Movement, Jumping, Swimming, Flying...
over 6 years ago – Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 04:54:58 PM

Today, we want to wrap up the info panel basic stats, so we're covering Movement, Jumping, Swimming, Flying, Levitating and Critical Hits (so, a lot of stuff!).

Since we have maps with full elevation, we had to make sure there were interesting complexities to moving around the map!

Let's start with things relating to moving around the map:

Movement: This is the maximum amount of tiles you can move during your turn. Every tile counts as one, regardless of its height or type. When you select Move in battle, all valid destinations within range will glow blue, so it's easy to see what's possible. A higher movement value will have you move far on the map, which will allow you to get in the best position possible for whatever actions you envision.

Jumping: This is the maximum height you can jump up or down when moving to an adjacent tile. You can see the height of any tile by moving the cursor over it. A higher jumping value will allow you to scale tall walls and cliffs (up or down), which will result in getting to a surprisingly advantageous position more easily.

Another thing of note is that you can jump over simple obstacles if their height is lower than where you're standing. The destination must also be at the same height as your starting point. This allows you to jump over small holes, water surfaces, etc.

This brings us to the more advanced movement types.

First, Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark has water areas. Some units can swim and some units can't. This will be denoted by the swimming icon on their information panel. Generally speaking, units that can wear very heavy armor and units without athletic capabilities (ie. most casters) cannot swim, while most other units can swim.

Swimming: If a unit can swim, they can wade through water at no movement penalty and even take actions while submerged, although they will deal less damage and receive more damage when taking actions underwater. If a unit can't swim and is forced into the water by one of the "displacement abilities", they will... drown. Drowning is bad >.<

Levitating: When a unit is levitating, they will simply walk over water, lava and poison surfaces with no problem. They will also ignore traps that might be on the ground. They must still worry about obstacles and jump height issues though. (The levitating animation for sprites isn't done yet).

Flying: Flying units ignore all obstacles and heights. They can go directly to any tile that is valid and within their movement range. They must still be able to swim to land in water and if they land on a trap, it will trigger, but otherwise they ignore most things. There's 3 forms of 'flying units' in the game: flying, burrowing and teleporting. They are functionally the same, but have a different animation when moving to represent their style.

Finally, this brings us to the critical chance percentage icon, which isn't related to movement. Every character has a basic chance of scoring a critical hit with basic attacks (abilities cannot crit, unless you have a special passive ability that enables it). The critical chance can be improved with abilities, gear and class selection. When scoring a critical hit, the unit will deal 50% bonus damage and potentially get other special bonuses.

Another exciting Kickstarter!

We'd like to invite everyone to check out Selling Sunlight, an intriguing narrative-focused RPG where you play the role of a merchant whose face has been stolen by the Sun. Needless to say, getting it back is promising to be quite the adventure!

The game features gorgeous hand-drawn environments (Hey! We like those too!):

Their campaign has been doing great and they are nearly funded! You can help them out with the final push HERE! :)

Items & Crafting. Many Announcements!
over 6 years ago – Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 12:30:19 PM

Things are going smoothly and we just passed 40% funded. Again, a big thanks to everyone for the incredible support!

Items

We'd like to highlight our Items system in this update. While designing Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, one thing that we noticed early on is how inconsistent of an experience most players get from consumable items. Many players just ignore them, as they are often non-renewable resources, or some abuse them when they only cost a bit of money to purchase. The bottom line is: consumable items are often balanced weirdly and offer a very varying experience for most players.

These are the steps we took to fix the issue:

• Every character has access to items: you don't need to rely on your class or sub-class to be able to use them (so you're not 'wasting' an ability to be able to use items).
• Every item has a different potency and a different amount of uses per battle, which is usually fairly low.
• You start every encounter with a full stack of all items you possess, without having to manage or purchase anything.
• Their usage is shared across your entire team (so, if you stat with 3 potions and a character uses one, you'll have 2 left for the entire team to use).

