Grimoire of Worlds

[GrindalfGames]

Thought I would start a dev log....
So I've rewritten a lot over the past month, all my plants are now procedurally generated(the graphics are not)
So names, and properties are procedurally generated. the textures are randomly chosen from different texture sets(herb set is at 120 different textures)

In this world I found 4 different berry bushes.

they each gave me
Tabal=7 hp
Stil=10 mp
Whusub=10 mp
Debib=10 hp

of course this is just random and will be different on a different world. The idea is though that you can bring the herbs, berries, flowers and trees back and grow them on your own world.
Berries are just a quick few hps/mps ect. Good for early game but not great once you have higher levels.
The herbs are a potion ingredient for stats(HP, MP, MGC, DEF ect)
The flowers are a potion ingredient for effects(remove poison, regen, float ect)
Trees give you wood which is used for crafting certain weapons or building houses.
I havent started on the random ores yet.

Building houses and towns......
When you have the recipe for the sign you can put a plot of land up as availible
people will move in and build houses or shops. Here is a little montage


You can also dig roads with the spade.
Im not really sure where Im going with that part of the game yet but its quite fun.
At the moment the houses just start apearing in 3 seperate stages. At a later date I would like to get the npc working on them.

Spell Creation......
Spells are created from putting runes together. Each rune has a its own job so putting them together in the wrong way can be harmfull
This is a regen type spell that targets the player

And the resulting spell

You only start off with a few runes and find more along the way so that way you can keep improving your spells

Anyway thats what ive been working on since the last time I posted

[RemiD]

good to see some progress, i wondered where you were with this project.


(you still have'nt fixed uvmaps or quads orientations in the leaves of your trees so the lighting / shadows still looks weird)

[GrindalfGames]

Actually I did flip them. I just didn't like the result so I returned back to the way it was.
Not worked on this for a few weeks now though, been having a little time off

[phodiS]

My god this is BEAUTIFUL!!..
I just managed to make my sprite character walk around on a 3d terrain...
and I though that was good lol!.   

Keep up the great work.

[GrindalfGames]

Thanks phodiS Im glad you like it
So recently I've been fixing a lot of issues from changing the way the plants, ores, ect generate.
I've also fixed up the ui a little. and added forest generation. I've tried to go with an ocarina of time feel to them.


Ive also added Mountain ranges. You can see in the minimap that they are quite big and can also change direction.
They are to tall to climb so it means you have to think a little more about navigation.


Ive also been working on quests. Quests are randomly generated and at the moment I only have gather quests(bring back to the issuer random amount of random item) and kill quests(kill random amount of random monster)


I would be quite happy if I could have a demo released for Jan 1st(it will be 3 years since I started this project)

[RemiD]

 the shapes colors in your game looks original and nice, but apparently you still have a problem with how you bake lighting / shading (lighted areas should be towards the lightsources / sun / moon, shaded areas should be in opposite direction of the lightsources / sun / moon...)

[GrindalfGames]

If you are talking about the palm tree shadow its just a sprite. I cannot move it according to sun direction because it uses the entire tile size.
The rest of the scene has no lighting/shadows applied. I cannot bake shadows because then they would be wrong for when the sun moves.

[RemiD]

of course you can bake some lighting / shading (not "shadows") in textures, and you already do, but not coherently and not uniformly.

but anyway, it is not important for now, focus on the gameplay / possibilities / environments / things...

[GrindalfGames]

I think I know what you mean. Like the brick texture on the houses?

[RemiD]

lighting / shading added in textures does not need to be perfect (it is rarely in games), it just need to look convincing enough and be uniform enough.

yes like for the bricks on the walls of houses, we assume that the most intense lightsource comes from the top (sun or moon) and therefore the away sides are more dark, the towards sides are more lighted.

same thing for the branches / leaves of trees, or the roofs, a statue, a plant, a rock, the interior of the "truncs doors", any shape in your game...

imo the weirdest lighting / shading is really on the leaves of trees (i already told you that)
but i guess why, you probably copied the same part (uvmapped on the same area of the texture) and rotated it randomly, hence the weird result.

basically, the approach is to color a shape with a material color, then use a darker variation of this color to color the sides which are oriented away from the lightsource, and use a lighter variation of this color to color the sides which are oriented towards the lightsource...

(if you don't want to spend too much time positionning / orienting branches / leaves of a tree / plant in a modeling editor, you can make it in code with premade parts and merge the result in one mesh one surface one texture...)

[Qube]

I think with a game like this you either need to do an approximation of shadows throughout all levels or simply skip that side completely and keep it colourful and bright. Judging by your screen shots I think it would work best to not bother with shadows across a whole scene but just do "cartoon shadows" in places where such things would add additional polish.

[GrindalfGames]

Im not using any directional lighting(just ambient light) and simple sprite shadows for entities. I wont be going back over old textures and changing them, at least not for a long time there is just so much work to be done on everything else

[RemiD]

i'm talking about baked (manually) lighting / shading on texels and you are talking about shadows... i give up !

[GrindalfGames]

I wont be going back over old textures and changing them

i'm talking about baked (manually) lighting / shading on texels and you are talking about shadows... i give up !

Are we not talking about the same thing here?
I also find the focus on graphical quality of an indie pixelated game made by one person in his spare time to be a little strange.

[RemiD]

your game looks good man, keep working on it. (but i like when the graphics are coherent / uniform, my technical side i suppose...)