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Activity Boards => Assorted Creations => Topic started by: James Edward Smith on December 28, 2009, 08:06:12 AM

Title: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on December 28, 2009, 08:06:12 AM
I started a devlog for this.

http://bonusroom.livejournal.com/

The first entry is just a over view of the overall game idea. Future posts will hopefully be shorter and more interesting, but I felt I needed to get that description out of the way for anything to have any context.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Büge on December 28, 2009, 08:15:24 AM
Seems like you want to make this an historical sort of game. Why are there orcs?
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on December 28, 2009, 10:35:51 AM
The game isn't meant to be any more historical than any game with a typical fantasy setting. I mean, it's not set in stone or anything, I did originally toss around the idea of having it be at least based on real history of the 1500s, with selectable player characters based on real influencial military leaders of the time. But recently I've been favouring the idea of just having a completely fictional setting with a made up world and inhabitants that just happen to resemble Swiss mercenaries, German Landsknechts, French Gendarmes and Garcons, etc.

The only thing historical is the inspiration for the game's units and combat on pike and shot warfare. But inspiration is the key word here, the game will hopefully feel very arcadey when I am finished. If Zelda is an action RPG, then this will be a sort of action RTS, though I find my intentionally verbose descriptor of "Formation Shoot'n'stab'em'up" to be more appropriate.

Thus, I've been toying with the idea of having orcs/goblins in it, if not other mythical creators as well. Although I want most of the game to be formations against formations with the exception of some what less organized cavarly and desperate infantry charges, I like the idea of you fighting stuff like dragons for instance as level bosses sometimes.

From reading a little history of the time and getting a feel for the kinds of wars and problems that were going on at the time, my current idea for the Orcs is that they were hired as mercenaries to bolster a king's forces in a war against his neighbor. After one of the last major battles of the campaign the king didn't have enough funds to pay the wages of his orcish companies who were only mercs in his army due to impoverishment in their homeland and so they deserted and turned to brigandry and became a scourge in the surrounding country side. One of your campaigns is to clear them out.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: yyler on December 28, 2009, 10:56:47 AM
I really like the idea of this game. A lot a lot a lot. If you ever need testers or anything, I am definitely willing. This sounds like a very, very fun game.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on December 28, 2009, 11:18:30 AM
Swear I'm still doing the graphics on this thing! Just finished the last of my remaining school/work crap, so I can finally get back to this.

I'll try to get some kind of sample up when I get back from magfest and you can let me know what you like and what you want changed. Fantasy setting should help me sex up the look, though - expect the entire swordsmen class to be scantly-clad busty elf hookers.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on December 28, 2009, 01:04:41 PM
In regards to all the sword and buckler men and other small melee weapon guys, one of the main-ish mechanics of the game that I haven't discussed yet in this thread or the devlog is what happens when two soldiers collide.

When a soldier is shot he dies or is routed (possibly he always dies and soldiers around him have a chance to route based on their formation's morale...) and the same applies to when a soldier is struck by a pike tip. But when two soldiers collide with one an other, they break out into a melee fight with their katzbalgers (pikemen, arquebusiers, etc) or swords (Rodeleros, Gendarmes, etc) or what have you. These melee fights are automatic and resolve with a winner based on melee strength of the unit, an endurance level that is reduced by engaging in multiple melee fights in rapid succession and recharges fairly quickly, and a small element of chance. Soldiers will then die or run for it if they lose, or attempt return to their currently assigned place in their formation if they are victorious.

The only exception to this is if a mounted soldier colides with a soldier on foot, he will always cut him down. Cavalry must be struck with a pike or shot to be defeated or be defeated in melee with an other mounted unit. But I'll talk about cavarly some other time when I'm even sure they will be in the game. They might end up just being enemies, but I've also had the idea of making the recruitable and having them work sort of like homing missiles that you can release and retrieve with the same button and that are of course, vulnerable as I just described.

But anyway, as you can see, swordsmen/axemen are one of the least dangerous units since all they can do is collide with units and engage them in melee. As such, I don't see having them being recruitalbe as swordsmen. I might just make them convert to the lowest level of pikeman if you recruit them. However, Spanish Tercios did often include Rodeleros (sword and buckler men) who would run in under the pikes or from the flanks whenever their pikemen clashed with the enemy and the front line became messy. So with this in mind they might have a place in a player's formation as a sort of auxillery pike support unit that you unleash once your pikemen start striking something. This might become to complicated though and I want to keep things smooth and managable.

