What's up, RMers?

[DerVVulfman]

Hrm. Don't forget Cackles! Evil witches and all.

[Samven]

Let's do this, Metal. ;D

So, anywhoo, I've been working on my game again. Nothing major. Just dungeon and town updates and stuffs but yayz all round.

[Kain Nobel]

Instead of focusing on everything in general, I'm going to try and make it a point this month to focus on two things; the first being the game making contest, the second being animated battlers (for my personal project.)

I decided to enter the contest because I simply spend too much damn time making resources, scripts, music, plot notes, concept notes, etc. and not enough time making an actual, playable game. I mean... I am making an actual game, but the contest project is a good way to get me back in touch with the basics of RM that I've been growing unfamiliar with.

The animated battlers thread I made a while back... well, all of that is going to the recycling bin! I mean, they were a cute start, but I've came up with new methods to my madness! As demonstrated here, each animation cell is going to have layers representing limb movement (head, left arm A, left arm B, left hand, torso, etc...) I'll post a couple samples I experimented with making...

Cocking a shotgun guy

If you can't tell, this guy wields an invisible shotgun. This animation demonstrates him cocking his shotgun and... going into his idle pose? This is actually a crappy attempt, I'm still unsure of what I'm doing, but it's a new start...

Cloud idle pose

I used a still frame of Cloud from FFVII, made the body parts on individual layers (including the weapon this time) and slightly moved a couple pieces of the body to make an idle pose. I'll need to study the action in his attack and see if I can do it justice.

I've hit a milestone of having composed 4 hours of music for my game, not counting the ones I've filtered out. A few pieces I composed way back in 2009 stood the test of time, but the Kain of 2012 is a different composer now. Four hours is a bit excessive, I'm probably going to dispose of some tracks over time and save others for future projects, but I'll continue to make new tracks regardless. I'm just curious how different my OST is going to be between now and the day I actually finish this game.

Oh yeah... new music?

Summit Town Shiva
Summit Town Shiva

I was attempting at happy-go-lucky beach theme, but I'm thinking this might go better as a snow covered city theme. Then again, I do have a town embedded into the side of a volcano in my concept notes, it might work there too. According to mythical legend, Shiva was a four-armed fire god (or goddess, idr.) According to Final Fantasy, Shiva is an ice goddess with the curves of a sexy diva...

There is so much other misc stuff that has been done these past few days, but I can't be bothered to post it all lol. Anyways, I'm out for the day, c'ya!

[KasperKalamity]

i used to fap to shiva when i was 11. don't laugh, i know i;m not the only one. Siren was pretty hawt too.

rming mind: i can't keep it together. i need help. whenever i get a free hour or two, i'd rather play vidja games than work on my project. it's really starting to bum me out, because i'm at a point that's the farthest i've ever gotten. see, i used to illigitimately acquire rmxp, but since have gotten a legal paid version. now i'm at the point where Postality Knights would crash on me, i'd cry myself to sleep, and start over like an idiot the next day. i can't keep up my motivation, and even though i have the whole story written out on paper, most of the battlers sketched, and everything done in my head, i can't get it out and translated into something trangivle.

wat do?

[JayRay]

Using my legally purchased Reallusion Iclone, I've began creating various critters and characters for the animated front view battle engine that has sort of been lost to the ages. If you haven't ever heard of the Asan'Tear battle system, it's a simple Front view system that allows for animated enemy sprites. After purchasing the Shanty Town WorldBuilder and having bits and pieces of buildings that I personally have put together from progs like Google Sketchup, I'm going to construct the backdrops of the battlebacks. One question I want to ask though, if anyone gets the Asan'Tear battle system, and can figure out how to have the battlebacks use the same animation, I'd be most appreciative.

[Kain Nobel]

KK, you're definitely not the only one... :X ahaha

Edit: No rest for the wicked! I'm changing this post to better reflect the frames as I have them now :D

Frame 1 is idle animation, frame 2 is him approaching for an attack, frame 3 is weak HP idle. I'll probably re-use and slightly edit cells from frame 3 to represent being hit by an attack.



^I've been thinking of doing this for so long but have been too intimidated to attempt it, now I feel empowered having got this far! At this rate, hopefully I should have a test sheet for Minkoff/DerVV AB + Trickster's ATB ready in a day or two.

