Mark of the Beast

red moon

Member
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1QyinxtB7OIFjGqmU_-scnfQzmGDVZYo1

UPDATE: THE MARK OF THE BEAST DEMO 1.0 VERSION IS HERE!
(I WILL UPDATE THE LINKED FILE AS CHANGES/IMPROVEMENTS ARE MADE)


Hello everyone,
for my 2nd game demo, I'll be using the side scroller module with scrolling turned off to move screen by screen. I've taken about two weeks at this point to build all the art in advance and test the tile sets in the comps you see below. The final look will be slightly different once I setup all sprites and palettes in the editor and I'm bound to lose a bit of color variation here and there.

Palettes -player/enemy1/enemy2/damage/
the damage palette will be used for fire, as well as blood effects and blood orb pickup
Env Palette -background/play surface/pickups/hud
the hud will always contain black, red, white and whatever color I set for lifemeter
pickups should always contain brown, yellow, green and white with the green color slot changing screen by screen to account for unique treasure pickups (emerald, purple crystal, red ruby...etc.

The player will move, jump and climb to travel.
The player will have a standing attack, crouching attack and jumping attack.
Enemies will perish after 1 or more hits.

There are 3 sub-bosses with each gifting the player an ability. The 1st allows the player to throw a knife projectile. The 2nd allows the player to change into a more aggressive state with increased health and damage output. Defeating the 3rd and final sub-boss will end the demo.

Each of the abilities will use the blood meter which is refilled by picking up blood orbs after enemies are defeated. Throwing a blood shard consumes 1 slot of the blood meter, while the armored blood form consumes 1 slot every 2-3 seconds the ability is active. I'm going to lean on the press up on the d-pad and attack button for the thrown projectile, while the armored form is triggered with the select button.

My current phase is full layout and final palettes with game object setup, enemy placement and temp sounds and music. The following step will be setting up enemy behaviors and getting the player to attack. After that, I'll do another pass on the sound/music and begin working on the special ability aspect. I'll do the boss animation, design and setup last.

I will be updating this post with short videos as I move forward and make progress. I want to do a larger adventurer game but thought it best to do another short demo to learn more before going all out on a large design.

If anyone out there wants help with pixel art, animation or level layout design I am happy to help out, I am still learning the coding aspects but I hope to be more of a help with that aspect in the future!
 

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Mugi

Member
these look really beautiful, but your mockups use way too many colors to work, many of the sprites have 4 colors + transparency in them.
rememeber that transparent is a color too, so it's 3 colors that show up.
 

red moon

Member
thanks Mugi and indeed they do, especially the first three area that make up the cemetery, forest and villager, i had planned to use dark blue instead of black for my transparency for the entire game so the rocks, trees and standing structures used that instead of black for the shadow color. i didn’t like how it limited the enemy sprites so i pulled back from that on later environment sprites. even the torched will lose the orange and yellow and will end up yellow and white or red and white because of the 12 unique colors per screen palette. ill do what i can to retain, but i will a few unique lose colors for sure.
thanks for the feedback, if you notice anything else problematic please let me know!
 

Dirk

Member
I really like, no, love your mock-ups, your level map and how you have laid out your plans for the enemies, palettes and game mechanics. It's really inspiring and I'll have to update my design document :)
I'm looking forward to your upcoming updates :)
 

dale_coop

Moderator
Staff member
o_O this looks fantastic. Beautiful graphics! Congrats!
Can't wait to see the first videos and of course demo ;) I loved so much LOST SOULS!
If you have questions, issues, don't hesitate to ask.
 

red moon

Member
Thank you both, I really appreciate it. The mockups are really helpful for visual problem solving and enabled me to take some notes after each stage/level to know how best to adjust the existing sprites once I started putting them into the engine. I decided on a rough map so I could limit my intentions at first, and look at the number of screens per tile set. At this point, the woods is going to used at highest frequency and allows me to blend from one zone to the next. I will be altering the leaf color on the palette end of things, so each wooded area feels a bit different and I’ll do something similar with the cave\cavern stages as well.

I’ll be back for lots of questions for sure, especially for the ai behavior stuff. Thanks again for the support !
 

red moon

Member
I've begun working on the title screen and created a couple variants.
At this point I've placed the 3rd one in place while I work on the bulk of the level construction but will return to replace this with the first or second version. All feature elements of minor animation and I may build them all to see what looks best.
The top one with the characters will take the most time for sure!
I'm in the process of adding some grey or brown around the white letters to soften them a bit and adding the dark red around the top edge to soften that as well. I'll be sure to post that once I have completed that aspect.
 

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red moon

Member
I'm leaning towards the 2nd one...I'm curious to see what you all think...
 

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Dirk

Member
Looks gor(e)geous and very atmospheric!

I love the title screen where the guy changes to his monster form, looks just lovely.
On the other hand the version with the silhouette of the village with dead trees looks also great and isn't as much "on the nose" like the first draft. It's subtler and personally I like it when horror is conveyed in a more indirect way (like in most Lovecraft stories). I'm imagining it with dreadful music and maybe some glowing eyes that can only be seen for a short time.

Regarding the two comparison pics I like the red one more, although I love purple, but in this case the red version invokes more fear or dread for me. A palette swap from purple to red could look cool ^^ I don't know how to do it though.
 

red moon

Member
Thank you Dirk, I appreciate it.

I like the subtlety of the silhouette version myself and like you said, with some eerie music it could be far more mysterious in that regard. I wanted it to feel a bit like a Hammer film... I grew up watching those as a kid and loved the imagery and fonts they used. I'll come back and revisit the title once I get some levels in and functioning for sure.
 

Woogz

Member
Title Screen looks great red moon :) Mockups look great as well. I like your art style a lot :) Can't wait to see some in game screenshots.
 

red moon

Member
Thanks Woogz! I do appreciate and I will have new thing up every couple of days I hope!
That's until I get stuck on something, which will come up!
 

red moon

Member
Thanks Dale!
I started in editor layout for the first few levels and realized I didn’t have any traps so i did some art for thorns, roots, fire, spikes and such. My first pass didn’t title that well left to right so I altered all the angled sprites to be more vertical. You can see the difference below. I also reworked the pointing robed specter enemy to be more dynamic. It’s likely that i’ll rework some of these guys as I move forward.

The stone object shown will be spawn point marker for respawn after player death.
 

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Mugi

Member
i hate to be a spoilsport but many of these are still using 4 colors + transparency, so they're a no-no for nes.
 

red moon

Member
Thanks Dale and Mugi they are all 3 color...I build them all in dark grey/light grey/white then add black (transparency) before I color them. So they follow the 3 color + black/transparency rule.
 

Mugi

Member
red moon said:
Thanks Dale and Mugi they are all 3 color...I build them all in dark grey/light grey/white then add black (transparency) before I color them. So they follow the 3 color + black/transparency rule.

the blue wraith has 8 unique colors in it on the above picture, and once you remove the dublicates, you will still end up with 5 including the background color.
here's a visual demonstration.

aaasfd.png

no matter how i juggle it i cant make it work as 4 colors without losing fidelity. you use 3 disticnct shades of blue on the inner parts of the wraith, a black outline, and then the outer area (transparency)


closest i got would be like this, which looks okay.
aadasf.png

but as you see on the one where i made transparent color pink, there will be issues seeing through the sprite on those areas.
 
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