The result is that you should feel free to use Items in combat whenever you feel the need, since they are essentially "free". At the same time, you have a very limited amount of them per encounter, so you can't abuse them either.

Our crafting system allows you to improve your items, carry more of them in combat and discover new items, so there is growth and progression in that area as well.

Crafting

Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark has a fairly simple crafting system that uses components you find during your travels to craft new things. The components can be obtained in numerous ways, such as vanquishing enemies, winning encounters or through thievery and poaching, to name but a few methods. The interface lets you select from a list of things you can craft and the recipes unlock as you find the components they require.

The crafting process allows you to mix some of those components to improve your items, gain access to new items, craft some accessories and special equipment as well as craft special Class Badges. Class Badges are consumables that unlock a secret class for characters. Some Badges have no restrictions, and some are restricted to male or female characters or even to non-story characters exclusively.

Announcements

First, we've hit 4 Social Goals! Thanks everyone for helping out spreading the good word! To express our gratitude, we'll be adding "Expressions for Dialogue Portraits", which will make the dialogues and characters that much more memorable. We're getting our portrait artist started on the task and we'll have a first portrait to show in an upcoming update.

The next Social Goal is a new accessory to visually customize your characters with! Let's unlock that one too! :)

We recently set up our Discord server for Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark. The Beta-Backer section of the Discord server will unlock after the campaign is over and we're done creating all the accounts, but there's also a public section where the fans can gather and chat about the game (or any other topic really). Our goal is to form a great and friendly community, so feel free to drop on there and check it out right HERE!

We also set up our Thunderclap announcing the last 48 hours of the campaign! For anyone unfamiliar with Thunderclap, it's a way to help us out on Social Media by donating some of your Social Reach and it's completely free! You can help us on our campaign right HERE. Thanks!

Projects to check out

We'd like to invite everyone to give a look at another amazing looking RPG, Dark Devotion. A roguelike action RPG, featuring awesome pixel art, which is already 85% funded with 8 days to go. It's looking very promising!

You can check out their great project right HERE.

Map creation process, new idle animation & Social Goal reached!
over 6 years ago – Mon, Oct 09, 2017 at 07:17:46 PM

We're just on the cusp of 45% funded! Thanks a lot for the continued support everyone, we really appreciate it!

Now, to start Monday on the right foot, we have something a little different: our hand-drawn map creation process detailed!

Map Creation

First, the base layout is drawn on paper. This is mainly a functional rendition of the map, showing terrain heights, obstacles, etc.

Next, the map is hand-drawn on paper from the basic layout and then scanned to be edited with an imaging software (our artist likes Photoshop).

Next, our artist colors the map and adds the finishing touches. This is the final asset file that is created for the given map.

Finally, props (rocks, stalactites, stalagmites, little bats, etc) are added on top of the final map when the map gets loaded in game. Also, a collision map (which is created from the original map, but saved apart) is also applied by the game engine to create the layout/elevation of the map.

This is a quick screenshot of the home-made editor we use to create the map topology.

New Idle Animation

We've gotten a lot of fan feedback asking for a custom idle animation, rather than the current "walking in place" idle animation style we've been using. Our goal is to provide an option for the player to be able to choose between the retro "walking in place" animation or the new custom ones.

We'll have a basic idle animation ready before the end of the Kickstarter (the real work will be applying it to all our different outfits and customizable visuals, which will be several thousands of new frames to draw), so we can showcase what things would look like for our 2nd Stretch Goal. But for now, we're looking for feedback on the basic stance that will get animated.

If you have an imgur account, we'd love it if you could cast your vote for the best stance (1, 2 or 3) on our Imgur post to keep things grouped (and please upvote us while you're there!), but if not, feel free to cast your vote in the comments right here :)

Imgur post: https://imgur.com/gallery/d2UyM

New Social Goal reached!

We just reached another social goal, unlocking a new reward: a new accessory for you to customize the visuals of your characters with. We'll provide various sketches for the accessory at the end of the campaign and let the community vote on which one they want us to create.

