Member-Run Project Tamers Network Project

I can help with some of the dialogue, as well as some skill ideas. Like for the end battle dialogue for the Magic Opossum, it could say something like "Victory is in the eye of the beholder" when it loses.
That look kinda ok. Also, you may give ideas here.
 
Well'p, long time no see.
I've been all that time working on other projects, and a certain project I were working on got
really huge progress, but now I'm kinda tired of working on it, which means I can get to work
more on TNR Project.

So, let's discuss what I've tried to do and what is planned.

First of all, I'm going to remove the level capper on fields, now If you want to bring a monster
level 99 to a field level 1~4, you can and will be able to face the enemy monsters with your level
99 monster. But I'm still thinking about what I could do about the field bosses, would not be fun
if you just leveled the monsters to beat it with ease, certainly I will need to think of something...

Second, I've got the idea of adding vehicles to the game, the vehicles would function way more
than just a ride, depending on the vehicle you get, you will have more inventory spaces to use,
aswell as a increase on the movement speed on field. Beside the fact that vehicles are not going
to be the kind of thing you get right after starting the game, since would not be fun, probably
I'll think of a way of acquisition of them in the game, maybe vehicle dealers on towns or something?

Third, I've been trying to sprite new monsters to the project, beside my spriting skill is not really
hard, I'm having real hard problems at creating monsters, I mean, real monsters, I can observe
a image and try to sketch an animal based on the image, and I do it well, but Tamers Network
isn't a game about animals fighting, It's about monsters. I've tried to make two monsters, one
I wont show here because thanks to the feedback of a friend, I think a moderator or a member
in the forums will find it "innapropriated", so better I avoid my first infraction, now the second
sprite, I tried to make a Kangaroo monster, and just got a Kangaroo.
SMpsyoT.png


That look's like a cool kangaroo, at least in my opnion, but is not a monster actually.
Beside I guess I did a good job about the 45° angle.

Fourth, I'm still dubious about the towns names, they still sound kinda bad, I will need to think more
about them, or just leave them as it is.

Aaaaaaaaaaand I guess that's all for now, If you have any idea or anything else, post it here,
anyway, getting back to work on the project, gotta make Tamers Network great again. Hehe.

Edit:. Oh, and I forgot about something, the Skills and Status system are going to be revamped, I want to split the skill consequences from the skill effect, so when multiplayer happens, that will make easier to sync the skill/status effects through the players on the server, anyway, that's all for now.
 
Hey guys, long time no see, eh?

Came to my attention the fact that this project has been in development for 5 years since the time I placed it in early release, and that is quite shameful for me to think about, I've been slacking so much about the project, and now I'm trying to retake the progress on it, and so I did.

You remember that Kangaroo sprite from above? Then, It is going to be a in-game monster, and currently, it has Stopped, Walking and Punching animations, both front and back animations, yes, there is back animations for the monster, and yes, that also means the monsters will be sprited in Isometric.
There are also a few number of other monsters I'm spriting, one of them is a Dog Slime monster, whose spriting job is still incomplete, but it has at least the hopping (stopped and walking animation) and an unfinished attack animation, and a Cat creature sprite, whose I'm going to resprite some other time, because I believe It's way too big than It is intended. Actually, spriting is really interesting, the only problem is that the only moment I have to work on the sprites, is during the late night, when I have some peace to spend working on it.

Beside I can't show the sprites yet, at least I can show a news about something I were working on this night, I were remaking the new battle system, and the results ended quite well, you can check the results here for more information.

I have confidence that the project, at least up to the next year, might be up and running for anyone to play it, while It isn't, stay tunned because I may release more exciting development news.
 
Remember that Kangaroo I spoiled some time ago and were questioning myself If It would do a good game monster? So I said yes, and resulted into me doing some shading job on it, aswell as back sprite counter part to the monster, check out.
Kangaroo%2BMonster1.png
Kangaroo%2BMonster12.png


I didn't do just that, though, check out here the full news for some of the animations made for it, aswell as the sprite of 2 other monsters coming to the game.

Anyway, I'll read comments on the news here too, so I can know If I'm taking the right track, or if there may be something to change, beside here I can answer the comments :/ (Yes, I can't on blogger).
 
Well, time to another update on the project.

I've made a serie of changes on the battlefield the monsters will be, each battlefield will have several ground layers to make the battlefield more cool looking, as you can see here, a week later I were bored, so I decided to make a standalone idle rpg, but wont say more about it since it's not related to the project, but on the next day, I've reworked severelly the battlefield, to make so It's not only about solid colors, added a few tiling to the floors and extras, aswell as did the basic color randomization system for the monsters skin (or better saying, monster skin, since Kangaroo Mob is the only monster in the game right now).

