This is the final product, yeah. The stuff before was experimenting with different styles while I learned how to do pixel work. Hand drawn stuff are good placeholders, but I wouldn’t want to build a full game from it.
But yeah, it’s changed quite a bit. Originally I intended for the game to be sort of a tank simulator. Growing up I was a big WW1 WW2 enthusiast. The technology at the time was really interesting to me from a visual perspective. Growing up in California there were museums all over the place.
I wanted the game to revolve around a really open world with you piloting a tank and the game focused around the development of the tank crew. It still had RPG elements too. I thought it was cool because I didn’t think it was done yet, at the time anyway. It was always mech games, and more of a tactical format. Or turn based.
Like, in an RPG when you get an airship it’s just a way to speed up the game. There wasn’t supply or fuel management. So you don’t really need to plan or think ahead, you just zoom around the screen until you got where you needed to be. I thought with a tank, making progress and planning destinations in an open world would be more heavy and rewarding. But you would have to layer the game a certain way to make it fun for people to do so.
The idea was inspired by a couple movies I really like, which are Tank Batalion and The Beast of War. I told myself when and if I ever finish this project I would go back to the tank and crew concept because I like it so much and there are so many possibilities with a crew on a tank as a platform tool. the intent was to make something interesting and easily accessible to players and get them interested in the history of WW1 and WW2
because they’re very important events in human history. I really hope that I can do that someday.
Go Netflix this shiz, yo. Better be on the top of your queue!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/49213959/dormant-sky-snes-era-rpg-videogame
Don’t need to attempt at original content anymore. Just take stuff from SNES games and make a ton of cash. It’s unreal how Kickstarter just greenlights anything because it will generate them x amount of money.
What am I looking at here? I don’t even have words. A part of me really wants to see this take off and make 5k just so I can have my mind blown. It means you don’t even have to try anymore.
Features:
“Immense Graphical Detail”
LOL!
Manually checking mail is a serious adventure for me. I have a P.O box because the one near my house is sort of “far off”. I decided to go out and check it out to see what kind of exotic mail I have obtained over the course of a few weeks.
It just started to get warm outside so I am going out a lot more. I know that makes me sound like a hermit, but I am really moody when it comes to weather.
Hello Earth!
Nothing is really “flat” around here so there is a lot of uphill and downhill walking. That’s a pretty long uphill buddy. Put on yo big boy pants.
There are several wild animals that could possibly attack me. But look at it this way, I rather take my chances with a snake or perhaps a bob cat over a row of homeless humans begging for spare change.
This is the house on top of the hill. I know I am almost at my mailbox because I can see rich peoples success towering over everyone else. As I flip this place off I continue…
Getting the mail and coming back is a good chore for your body. There are so many hills it gets kind of exhausting. Especially if you haven’t done it in a while. It’s kind of funny not seeing a single human being walking other than myself. But I did see several hundred automobiles fly by.
At this point my aged body needs to rest. I am not as athletic as I once was during the 40s. I take note to myself that my crippled body is slowly decaying and start to move on. Also, please look at my cute shoes.
I know I am almost home because I turn left and there is a screenshot of secret of mana’s. So, I get home finally check out what Kind of neat things I have obtained from my mailbox.
I am rewarded with “The Gerber Generation” and several bills. I encourage people to at least go out for a small walk sometime this week. Especially if you live in a beautiful area. If you live in like, Stockton, I am cool with you just hanging out with your doors bolted.
Sometimes people ask where I get inspiration, well I have the advantage of being able to just go outside and see many things. I think people who say go “draw from life” is full of shit, but being around wild life does help very much. You can get the same effect from going to the park as well. If you’re a dedicated digital artist or whatever, try taking a sketch pad and going outside. It’s nice.
Game updates on the way, too. Later doods.
I’m going to level with you…I’ve played and enjoyed the Final Fantasy series as a whole regardless if I liked the game or not ever since the NES. It’s an experience. I can easily say I’ve beat every Final Fantasy game in the series(including 1 which is an awful game). All the way up to 13.
And this is coming from someone who hated FF1 and still beat it. When you just have no desire to finish a Final Fantasy because you lose interest, especially if you’re a big fan, then something is wrong. And this DLC shit needs to stop too!
I literally stumbled on Final Fantasy All the Bravest on accident, because after FF13 the series really doesn’t interest me. Especially with this DLC content garbage that has been flying all over the place between Capcom and Square.