A shout-out to another great Kickstarter

Today we're showcasing something a little different: a strategy tabletop board game. Tsukuyumi - Full Moon Down is a beautiful looking board game without any elements of luck or chance, that focuses on specific strategic skills and promises to be a blast for its 3-6 players.

Check it out right HERE!

Unit Stats & Maps Sneak Peek!
over 6 years ago – Sun, Oct 08, 2017 at 10:40:24 AM

We're now past 35% funded and the campaign is moving along smoothly. Thanks everyone! :)

We're also at 3 Social Goals, 1 short of unlocking our first Social reward: facial expressions for dialogue portraits! Almost there! :)

Unit Stats

In Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, every unit has basic stats that represent their potency with specific offensive and defensive abilities.

The first basic stats are a characters HP and MP values:

• HP: Hit Points represent a character's remaining health in combat. Once that value reaches 0, the character falls in combat and incurs an injury. Healing abilities can be used to restore HP as long as the character still has 1 or more HP. There are also revival spells to bring a fallen unit back to combat.
• MP: Mana Points are a bank of points that are expended in combat to use various abilities. Many strong abilities require MP to be used, but not all of them do. A unit starts combat with 0 MP and will gain 10 MP every turn they get. Abilities and equipment can increase this, to allow you to access stronger abilities earlier in combat.

When looking at a character's information panel, there are 6 values that stand out. They are the sum of a character's natural score for that value, added with their gear and any bonus from abilities:

• ATK: The character's physical power. This influences regular attacks (including ranged attacks of all kinds) and most physical skills.
• MND: The character's magical power. This influences most spells with a magnitude, including offensive and healing spells.
• DEF: The character's physical resistance. The higher this is, the more damage is negated when being the target of any physical offensive action.
• RES: The character's magical resistance. The higher this is, the more damage is negated when being the target of any magical offensive action.
• SPD: Speed influences how fast a character gets their turn in combat and has a much more limited range of values than other stats (otherwise characters could be comparatively way too fast/slow and it would irrevocably break the balance of the game).
• EVA: Evasion is your chance of evading an offensive action taken against you. Generally speaking, most basic abilities have a 99% success rate and your evasion brings that value down. Evasion is mostly influenced by equipment, abilities and your base class and will not "grow" as you level up.

Every character will increase all their stats (except EVA) by some amount upon gaining a level. The amount of stats they obtain is primarily dependent on the class they are using when they gain that level.

For example, a Wizard is going to be getting a lot of MND, but not that much ATK upon leveling. Burly fighters will end up naturally with more ATK than MND, while hybrid classes will get a more balanced progression.

There's a lot of other values on a character's information panel and we'll be covering those in a future update! :)

Maps Sneak Peek

We've been asked to show off some of the maps we have ready for the game, so here's a few of them!

Another great Kickstarter project

We'd like to bring to your attention Kharon's Crypt, a non-linear dungeon crawler based on possessing enemies. It has a distinct old-school Zelda vibe and a free demo!

Check out their campaign page HERE.

Designing a new Story Character, from Concept to final Sprite.
over 6 years ago – Thu, Oct 05, 2017 at 06:14:42 AM

First things first, we're now 33% funded!

A big thank you to for all the support from the fans!

Kyrie's Sprite: from Concept to final Sprite

Next, today we have an update of a more graphical nature, detailing how we create a new story character, starting from the basic concept and ending with the final sprite.

Have no fears, we'll resume explaining all the game mechanics in detail next update, but we wanted to show everyone something a little different today!

We've created a post on imgur detailing the same process (except it links to larger images in general). If you have an account, we would greatly appreciate it you could take a second to upvote it as it would really help out our campaign!

https://imgur.com/gallery/amjF4

We first start with a blurb of character information from our story document. That is passed along to our awesome concept artist, Rio Sabda. We try to give him as much relevant information as we can think of. From that information, he will create some sketches, illustrating some basic styles, silhouettes and ideas that he imagines for the character.

