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xianc78

gamedev 

Ending and credits now have a background too. I was inspired by early fantasy RPGs like Final Fantasy 1-7 and the first two Ys games which featured a space background, despite none of those games (except FF4) taking place in space.

Space backgrounds are often associated with deep philosophical thought or the meaning of existence. Or maybe the protagonist is transferred to another world after starring into the mirror. I don't know. I just felt like the ending and credits screen needs a background too.

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xianc78

gamedev 

There is finally boss music. It was hard to find a good track because I don't want anything too epic as I might use that for a better game.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Title screen now has music.

Title music is "RPG Lost In Time" by Hitctrl. (Released under CC-BY 3.0)

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xianc78

gamedev 

Rewrote (or had AI rewrite) the ending text to better fit the situation and the background.

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xianc78

gamedev 

One of the bosses (the one that you are supposed to bomb) now has an original sprite. Previously, it was just a large version of the blue, darknut-like sprite which changed to yellow when bombed. Instead I made it a skeleton with armor and the armor disappears after being bombed, but reappears after being stabbed.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Replaced some of the copyrighted placeholder sound effects for items with stock sound effects. It's really hard to find any good ones, and these are the best I could find. The heart sound is a bubble sound effect because that's the closest thing I could find. The hearts in the Zelda games always made what sounds like bubbles or liquid, so I guess it fits.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Replaced the sprite for the teleporting wizard boss with a sprite of my own. Just one more to go!

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xianc78

gamedev 

Replaced the sprite of the bug boss with a sprite of my own. Now every boss is using original sprites.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Added a "death animation" for bosses (actually for all enemies but I don't think it works well with them when I tested it) instead of just a single frame. There is supposed to be an additional frame but it doesn't appear in game.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Decided to get rid of the penalty of taking half of your coins when you die. I realized that this game is brutally difficult and losing money on top of your equipment just seemed way too harsh, so I decided to just have it reset your equipment to level 1 and leave it at that.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Added red coins after realizing that a lot of the shop items are too expensive. They are worth 10 coins each. I hope it helps.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Finally found a "death whirl" sound effect for when the player gets killed. It took me forever to find one because I didn't know what it was called. Obviously it's not in sync because it's a stock sound effect that I just downloaded, but I plan to sync it in due time.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Tried to make the "death whirl" animation in sync with the sound effect. Now, I realized that I need two delays. One before the player starts spinning (just to allow the mind to process that they got hit) and one for after the player disappears.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Added a delay after the player sprite disappears and before the level restarts. I kind of cheated by just copying the same transparent frame like 6 times just to give the illusion that there is a delay between the death animation finishing and the level restart, but the animation is still going up until the restart of the level.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Trying to replace the BS Zelda male avatar sprite with something that I own (well a modified version of a public domain sprite).

I'm not a good pixel artist when it comes to humanoid characters. I tried to get help on OGA's forums, but activity is too low on that place and I don't know anywhere else that I can get help. This probably won't be the final sprite, but I'm running out of options, and I want to get this game done so I can move on.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Tried my best to add hair to the sprite. I still don't like it that much. I think I should redo the shield because is side walk-cycle has him swinging the shield but that's because the base sprite has both his arms swinging while walking.

And of course, I also have to reposition the sword during attacks. I might have to redo the sword sprite because it looks way to big for him.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Bosses now drop life capsules upon death (assuming your max HP isn't maxed out). During my test playthroughs, I noticed that I reach the end of the game with my max HP still in the single digits for whatever reason. I also want to make it possible to reach a max HP of 20.

1+
xianc78

gamedev 

Doors now have unique colors depending on the level.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

I've also re-positioned the sword to better fit the new sprite. It's still not perfect though and I plan to redo the walking animation, so that the character is holding the shield in place instead of swinging it.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Player no longer swings his shield while walking.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Fixed the animation with the red shield sprites too, but the attack animation still shows the green shield.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Red shield sprites now have proper attack frames.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Red shield sprites now have proper death animation.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Finally added a victory fanfare after completing a floor. I just used the fanfare I used in my previous games (which was a CC0, 8-bit fanfare from OpenGameArt), put it in NeuralNote and changed the instruments.