I’ve talked about this before, because it’s a big problem. Why do companies feel like they can get away with this? Well, because the gaming demographic is so large now, that a certain level of dedication and time isn’t required anymore because you don’t have a small pool of people to keep interested. you basically have anyone who has a phone can pick it up the game.
There is a lot of stuff in the gaming world that makes you shake your head, but this is incredibly staggering. I’m probably the last person to find this out, because I pretty much said screw off Square you aren’t getting anymore money from me after 13. I think Bravest came out in January? Not sure.
This game is created to insult gamers of any age and collect as much money from nostalgia as possible!
Final Fantasy All the Bravest is a 2D touch-action RPG released on January 17th, 2013, for the iOS. The game features traditional jobs, characters, locations, monsters and music from installments of the Final Fantasy series.
So what this pretty much means is, they’re using old resources and content to fill out the game.
It also includes social networking features which allows the option for an extra party slot for every time something is posted, via the game, to Facebook or Twitter.
?????
Utilizing the touch screen, the player can command characters to attack the enemy party. The player cannot choose which enemies to attack and can fight most efficiently by simply swiping along the rows of party members.
So basically, you wipe your finger across the touch screen and that’s it, guys. That’s the whole game. Incredibly insulting. But, it’s old FF sprites, so….
The gameplay is straightforward as it doesn’t require strategy.
Battles are designed to engage the players and give them different choices and options to maximize their characters, choices, and builds. Battle mechanics are created to reward the player for playing smart to overcome enemies, so in this game that is erased. It doesn’t exist. You basically made something baby friendly. 0 thought of game design.
Whenever the party dies the player will have to wait for fallen party members to respawn in real-time, three minutes per character, meaning a full hour and a half to respawn the entire party.
There is also the option of paying real money to get an hourglass which revives the whole party.
Fuck off.
The last thing is the downloadable content, which isn’t even content. So basically you can pay 0.99 to get a random character from the Final Fantasy universe. You don’t get to pick. So if you wanted Terra you might get Yuna instead so you’d have to throw more money at the game.
What’s the difference? There is 0 gameplay impact. The characters do nothing! Grats you spent 30 bucks so you can “finger” Auron over and over. You can also purchase different areas to fight different enemies, except you know what YOU DON’T FUCKING DO ANYTHING BECAUSE YOU AREN’T PLAYING THE GAME! The game is playing itself and all you do is swipe your mongoloid finger across the screen and stuff happens! They’re all FF6 sprite edits. It’s incredible.
The combined cost of all the DLC amounts to the total of $46.62.
This game isn’t made for fans, it’s not made to bring new fans in, it’s 100% designed to steal your money! It sickens me to see how bad these companies are getting. It’s desperate and lazy game design. Just because your audience of gamers has expanded does not mean you can start producing junk. FF is big, but it’s not THAT big enough where you can start cranking out games with no thought. Sorry, dudes.
It’s because of stuff like this is why people like me lose interest in playing games now. It’s not about entertaining you, it’s about how much fucking money we can take out of the consumers wallet before they figure it out. It’s becoming WAY too obvious.
It’s in such bad taste. It’s really sad to see these big companies that used to, I thought, respect the people enough who bought their products to not make it so blindly obvious they just want money. Gaming is such a huge industry now that the only logical thing they can do is half ass work and sell it. Killinz muh childhood Lizzzaaaaa!
It’s not even work, guys. It’s old fucking resources from the old games re-used. It’s ridiculous. Stop insulting your customers! I mean, just because it’s not a next gen console doesn’t give you a free ticket to produce garbage just because it’s 4 dollars. So, because there are ton of crappy app games automatically means you have to be apart of the problem and create complete junk too? That’s stupid, I really can’t imagine anyone who could defend this game. It’s impossible.
Stay away from this garbage.
doods, i’m pretty sick, but let’s at least update this thing.
Original idea, was happy with it at the time but it doesn’t add much. It’s interesting but pretty similar to others.
While weird, it’s a fresh idea and I think people will like fresh designs. I like this one a lot more.
Yeah the only thing I’ve recently been working on is this platforming boss. It’s nowhere near done visually either but since the updates have been really spaced I’ll throw you the -WIP-.
The idea of this boss is set on a timed event where you basically avoid things on the back of the machine. Over time certain things will happen like flames appearing where you have to avoid them and pieces of the body disjointing and slamming against walls.
