Title Screen... possibly a small excuse plot too?

[Lord Ruby]

I came up with a more pixelated custom font based on Segoe UI to replace the Gabriola font for the subtitle (tried to keep a bit of the playfulness/script-ness tho). Additionally, i puffed up the 2022 logo a bit to see how it would look, but i've kinda grown attached to the big bubbly letters for the main logo. If people like the 2022 one, i'll try incorporating the eye. I re-used the smear from concept 2 earlier for the "2022, 2023 talkhaus" text at the bottom, but then i tried just making it another lozenge and that's kinda cute too... Thoughts?
aat concept cust font.pngaat concept cust font and 2022 logo.pngaat concept cust font- lozenge.png

All of these look fantastic! I can't pick a favorite among them.

[Scarfley]

These logos are all very pretty! :D
Personally, I prefer not having both the subtitle and the "2022, 2023 talkhaus text" inside a lozenge and instead only one of them.

[Catabo]

I tried a few of 4season's fonts (thank u for going to font hell for me). One ended up being close enough to the 2022 concept that i mixed in a little of the flair on the letters from the latter.
Do we like the bubbly typeface or the modern one? Please ignore jaggies (they'll be smoothed out) and choose based on concept only.
1- bubbly

aat concept cust font.png (5.68 KiB) Viewed 1575 times

2- modern

concept 20230219 4seasonfont.png (5.99 KiB) Viewed 1575 times

3- there's a third one

concept 20230219 4season2.png (6.04 KiB) Viewed 1575 times

[camwoodstock]

I tried a few of 4season's fonts (thank u for going to font hell for me). One ended up being close enough to the 2022 concept that i mixed in a little of the flair on the letters from the latter.
Do we like the bubbly typeface or the modern one? Please ignore jaggies (they'll be smoothed out) and choose based on concept only.

we think the labels might be accidentally mismatched (bubbly is very sharp and thin, modern is very large and rounded edit: they were fixed in the time we actually wrote this reply)? so for the sake of clarity we will be using the filenames.

our main contention with cust font is honestly the shading. we might need to rethink how we add the "glossy" texture to the logo for all of these bc otherwise it just kinda looks weird? it's especially the fact that the glare is at the BOTTOM of the first "A" you see. if that was addressed it'd probably be the best one but otherwise we'd like to go with 4season font, because it definitely handles the glossy effect well with the current technique.

...and 4season2 is nice looking but is fairly bland/could use something else to it.

[Catabo]

we think the labels might be accidentally mismatched (bubbly is very sharp and thin, modern is very large and rounded edit: they were fixed in the time we actually wrote this reply)? so for the sake of clarity we will be using the filenames.

our main contention with cust font is honestly the shading. we might need to rethink how we add the "glossy" texture to the logo for all of these bc otherwise it just kinda looks weird? it's especially the fact that the glare is at the BOTTOM of the first "A" you see. if that was addressed it'd probably be the best one but otherwise we'd like to go with 4season font, because it definitely handles the glossy effect well with the current technique.

...and 4season2 is nice looking but is fairly bland/could use something else to it.

I've noticed the attachments system putting things out of order, too; it seems they go out of order when you browse the posts at the bottom of the "post a reply" page rather than in the thread proper.

I originally only did simple shading because i anticipated adding more later, but the funny thing is i'm actually going to have to simplify it more because i recently learned that "4 colours (incl background) per tile" is the limitation i have to work within. The white swash on all the logos was meant to invoke the stripe on Demo's dress; i'm going to try and make that work rather than worry about shading. Might reposition it a little so it's not filling the bottom of the first letter.

[Lord Ruby]

For the record, these are my favorites at this point:

1- bubbly
aat concept cust font.png

aat concept cust font and 2022 logo.png

...I realize this doesn't show the pictures, but at least talkhaus makes the file names highly visible.

[Daizo]

I think I like #3 the best, aka "there's a third one."

