[Galladin]

So...here's what I've been up to since I re-installed MZX 2-3 weeks ago. It has been a while from the last time I MZXed, but boy is this fun. As always, no mockups, it's all playable stuff and aside the battle-engine, all engines are finished and working pretty much flawlessly...

"The year is 2075. The world is changed, some say Awakened."

This post has been edited by Galladin: 04 April 2016 - 10:56 PM

[asgromo]

😃 this looks great!!

[Dr Lancer-X]

Incredibly nice work on utilising the 8x14 char space. The title screen and those portraits made me double-take and examine them closely. Looks fantastic.

[Galladin]

Thanks - I'm pretty satisfied with how especially the portraits ended up, I didn't really plan them that much but just started sketching and here we are...

As for the story, it is set in the Shadowrun setting if you're familiar with that and the plot itself is, with some liberties taken, from one of our roleplaying sessions a while back.

[djtiesto]

Some real great character designs, I'm impressed with your use of color and being able to effectively keep within the 8x14 MZX size limit.

[Galladin]

So this is progressing pretty well, it's a lot of fun to do it when things work out and for the first time almost ever, I am pretty satisfied with the background graphics. The game will be very short in terms of number of boards, but once the main adventure has been finished I will see and reconsider if I have enough motivation left in the tank to extend it over to our second adventure - the good thing about this is that the main storylines are there and it's easy to just bash it into MZX.

Anyways, lots of characters and objects have been added, as well as portraits for more NPCs. The minor NPCs will only respond in *message lines, while the more important ones will have much more to say over the Dialogue interface. Working with this big characters (3x4) requires a lot of simplification and reuse of graphics, so I've had to take some liberties from the original layout of the areas to squeeze everything in. Nevertheless, I think using the big characters adds a lot to the atmosphere, plus I'm trying to use other ways of distracting the player from the simple background such as animating the NPCs or the moving showroom lights against the wall in the screenshot below.

Oh and it was good to find ModArchive still up and running, got loads of good tracks from there yesterday - they fit the industrial, futuristic and rather dark feel of the game just perfect.



<You see the ugliest human being you have ever encountered. In fact, you are not so sure if his hideous, wart-filled and unshaven face is that human after all. His whole demeanour just strikes off as repelling and he reeks of filth, vomit and old synthetic booze.>

[Galladin]

djtiesto, on 28 March 2016 - 02:55 AM, said:

Some real great character designs, I'm impressed with your use of color and being able to effectively keep within the 8x14 MZX size limit.

Thanks Luke!

With the portraits it was actually pretty easy, but when it comes to the in-game graphics for NPCs and whatnot, that requires a bit more work. That (and the fact I need just about every bit of charset space I can have) is also the main reason I decided to keep the background floors just empty space.

[GetDizzy]

Lookin awesome so far. I approve.

[Galladin]

Well, shouldn't have said anything, I guess I just jinxed it. The .mzx file and several charsets just got corrupted most likely due to the fact my laptop ran out of battery. Luckily I had a backup from 3-4 days ago and I will have to redo several things, but it is not actually as bad as I thought. Most of the charsets and all still work, but I would not want this to happen again. I guess I need to back up more often.

Anyone familiar with this debug code?

"Board @ [some gibberish] is irrecoverably truncated or corrupted. Debug Code 0d03h." A similar message also pops up mentioning a "Robot @ 63BF4h is truncated or corrupted." When I look at the boards, there are only 3 that still work within that .mzx file, the rest of the boards are now empty.

If the problem is a robot, is there a way to find from the debug code which one or where it is?

[Galladin]

Well, whatever it was I managed to pretty quickly redo whatever was lost - and more.

The battle-engine and the character development screen are still undone, so once I've finished doing the areas I'll start working on those.

"The 2075 public loo - some things never change."

This post has been edited by Galladin: 04 April 2016 - 08:53 PM

[Hoof]

There's a lot of poo in that loo.

This game looks great. You've pretty much mastered proper use of the color black, which—in my opinion—is just plain hard to do. This is all very inspirational to me!