Tanning%2BEffect.png


Now what are the next steps? One thing I'm trying to do, is attempt to make animations to the monsters, like as If the project were a fighting game, so no recicled animation plays when using certain attacks, beside, latelly I've been watching gameplays of Megaman X, and their Mavericks are giving me ideas, I don't need to make the monsters be generic, but also don't need to make them robotic, and may even give them special outfits, that could turn out their look even more unique.

Another thing I've been thinking, maybe instead of mimicking original reference of the monsters body colors (like colors of a Kangaroo for Kangaroo Mob), I could instead make so the monsters has a body color variation in full RGB, like, you may find a blue Kangaroo, Red, Yellow, Purple, who knows, any kind of color, but I'm not entirelly sure if that would be a really good idea though.

Anyway, that's all for today's refresh of news.
 
Holy crops, I didn't launched an update on this project in more than a month, better I change that frame...

Then I'll try to make a resumé of the changes.
Beside the fact that I've made monsters more colorful...
colorful%2Bmobs.png


And also be visible in the maps as they are (Because If I scale them up will break the sprites of the game, certainly I'll have to scale down the rest of the game):
field_mob.png


I did a spotlight on the Cait Sith monster, turned it into an avatar (beside I lost the fixed version of it), aswell as talked a bit more about the battle changes.
Then dived in a sea of glitches and bugs, and then were able to leave it, and did several cool changes, like adding spell casting animation and effects, battle hud and a number of other changes.
Casting.png

And finally were able to make battles be finished, beside I still need to add human input on that too, since the battle ends after the messages on the top of the screen ends, and also made the game be able to scale with the window, so It has fullscreen view even of the battle without glitches on sight. Aswell as added a few battle calling scripts for npcs, It's actually basic, but It's working for now, later I'll have to do changes to it, anyway.

And turned the old version of the project disponible for download and playing, I guess that may help on the feedbacks, and giving an idea of changes, or of things that may come back to the project.

I doubt this post resumes an entirety of a month without news, but at least gives some ideas on the changes that happened, If you want to use the Cait Sith avatar from the post featuring it, I recommend you to do a little sprite edit on it, to make the belly white area go a pixel or two to the right, then fill the area where it was before with the gray skin color, after that you may color the sprite any way you want, just use your image editor tool of replacing color to change the coloring of your Cait Sith, If It has support to.

Anyway, I'm still owing a spotlight news to the Dog Head Monster, beside the people who follow the blog still doesn't know, but there are two monsters I sprited, whose may be spoiled in some future news, one of them has even their gear sprites, stay tuned for more news, and if you want more periodic news, follow my blog for news on the project, beside I update this topic in a certain delay of time, you may have even more news by following the feeds of the blog.

Ah, I've also forgot to tell, I'm respriting the player aswell, so It fits the new monster sprites, and in the future I'll resprite the tiles, instead of being 2x scaled sprites, they will have 1x of size, but I believe I'll have to do some coding to zoom them, so one doesn't need to force their vision to see the sprites, even more if uses one big monitor. The sprites are not ready yet, but when I finish the model, I may show the changes.

Until next news.
 
Woah, I could have said that time flies, but actually, I skipped one month of news, no, wait, I skipped TWO months of news.

Well, I'd get a cup of coffee to then write a short resumé of what happened latelly, but the problem is that It's 2:26am, and I didn't went asleep yet, so no, I wont get some coffee. And as you can see from the awkward dialogue, the sleepiness is attacking, so better I start telling what changed on that time.

I've added different attacks to some monsters, for example, the Kangaroo Mob has now 4 different attacks, and fixed a good number of skills and positioning bugs in the game.

I've also scaled down the game sprite sizes, now instead of the map and player characters having 2x2 pixels, they now have 1x1 pixels.
The problem is that the world feels smaller now, so I've had to scale up the map and npcs in the map through the drawing script, resulting in...
Awkward%2BColored%2BTRees.png


I've added 2 more magic spells, so Fireball doesn't feel so lonely, the Frost and Thunder spells are in, and in the same post, I talked a bit about the Dog Head Monster.

Added 4 more monsters to the project, being that one of them is almost fully animated, status system is now working aswell, you can see more about it here.

As the image above of the scaled map showed, the hairs also gained a redesign, they're no longer scaled aswell, another thing that changed, is that I'm no longer restricted to 32x32 bits of size for the hair, I can make bigger and longer hairs in the game, this might be good for female characters customization, but I'm still bad at drawing hair, if you ask yourself why, check the image above, again.

I've also launched a video showing the current gameplay of the game, or at least a part of it.

Some days after launching the video, added Critical and Miss system to skills, aswell as reworked a bit the battle hud, there is no teaser for the new hud, yet.

And, posted some of my future planning on the project on this news, aswell as talked about a few things I've forgot talking about during the last news.
Some of them are, now monsters will attack at the same time, if their target is not using or being a victim of a skill, and the monster isn't going to use a multi target skill, I'm going to change that in the future, once I get the multi target... targets.
Fixed some positioning issues for skill effects, It's about 90%~ fixed.
And about monster sizes and how they affect your gameplay.

