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Author Topic: Kesashi's Gallery  (Read 140101 times)

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Offline L.K. [Taikichi]

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Re: Kesashi's Gallery
« Reply #525 on: November 30, 2020, 05:40:30 PM »
I must apologize for not commenting here sooner... I've been aware of your really diligent work here for a while but never hopped in on the discussion for some reason... Anyways, I checked out your website for Blade Regalia and I found it to be pretty interesting read :) As an avid gamer I have some feedback also if you would hear me out.

Thanks for the feedback, and if I'm honest, this is the kind of feedback I would pay money for.

Consider adding at least an option for a comicbook outline reshade.

So on the topic of design I spent a lot of time considering how the characters should be rendered. I did actually try using outlines in the past, but I felt like it was better if it matched the 2D art style in the end. But I'm personally neutral on outlines or not, and so that's why i think you're idea is an absolutely great idea. Philosophy-wise, I'm a big supporter of players being able to choose the most fun way to play. It's something that I wish other game developers would do more. It would be fairly easy for me to add those kinds of options to the settings menu even having hatching and manga-style shading.

And yes virtually every background element is a placeholder, I've spent more time figuring out how the background should be rendered than anything else, and honestly I do think Breath of the Wild figured it out for me. We'll probably go for some kind of flattened, colorful, environments, but not actually cel shaded. I avoided cel shading the background because it ends up having very little depth.

I hear that Genshin Impact is doing really well.

So Genshin Impact has been an interesting topic of discussion because at first glance it seems like complete degenerate game design by the fact that it duplicates Zelda Breath of the Wild in almost every possible game mechanic, and then adds on awful mobile game mechanics and gambling. But the problem with writing it off is the fact that it is making millions of dollars very quickly, so that says to me that gamers like the things Genshin Impact is doing.

One thing I would say is very important to consider with the success of genshin impact is a theoretical topic that many failed games don't address. When you're working for a charity or non-profit trying to collect donations and you ask someone for $1, you don't know if they could afford to give you $100. So a lot of people collecting donations will start high, and then that person might say, "all I can afford to give is $10", or they'll say "give as much as you want."

You will only get as much as you ask for. So you should ask for more than what you need. Based on statistics most Genshin impact characters are worth about $20 each, and some characters (5 star characters) are worth up to $300 each. Imagine a game having a $300 DLC that just adds one character, it's no wonder games don't do that. Genshin Impact gets away with it because they turn spending money into a game. During the death of a game called Gigantic there were many fans who wanted to support the game financially, but the developers didn't have any avenues available to them. There were few micro-transactions in the game and the game itself was free to play which resulted in the development team working for months with no pay.

What sets apart Genshin Impact from other gambling games and even Zelda are many key factors just base on my assessment of it. 1) The developers are very passionate about the game, and people can echo that sense of passion. They work pretty hard on it and it shows. 2) They copied a good game, sometimes we take that for granted when games do copy other games. 3) The anime aesthetic. This is a big one, people want anime games. A lot of people would only play Dark Souls if it looked like Code Vein which is why Code Vein was successful. If Hyperdimension Neptunia released another game I'd buy it for no reason.

Genshin impact will suffer for a few reasons. It has some awful mobile game mechanics even though it's essentially a single player game. It has an energy system meaning you can only do a certain amount of actions per day (even if you pay money for more energy there's still a limit). If a game clones genshin impact and removes the energy system, it would absolutely decimate Genshin Impact. You should always put the customer first, and the player is the customer, and the customer does not like it when the game tells him to stop playing. This is exactly what Jeff Bezos would say is the most important factor of the success of Amazon is its dedication to customer satisfaction before anything else. The second issue is genshin impact punishes you for playing multiplayer. Much of the game is locked into single-player and it completely disenfranchises players from playing together. Blizzard Games makes basically all of their money off the idea that people like multiplayer gaming.

On top of this, your combat needs to be really well refined, responsive and just plain fun.

Combat mechanics are very important to all of us and the main thing I'm a fan of is responsiveness and control. This is the reason why I would never introduce an ability like "confusion" that changes your controls because it's mostly just frustrating. So I fully support animation cancelling, obviously some abilities can't be cancelled. Sometimes you have to commit like with an ultimate ability. In real life, if you wanted to do something you would just do it, you wouldn't do some crazy step-back, punch, crouch, combo to do a special attack like they do in fighting games. It should be pretty close to just as responsive as your own mind in my opinion.