What I really enjoy about the concept is the backdrop. While all of this is happening the background is moving through different levels and the backdrop has an impact on what’s happening.For example one level will have lasers shooting out from it while the top level just has wall spikes you have to avoid. The lowest level has a bed of acid you have to climb on the piece that’s higher than the rest. etc.
The face turns out very well in concept but it doesn’t translate very well through pixels because of my own abilities.
>
Jumping from limb to limb as it disjoints is important as it means if you live or die. Having players be aware of everything around them enhances gameplay and keeps players interested.
Memory to avoid various obstacles is important. Older games embraced the idea of re-doing a stage or evet over and over as long as it was easy to re-do. After, you’ll feel a lot more rewarded vs level grinding.
It’s just light platforming on a timer. And using memory. The Design of the machine actually changed a lot. Originally I had it as just a huge half produced machine with one arm. I went back to it later and realized it’s sort of similar to other designs I have so I made it into a large woman. The basic concept is still there and it makes it a little bit more interesting this way as visual variety. Doesn’t make much sense, but a it’s not meant to. 
I like to work in pieces. I don’t usually create a whole body but start off doing parts and connect them when everything is completed. Animations come last as well. To be honest with you I don’t like this pixel work very much. Push content for the sake of pushing content though.
Lastly I want to go through questions, I’ve answered these through private already, over the weeks, but I’ll post for anyone who is curious:
Anonymous asked you:
can u possibly update us on the status of the game progress? i was also curious about what art school you go to.
Me:
if the blog isn’t updated, the game isn’t being updated at a normal pace. it’s the curse of limited time and
having 1 person work on vidcons. Put it into perspective though, there are people with 5+ teams and still
producing little or even less than myself. So, food for thought. I went to the school of pixels. I majored in charsets.
Anonymous asked you:
whatever happened to the promised aliens post?
Me: Yeah, I sort of vegged out on that. Game sucks, really buggy, don’t play it it’s trash.
Anonymous asked you:
I want to run a Kickstarter and I was wondering if you would be able to give me some tips?
Me: Yeah, don’t use me as an example dude. Follow games that are really successful and just emulate what they do.
It’s a flake answer, but really, you’re better off doing that. I don’t got dem answers.
Anonymous asked you:
Can you make a Twitter so I can follow updates easier?
Me: It’s on the list, but I don’t want to waste my time updating people with things that just aren’t happening, like, tweeting “woke up opened computer then fell asleep” it’s something I want to do, and communicating with people who are interested in the game is very important, but i think just producing content and doing work right now sort of takes priority over jerking around on twitter.
Anonymous asked you:
Are you single?
Me: I am currently engaged to video games and it is a very strong relationship….sry.
Anonymous asked you:
I missed the first Kickstarter and I’m hoping you’ll run another when the time comes!
Me: Yeah dude, going to produce a demo first and see how that turns out and then maybe do another one. It’s not
really on my mind and I’m not too concerned with crowdfunding. Too unreliable.
That’s about it. If you have a question feel free to ask and I’ll either post them as a bundle or do them in single format. It really depends on my time and how many times I update Tumblr. Thanks doods.
one of my favorite animations, EVER. basically, just shut up and watch! it’s one of the few recent animations i’ve watched that felt so rewarding at the end, and it’s an incredible journey and every second shows such passion in the work. and you can’t see that very often but when you do it’s really amazing.
i found out very last minute that they’re running a kickstarter to extend the story. watch the video and if it interests you take a look at their kickstarter.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1862188728/the-reward-tales-of-alethrion
so, they’re finally doing it and remaking the old ducktales game for the nes. before i say anything, i grew up through the nes days and this was back when capcom was beloved by everyone simply because they put out hit titles left and right. ducktales was an amazing game on the nes for it’s time. that was in 1990. it’s 1213 now.
what exactly is the demographic for this game outside of grabbing people with nostalgia for the nes game? i mean, is ducktales still somehow relevant in media? i don’t know because i don’t watch t.v anymore or know what kids are into, but i can almost assure you it’s not 80’s and 90’s cartoons.
if you watch the trailer it feels pretty cheap in a sense where it’s obviously trying to grab a few bucks from people who played the old games. you can’t tell me this is directed to kids now because who knows about ducktales and who knows about the history with the games outside of dudes and babes in their mid 20s and above?