1+
xianc78

gamedev 

Certain items will now disappear if you don't collect them in time.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Added a fanfare for collecting the mirror. I also just realized that two of the bosses are broken and I need to investigate the problem.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Fixed the boss bug. Although I didn't record the bug, the bug was that some bosses would just hang upon death. Turns out they aren't calling the animation method.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Water tiles are now animated.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Did the same with the other tilesets. Though I don't think lava flows like water. Maybe I should have it bubble up instead.

1+
xianc78

gamedev 

Player can now pick up items with his sword.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Changed the lava tiles to make it look like it's bubbling, but it ended up looking weird. Judging from other games, lava tiles tend to have 4 frames of animation instead of three, but if I add an extra frame then I need to add an extra frame to the water tilesets.

1+
xianc78

gamedev 

Decided to change the death whirl sound effect to make it sound less 8-bit. I don't know how it turned out. Should I play with the instruments more? Is it fine just 8-bit? Or should I keep it like it is in this video?

1+
xianc78

gamedev 

I've bit crushed the death whirl sound effect, but I can't make it sound like an SNES sound effect. It honestly sounds more like the compressed voice sound effects you would hear in 80s arcade games.

1+
xianc78

gamedev 

I have the HUD display the current level like how it is displayed in Super Mario Bros as it does a better job explaining which environment you are in and how far are you from the next boss.

I've also decreased the intervals for when bombs explode. I did a full playthrough of the game and I realized that the later enemies that are only killed by bombs are extremely hard to kill due to the long interval, so I cut the interval by half.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Trying to replace the remaining copyrighted placeholder sound effects with stock ones, but I can't find any that sound right. In Zelda and Zelda-like games, enemies die with an explosion sound effect, but it's not quite and explosion. It sounds somewhat softer, but I can't find any free to use sound effect that matches that.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Tried to mimic the enemy kill sound effect with my voice with BitCrunch and reverb effects. It doesn't sound exactly what I wanted. It sounds more like a whip-crack sound effect more than anything.

1+
xianc78

gamedev 

Replaced the "key get" sound effect. Now, I think I have all placeholders removed.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Balancing the newly created/replaced sounds. They were too loud in the previous video, but now, I think they are too quiet.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Added a menu to the pause screen. Recently, I reconfigured my game to play in fullscreen so I need to accommodate the lack of an exit button.

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xianc78
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gamedev 

Improved the pause menu.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Added outlines to the pause menu text.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Player's HP restores to maximum HP in-between levels.

I'm trying my best to make this game at least beatable. I noticed that because of the random enemy drops and the random nature of the in-game shops, healing is heavily RNG dependent, and you can go multiple levels with very little chance to heal, so I feel like this was necessary.

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xianc78

gamedev 

I noticed now that I made the game too easy by having the player heal between levels. To somewhat compensate, I increase the prices of the white and blue swords. Maybe they should be even more expensive.

I also realized that while the bosses take a while with the wooden sword, they are easily cheesed with the blue sword so I think it should be pretty expensive.

Balancing difficulty is basically the only thing I have left to do. I could release this game unbalanced, but since permadeath is a key feature, I want to make it so that you can lose and probably will on your first playthrough, but not have it so that winning is impossible. Though there was a Japanese PC game known as Xanadu which was infamous for being popular, but having very few people actually beat it, so maybe I could do that.

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xianc78

gamedev 

The final boss now drops bombs. I felt like it was kind of necessary as the boss is piss easy if you have all your stats maxed. I also increased it's HP slightly.

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bajax

re: gamedev 

@xianc78 you should add a little monkey who cheers you on from the margins whenever you get an experience point
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xianc78

re: gamedev 

@bajax There are no experience points. It's more action-adventure than RPG.

0
LukeAlmighty 🇨🇿

gamedev 

@xianc78
I love seeing your progress. Keep on keeping on.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

@LukeAlmighty Thanks.

0
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