Crystalshire:Developer's Edition-For Dummies

[Rob Janes]

Thanks for your kind words all.  We're still plugging away at this slowly but surely, it's been slow the past few days, life has had a lot of things that needed doing.

I'm still working on my own tilesets.  I'm not pixel artist by any stretch, but this is my tiles so far, heavily inspired by Hanzo's work, used as references.

I create the basis of my sprites in simple MS Paint.  For the trees for example, I start with a base set of leaves, maybe 5-6 leaves and I keep pasting transparent layers of leaves ontop of each other in MS Paint.  Once I have the tree top and trunk done with some basic shading in paint. I use Paint.NET and start giving it a rounded shade.


[Murdoc]

The road should have darker outlines where it meets the grass to create depth, as though the grass was creating shadow.

[Rob Janes]

Development plugs away on graphics today, hopefully Schnurman is hard at work on sprites ;)

I added a little piece to the code to give the head a 'bobbing' motion when walking, just to make it feel more unique.


[Mr.LLoyd]

the tall grass looks tiled you need to fix that the rock path looks very squer and the rocks on the path look flat the lamps are the only object on the tall grass that doesn't have grass on the bottom.The trees,rocks, fence and bushes look very sexy.

[Bonk]

You really need path-grass transitions and better looking grass-short grass ones. They need to have grass sticking out in blades and shapes.

[schnurman]

Stop pillow shading bro, it makes it look plastic.

Sincerly,
Schnurman

Ps. Got new graphics for you a, skeleton monster, wolf, R.I.P chicken. Also I made pants for you and I noticed an error in the shirt so I am currently fixing that. Though I am starting to make armor. Pm me diffrent types of materal it should be made with (wood, steal, ect.).

Pss. I need the game engine to actually work and see what the sprites look in an outcome!

[Rob Janes]

The 'Pillow' shading works for this style of game. ;)

'Pillow' shading isn't an immediate 'no-no' like people think it is.  It has to be done correctly and across the board to have a seemless look and feel.  It can actually look quite appealing when used in appropriate style games and context.

Fire me the graphics when you get a chance, I haven't had a chance to actually update the game on the live server in a long time, too busy getting a stable build with enough content.

[schnurman]

@Rob:

> The 'Pillow' shading works for this style of game. ;)
>
> 'Pillow' shading isn't an immediate 'no-no' like people think it is.  It has to be done correctly and across the board to have a seemless look and feel.  It can actually look quite appealing when used in appropriate style games and context.
>
> Fire me the graphics when you get a chance, I haven't had a chance to actually update the game on the live server in a long time, too busy getting a stable build with enough content.

Alright I will but I can't at the momment at school, if you notice I send more stuff in at the end of the week. I am use to it with my old jobs. Also well your wood looks very plastic I will show you an example of finer wood when I am home with this sprite style also. Though your pretty good from just a starter in graphics!

[Rob Janes]

Sounds good, get in touch with me when you can send them next batch of sprites off.  Thanks by the way, It takes me long to do tiles but I think they're coming along nicely, it's matching what I see in my head for the vision of the game, which is the main thing.

I really need to bring on another 'spriter' though, for the amount of content to make a game, it'll be hard with just you on sprites and me on tiles and programming.

Anyone who can do sprites like we have so far, should get in touch with me if they want to help out (The game will have 'microtransactions' for virtual currency and item shops,  I can offer up to 10% gross profits should you tackle enough sprites).

[Kinjiru]

Rob have you already fixed some of the problems with CS:DE? Not all the systems work properly.

[Rob Janes]

Everything in this game is working as intended at this point.

[Whackeddie99]

THATS HOT!

[Rob Janes]

I changed some of the code for rendering today, just some minor things.  I've made it render the players Head and Hair seperately of the DrawPlayer sub, fixing some edge issues with overlapping.  I've also added 2 new Mask (Mask3/Mask4) and 2 new Fringe (Fringe3/Fringe4) Layers.

[aiden500]

Are the tilesets included in the source?

[Bonk]

@aiden500:

> Are the tilesets included in the source?

