[Jinroh]

Ah great set of faces. ^^ I'm glad you're almost back to where you were before your unfortunate problems. V_V Always no fun when that happens. All the characters look great btw. Very high quality art. ^^
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Mao Mao Games
The wolf and his mate howl, taking solace in the silver moon. Pressing ever foreward to see what the future holds.

[Mattias Gustavsson]

Thanks :-)

Over the last few days, the weather here has been too warm for me to get much coding done... but I've managed to take a stab at the third character, the Thief:


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www.mattiasgustavsson.com - My blog
www.rivtind.com - My Fantasy world and isometric RPG engine
www.pixieuniversity.com - Software 2D Game Engine

[Mattias Gustavsson]

The last weekend was a long weekend (due to the Queens Diamond Jubilee), and I had hoped to get lots of stuff done on the game. However, there was a fire (!) and I had to spend a couple of days cleaning up after it (at least nobody was hurt, which is the main thing).

But I have managed to get the last player character done - the Wizard:




So that makes all four player characters done:


I've also played around with a few options for combat resolution, but haven't found one that feels right yet - I'll keep trying though :-)
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www.mattiasgustavsson.com - My blog
www.rivtind.com - My Fantasy world and isometric RPG engine
www.pixieuniversity.com - Software 2D Game Engine

[RampantCoyote]

Can't wait to see it! But I can. :) Get it right. It's a lot easier to change it in the prototype stage than later. But you know that already.
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Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Old-School Game Developer talks Indie Games, RPGs, and the Games Biz

[Mattias Gustavsson]

Yeah, I'm going to stay nicely put here in prototyping stage for a good while :-)

I've been experimenting a bit with the art for the game, especially when it comes to enemies. It's been a bit of a challenge for me to set up lighting which works for all types of creatures.. but anyway, here's a bunch of different monsters and creatures, with the player characters thrown into the middle:



I quite like having many different sized monsters - it feels more dramatic somehow.
_________________
www.mattiasgustavsson.com - My blog
www.rivtind.com - My Fantasy world and isometric RPG engine
www.pixieuniversity.com - Software 2D Game Engine

[Nodtveidt]

It feels more heroic for the player to take down monsters many times their own size. :)
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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows. - wallace

[Verious]

The characters and monsters look great!

IMHO, the Hydra feels a little small in relation to some of the other monsters and the heroes.

[Mattias Gustavsson]

I've been experimenting a little with the look of the dungeons - not quite right yet, but getting there ( I want the look and feel to remind players of tabletop and miniatures )


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www.mattiasgustavsson.com - My blog
www.rivtind.com - My Fantasy world and isometric RPG engine
www.pixieuniversity.com - Software 2D Game Engine

[tcaudilllg]

Is this gonna be a Diablo clone?

[Mattias Gustavsson]

no
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www.mattiasgustavsson.com - My blog
www.rivtind.com - My Fantasy world and isometric RPG engine
www.pixieuniversity.com - Software 2D Game Engine

[BadMrBox]

Looks good but I think you need to give the doorways a little more height. That big guy would have a problem getting anywhere in that place :).
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[Mattias Gustavsson]

Ah, but he's a demigod who was summoned directly into that area by his worshippers! :D

Point taken though :-)
_________________
www.mattiasgustavsson.com - My blog
www.rivtind.com - My Fantasy world and isometric RPG engine
www.pixieuniversity.com - Software 2D Game Engine

[TheSuddenFire]

This looks outstanding! I had no idea Poser had such capabilities.
I agree with giving the doors a bit more height.
I would love to play this.
Understanding your thoughts are still in the wind,
is there any idea of music, yet?
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Chameleon, on the floor, writhing with a blood-stained neckline. Glowing eyes stare unto this changing one.

[Mattias Gustavsson]

Thanks :-)

I haven't given much thought to the audio side of things - I'm no good with music or sound myself, so I'll probably team up with someone to do those bits.
_________________
www.mattiasgustavsson.com - My blog
www.rivtind.com - My Fantasy world and isometric RPG engine
www.pixieuniversity.com - Software 2D Game Engine

[Mattias Gustavsson]

I'm still working away on this one. There hasn't been much to write about, as most of the work has been under-the-hood stuff, which isn't really that interesting. But I thought I'd give a brief summary of what I've been up to.

I'm trying to not get too distracted by tech on this one, but I think it makes sense to have some good tool for the more basic things - tools which saves you a lot of time by automating things.

So basically, I've been working on the "asset conditioning pipeline" - which is to say, the scripts, tools, utilities and general technology which gets my props, characters and bits of scenery all the way from the 3D program I use and into the game, where they can be rendered to the screen. I really wanted to have an automated process for this, so that I could just set up an object or character the way I want it in Poser (the 3D program I use), and then just save that file, and have my tools pipeline do the rest. And by "the rest", I mean quite a few things. Here's a run-down of the steps that happens after I've saved a new Poser file somewhere in the asset directory for my game.

1. When I'm done using my computer for the day, I launch the asset conditioning program.

2. This scans through the asset directory, and detects any poser file which is new or has been changed.

3. If there are new/changed files, the conditioning tool generates a poser script file, which, when called, will load and render the files.

4. The conditioner starts Poser, and automatically starts the script (by sending key presses! - it was the only way I could get it working)

5. The script loads up each poser file in order, and renders each object from eight different directions - but also, for each direction, it renders a bunch of different images - I'll explain why later.

6. When everything's been rendered (which could take hours, if there's a lot of new assets) the conditioning pipeline goes through each rendered image, and processes it into a format that can be loaded by the game. This is involves a few steps.

7. First, each image has a sharpen filter applied, and the contrast, brightness and saturation adjusted (in the past, I've always done these steps in photoshop, but it is way more convenient to have it fully automated - and it was surprisingly easy to implement).

8. Next, each image is palettized to 8-bit, and compressed using a custom RLE compression, which has separate data streams for alpha and non-alpha pixels.

9. All the images for one object are put into the same file - and what's more, if I have several animations for an object (as with most characters), all images of all animations are put into the same file. This way, I end up with neatly packaged object files that contains everything there is for that object - makes for faster loading, and makes it easier to manage the files.


I still have a few minor things to finish off with the conditioning pipeline, but it feels really good to have the bulk of it done - this should allow me to focus on what I want my assets to look like, without having to waste a lot of time on getting them in the right format for the game.
_________________
www.mattiasgustavsson.com - My blog
www.rivtind.com - My Fantasy world and isometric RPG engine
www.pixieuniversity.com - Software 2D Game Engine