The only idea that I actually wanted to implement in terms of pikeman support units is the idea of "doppelsoldners". You can see in my sprites that I have halberdiers and a guy with the big two-handed sword refered to as a zweihander. The idea is that you can recruit or choose to upgrade some of your pikemen to these guys (it's random whether you get a guy with a halberd or a guy with a zweihander) rather than promoting them to ensigns (high level pikemen) and they are placed intermixed into your first two lines of pikes. You make these guys swing their weapons by pressing the shot button while the pike button is held down. Their swings can fell soldiers, but more importantly can knock aside enemy pikes making your pike charges more successful against other ready pike formations.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mongrel on December 29, 2009, 04:10:19 AM
Want to play this so hard.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Defenestration on December 29, 2009, 05:23:53 AM
What if you made the swordmen slightly faster than pikemen, and then giving them the advantage over them while they were in the swordsman's melee? After all, pikemen have this ginormously long weapon not suited for close combat. Then you sort of have a RPS thing going on; Calvary own soldiers (when properly "aimed"), pikemen own calvary (if they're quick enough), and soldiers own pikemen (when they get inside the range of the pike), and riflemen own everything, at the cost of them being less automated, harder to aim, extremely slow to reload, have shit for HP, and completely useless unless you have a number of them to attack in a reload wave like you described.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on December 29, 2009, 05:57:32 AM
Well, when pikemen come to melee they abandon their pikes and draw their katzbalgers for the duration of their little melee fight. But the idea is that melee fighter units will be stronger at melee than the other units with drummers and arquebusiers being the shittiest, pikemen sort of being in the middle and then doppelsoldners and swordsmen and de horsed knights being the best at it.

Melee fighting is really just there to give the game a less binary feel though. In what I would call a shitty implementation of my general sort of idea like the game Mercenary force on the Gameboy, colliding soldiers just die/deal damage. So swordsmen are really just the lowest tier most common enemy in that they damage you by just running into you except that in the game mechanics they don't just bump into you like a goomba, they actually mess you up. The idea is not to set up a situation where every unit is a rock to someone's scissors, melee troops need to be at a disadvantage against all the other units in the game so that I can throw a lot of them at you. Enemy shot and and pike guys are going to need neat little attack patterns with tells and vulnerable periods and all of that, but swordsmen, I can pretty much just send at you.

I like the more organic style my game will have of volleys of pike attacks always being the more decisive and desireable way to attack, but just bumping men into men not always meaning death, just a very dicey situation. Of course though, like any shmup, there are gonna be way more enemy troops in a level than you have, so a battle of attrition is the road to eventual defeat, your firepower and stand offish pike tactics need to be utilized to progress.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Defenestration on December 29, 2009, 06:05:37 AM
I wonder. Think they had primitive mortars or some other artillery that isn't catapults back then? Or do not plan on having a "bomb"?
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mongrel on December 29, 2009, 06:59:41 AM
They did have those, yes. As well as early field guns. The 1500's is plenty late enough for a very small number of mobile cannon (as opposed to the earliest ones, built on site for long castle sieges)
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on December 29, 2009, 07:09:06 AM
Cannons were in use before hand guns which started as literal "hand cannons" That you held and lit with a match manually, graduated to the matchlock and then eventually the wheel lock and the flintlock which along with the concept of the bayonette lead to the abandonment of the pike as a primary infantry weapon and brought combat to where it was during the American revolution, etc.

One of my original ideas was always to have artillery as a big AoE blast attack you could do that you had a limited amount of shots with that you had to collect or produce some how, but at the moment it's not really a priority for me. I'm only going to add actions for the player if they seem necessary or like they add an other layer or option for the player that feels necessary and/or fun. I don't want to overwhelm you with choices so I'm basically going to judge from play testing how many unit types really need to be in the game to make sure it doesn't feel overwhelming or overly simplistic. So it could end up that you just have pike and shot, you could get the doppelsoldner concept too, you could get cavalry and you could get artillery too. It all depends what level of complexity proves the most enjoyable and yet accessable.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on January 18, 2010, 10:10:13 PM
PIKENSHOT.

PIKE PIKE PIKE PIKE SHOT SHOT SHOT SHOT PIKE. EN. SHOT.

PIKE PIKE PIKE PIKE PIKE PIKE PIKE PIKE PIKE PIKE PIKE
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on January 18, 2010, 10:21:07 PM
Started hammering away at this, Geo. I'm aiming for something stylistically similar to Mother 3, if that looks alright. Now that I'm armed with the infinite power of C U B E   K I N G D O M (http://brontoforum.us/index.php?topic=4380.msg127500#msg127500)  this all seems way less daunting.