I think they already said no. Besides, you should make your own for your project instead. Most projects that use unoriginal tilesets aren't worth playing. Try your own angle on graphics (:

[aiden500]

ok I was just asking anyway  :P

[Jeff]

Tiles are mostly alright but a few things bother me.  First, it looks like everything is pillowshaded, especially the fence posts.  Light doesn't go parallel to the ground, they would at least be shaded upward, but I recommend you choose a lightsource that is to the left or right of the objects as well as above.  Second, almost all of the tiles have some grid problem.  Tall grass is the most visible because of the clear vertical lines.  The cobblestone tiles all have a slight error in the bottom right corner of them, it seems a pixel or two are missing. The short grass also has a slight tiling error, the middle is lighter than the rest of the tile.

[Irhymer]

Hey Rob, I had a few questions.  :cheesy:

-How do you plan on handling the additional player frames? Will there be a set number of frames for the attack animations/sitting/waving? Or would there be an option to set the frames?

-Will attack/sit/wave be the only animations added? And will adding or removing frames be instructed?

(That's all I could think of at the moment)

Thanks,  ;)
-Jake

[Rob Janes]

Right now it's a set number of frames for attacking and a single frame for sitting.  I never thought about givin players ability to add their own.  Would be hard todo, right now I simply have a AttackRectX and Y that tells it where to get the frame in draw player , I could make it dynamic to load additional frames from a config file.

[Dash]

This is Zelda/Graal inspired right? so please tell me you have that free moving feel of those games, you know like this:

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/124scratch/1889898

[Rithy58]

@Dash:

> This is Zelda/Graal inspired right? so please tell me you have that free moving feel of those games, you know like this:
>
> http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/124scratch/1889898

Free Moving feel of those game? Do you mean like Pixel-Based Movement?
As of right now, I don't think he had change the movement so it's still Tile-Based movement which is what I prefer and how the engine was set up to be. PvP is much more fun and practical with the Tile-Based Movement. Imagine shooting someone with an arrow and you missed by one pixel.

Sincerely,
Rithy

[Irhymer]

@Rob:

> Right now it's a set number of frames for attacking and a single frame for sitting.  I never thought about givin players ability to add their own.  Would be hard todo, right now I simply have a AttackRectX and Y that tells it where to get the frame in draw player , I could make it dynamic to load additional frames from a config file.

Thanks, sounds good! (as for additional I was thinking of a running/dashing animation, 1 or 2 frames) The config file would work nicely in place of a dynamic sprite sheet though.

@Rithy58:

> Free Moving feel of those game? Do you mean like Pixel-Based Movement?
> As of right now, I don't think he had change the movement so it's still Tile-Based movement which is what I prefer and how the engine was set up to be. PvP is much more fun and practical with the Tile-Based Movement. Imagine shooting someone with an arrow and you missed by one pixel.
>
> Sincerely,
> Rithy

Honestly pixel based is more realistic. Its a pain watching enemies walk like robots square by square. I feel like the arrow problem can be fixed with a hit range setting or something like that.

[Mr.LLoyd]

When i open the server with vb6 and try to run it it says i need to check the server.log for more details i did and there it said: Line 27: Cannot load control Socket; license not found.

Edit: nvm the problem is fixed now.

[Dash]

@Rithy58:

> Free Moving feel of those game? Do you mean like Pixel-Based Movement?
> As of right now, I don't think he had change the movement so it's still Tile-Based movement which is what I prefer and how the engine was set up to be. PvP is much more fun and practical with the Tile-Based Movement. Imagine shooting someone with an arrow and you missed by one pixel.
>
> Sincerely,
> Rithy

He isn't making a rogue game, the tile moving system is very played out and only works for like I said…rogue based games. Rob is customizing the engine so it is how he wants to set it up not how it's suppose to be. You prefer what you want I just hope Rob sees that a Zelda like game with tile moving system would feel dull and robotic like Jake said.

[Rob Janes]

The movement system hasn't changed yet, but it wouldn't be hard to changed, the moving is rather easy to change, the combat would be a bit trickier.  I am not sure I want to change it honestly, it's inspired by Zelda and Graal but not meant to be a clone, pixel based movement would be nice but it also mans data needs to be transferred more frequently, and the less packets handled the smoother it will run.