I'll have to re-open my animated battler's thread before I spam the what's up thread to death, but for now I'm going to bed (finally) so... 'til next time, have fun guys ;D

[millarso]

Interesting animations, Kain.
Do you have that figure as a sort of 2D template, or did you make that model with some 3D software and render it 2D? I can't decide which way to go. The 3D modeling will take me longer, but the animations would be far easier after I have the character rigged.

I am in the middle of writing a new story based on the pirate concept. The idea is that you are going to start as a pretty dastardly pirate captain, but some crazy events will happen, and you will rethink your place in life. That sounds pretty cheesy right now and nondescript, but if it turns out on paper like it does in my head, then I think it should work out pretty good. Hopefully, I can come up with a good synopsis to show off fairly soon. I'm going to try and do the game using an isometric engine as well because I like the depth that it can give a world.

[Kain Nobel]

It's all 2D but I tried to mimic 3D body rigging to achieve the movement. I'm still kind of limited with how I can use this technique, so I'm going to have to refine my approach. I spent hours upon hours watching 2D and 3D animation tutorials last night, as well as skimming through books and programs that might help me achieve what I'm trying to do. I've also been studying still-shots of animations in action, identified that many times a key frame has similarities to a dramatic comic book pose, but I still don't fully get it all yet when it comes to motions.

I'm discovering that planning and discussing our secret contest project via PM is kind of difficult, I wish we had private sub-forums on here so we don't have to cram every aspect of design into long-winded private messages. Regardless, I'm feeling that we'll be ready to start soon, I'll let KasperKalamity announce when things officially kick off.

[DerVVulfman]

Okay. Taking a break from messing with Hmode7. I mean, I got 3D movement and missile firing working, but my project has so many visual touches (animations, particle effects and more) that I'd have to redefine virtually every visual script. Oh, I showed MGC a visual equipment script and that I got SephirothSpawn's Event Text Display to work in 3D last year, but that's just a small part.

Now, I've headed back to my initial project and continued to refine MrMo's ABS Ultimate. I had a little problem with the dead companions not staying put when you left the map (either savegame or teleport-wise). In fixing it up, I added a little more to the system. Initially, the system either had corpses blink out (sorry, no collapse fade) or they froze in place with a dead pose. The third option let them be semi-transparent so they're still corpses, but the transparency is a nice touch.

Also, I added jumping. I know... I know... I said before I wouldn't add Jumping as it's mainly just a movement system feature. But, it's tied into the dash system so you can have a good LONG jump, and I plan to add a bit more oomph into attacks if you can swing your weapon when landing. YAY! DRAGOON JUMP ABS!!! It's not in there yet, but that's the idea anyway. Now before you ask: "Can I accidentally jump up a cliff?", the answer is ... SURE! That is, if the map designer didn't put a special code in the tile where he should. The 'counter tag' is so under-used, that I figured... use THAT! So if you have counter tiles along the edge of a cliff, it would be a perfect boundary that doesn't visually affect the gameplay or graphics! Booyah!

For those who said 'Can I have a map where I walk behind a wall and the wall goes transparent?'.... well, I don't have that yet. Tilemap-wise, I'm not the best (prods a fellow member). But I did something like that with events (already posted) that was pretty dang easy. Tilemap-wise. That would be hard. I got an idea how it can be done seeing what a friend did. But also, I had to take a few aspirin after seeing what my friend did. Whoh, dude... awesome! I think it can be done, but... woof...

And... I so wanna start working on my grappling line / thief climbing script again. I lost it when my PC did a chunky hard drive grinding crash. *BOOM!* It wasn't pretty.

Neither was my hard drive once I made sure no one else could use it. "A little gasoline. A blowtorch. No Problem." - Deliah Deets (Beetlejuice)

[Taylor]

Haven't done much lately. Only more recently have been trying to convert PK8's Damage Display customisation into using images. Now sure, Trickster's already got a script that does image-based damage pop, but doing it myself means knowing how it all works. (Which was the point to that ABS I was trying a while back... that I ended up stopping.)

Yet to work out how to make WEAK and BLOCK checks so as to have popup images for them. Since the popups are just sprites... uh... I'll... need to edit the 'damage' definition to have an argument that holds information of element affinity?