Here're (http://www.spriters-resource.com/gameboy_advance/mother3/sheet/28137) a couple (http://www.spriters-resource.com/gameboy_advance/mother3/sheet/6078) sprite (http://www.spriters-resource.com/gameboy_advance/mother3/sheet/14584) sheets (http://www.spriters-resource.com/gameboy_advance/mother3/sheet/6074) from Mother so you can get a sense for what I was kind of driving towards. Lots of frames of animation, fairly little detail apart from the expression.

Starting on the pikemen. Going for a slightly-tattered merc look, using this (http://www.st-max.org/images-people.htm) as base for the clothes. As for the colors, I've lost the link you sent me for those. I still have the YouTube clip, which I could use, but I seem to remember you having a picture somewheres with a colored set.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on January 19, 2010, 09:32:22 AM
Something that you need to focus on when you are doing these is the concept of having the legs of the character being a separate sprite from the upper body and arms. The way the code works now where the character is to be drawn is decided and then his legs, in whatever state of walking/standing they are currenly in, are drawn. Then his upper body is drawn in whatever frame of an animation it is currently in, so stuff from that part of the sprite can over lap the legs and feet sprite.

With how much I've had to work lately (I haven't had a week where I didn't work well over 40 hours) I haven't gotten as far on implementing sprite animation into the game as I would have liked to by now, but I have got pikemen walking around and lowering their pikes. I just need to implement the stuff for arquibusiers (I want their gun smoke to hang in the air where they shot and then allow them to disjoint from it if they keep moving right after they fire, etc) and then I can post a little demo of just where game is at so far for the first time on here.

But anyway, from just what I have with my sprites so far my main complaint is that my guys look too upright when they walk forwards or backwards as it makes everything look too static. I mean, it's sort of cute, having this perfectly upright formation of tin soldiers, but in my head I always wanted them to look more dynamic and distinct so that they don't all look like robots in perfect formation. Basically, I think the upper body needs to lean to look like they are sort running forward when they move forward with their grip on their pikes or whatever changing slightly between when they are moving backwards, forwards, maybe even when moving up or down, and some sort of little "ready to do something" animation for when they are just standing still.

It would be nice to have say three minor variations for all "major" animations like attacking, moving forward, etc so that I can randomly decide which one to play for each soldier when the formation is made to do something so that we get a little visual illusion of these actually being living individuals that actually have to breathe in and breathe out and fart everyonce in a while. It all sort of adds to the main idea of really simple controls and mechanics, with cute little details to make the whole thing seem almost realistic despite it being obviously an arcade game and in no way a simulation or RTS of any sort.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on January 19, 2010, 10:07:13 AM
I can do all of that, shouldn't be an issue. Seconding having 2 or 3 minor differences for each animation to give it a bit more life.

Something that you need to focus on when you are doing these is the concept of having the legs of the character being a separate sprite from the upper body and arms. The way the code works now where the character is to be drawn is decided and then his legs, in whatever state of walking/standing they are currenly in, are drawn. Then his upper body is drawn in whatever frame of an animation it is currently in, so stuff from that part of the sprite can over lap the legs and feet sprite.

Ah, alright. The only problem I can forsee is that I won't be able to draw in the walkbob sprites tend to have, where the standing animation is like one pixel higher than the walking ones:

(http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/3623/toadwalk.gif)

Do you just want me to draw this into the legs, and then you'll have the torso know to go up a pixel or two when that frame is activated on the legs?
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on January 19, 2010, 10:15:32 AM
Yeah, that sounds like the best option.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on January 29, 2010, 07:28:37 AM
Update'd (http://bonusroom.livejournal.com/)
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on January 29, 2010, 02:46:32 PM
Now with really primative alpha of engine for download (http://bonusroom.livejournal.com/)!
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on January 29, 2010, 02:55:32 PM
Getting errors on my computer - whenever I try to boot the exe, the thing fails and I get an "error signature":

Quote
AppName: condottierewars.exe      AppVer: 1.0.0.0     AppStamp:4b635db2
ModName: kernel32.dll      ModVer: 5.2.3790.4480      ModStamp:49c51f06
fDebug: 0       Offset: 0002237e

I'm running XP Professional 64x
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on January 29, 2010, 03:40:33 PM
Hmm, I've had trouble with this before when I was trying to test out Popegame with Tim on his Win64 box.

I'm gonna try to make a 64bit version for you, but in the meantime, try downloadng the XNA runtimes if you care to.

Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: yyler on January 29, 2010, 03:41:57 PM
I am running 32bit W7 and can't get it to run in any compatibility mode, but it's an alpha, so w/e
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on January 29, 2010, 04:12:19 PM
Thanks for providing no error information. Enjoy your no bug fix.

