A Grindstone Never Sleeps… Or Something Like That
Back at it again with the Monochrome RPG development dev-log. Not too much has happened this week worth sharing so I’ll keep it to the point. The biggest thing is that the Gackle Boss Bout will now be taking place in a fancy new location!
Wait So its 3D? Always Has Been… *Bang*
Yes, both the main bout scene and the new Gackle boss scene are constructed in 3D! It definitely elevates the simple 2D cartoon style with a fresh new perspective. Now the main bout scene is pre rendered and just a screenshot of the 3D version is used, but that will soon change to the real thing I think. Overall this will make each battle look and feel more dynamic and allow for some unique creative design choices.
But what does that have to do with me? I am just the programmer, so is there a point to me explaining this? Of course! Its not like I need to fill a word count or something and need to get as much typed in to make it look like I did more than I can actually write about : )
Placing Plenty People Purposefully
With the new 3D space comes challeneges with placing the combatants in the battle. The main transforms are already setup for me by a co-worker which is awesome, but now I had to tell the combatants where these spots were and who should go where.
In comes the Battle Component. Gackle, the big boss, has one of these and it conveniently has a setup area for all the possible combatants in the battle. I never knew this existed before but it turned out to work extremely well with the setup of the new area.
I gave each combatant the position of the spot they should stand and let it do its thing when the battle is loaded. This worked perfectly the first time and nothing bad happened ever again! Well almost…
The Pivot Problem
Think of a pivot as your center of mass. The point of which you want to keep centered to stay balanced. Lean too much forward and you fall over, because the center of mass is off center.
Now while 2D sprites cant fall over per se, the pivot determines a lot about how the combatant moves and where it is placed in the world. Keeping it in the optimal centered place is important when making a game involving placing things in certain spots.
Take this Spinner for example. The pivot position relative to its image is marked by the point where the box meets the start of the arrows. As you can see it is nowhere near the base of the Spinner itself.
Any attempts to move the spinner will be done with this offset in mind. If I were to for example place the spinner on one of the points mentioned before, they would be a little too much to the right or left and possibly be offscreen!
Now many of the combatants currently have this problem and they are going to be fixed in due time. This should all together eliminate the rest of the troubles involved in switching to this new Boss Scene, which will be awesome once fully setup.
Next Week’s Notes
Next week I will continue to work on this nee Boss Scene. It will need to be setup to work how the old one did, which hopefully wont be too much of a hassle, barring some already discovered issues. Should be a fun time nevertheless.
Game Jam Goodness!
This past weekend I was able to participate in the 2021 GMTK Game Jam! It was an awesome experience and I am blown away by how many awesome game designers there are who made some pretty cool games.
The theme of the jam was Joined Together and I had a few Ideas I had to cut before landing on the simple but creative idea of making a game where players can make children-style arts & crafts. Hence the title Krafts. You can place things and move them around, glue them to each other and when you are all finished you can save a picture automatically to your computer of what you made.
Feel free to check it out and make some Krafts! Comment what you make, I love to see them. Also any feedback is appreciated as I plan on doing a full polish pass and then a true release with a whole host of new features!