[PSI Ninja]

Are these title screen logos still being worked on? If not, then we should put them to a poll so that the people's choice can be inserted into the base ROM.

On a related note, does anyone feel really strongly about handling the actual title screen level (and movie)? I originally said that I wanted to make it, but I'd be willing to give up my claim to focus on my other AAT stuff.

[Catabo]

Are these title screen logos still being worked on? If not, then we should put them to a poll so that the people's choice can be inserted into the base ROM.

I remember we had enough of a consensus on the first one in my last post. I had been working on converting it to four-colours-per-tile, then stopped to work on some other stuff. Here it is in its current state (only tile alignment has been done, not colour reduction):

aat bubbly concept- tiles 163b.png (3.2 KiB) Viewed 1398 times

This is still absolutely open to anyone who wants to try their own take on it.

[SAJewers]

Wanted to do some work on this, and have no idea what the status on anything else is, so I thought I'd look at Nao's latest proposed World order and try to come up with some potential plot threads.

World 1: Demo wakes up on the shore of an unkown island, meets Rachel, who agrees to help her get home if she helps deal with what's going in, starting with the TBD boss of Castle Wolfenstein.

The Fishmarket: Demo hitches a a ride on a cruise boat, which sinks Titanic style. All the icebergs were caused by Cirno, who is working for the TBD boss of Spikes do Hurt. Potential side story with the Boss Bass Family.

Forest World: Demo must help Emerald Winston III, who is in a fight with his bitter Rival Everything D. Swan, Swan has animated all the Liquor Bottles in Winston's distillery, and is working to deforest the area to his gain.

Sky World: Demo takes to the skies to deal with the Ghost in Snake Block Fortress. Demo then has to go to Space to deal with the TBD boss.

Banff, Alberta: In the Mountain path, Demo scales a Mountain in order to shut down the Tap Tap Factory. the Urban path, Demo runs through the City, scales the Thwompire State Building, and takes down the government.

Final Abstract World: Demo enters a Rift and finds out who the Antagonist is, who she then defeats.

Postgame: Turns out someone crossed the streams, causing the incident on the archipelago/island, and is what lead to all references to past Demo games, like Parrot Boom-Boom, Idiom Factory II, , WtH enemies, etc

[PSI Ninja]

World 1: Demo wakes up on the shore of an unkown island, meets Rachel, who agrees to help her get home if she helps deal with what's going in, starting with the TBD boss of Castle Wolfenstein.

I always wanted to know, but is Rachel a reference to something, or is she an OC?

I'll get back to working on the Sky World boss some time later this month. I haven't thought about the collab in a while because I've been dealing with some real life crap lately, and I've been distracted too much by playing other games. They need to stop releasing too many video games too quickly so that I can focus on AAT again. It's like there are two orders of magnitude more games being released nowadays compared to 2003.

[SAJewers]

World 1: Demo wakes up on the shore of an unkown island, meets Rachel, who agrees to help her get home if she helps deal with what's going in, starting with the TBD boss of Castle Wolfenstein.

I always wanted to know, but is Rachel a reference to something, or is she an OC?

An OC. I had Dave's Spokesman on my mind when working on the Quick Warp, and thought I'd try making a name up for a character rather than re-use a sibling or something. "Discount Dan" was too obvious, and I ended up with "Rachel's Rebate Rotocraft".

Sprite is edited from this old A2MT sheet, as I'm not much of an artist

[Catabo]

I'd like to drop this quote from cow in the main AAT thread because he's got a point:

anyways, ah
are cutscenes actually needed ?

I thought this was a paired down hack.

This is why i think "Demo's oblivious to the story, but you get cryptic hints along the way" is ideal. The game already has the infrastructure for NPCs you can press up on and get the SMW text box (a level uses it); those combined with the beginning-of-game text box and end-of-castle text should be enough. Perhaps putting rest areas generally at the beginning of worlds with an NPC that explains the scenario for why Demo's here would be enough to have a mini-story for each world so they can still be played in any order and still make sense (NPC: "Oh no! Swan's taken over the forest!" castle text: "Swan has been taken down.").