From this sketch, we point out bits and ideas that we like and dislike and the sketches refine over a few quick iterations (usually only 1 or 2, as our concept artist has great instincts ^^).

Here is the long description we gave him to create the above sketches (long text!):

Name: Kyrie

Gender: Female

Age: somewhere in her 30s or 40s

Role: Arbiter* captain, main protagonist.

*The Arbiters are basically an elite force of warriors that act as policemen and diplomats throughout the land. They are invested with immense power from the Immortals (the ruling council of the land), acting as their primary agents.

Personality/History: Kyrie is tough, stern, and not afraid to dispense justice when it is deserved. When she sets her sights on a wrongdoer, she can be impulsive and borderline obsessive. But she does have a dry sense of humor and whimsy that sometimes reveals itself. She was once trained by a famous Arbiter, and she is now mentoring the daughter of that Arbiter.

Design notes: We picture her sort of like a female Jon Snow from Game of Thrones: a medium height and build, with medium-weight armor (leather). Maybe a fur-collar cape if you think it's a good idea. We'd prefer a little more color in her clothes, though (maybe some purples?). Our writer says he drew inspiration by Cassandra from Dragon Age as well. She should have an Arbiter's armband on one arm (sketch attached, but it doesn't have to be the same color).

 After a little back and forth about the details we liked/disliked, we come to a more refined sketch, where we now work on finer details. Again, we point out which details/style we like from a few options and then make some suggestions of our own.

In this case, we mostly went with details from the first sketch and made some suggestions about the colors. We try to leave as much leeway as possible to our concept artist, rather that controlling his process, as he's really awesome! :)

 After our comments and suggestions on the final sketch, our concept artist draws the first draft of the final illustration, where he brings everything to life with a lot of details and full colors. The actual image he draws is around 3000x5000 pixels, so it's very high-res and very detailed (and very big, lol).

 From the first draft version of the final illustration, we usually make a few small suggestions and corrections to refine the vision to its final form. In this case, we mostly wanted a bit more color on the sash, a less fluffy haircut, a different belt buckle and a few other fairly minor details.

This then becomes our final illustration for the character, from which our sprite artist is going to create the pixel art rendition for the game.

 Using the above illustration, our awesome pixel artist creates a first version of the sprite, featuring the sprite in a neutral position. Usually, she will adjust some colors a bit for better contrast and tweak some of the details to better fit the smaller sprite shape (our humanoid sprites are roughly 92x216 pixels, which is of course much smaller than the 3000x5000 size of the concept art).

From the above sprite, we will create all the frames and actions the character will need. This process is definitely involved and will be the topic of another post, at another time ^^

Note: Indeed, that is a different sprite than the Kyrie sprite we've been showing so far. Kyrie's sprite isn't yet fully finished, so in the meantime we'll show Anadine, an apprentice Arbiter under the care and tutelage of Kyrie.

As can be seen here, we end up compacting all the sprite frames into a tightly packed atlas (that atlas itself actually gets repacked even more tightly into a bigger atlas that contains more characters to save as much memory as possible).

 Once we have the final sprite and the final illustration, we ask our portrait specialist, the great Marcelo Batisti, to create a portrait that will fit the in-game sprite. This portrait will be used in game for dialogues and when showing information about the unit it belongs to.

 Finally, the character gets added to the game's assets and then can be used in battles, menus and cutscenes. This is from one of our maps, the Canyon Of the Resting Giants.

Hopefully you guys found the process interesting. Let us know in the comments what you think!

Another campaign you should be checking out

Please allow us to draw your attention to Flynn: Son of Crimson, a gorgeous fast paced 2D action platformer currently on Kickstarter.

THAT is some AWESOME pixel art! And looks like a ton of fun to boot!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thunderhorse/flynn-son-of-crimson-fast-paced-2d-action-platform