Well, I may have missed something, anyway, that's kind of a few minutes talk about what changed latelly. And I have to say, even though I did a brief talk about the skill effect positioning issue, that problem were causing me some headaches, had to change the formula over and over, and change the codes both in battle system and the drawing system to find out how to fix that, ended up that I had to do two vectors to deal in different ways with the positioning, one for world position, and the other for the position that isn't affected by the battle system scaling and repositioning system.

Anyway, that's all for the news, check out the blog to find out if I missed something about news.

Until next time.

Edit:. Beside I should try getting some photos to place on the thread main post, later. Beside you guys possibly will be wanting to see it too, maybe I should wait until I get the game more presentable... Beside there is no photo about the project on the front page, right now. :/
 
Hey guys, long time no see, again.
I've given quite a hiatus on this topic, and why do I feel like talking all that again?

Anyway, the development of the project has stagnated a bit, because I'm trying to solve some IRL things, like trying to find a job, fix my sleep time and stuff.
But, I'm trying to work more on my project, beside there have been a few bumps in the way.

Do notice that's video in the post, open it on youtube and check it's description for information about what is happening in the video.
Let's see... What happened in 5 months...

Well, this guy here got a sprite change, went from this:
Cait%2BSith1.png

To this:
New%2BCait%2BSith1.png


At the same news, I talked about making the buffs have equal duration in and out the combat, so you don't need to cast buffs again when entering a new battle, of course the same also will be valid for debuffs.

The rush of the year ending has slowed down the project some more, but I were able to finish the Cait Sith new sprites overtime.

I've speculated once about making the game be demi open, the demi open part is because I thought about making so audio and graphics of the game be editable, I still haven't decided about that, beside maybe I wont do that. Because the demi open game idea opened up space for another idea, whose I may talk about in the future.

The Monsters status passed through another change, making the changes in their build more significant, but that caused a few balancing problems in the game, whose I'll talk about soon (Check out the comment I did about the Dog Mage).

Also, I'm not sure if I talked about this change before, but the monsters sizes affect their status aswell, as you can see on the news above, but that also means they will either need more or less exp to level up, so you wont get much exp for bullying weak monsters.

The defense system also passed through a revamp, now It's in porcentage, instead of solid numbers, like it was before. There is way less chance of the monsters inflicting 1 of damage per attack now.

I've also spent my time making this animation for this monster:
That's when I discovered that listening to music while trying to record a video of gameplay will cause you to scrap the videos you've tried to record.

The game finally got 10 monsters total, but currently the monster creation has been halted a bit, since I'm doing something else.
I've also added some basic physics to the battle, they will be perceptible after a skill ends, because if the monster was in the air during a skill effect, it will fall. And if it is out of it's formation position, It will walk to it.

Then begins the arc I'm currently in on the project development, I found out a problem that will cause problems in the future, on multiplayer, or when there be more npcs in the game battling. The skill scripts are calculating positions and defining what to draw when they shouldn't. I'll have to solve that to avoid future problems. And also, explained why I'm not asking for donations for the project, check out the news before that one (on the blog) to know why the topic.

The way Skills and Buffs status are being handled are passing through a change, too. The method that was in the game before was too confusing for me to edit, I had about 5 script files to handle the status effects and their functions, and that was twisting my mind. Now I'm changing the system to a more simple, and 1 script file using system, which will be used by both skills and status (buffs and debuffs). The system is still under development, but It's partially working. I will talk about one of the problems I'm having with it later in this update post.

The monsters gained an aggro system, so now they look on the player direction, and then attack if the player remains on sight for too long.
I also showed on the same news the capture system I'm using for debugging, but that system will be changed in the future, because I want it to be accessible both by player abilities, and certain monster skills (Yes, some monsters may help you capture other monsters).

And then comes the latest news, I'm trying to think about what way I'll use to find out who the monster is, and where can the game find it. That kind of information will be necessary both for skills and status(buffs and debuffs), but depending on the way I use to make the game find the monsters, It will cause problems the the status system, so I need to think how I'll make the game find the monster.

I also talked on the post about my personal goals for the project, I may not be able to implement them all, but I'll try to do them all. So check out the latest news.

Well, that's all for the recap.

Until next news.
 
Have you tried adding a transition effect to the battles? Like going into a battle and leaving the battle? It would make the game much more polished and would look better.
 
Have you tried adding a transition effect to the battles? Like going into a battle and leaving the battle? It would make the game much more polished and would look better.
I can, by the way, I just added the defeat screen effect, that happens when the player loses a battle, beside I still need to add a lock to the controls, so the player doesn't move while the animation is happening.
 
Holy necromancy! But the news aren't that good, anyway.

It's not really a "It's over", but right now, I can't get the project to proceed.
 
Back
Top Bottom