[Galladin]

Hoof, on 05 April 2016 - 05:47 AM, said:

There's a lot of poo in that loo.

This game looks great. You've pretty much mastered proper use of the color black, which—in my opinion—is just plain hard to do. This is all very inspirational to me!

Hoofey! Just a couple of days ago I was trying to find some old projects from my archived Gmail files and stumbled upon our e-mail conversations - some insanely good-looking projects you had going back then! Are you still working on something or just lurking around?

And thanks, I appreciate your opinion a lot - I still envy your graphical skills, sir. Jauhis gave me some great ideas how to effectively utilise black backgrounds and he's probably got a PhD in that, so that helped quite a bit here...

This post has been edited by Galladin: 05 April 2016 - 08:35 AM

[Dr Lancer-X]

This art just gets better the more I look at it.

I mean, geez, look at it




That ugly old man is probably the most beautiful thing I've seen in MZX. It's so well-crafted - the image fits the grid and the grid fits the image, but it's so smooth there's no visual evidence whatsoever that anything is compromised to make it fit to the grid.

[Galladin]

Dr Lancer-X, on 05 April 2016 - 01:44 PM, said:

This art just gets better the more I look at it.

I mean, geez, look at it




That ugly old man is probably the most beautiful thing I've seen in MZX. It's so well-crafted - the image fits the grid and the grid fits the image, but it's so smooth there's no visual evidence whatsoever that anything is compromised to make it fit to the grid.

You're making me blush, Lankypants!

There's about 10-12 of those portraits right now and none were planned too much so I guess I'm just lucky they "fit the grid". I mean, initially yes - the first one. I just took the 4x3 from neck upwards in the character editor and started carving out the facial figures and the rest just came along pretty nicely. Having that template in place, it's a pretty fast process to create new portraits. Currently there are a couple of portraits I like much more myself than Mr. Ugly shown here.

[T-Bone]

Galladin do you do sprite work for other engines at all? You quite crafty with limited colours and pixel space

[Galladin]

T-Bone, on 06 April 2016 - 09:41 AM, said:

Galladin do you do sprite work for other engines at all? You quite crafty with limited colours and pixel space

Other engines? As in other GCSs or non-MZX projects? No.

But...here's some concept art on the player character and how this thing started.

[T-Bone]

Very talented. I really do enjoy the original style you have in your games and concepts.

How far along are you with this current project?

[Hoof]

Galladin, on 05 April 2016 - 04:34 AM, said:

Hoofey! Just a couple of days ago I was trying to find some old projects from my archived Gmail files and stumbled upon our e-mail conversations - some insanely good-looking projects you had going back then! Are you still working on something or just lurking around?

And thanks, I appreciate your opinion a lot - I still envy your graphical skills, sir. Jauhis gave me some great ideas how to effectively utilise black backgrounds and he's probably got a PhD in that, so that helped quite a bit here... />

Eh, I lurk and I start little projects every now and then. Very few have legs, though. Mostly, I'm just a super nostalgic guy—for everything—the older I get.

Love seeing your work though. Seeing it definitely made me fire up megazeux again and start yet another blank .mzx file.

[Galladin]

T-Bone; Glad you like it - all the playable boards are pretty much there in terms of graphics and design, I will now proceed to introduce more quests, dialogue and items into the boards and brainstorm the combat system. The intention is to keep it real short and actually finish something for once.

Hoof; That sounds very familiar, I often get this sudden burst of creativity, fire up MZX and somehow find myself back at DMZX, browsing through games, old ideas and old posts. This time however it's so much fun that and it's coming along so well that I am confident this will get finished within a month.

It would be neat to see some of your projects too, how did that blank .mzx file end up looking like?

[Galladin]

Just so you don't think it's dead.

Worked on the battle engine once more plus finished two new boards. Flying back to Finland today after a 3-week-vacation in Barcelona playing hockey and seeing old friends, so I should have plenty of idle time at the airport and during the flight to work on things.