I don't actually know if anyone has planned cutscenes yet, but if the game's going to have one it should be a post-final-level scene or something that the game can still go without if no one gets around to making it. I'm not gonna go back and re-read the thread right now, so my oopsy if cutscenes were already generally decided against.

[camwoodstock]

I'd like to drop this quote from cow in the main AAT thread because he's got a point:

anyways, ah
are cutscenes actually needed ?

I thought this was a paired down hack.

This is why i think "Demo's oblivious to the story, but you get cryptic hints along the way" is ideal. The game already has the infrastructure for NPCs you can press up on and get the SMW text box (a level uses it); those combined with the beginning-of-game text box and end-of-castle text should be enough. Perhaps putting rest areas generally at the beginning of worlds with an NPC that explains the scenario for why Demo's here would be enough to have a mini-story for each world so they can still be played in any order and still make sense (NPC: "Oh no! Swan's taken over the forest!" castle text: "Swan has been taken down.").

I don't actually know if anyone has planned cutscenes yet, but if the game's going to have one it should be a post-final-level scene or something that the game can still go without if no one gets around to making it. I'm not gonna go back and re-read the thread right now, so my oopsy if cutscenes were already generally decided against.

to quoth ourselves from main thread: we were under the assumption that, if we are to have cutscenes, they'd be. fairly barren in placement. there'd be 3 (maybe 4 or 5?) places for them, as follows (in spoiler bc this is repeated info to an extent):

• the very intro, which is mostly an excuse plot of course
• (OPTIONALLY) before bowz castle, which has a little bit of a goofy reason for why demo somehow decided to go there
• after bowz castle, which definitely remarks that something is. Up. with the story. maybe this'd be the reveal of the true big bad/the final boss if we don't go for the second optional cutscene?
• (OPTIONALLY) before the battle with the final boss, if we don't decide to reveal them and their motive after bowz castle. though we'd be fine to reveal their motives here if we decide to hold back there for whatever reason?
• the ending & credits after beating the final boss!

we do definitely think "demo literally is oblivious to the story, and her own motives are so far removed from everything that it catches her off-guard when everyone else seems to assume otherwise" is a very funny plot to go with. we forget just who mentioned it, but the idea pitched for the "watchmaker" final boss that he was behind the game's plot like a dungeon master, and he came up with all these clever bits and worldbuilding that demo just steamrolled without even realizing they were there, nor realizing that he was trying to string her along, has stuck dearly with us ever since it was mentioned. it's such a goofy bit, but it's so good. we defs want to go with that for a big bad reveal/possibly pre-final boss motive rant, while poor demo is just. blatantly self-admittedly uncertain of What the Hell™ they're talking about.

as for an excuse plot, we think it'd be very funny if it's like. demo is doing either errands or even Less than that, somehow. and we have 2 distinct ideas for that one:

1. demo is running errands, and is just trying to find directions to some place. maybe the idea is she's trying to find the asmt title screen supermarket, but they moved buildings in the decade+ time since asmt1, and she's trying to find where it went to? and it just so happens that the bowz castle is framed as "the original address for the supermarket" by the story, regardless of if that makes ANY sense in terms of the stage, because it's part of the big narrative by the watchmaker she is Not paying any attention to. we think this one's pretty fun as it's a bit of a callback to the leadin to asmt1 (demo trying to go to a supermarket to get groceries) but it takes it in a completely different direction on some fundamental level (this is ALL willing on demo's part, she's just trying to find and really bad at locating this supermarket).
2. demo is is trying to go on a walk with someone, and they just. run off. (maybe pal, since he IS a dog, though we do wonder if having this so soon after The Whole Game Is Postgame also involving pal in an excuse plot is a bit much. but also we don't know any characters who'd simply bolt off like that.) so demo goes running after them (and the idea is that demo is always just Ever So Slightly Behind Them At All Times, for some reason), until the both of them literally stumble their way into the bad guy, who is very annoyed that demo and this individual literally just made a whole mess of his big cool narrative and didn't even bother caring (because, y'know, demo was sidetracked by trying to get back to their friend!). in this case, maybe the bad guy could also take the other individual captive at bowz castle, giving an actual "motive" of sorts to do the postgame.

