mercy's Forum Posts

  • Thank You for your help, R0J0hound!

    I installed your awesome plugin. Studying the code, because it was years I coded anything. Planning R&D as well to realize flames from a single camp fire sprite, candles, swamp gas and other stuff.

  • I have one animation for a burning tree. In the first frames it is perfectly healthy, then begins to burn and finally burns down to cinders.

    My forest can catch fire. The fire propagates to other trees, destroying large sections of the forest in the end.

    Can using instanced sprite animations of just one "burning-tree" animation spare resources in this case? Can I conserve memory and CPU cycles by using only one "burning-tree" animation and starting instances of this one animation at different game-times and screen-coordinates - as the fire propagates?

    Eventually I want XCOM-1-style large-scale fires. Does instancing help here conserving memory and some CPU resources? The whole forest fire is just one sprite animation put on the screen at many coordinates at once, playing with different start times. I want to make the instances begin at random times so the burning tree animations on screen will NOT be synchronized.

    Can instancing or an other solution preserve resources in this case? Memory, CPU cycles?

    Does instancing makes sense in this case?

    In 3D rendering, engines can use instanced geometry objects - reserving memory only for one object - and rendering many of its instances.

  • aJamDonut: Thank You! I'm looking for code samples.

  • Does anybody know a modern solution:

    .. to the old scene special effects - then coded in ASM - that took a picture, took it apart at the pixel level and made it explode, made the picture pixels behave like water waves, etc..

    Example:

    Take the pixels of a 16x32 flame sprite, store them in memory and make a plasma animation torch effect from the image - using the sprite's pixel colors. Make the pixels flow like a flame, adding little sparkler sparks shooting out (from the flame) from time to time, make the flame alive.

    Melt-flow plasma effect:

    1. Take the pixels from an enemy character sprite,

    2. create an animation: leave the first frame unchanged = showing the enemy

    3. then make the pixels melt like ice - a downward plasma flow - then splash the whole fluid mass to the ground in the end.

    Does anybody know of a code somewhere that can manipulate sprites at the pixel level like this?

  • mercy Thanks! That HUD took a lot of work, and I tried quite a very different styles before I was happy. I've been working on it ever since I started the game, because for a game like this, that's how you control and interact with it, so it has to look good. Also, as an artist, I can't bear the thought of anything not looking good, lol. I had a few graphic design classes, but my major was actually painting.

    It shows! You have excellent color palette and clear visuals.

    I'm definitely going to put a strong effort into a trailer or whatnot. I am also going to do a very detailed illustration for the title screen/promo art.

    You are lucky! I'll have to pay for a really good title art.

    I was hoping to get my level built with full z-sorting walls and create a new video explaining it, but last night I didn't feel well, and today I got stung by a yellow jacket right on my index finger. It actually hurts just to type. I'll get it done soon though.

    I immediately slushed vinegar on my nose, when one of the beasts attacked and stung me in the face.

    Music:

    I'm curious about your plans. I thought doing "music" myself for my game, but it would be very primitive and Fallout 1-esque: just a few notes or synths to introduce scenes.

    Real musicians, who have the education and skill to compose elaborate and enchanting pieces and who happen to love, what they are doing, instilling their soul into their creations are who I'm after.

    Music emotional memory in the players mind can make your game immortal. Music can create an unforgettable atmosphere. I don't want just fitting music, like Craig managed with Telepath Tactics: he found a composer with a good price and wanted consistent score from one musician.

    I want an unforgettable, not consistent score from multiple musicians. There are young "scene" people putting their soul into their music, not even knowing they created something exceptional and not putting their music up for sale. I found once a kid, who did an amazing retro track and tried to explain to him, how his sound effects truly reflect the great Commodore C64 from 1984. He didn't understand and answered with a "Sure, mate.."

    I'm really thinking on making several posts to LinkedIn - I give Money for Your Game Music! - and plan to contact SoundCloud artists I liked musics from.

    I came up with a title "track" list, giving the songs names in movie-soundtrack style. Its basically an MP3 playlist without the actual music. Every title describing the general feel of the music piece.

    I want multiple genres represented in my fantasy RPG, like that famous XCOM-1 night music suspense track, then various "dark forest at night"-compositions to make players hairs stand on end, while they are exploring an unknown and dangerous fantasy world.

  • Fantastic work on the graphics! Great GUI with the readable, nice fonts and professional color choices. Clearly you have a strong illustration background and it shows on the screenshots. This will be greenlit on Steam really fast, just do a good trailer.

  • Forgotten Legendz

    Fantastic work. Animations are really nice and all equipment is visible on the hero. Also the GUI is superb, excellent placement, size and icon design.

  • New target indicator and re-worked FX for the Blink ability in Reliquary.

    AMAZING!!! Let us know please where you will sell your game or if you release a demo. oo

  • WOW, your game is getting pirated. This must be a sign of success: game sells well enough so Insanity's Blade gets known and crackers notice. I was always afraid of this for my game and can only think of day-one patches then frequent updates as a remedy:

    • Don't bother with copy-protection, except the obligatory ones, like Steam
    • tire out crackers
    • introduce "desperately important" new features in updates.
    • So people, who pirated the game probably won't have patience to wait. Instead they go and purchase the game, because the latest crack with the "desperately important" new features are getting too late and as you post even newer changes people can't wait anymore and go to your store page.
    • Maybe compile an EXE for each customer, embedding a "serial identifier" so you know, who uploaded their version to the net = gave the game to a cracker.

  • After establishing the camera angle I decided to tackle animations next, otherwise my game can't be made.

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  • <img src="https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/1444x1124q90/819/hlcg.jpg" border="0" />

  • Oh, look! A cave!

    <img src="http://www.adamprack.com/couriermedia/cave.jpg" border="0" />

    Nice one. Another isometric 3D view!

  • Isometric 3D at last! Looks cool!

  • Not really a good idea. Legend of Grimrock players complained about their videocards overheating. Devs chased the bug for a long time, until a day when they found out the game wasn't frame limited and this caused not only overheating, but consuming a lot of power as well resulting in increased electricity bills...

    The game was basically idling or not really GPU hungry, but during idle it commanded the videocard to render the same frames over and over.

  • Nice info! Tutorial is a good idea.