanted to change anything in them) or just treat them all as “final” versions.

This isn’t too much of a problem since I’ve spent a lot of time on the music already and I feel the tracks sound exactly the way I want them to. But there are a few tracks here and there that weren’t mixed well and a couple of them that I wasn’t sure I wanted to bring into the final game.

The following track was originally intended to be the BGM for the final area in the game (The Enemy Encounter version starts at 3:50).

There’s no need to worry about spoilers as this track’s been already replaced with something that I recently composed some time after my external hard drive failed.

And if you think it sounds good already–don’t worry, the new track is WAY better.

On the other hand, I MIGHT be able to find some use for this one somewhere in the game. But, there’s no plan for it now–I only need 12 environment tracks for the different places/planets that players will visit and those are already finished. I’m not worried about it right now.

 

This week, I’ve been dealing with this stupid bug while trying to import my animations into the game engine that I’m using and it’s taken about half the week to deal with the problem. Funny part was how simple it was to fix the issue. Even though the game engine’s compile window wasn’t explaining anything at all, it turned out to be that the names I was using for some files inside of the animation program were too long. After stressing out for about a couple of days, I ended up trying to rename everything and it finally worked!

Normally, I’d say this was a waste of time, but in reality, I learned something useful about importing my animations into the game engine that’ll save me the trouble for later on. Once I have some money to put into the project, I’m going to invest in a better animation program that will hopefully be more compatible with the game engine that I’m using (and hopefully will result in less issues like this week’s).

 

To be honest, this setback hit my schedule kinda hard and even though I’ve pretty much hit the ground running again with the game’s development ever since I fixed the problem, I don’t think I’ll be able to wrap up the character creator just yet.

But, there’s still this weekend so we’ll see what I can get done.

In the meantime, I’ll try to have something “special” prepared just in case I’m not able to follow through with that character creator by my next post.

 

– 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

 

The Planets of Ze’re

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I think it’s a good time to start talking a bit about the setting of Astraverse.

Some of these things I may have briefly mentioned before but in this post, the goal is to go into a bit more detail.

 

Astraverse takes place in Ze’re, a fictional star system that contains 5 inhabitable planets: Jeavis, Ashara, Autovia, Croatis and Hautune.

I took some obvious inspiration from the Algol star system that was in the original Phantasy Star games on the Sega Genesis. I liked the idea of having more than one planet in the game to travel to and experience.

smallPlanet Jeavis

Jeavis

Jeavis is a hot planet and it’s closer than the other planets to the Ze’re system’s star. It has a red atmosphere and a red sky. It’s also covered in deserts. There will be a ring of astroids surrounding this planet which will be visible in the sky from the planet’s surface.

 

Ashara (left) & Autovia (right)

Ashara and Autovia are planets that share the same axis and they rotate around each other during their cycle around the star, Ze’re (this is probably not scientifically possible but I have read about the possibilities of 2 planets sharing an axis and that’s where this idea came from). They both have very similar atmospheres that are very “Earth-like.”

Ashara is a planet that’s filled with a lot of green. I like to call it a “paradise planet” so there’s going to be lots of trees, grassy fields, flowers–stuff like that.

Autovia, on the other hand, will be filled with cities. As a matter of fact, the entire planet will be a gigantic city. This is where most of the people in the Ze’re system will be taking up their residence. There’s this AI that built that were able to quickly build the planet-wide city on Autovia using a technology that can be seen across the sky of Autovia.

 

smallPlanet Croatis

Croatis

Croatis is a planet mostly covered in oceans. Not much is known about this planet from the beginning of the game’s story and because of that, I rather let it remain a mystery until people can actually experience the story and see for themselves!

 

smallnew Hautune

Hautune

Hautune is our “cold” planet. It’s covered in ice and snow and the cool thing about it is that it has a purple atmosphere–so the sky appears purple when seen from it’s surface.

 

I’m planning to add the Construction Tech to Autovia and the ring of astroids around Jeavis eventually, though. Should either show up in the demo of the game or the full game!

 

– 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

Should’ve Started This Before But Here Goes…

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I’m not really sure of what the best opening start to a blog is….

I figured I’d just go ahead and say that instead of pretending like I have all the answers or know completely what I’m doing. 

I’m starting this blog because I’m currently working on a serious game project inspired by my favorite video game “Phantasy Star Online” and I’d like to not only give a proper way for others to track the game’s progress but also (and mainly, to be honest) to gain the project some sort of following so I can put some food on the table while I’m at it.

I’m Daniel (DJ is what my friends call me) and I’m a part-time music artist (Last BeNeVoLeNcE–I’m actually “googleable”)  and, of course, a game developer. 

As you can tell by the title in the heading logo of the site, the game I’m working on is called “Astraverse” and it’s set to be a 2D game co-op RPG that’s A LOT LIKE PHANTASY STAR ONLINE.

I’d even go as far as to say that it’s a “PSO-like” (I get this from the “Souls-like” & “Rogue-like” terms) or a “PSO-clone” but it’s still going to be quite different. For one thing, it’s a 2D game–which already comes with a set of differences. But, it’s basically my own 2D twist on the gameplay from the legendary fantasy sci-fi title that some of us know and love. 

Anyway, I’d like to keep these blog posts as short as I possibly can so that it’s easier to follow (some will probably be long to cover more in-depth topics). I’ll cover the current progress of the project in another post and I’ll do maybe another post or 2 that’ll go further in explaining why I decided to work on this game and how it will be the same and/or different from PSO. 

Thanks for coming–don’t forget to subscribe at the bottom the page if you haven’t already!

LB