Project Demo

[Heraga]

#Notdeadyet!

Anyways, I've decided on how I want to approach this game: it will be made up of 5 "levels" and will play sorta like a Metroidvania. I don't want to fall into that cliche though, as many games use that.

About costumes: each character will have 2 alternate palette swaps, and 1 alternate costume based off their ASMT Appearence. I might add more, but I feel like it'll do for now.




Oh, and achievements are a thing.

[Heraga]

Vote on the poll if you care or not.

[Heraga]

Now with music and stuff.

World Map
Grasslands
Underground

[Heraga]

Fonts and Cutseens Yo

[tangy]

I want to play this when I get the chance.
You'very much redeemed yourself since this time last year

[Heraga]

I want to play this when I get the chance.
You'very much redeemed yourself since this time last year

Thanks so much! This has been one of the most fun projects I've worked on in a whiles, and will promise for this game to be the best experience possible.

[Heraga]

Inventories. Key GFX are placeholder.

[tangy]

image

Inventories. Key GFX are placeholder.

So it's a metroidvania?
also heros is spelled heroes unless you're speaking french

[Heraga]

image

Inventories. Key GFX are placeholder.

So it's a metroidvania?
also heros is spelled heroes unless you're speaking french

I never proof read, so yeah, thanks for telling me that.


And yeah, it is a Metroidvania.

[Heraga]

Eh

[Heraga]

Woah

[Ivy]

T I T L E S C R E E N
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T
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E
S
C
R
E
E
N

[Heraga]

T I T L E S C R E E N
I
T
L
E
S
C
R
E
E
N

T H A N K S
H
A
N
K
S

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Everything is sorta working now.

[tangy]

From that animationN of the title screen it looks a little bit like Demo's running animation is backwards??
Edit: I liked the little thing you had going w the hub and levels... Perhaps you could have each level be a mini metroidvania of sorts?
Edit2: I also liked the idea you had with background dirt being darker than foreground dirt

[Heraga]

From that animationN of the title screen it looks a little bit like Demo's running animation is backwards??
Edit: I liked the little thing you had going w the hub and levels... Perhaps you could have each level be a mini metroidvania of sorts?
Edit2: I also liked the idea you had with background dirt being darker than foreground dirt

It's more styled like Ducktales Remastered's map, just larger.


Desert Cave


Two person dialog with Iris

[Heraga]

[saturnyoshi]

It all looks pretty neat, but that gameplay gif, why does Demo stop so suddenly? And from the look of it there`is no variable jump height? (Like hold the button longer for higher jumps)

[SeraphTearZ]

Just finished looking thru this thread from start to finish. I am really liking what I see done so far and look forward to seeing how it progresses!

[Heraga]

Quick update to show I'm not dead. What your seeing if the intro screens, inspired by Yoshi's Island. These only appear when going to a new world/going back to an older world.


(It's not a .gif. Gyazo broke for me >_<)

[Heraga]

Man, tbh, I really didn't want to make this post, but I really don't know anymore. I had lots of fun in the beginning, but it's no longer that case. It feels like a drag to work on this, and I don't see the payoff of working on this another 10 years, only for the at of romhacking and raocow himself, to vanish from the interwebs. More importantly, I want to move on to offical stuff and offical work. This game, in it's current state, is 9% done. I literally don't even have a good platforming engine or, heck, even enemies done. I'm not sure if it is even worth it. I've come to a few options of what I could do:

1: Cancel the game, and release the GFX hoping someone might finish this
2: Contuine the game
3: Contuine the game, but hand it over to someone else


I guess the main problem is that I use Clickteam, which has mostly been forgotten in time, even though it is good. My reasons for continuing are also as strong. The GFX artist for the game, SAB, has dedicated over a whole year to making Pixel art for this game. I've also been closely working with composers, who have already made 7+ tracks, which I'd hate to go to waste.


I'm really unsure about this.

[Rixithechao]

Finding a good, robust platformer engine is tough. I've been working on my own for years and still haven't come up with anything I'm completely satisfied with... though I've been stubborn about making them from scratch and trying to include some fairly ambitious features.

If it helps, Wings of Vi, Freedom Planet and the FNaF games were all made with Clickteam products. If you're familiar with the Noitu Love series by Konjak, those were made with Clickteam as well. But if you really want to change to another engine, I'd personally recommend GameMaker or Unity. Konjak went from Clickteam to Construct, and I've heard good things about that engine as well, so that's something else to look into.

Last but not least, we've been making huge strides with customizing the look and mechanics of SMBX through lunalua -- particle systems, parallax backgrounds, screen distortion effects, custom message boxes, custom HUD, custom characters with custom abilities and custom physics and so on -- so you could turn the game into an SMBX episode like Superb Demo Sisters and you'd just have to adapt the pre-existing stuff to your needs rather than build an engine from the ground up.