The RPG elements of the game are interesting. It looks like you have characters with base ability sets, and then you can unlock different regalia outfits for each that alter the abilities. There are a few pitfalls to watch out for here. Firstly, I don't think you want to completely change up a character's role, nor lose what a player likes about them

Initially we were conflicted over how to handle Regalia in the game vs the canon of the story. I personally think with all its strengths and weaknesses it will be something that helps blade regalia stand out. A core part of blade regalia is the idea that their fashion choices are meaningful with respect to combat. In other games cosmetic options are always purely cosmetic, but in blade regalia this will be different. So currently, the way it's being handled is that getting a new regalia is like basically getting a new character. We also plan on introducing a regalia sharing system where heroes with matching features can share regalia. This makes it reasonable to bring down the workload from 450 regalia (3 each for 150 characters) to somewhat fewer since there will be so much overlap . The main reason why the workload is so high is so we can continue to introduce new content over the next few years after its final release. So I would like for the game to feel complete even if it only has 20 characters, and every new character is just a welcomed bonus.

A big thing for me, which is why I stopped playing games like Warframe and Diablo III, is the requirement for constant narrative hook. If your game is going to be singleplayer/coop then player impact on the shape of the game world is just a necessity.

This is something we plan to cover when we start implementing narrative elements into the game. We definitely do have big plans for how the players will experience the story. Essentially I want for a player's personality to play a big role in how the game unfolds.

I believe that content in the game should always be unlocked by playing the game

I would definitely agree that it can be very un-fun when the game asks you to break from the regular gameplay to do something else. Looking at Genshin Impact again I find it hilarious how they try to set a precedent that your character is a 10,000 year old diety who battles dragons and then you're being asked to catch same random girl's pet cat. I understand that's a very MMORPG-thing to do. Since blade regalia is an action-adventure game, most of the conflicts are going to be solved through fighting and exploring. I can see how some developers think they need to mix things up and just end up making things worse.

Offline L.K. [Taikichi]

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Re: Kesashi's Gallery
« Reply #526 on: December 05, 2020, 09:41:00 PM »
I added a news update to the website covering some upcomming changes. The Command Wheel will be an in-combat solution to controlling your AI's behavior. You'll be able to send direct commands to your entire team to help them out of danger or ensure you're all working together. You will be able to make extremely specific commands and put them on your command wheel as custom commands. A specific example is commanding a specific teammate to use a specific supportive ability on you.

This next update is one of the largest fundamental changes to Blade Regalia and its the change of the protagonist. The original protagonist, Katherine, escapes from a controversial experimentation in the antagonist faction and this new protagonist is the person who escapes with her. This person goes by the name Specimen 5 (codename: Keagan) because taking away your real name is a core part of the experiment. You will get the option to pick Specimen 5's gender and skin tone but obviously, the glasses are non negotiable. The gender is actually not just a cosmetic option because when regalia-sharing comes into play it will have a big influence on what regalia Specimen 5 can access. As you can see, their features are very different so they will match very different regalia.





Offline NO1SY

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Re: Kesashi's Gallery
« Reply #527 on: December 06, 2020, 08:53:00 AM »
Ah a combat wheel for commands is a good idea! I think this will work really well for a game like yours.

So on the topic of player power tied to cosmetics, I think it's an interesting idea, but it also innately brings issues... So, obviously, everyone have their own tastes and preferences when it comes to style and aesthetics. So what happens when someone likes the look of a specific regalia on one of their characters, but they want to use the skillset/stats conferred by another regalia? My brother is a person like this, for instance when he was playing The Witcher 3 he hated the look of 90% of armour sets in the game, and stuck with wearing the 1 set he liked the look of despite the fact that other sets were more powerful; did not stop him complaining about the "lack of cool armour choices" though... Obviously he still loves that game, but I feel that in a game where the outfits are a large focus you might find that this problem gets amplified a bit. I'm not sure how I feel about Transmog as a fix for this either... as this significantly detracts from any narrative design that goes into making the different items meaningful... I'm not really sure what the most ideal option is here, and I hope that you successfully pull off your design philosophy here. Perhaps having regalia usable by lots of different characters will alleviate this issue entirely in practice - if players are always able to find a character that they like the look of the regalia on, as well as the skills that it brings.