if so, i guess that’s cool, but with the advances in technology and game design it just feels so weird that they’re doing a remake of a pretty good game during the 90’s. i mean, does that even translate to now?
instead of utilizing the new technology and new perspectives people have in the gaming world now, it feels pretty cheap that it’s just ducktales original with 3D backdrops. one could argue that capcom wants to bring ducktales to a new generation(yeah right) but in a world of advanced gaming i don’t see how young people would find this very engaging.
i’m sure there are plenty of dudes and babes seeing the trailer and are happy about it, and that’s cool. but when i look at it, it just feels really cheap. who is still talking about ducktales, guys? like, really.
it’s so weird seeing this game appear again. who exactly was asking for this? it’s like well, capcom has the license we need to make a few bucks.
ducktales was cool in the 90s with it’s platforming mechanics and music, but that doesn’t mean it will translate x years later. but it’s cool, as long as you play the ducktales song you can just forget about that because i am 2busy feeding on yo nostalgia, now buy me.
why are you so awful now capcom? i remember when you had to actually work for your fans to get them to buy your games.
look, let’s just all reflect and enjoy the best song from the nes title. you can’t talk about ducktales without posting about the moon stage song.
i haven’t really drawn in a while. this felt really-really good. it’s weird how if you don’t draw for a while you realize how much you missed it.
hey pal. to give you the short answer no. it would be nice to branch out and give people something to work on, but i don’t have the cheddah$$$ to commission that sort of stuff.
as far as free is concerned, i am not interested in that either for a few reasons. regardless if people want money or not, they need to be compensated. that’s my rule. if you’re contributing talent you need to be paid accordingly. if you’re offering free stuff, that’s unreliable for me, and i prefer paid stuff because you’re obligated to work on content.
i’ve had several people email me stuff wanting to work on the project and a lot of it is just too good. if you’re a unique artist, i’m always interested in looking at work if you have an interesting style. if you draw anime stuff it won’t fit in to the game, and that sort of thing does not interest me.
if you write music, i’m looking for classic video game vibes. not looking for these edited orchestrated jams because with music like that it becomes bigger than what the game is. it’s like hearing one winged angel in ff1. it’s stupid.
but yeah, if you have work please send your portfolio link or whatever to my email:
raquelapplegate28@gmail.com
and if i can find a place for it in the future i will be sure to contact you. additionally, if you’re an artist looking to get onto an upcoming project, ghost in a bottle games is looking for talented artists:
http://www.octopuscityblues.com/
thank you for showing interest dude. seriously.
This scenario takes place around and inside Mechah Mechanical Factory. Recently liberated by the Royal Army. A unit of soldiers with “unique” talents called Rudhira are sent in to study the technology. Unknown to them mechanical footsteps advance closer and closer to re-take Mechah Mechanical.
Thoughts and cuts -wrist wrist-
With various set backs I am going to introduce a demo to share with the public in the future. That is the new set goal. I originally wanted to share it with all of the features I had planned. The demo was going to consist of two scenario’s. A factory and a train. The factory scenario would take place a year before the train scenario.
I wanted to give players the option to ease slowly into the game and introduce the mechanics very slowly in the factory or let them jump right in and learn as they go from the train scenario.
The factory is important for two reasons: Introduce game mechanics that will be used throughout the game and setting up the story that takes place later. The idea is for you to learn everything that will be used later on in one area to make it easier later so you’ll know what to expect and apply what you’ve learned in the train scenario,
Sadly, I’m going to be cutting the train scenario out for the demo and focus on the factory. Additionally I’m going to be cutting a few features:
There will not be animated backdrops for battles.
Class dancing will be restricted to only a few classes.
Large battle characters will be gutted and the overhead pixels will be used.
Train scenario and sections of the factory will be unavailable.
Mechah Mechanical
Originally I had only thought of using the interior of Mechah Mechanical for players to explore as a basic area. Adding on slowly I never considered if I should establish a setting or mood outside of the factory. Taking more consideration of the setting as a whole, the factory being a platform for players to experience I thought it would be better and a lot more fun if you can explore certain outer areas of the factory.with their own sub-theme.
Climbing walls, jumping around a maze of crates on the roof, exploring the vast water system in the factory, etc. Early ideas.