[KobaBeach]

i honestly just think plot should be a joke i've just been incredibly hands off off most of this because i feel like i can't really help people that much outside of programming and inserting shit but i also don't want to stifle creativity if that makes sense?

[camwoodstock]

i honestly just think plot should be a joke i've just been incredibly hands off off most of this because i feel like i can't really help people that much outside of programming and inserting shit but i also don't want to stifle creativity if that makes sense?

oh 100%, this is not going to be a serious plot whatsoever! we directly intend for this to literally have the minimum context for why demo is going through levels/minimum context for why there's a final boss/roll credits, with MAYBE things before those last 2 for additional humor. we're just wondering what brand of joke would be funnier with everyone is all, since as mentioned, we're not sure if it'd be more fun to go with a sort of "asmt1, but in a different direction" joke plot or an "(almost) wholly original joke plot" joke plot. we're personally leaning on the former, but y'know, if people Vehemently Object to that for one reason or the other, we'd like to know.

also, we'd like to know if we're going ahead with the watchmaker as the true final boss sooner rather than later, if for no other reason than we want to ENSURE the joke of "he tried so hard to have this big sprawling story and demo has unwittingly trounced it without being aware it was there in the first place" gets into the story we go with if he's involved.

[Catabo]

aat title graphics only png.png (2.93 KiB) Viewed 1049 times

aat title wip 202307 tiles and palettes used.png (3.11 KiB) Viewed 1049 times

This took way longer than it should have thanks to procrastination! I ended up simplifying it a lot (pour one out for the shine on the eye) in the interest of getting it done, but the good news is it will be very easy to shrink it down if it blocks too much of the title screen. The different background colours on the "titles used" image correspond to palette (palette 0 is both subtitles, palette 1 is the AND ANOTHER THING text, and palette 2 is the 16×16 in the top-right corner of the "R").

[PSI Ninja]

I'll just leave this here:

I'll fix the door palette later. If anyone has other feedback on the title screen level, please let me know.

[SAJewers]

Should add someone to sit with Pily, but otherwise

[camwoodstock]

Should add someone to sit with Pily, but otherwise

well that'd have to be Kood, right?

[PSI Ninja]

Should add someone to sit with Pily, but otherwise

well that'd have to be Kood, right?

I Kood give it a try, because Pily doesn't deserve to sit by herself. I would love to add more NPCs, but the main issue is palette limitations. The level makes use of almost all of the palette rows, and I only have the back half of a few of the sprite palettes left to work with. Since the A2XT2 graphics have a fair amount of color depth, I would probably have to do some color reduction.

There's also the perspective issue that Money pointed out on Discord. I'll see if I can extend the floor tiles upwards by one 8x8 tile this weekend, so that objects on the ground don't look so flat against the wall.

[SAJewers]

We don't have Garish or Science anywhere in the hack; could always put them there instead of Kood

[KobaBeach]

We don't have Garish or Science anywhere in the hack; could always put them there instead of Kood

you could put Garish checking out the donuts and have Science just floating about checking something out (the potted plant?)

they don't have to be next to Pily

[PSI Ninja]

Title screen update. I extended the floor tiles upwards a bit to fix some of the aforementioned perspective issues. It looks 1000% better and makes the interior look bigger, but now the objects seem to be a bit too far away from the wall. Maybe I could extend the floor tiles by four pixels instead of eight, but I wanted to get some opinions first.

aat_title02.gif (7.82 MiB) Viewed 856 times

Oh, and don't mind the missing tiles in the first screen. That's still a work in progress.

[KobaBeach]

I think it looks fine tbh