<img src="http://imageshack.com/a/img835/6498/7rpb.jpg" border="0" />

Man, I hope nobody was super attached to the old art style. It was sort of a tremendous pain in the butt to work with, so I had to make a decision between seriously cutting back on scope or switching to something easier to work with.

Last month I started over from scratch with all new pixel art assets. The simpler workflow combined with my current level of experience with C2 allowed me to implement everything I'd done before the change(about three months of work) and more in just two weeks.

<img src="http://imageshack.com/a/img802/7/3uda.jpg" border="0" />

To give you an idea of the difference it's made, the old player character had to have between 8 and 16 animations for each individual action like running or shooting, depending on how smooth I needed rotation to be. Now the player character has 8 animations total, because pixel art just lets you get away with so much more before it looks weird.

This simplicity has also added a lot of flexibility to how I can design monsters and their behaviors. I'll be adding new species to their ranks much faster now. I've got three fully implemented and three more in the oven. After that I'll turn my attention to boss monsters and dungeons.

<img src="http://imageshack.com/a/img268/9584/0bar.jpg" border="0" />

I'll throw a playable build of my testing arena up here in the next few days in case anyone is interested trying out the combat.

I can't test it from here, but looking good from what I can see! For the level generation I'd recommend taking a look at the method Derek Yu employed for Spelunky. It translated very well to an isometric perspective in some of the tests I've done. There's an interactive example of how it works made by Darius Kazemi, but his site seems to be down right now so here's the article I found it through instead. Another simple option to explore is the method used in Vlambeer's Wasteland Kings.

RandomFellow

Steampunk Giants is looking great man! Love the HUD.

A simpler option without variables might be to just take the Y value of your ground level and set your text to the difference between that and the object's Y value. So just something like Set Text to GroundY - ObjectY. Or if you want it always relative to the catapult, use catapult.Y instead of ground.

There is a better way! You can do it in one event. Put all the objects you want Z-sorted into a family called IsoObject or whatever you prefer and set it up like this:

<img src="https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/437x69q90/203/s7uq.jpg" border="0" />

Here's a couple screens from another prototype of mine, this time for a procedurally generated dungeon crawler.

<img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BdqiiAACYAA3PU-.jpg:large" border="0" />

<img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bdvyr9-CAAIvUyV.jpg:large" border="0" />

Sanches Nice effects!

WestZephyr

Thanks! I sort of broke it recently, but as soon as I have a stable playable build I'll put it up along with a devlog update.

For now I think C2 is only supporting controllers that use XInput drivers. That means most modern controllers are supported, but this does leave a lot of joystick users out in the cold.

RandomFellow Dude this looks fantastic! You are entirely too humble.

RandomFellow Lol I'm not sure my work is that good, but I hope it encourages people to keep going with their own stuff. Seeing everyone else's work here certainly keeps me going!

I've got the combat basics roughed out for my Pikmin style action RPG prototype. It runs terribly for me in Firefox so you'll find a link to the EXE as well, in case you don't use Chrome.

Browser Link

Exe Link

WASD to move

E to pick up or drop Scepters (They all fire the same unfinished projectile)

LMB to use Scepter

Hold RMB to direct Imps

Middle click to make Imps hold position

Direct Imps toward slimes to make them attack

[1] will reset the layout

I'm getting 58 - 60 fps with the EXE, so hopefully it won't chug for anyone. I minimized my use of pathfinding as much as possible but the Imp's AI is still pretty taxing. Anyway, feedback would be greatly appreciated.

I can't take a look at the capx from here, but it sounds like you need to set Force Own Texture to "yes" in the layer's properties.