As for working on original IPs, you could retool Project Demo into one -- keep the backgrounds and music but change the characters and any ASMT-specific elements of the setting. (You could theoretically keep Demo, Iris and Mishi as unlockable bonus characters or something, though you'd have to ask raocow for permission first.) Freedom Planet started out as a Sonic fan game, and I've seen a few other fan games go that route as well, so it's certainly a viable option. If you do that, though, SMBX might not be the best engine to work with since development has been trending away from standalone executable-style distribution and toward self-contained episode packages.

EDIT:
A couple more things: there's a metroidvania kit in the Construct asset store. It's $54, but it looks like it has almost everything you need. Also, here's a discussion thread about some of the engines I mentioned plus a few others.

[Heraga]

Finding a good, robust platformer engine is tough. I've been working on my own for years and still haven't come up with anything I'm completely satisfied with... though I've been stubborn about making them from scratch and trying to include some fairly ambitious features.

If it helps, Wings of Vi, Freedom Planet and the FNaF games were all made with Clickteam products. If you're familiar with the Noitu Love series by Konjak, those were made with Clickteam as well. But if you really want to change to another engine, I'd personally recommend GameMaker or Unity. Konjak went from Clickteam to Construct, and I've heard good things about that engine as well, so that's something else to look into.

Last but not least, we've been making huge strides with customizing the look and mechanics of SMBX through lunalua -- particle systems, parallax backgrounds, screen distortion effects, custom message boxes, custom HUD, custom characters with custom abilities and custom physics and so on -- so you could turn the game into an SMBX episode like Superb Demo Sisters and you'd just have to adapt the pre-existing stuff to your needs rather than build an engine from the ground up.

As for working on original IPs, you could retool Project Demo into one -- keep the backgrounds and music but change the characters and any ASMT-specific elements of the setting. (You could theoretically keep Demo, Iris and Mishi as unlockable bonus characters or something, though you'd have to ask raocow for permission first.) Freedom Planet started out as a Sonic fan game, and I've seen a few other fan games go that route as well, so it's certainly a viable option. If you do that, though, SMBX might not be the best engine to work with since development has been trending away from standalone executable-style distribution and toward self-contained episode packages.

EDIT:
A couple more things: there's a metroidvania kit in the Construct asset store. It's $54, but it looks like it has almost everything you need. Also, here's a discussion thread about some of the engines I mentioned plus a few others.

That's what I've been attempting to do during the past month, develop my own engine. However, it isn't perfect, and is more of a SMB1/3 rather than a SMW engine. I've worked on PD oddly. To make sure that everything is possible in SMW, I've tested I want to do first in a PD version of SMW. Everything from GFX to Music is possible.


The Fnaf series was one of the main reasons I started PD. However, it was really Undertale, back in September, that made me really want to work on this again. If possible, there are also many engines built in GM that have the mechanics I'm looking for, so worse case, I'd switch to that.


Now, using SMBX, might be something I may do. I've seen Metroidvania maps built the way I need them on the SMBX forum, but as I'll quickly mention: I have no knowledge of lunalua, so that might be a small-big problem.

When it comes to making an original IP, it'd be kinda hard to have Demo be in it, for the main reason of having to mention it. Demo and Friends don't belong to me, and it'd be hard to show off the game without talking about raocow and the Talkhaus. I may go the FP approach and just swap out Demo for a new character, but once again, IDK.


I'll look over my options, who knows after all!

[QubicTom]

Don't give up! Two things might help:
1. Take a break. Like, a few weeks without thinking about coding at all. But do think about how cool it could be when it's finished! (And I'd definitely play it, and many others would)
2. Make decisions right now. We can all get stuck by not being sure which way is the best way to do something. Forget that, decide on a path that will meet your needs (what game engine to use, or if SMB3 physics instead of SMW physics will suffice) and stick to that decision. One thing people are really good at is adapting, so if there are obstacles along the way, you will, for sure, find a way around them when you get there.

It looks so good! Motivation can be replaced by combining ambition and pragmatism. Go for it :D

[Sloshy]

if you decide to cancel this, it would've bbeen better if you never started at all.

[Rixithechao]

I'd argue the opposite. With every project, you get something back from it: learning lessons on what does and doesn't work for production and design, resources that you can potentially reuse, so on and so forth. So even if the game is never finished, you're generally at a more capable place than you were when you started.

This project isn't a kickstarter-funded game or AAA title, so there weren't any financial stakes -- if Nin were to cancel this, he would mostly lose the time he put into the game. And in exchange for the gamedev experience, the support and advice from other talkhausers, resources like graphics, music and designs that can be put toward another project and the contacts he made with his artist and musician, which could potentially lead to further networking down the road, I'd say that was a worthwhile investment.

That said, I would still like to see Project Demo succeed in some form or another and I wish you the best of luck with whatever direction you decide to take it, Nin!