In terms of options for approaching conflicts/challenges, I think that combat and exploration are great pillars to design an action-adventure game arround. But I also think that there are other ways to engage with the world to drive a narrative, and if you can only engage through fighting or looking then a game can become a bit one-note. The obvious suggestion, especially since yours is a party based game, could be puzzles that involve coordinating multiple team members (depending how much control over them you have) - can be as simple as standing a few characters on pressure plates to open a door, a la Divinity Original Sin II; or more linear or one-off mini-games/puzzles as seen in the newer Final Fantasy games maybe. Obviously puzzles play a huge role in the new, big adventure games such as Zelda, Fenyx Rising, and Genshin. In terms of exploration, I think that Guild Wars 2 and Grim Dawn both do a fantastic job with implementing secret dungeons and hidden areas. In GW2 they also have jumping puzzles which are actually quite fun. Grim Dawn is one of my favourite games at the moment, and they have whole areas that are completely "off map" that are really fun and rewarding to find. Grim Dawn also has materials that you pick up throughout your adventure, that you can invest in rebuilding bridges, excavate rubble from blocked paths, blow open locked chests, trade with a specific NPC for an item, or use to purify shrines etc, so fighting and collecting these materials through natural play can be used to directly impact your game-world outside of boring fetch quests - and it's even better because these materials each have multiple uses, so it becomes a decision on behalf of the player on where they are going to use these materials; balancing what they will gain against what they might miss out on. It seems in a lot of action-adventure games, players also seem to really appreciate moments where they can choose not to fight, either to take a different approach to solving a problem, or to make a choice to ally with an npc rather than fight to them. Again, this helps to break up monotony in action games and allow players a sense of freedom. Lastly, if you want to keep things very action orientated, then changing up the pace of that combat with challenges can lead to some very different feeling experiences. Grim Dawn has challenge shrines, Doom has the Rune Trials, Guild Wars 2 has Adventures. They essentially temporarily force the player to engage in specific styles of play, and if done well, can be utilized to break monotony and have players engage in all of the game's systems and mechanics. Mini-bosses and Raid-bosses with enrage timers or phases also can be used to engage players in this way.

Lastly, I don't play Genshin, but a Youtuber I watched for Warframe content now plays it, and he made a video on how to more efficiently spend your money in that game. I will say, it's nowhere near on the level of predation as some mobile games I've seen, but even optimising your spending (which not everyone will be aware of how to do, even if they do not fall prey to the predatory practices that are there) makes it so on average it costs $20-25 to get a character that you actually want... 1 character!? It's a shame, because I think that the game looks kinda fun, and I like character collections, but there is no way that I can justify that kind of monetary investment for a videogame... It reminds me very much of Warframe, which now that I am out of, I have no intention of getting back into if I have to pay money...

Offline L.K. [Taikichi]

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Re: Kesashi's Gallery
« Reply #528 on: January 05, 2022, 05:32:00 AM »
Little bit of interesting progress to talk about. I've stopped doing 3D modeling and animation myself and I've started delegating that work to other team members or freelancers so I've started to develop a comprehensive set of character outfits as 3D reference images. For these pictures to be proper guidelines, they aren't drawn in perspective and only consider 2 axes.

For some of these I'll do additional sets with transparent sections so the 3D artist can understand what's underneath. For the sake of optimization, the full body does not actually exist underneath the clothing and I give a general guideline of where the body could reasonably cut off underneath draping clothing. The body is done separately from the head because characters have the ability to swap outfits with other characters if they have the same body type.

The Crystal Edge Regalia



The Blade Regalia

Misery


The Weeping Queen's Regalia









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Re: Kesashi's Gallery
« Reply #529 on: January 07, 2022, 02:17:34 PM »
Outsourcing work or adding members to your team to increase the overall man power is a sensible step, it's generally something I will avoid at all costs but when you're making a game there's a lot of work required I know.

I like the interesting simpler blueprint style for the newer designs, my favourites are the Devastator Regalia and the Temple Knight one.