[Galladin]

Revamped condo


Channel 3 news


Greywolf, native American shaman


Lone Star patrol officer, corporal L James

[Galladin]

Happy New Year!

[Graham]

Happy New Year to you as well! I love the design aesthetic of your game. It's shaping up nicely.

[CJA]

oh my godddddd, this stuff looks SO GOOD

like, this stuff takes on an aesthetic of its own that twists mzx's graphics and turns them into this delightfully vintage thing that could compete with any pixel art or vector retro style

[Galladin]

Currently visiting my hometown in Lapland for 1 more week, been reuniting with Jester and he's been writing a lot of dialogue for the game while I've been mainly working on the combat system and adding new areas! Things are shaping up nicely and what is more important, it's fun!

Still to do:

• Combat system
  
• 3-5 playable boards
  
• Final boss area
  
• Cutscenes (very simple/static ones)
  
• UI for buying new items (or handle through dialogue)
  
• Add interactive content & puzzles

"You finally reach the Seattle Docks and park your rusty van on a narrow alley between the abandoned buildings and endless piles of industrial steel crates. The Hookshot should be right around the corner..."

This post has been edited by Galladin: 15 August 2017 - 07:27 PM

[Galladin]

So what's new?

Well, just got back to working on Sixth World last week, almost finished the battle engine and created the areas that were still missing, except for the final board. I think things are looking pretty good and everything seems to work, finally! =)

The battle engine was actually one of the biggest obstacles, it feels great to have that pretty much solved now.

Still to do:

• Final boss area
  
• Cutscenes (very simple/static ones)
  
• UI for buying new items (or handle through dialogue)
  
• Add more interactive content & puzzles

"Fraggin' over-sized rats and...whoa, freeze right there boogieman or I swear I'll geek ya!"

This post has been edited by Galladin: 24 November 2017 - 03:50 PM

[Lachesis]

nice. does Ace get help or is he a bad enough dude to take on everyone himself?

[Galladin]

Lachesis, on 25 November 2017 - 04:39 AM, said:

nice. does Ace get help or is he a bad enough dude to take on everyone himself?

Haha, yeah it will be a party of 3 for most parts...the battles will be actually pretty deadly so going alone would be a suicide.

I haven't yet beta tested all the battles so the challenge rating probably needs to be adjusted further down the line.

[Galladin]

Added dialogue, finished the final boss area, fixed a couple of bugs I found, added content and new details to boards using some vlayer-stored graphics and the unbound sprites. Added a pause menu accessible by Enter/Space, which also shows the controls and battle commands. Now continuing with cutscenes. I also talked with Lachesis and Lancer-X over Discord on how to apply a more efficient path-finding algorithm, the current one is very crude so I will look into implementing at least something that works better.

Still to do:

• Cutscenes (very simple/static ones)
  
• UI for buying new items (or handle through dialogue)
  
• Add more interactive content & puzzles

"You park your roadster right under the flashing neon lights marketing some cheap biotech wonders that are supposed to keep you young forever or something. The smell of urine mixed with a stench of synthetic alcohol and street scum hit your nostrils like two pounds of C-6. You're at the Redmond Barrens."

This post has been edited by Galladin: 05 December 2017 - 06:28 PM

[Galladin]

So...Christmas is almost here and things are looking good. On a leave from work until January so I've been mainly doing standard relationship stuff with my girlfriend, ice hockey and MZX.

Yesterday managed to finish the cutscenes as well. They're pretty simple and not at all as pretty as I'd like, but hey it works so it'll do. Changed the dialogue UI as well, it now reads all the dialogue from text files so it'll be a lot faster to type in all the chit chat.

Still to do:

• Improve pathfinding
  
• UI for buying new items (or handle through dialogue)
  
• Add more interactive content & puzzles

As for the puzzles & problem solving, there's a couple of them already pretty much sketched out but I just need to implement them. No slider puzzles obviously, expect more of the type that Dragonbreed had - "how do I get out of here" and "how to open the goddamn door".