I originally planned for players to explore six wings of the factory with different themes. Three of them will be blocked off simply because they’re still in development and I can’t focus all that time into different areas, regardless if I want to or not. The current wings are:
Development
Research
StoringUnderground testing
Chemical Lab and research
Outer Security wing
It is a lot to consider. Ultimately I think it would be better to emmerse the player in a large atmosphere allowing them to explore different sections if they choose to do so. I am a fan of linear kind of games, but allowing players to branch off too.
I would rather cut certain areas off to the player than produce a forced half thought out concept and just go “here you go”. The more content you add the harder it is to make sure every section is exciting and fun and simply not “hey bro walk through here rale quick 2boss”. It’s incredibly bad design and you don’t care or remember what you just experienced because it’s forced half used content.
Hopefully I can update some solid content eventually. It will take a long time to polish and finish this up, so I hope the people who follow the game can understand I am incredibly limited in terms of resources and time.
Until next time!
Introduce #yolo calender.
Demo factory design/throughts content and feature shrinking.
You aren’t entitled to sh—(Aliens Colonial Marines).
Is it retro?
Deciding on character visuals.
Q&A#2(Grrl talk).
Greetings from space!
Hello human beings. I apologize for the lack of updates. The reason for this is because I feel I should only post content when I actually make progress worthy of posting on the blog. I don’t like filler, even if it is required at times. I STILL DO NOT ENJOY IT!
Progress is a chain reaction for me, as I make design progress I share, and then I feel the need to discuss other topics that originated from that and so you get plenty of posts.
There will still be junk posts, especially with Hideo involved.
Moving forward I want to introduce to you the #YOLO calender. These are tiny goals regarding the tumblr I would like to tackle in the future and things you can look forward to. I will obviously be making posts in between these but it’s just to give you and myself something to look forward to.
Also, in regards to expanding, yes there will be an IndieDB page, DA, and Twitter account soon(tm). It depends on my own progress, so if you don’t see me posting it’s probably doing bad! I would really like to launch these profiles on the tumblr’s 100th post, which I’m pretty happy about.
100 might not seem like a lot to the folks of tumblr, but the majority of the stuff I’ve wrote I’ve been pretty happy with so it’s a big deal to someone like me. Let’s break down the calender.
Introduce #yolo calender.
Demo factory design/throughts content and feature shrinking.
You aren’t entitled to sh—(Aliens Colonial Marines).
Is it retro?
Deciding on character visuals.
Q&A#2(Grrl talk).
Stay tuned for design thoughts. Thanks guys.
I’m a big Bayonetta fan. It’s a great a game that does something that I don’t see done very often with new releases and that’s a game that has charm, and doesn’t take itself too seriously and it’s a wild and crazy ride. It’s not trying to be something big, and it just happens to be play incredibly well! The after effect of this is having a very big following of fans, myself included.
Um, most people know already that Bayonetta 2 is going to be a Wii U exclusive game. Now, instead of people being excited about the fact that Bayonetta 2 is going to be made, a lot of people are upset because it’s going to be exclusive to Wii U instead of being on Xbox or PS3 like Bayonetta 1. I don’t own a Wii U personally, and I probably won’t, but the fact that Nintendo is funding a game that otherwise wouldn’t be made is awesome to me, and I don’t see how ANYONE can be upset over this. It seems like people are acting like:
“Well if I can’t have it nobody can have it!” ~insert bib~
Am I kind of upset that it’s going to be exclusive? I only own Xbox personally. Well, it’s a shame, yeah, but I’m not really upset over it because like I said, I’d rather it be made and have it out there than not having it at all. Platinum games isn’t “out” to give their Bayonetta fans the bird.
I’m not a big console loyalist as I used to be when I was younger. It used to be Sega vs Nintendo which games had the better titles and the most games. I rode the Nintendo surf board all the way to Nintendo 64, and man, not even Starfox 64 or Goldeneye 64 could save it. I just instantly jumped ship to Sony Playstation and never looked back.
I’m an Xbox user now, mostly because a lot of great titles happen to filter through that console. I probably would have picked up the PS3 when it was released but “dat price”. I don’t know how cheap it is now, but whatever is on PS3 is usually on Xbox anyway. I’m a huge MGS fan, who isn’t right? and I still haven’t played MGS4. It would be great if it were on XBox but, I don’t go “F MSG 4 I WISH IT DID NOT EXIST BECAUSE I CAN’T PLAY IT RIGHT NOW” that’s silly.
I’ll get to Bayonetta 2 one day along with MGS4 and it will still give me a great experience regardless of what console it’s on.