T KABBAGE: I'm fairly certain you'll just need to install the XNA framework. When I get like, an actual beta together in the near future, I'll bother making an installer that will install XNA and all that if the person doesn't have it automatically. But I just can't be arsed right now for how bare bones and no where near complete the thing is.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: yyler on January 29, 2010, 04:17:16 PM
Nothing happens at all. At all. You get no error information because nothing ever happens. At all. Unless this produces a debug file, I can't tell you anything.

And I have the XNA framework, I know that.

Again, it's an alpha engine release, so whatever no big deal. I don't expect a fix now since there'll obviously be one later.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Defenestration on January 31, 2010, 05:33:19 AM
I can't get it working either, but I'm also running a 64 bit OS (Vista Home). Here's the stuff C&Ped from the details drop down box if it will help.

Code: [Select]
Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
  Application Name: CondottiereWars.exe
  Application Version: 1.0.0.0
  Application Timestamp: 4b635db2
  Fault Module Name: KERNEL32.dll
  Fault Module Version: 6.0.6001.18215
  Fault Module Timestamp: 4995344f
  Exception Code: e0434f4d
  Exception Offset: 0002f328
  OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.256.1
  Locale ID: 1033
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on January 31, 2010, 12:20:35 PM
Hmmm, it worked for Kazz.

You guys need to be more like Kazz.

Steal his computer.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Kayin on January 31, 2010, 02:35:58 PM
Near same deal as Kabbage on 32 bit windows.

Quote
AppName: condottierewars.exe      AppVer: 1.0.0.0     AppStamp:4b635db2
ModName: kernel32.dll      ModVer: 5.1.2600.3541      ModStamp:49c4f751
fDebug: 0       Offset: 00012a6b

I got the XNA redistribute and everything like that too.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on January 31, 2010, 02:45:22 PM
Those messages really don't tell me much other than that the game crashed...

Uhm, looking around on the web leads me to believe that you either don't have .NET installed or XNA or some combination.

It works for Kazz and I know he has both of those so that's what I'm thinking right now.

In future I might work on making an installer that ensures this works on the majority of systems at least, but right now I'm really just prototyping the game. In all probability, I won't even use XNA for the final game itself anyway. I'll probably make it in Flash and action script if anything. So, long story short, if it's not working for you... yeah, I dunno, figure it out yourself. I'm not going to put a lot of work into making dumb windows stuff work when it probably won't matter in the long run anyway.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Kayin on January 31, 2010, 03:05:46 PM
I'm pretty sure I have both (i'm reinstalling .net to double check everything), but if this is just for prototyping, yeah whatever, don't waste your time with us.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on February 05, 2010, 04:38:00 PM
My alpha build wasn't working for a lot of you poor folks, so here's a video of me messing around in it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xszz89upHLM
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on February 18, 2010, 09:41:47 AM
I had a funny idea last night before I went to sleep of having a non-boring tutorial level by having this optional tutorial bit at the start of the game where you have to go into the bar/whorehouse that your merc company has shacked up in the night before and get all your starting troops out of bed and on their feet in a couple of ways that mimick how combat in the real levels works, just with no actual danger.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Norondor on February 18, 2010, 10:54:39 AM
Oh, that concept actually rules! Reminds me of the boot camp in the russian levels of Call of Duty 2, which were also cool and set the mood pretty well.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mongrel on February 18, 2010, 11:11:08 AM
Yeah, I like that too. It's pretty cute.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on February 21, 2010, 03:34:39 PM
PIKE
PIKE
PIKE
PIKE
SHOT
SHOT
SHOT
SHOT
PIKENSHOT

PIKE

N

SHOT
SHOT
SHOT
SHOT
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on February 21, 2010, 03:37:25 PM
No, I don't have that menu made yet, Kabbage. It's sadly not high on my priority list.

What is high, is me bugging you to make your sprites. I wanna see if I prefer them to mine. In the meantime, I just keep making my own sprites and I don't want to have to throw them all the way should your attempts seem amazing or something.

(http://tsamurai.pyoko.org/images/pikeandshot3.gif)
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on February 23, 2010, 08:56:43 PM
(http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/1660/cyclonestompler.gif)
(http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/7200/cyclonestomplerbig.gif)

Thoughts from a stylistic point of view?

I'm shooting for haggard conscript for this guy. I'll get up a merc in a bit. I remember you saying these were mostly folks off the street or farmers or what have you, and not professional soldiers.