Makes sense that the body would cut off when not visible, those polygons will add up before you know it :P
Nice to learn about the behind the scenes as always
Do you have an ETA or a % progress on the project so far? I know that's always a tricky one :P
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Offline Xseos

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Re: Kesashi's Gallery
« Reply #530 on: January 08, 2022, 03:52:13 PM »
I like your art style its unique to my eyes and i see plenty of potential, not sure what you are working on nowadays but just keep it coming!
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Offline L.K. [Taikichi]

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Re: Kesashi's Gallery
« Reply #531 on: January 11, 2022, 05:05:36 PM »
Do you have an ETA or a % progress on the project so far? I know that's always a tricky one :P

If things go on schedule then the next playable version of Blade Regalia would be public by the end of February this year.

Recently I've finished the systems that allow characters to be interchangeable in terms of their abilities. Because these outfits can be changed, and these outfits come with specific abilities, the characters have to have animations to reinterpret the abilities of the outfit. So in order to do this, characters were standardized as using specific weapons referred to as their "weapon mastery". So the weapon mastery defines the way that characters will animate and the outfit simply calls certain animations to happen and the weapon mastery gives its interpretation of that animation.

The weapons that characters used to have were almost completely unique to each character, for example, weapons like a Flail, Mace, and War Hammer were all just consolidated to a standardized "Hammer" and weapons like the greatsword, claymore, katana, were just consolidated to a longsword. An ability would call for the character to "Stab their weapon in the ground" for example to create some kind of magical field on the ground, and the weapon mastery would do whatever would be considered stabbing the weapon into the ground for that specific weapon.

There are a lot of core systems in that vein that I've finished recently. The biggest core system that hasn't been finished yet is the enemy AI, so there are no teamplay mechanics yet which are going to be central to the gameplay. I'm rebuilding the ai from scratch again, so the game won't be using the AI it was using before especially because the AI needs to be able to respond to the way that characters can be customized. So if there's gonna be another delay, it'll be over developing AI.

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Re: Kesashi's Gallery
« Reply #532 on: January 12, 2022, 02:08:23 PM »
Ah awesome, I like the consolidation step, that's very useful for saving time if you can group stuff together code-wise.

I imagine AI can be very hard to get a decent estimate on because it involves a lot of testing and tweaking and designing your own system to simulate intelligence. Would be awesome to actually implement learning AI and have them figure out stuff by having them battle each other But that's easier said than done :P
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Offline Coryn

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Re: Kesashi's Gallery
« Reply #533 on: January 13, 2022, 12:48:14 PM »
You get that done Suuper, and then you'll have more than enough time to do art while lounging on your piles of money, lol.

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Re: Kesashi's Gallery
« Reply #534 on: January 13, 2022, 12:58:23 PM »
pfffffahahaha yeah right XD
I do intend to try my hand at making a learning AI when I eventually get round to my own game programming but that's a story for another year :P

On a slightly serious note my living expenses are as low as possible so I don't have to work full time, which does indeed give me more art time. I recommend it to those who can.
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Offline L.K. [Taikichi]

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Re: Kesashi's Gallery
« Reply #535 on: February 27, 2022, 02:00:15 AM »
So yes delays as usual. I had a bit more trouble than I expected with AI navigation. The AI is now designed in a way that it can operate any character I attach to it. In the past I would've made a unique AI for each character, but with the new customization options, that system wouldn't quite work.


And more character art

April


Delilah
« Last Edit: February 27, 2022, 02:02:58 AM by L.K. [Taikichi] »

Offline Echo_River

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Re: Kesashi's Gallery
« Reply #536 on: June 14, 2022, 12:23:47 PM »
Woooow! That looks amazing!! I love the look of all the effects. It's so fascinating to see characters that you've drawn now moving about and fighting.
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Re: Kesashi's Gallery
« Reply #537 on: June 15, 2022, 08:39:45 AM »
Oh I missed commenting for some reason :/

Again I totally agree with the AI being a one-size-fits-all for your enemies, no point in doubling up work for yourself. What you can do to make each enemy play slightly differently is just have some hard coded variables for each character like agressiveness, evasiveness etc, which dictate how likely the AI is to choose a particular action. But I'm sure you're way ahead of me on that already.

Very cool outfit for Delilah, I couldn't quite tell it was a snake at first glace because there aren't too many details, the eyes are small etc, but AFAIK that's just the concept art, seeing it on a 3d model will make it easier to see I think.

Keep it up and keep us posted!
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