Thinking of never having their eyes showing, or at least, only in extreme situations (the shotsman's helment would tilt back and his eye would be visible when shooting). So either different hairstyles/colors (for sharp contrast) or different hats/helmets.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on February 23, 2010, 09:11:19 PM
Huh, how about that. Turns out the bigger I make the sprite, the less awful I am able to make it.

(http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/3233/cyclonestomplerbig2.gif)
(http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/2602/cyclonestomplerbig3.gif)

I might just make them at a small scale, triple their size while preserving hard edges, and then do a bit of detail work.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on February 23, 2010, 09:31:00 PM
Pretty decent so far, Kabbage, I like his hair especially. I'll have to see how agressive he looks when doing attacking animations and such.

If you could make his tunic look more like a slashed doublet, that would be cool.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on February 23, 2010, 09:38:05 PM
Some pictures of the Swiss too.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on February 23, 2010, 09:47:39 PM
Now featuring PANTS

(http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/4614/cyclonestompler2big.gif)
(http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/3922/cyclonestompler2hueg.gif)

Alright, I'm gonna take a cyclonestab at slashed doublet
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on February 23, 2010, 09:56:16 PM
Now featuring PANTS

(http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/4614/cyclonestompler2big.gif)
(http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/3922/cyclonestompler2hueg.gif)

Alright, I'm gonna take a cyclonestab at slashed doublet

Messing around with colors. Gonna start adding a black layer too, on account of the forum background being pretty close to skin color.

Thinking I might do something with hard angles on the face shapes. Kinda like how that looks.

(http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/2569/pikeman02green.jpg)
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Classic on February 24, 2010, 12:49:05 PM
Umm... how much is this game going to be like darklands 2?
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on February 24, 2010, 08:22:11 PM
Well... ummm... Let me see.... hmmm. Darklands is a turn-based strategy game with a four character party system and Pike & Shot is a whimsical mutation of the side-scrolling shmup genre.

So...

Yeah...

I dunno, It's not going to be like it AT ALL I guess is where I would rate the relation.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Catloaf on February 24, 2010, 09:09:37 PM
So will there be a General sprite/hitbox for the troops to form around?  If so, only one, or multiple options with varied characteristics?

Also, please have some sort of powerup/special attack of a cannon strike or catapult barrage.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: NexAdruin on February 24, 2010, 09:39:15 PM
I really want to play this game a lot except as soon as I open it it crashes.

Is it not made to play well with 64-bit operating systems? Or is it my AMD processor?
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Defenestration on February 24, 2010, 10:10:41 PM
Now featuring PANTS

(http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/4614/cyclonestompler2big.gif)
(http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/3922/cyclonestompler2hueg.gif)

Alright, I'm gonna take a cyclonestab at slashed doublet
I'm confused why some pixels are larger than others.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on February 24, 2010, 10:30:49 PM
I dunno, it's a style I'm messing around with. Doing the basics at half that size, then doubling it and adding in detail.

Does it look like poopgame
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Detonator on February 24, 2010, 10:38:53 PM
I have to say yeah, the inconsistency does make it look a little "off".  Try keeping the detail level the same throughout the whole sprite.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Detonator on February 24, 2010, 10:57:46 PM
I gave it a quick hack-job in Paint, tell me what you think.

(http://i512.photobucket.com/albums/t322/DetonatorNova/cyclonestompler2hueg.gif)
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Defenestration on February 24, 2010, 11:07:45 PM
Honestly, Det's is better. Shave that one column off the unarmed arm so he doesn't look like he has a really fat elbow and it would be perfect.

I know I'm kind of talking out my ass here, but if you're going to do old school low rez sprites consistency is the name of the game. If you switch the resolution like that in the same sprite, it looks pretty awful.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on February 24, 2010, 11:10:04 PM
AW FUCK THIS

 :barf:

WHY DON'T YOU GET DET TO DO YOUR FAGGING SPRITES
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on February 24, 2010, 11:11:24 PM
Nah I agree - I'll see if I can pull off angular rather than retro and we should be the better for it.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Defenestration on February 24, 2010, 11:13:05 PM
Of course, all Det did was remove a few pixels off of an image that you created which is actually pretty awesome other than that small detail.

I actually really like the look of them honestly, but the sub-pixel thing really stuck out.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on February 25, 2010, 07:33:44 AM
"Sir, we are getting too much distortion from the sub-pixels for the byte matrix to fully re-align!"

"Ensign Kim, Try refining the beam resolution."

"I'm trying... No effect Captain! 30 seconds until containment breach!"


About the Demo I uploaded:
It won't work for most people. It only works for Kazz because he has the exact version of XNA I am running and the same OS. I have to republish the game by creating an installer project for it like I did with my old stab at making Popegame a while back. When I did that it worked on almost everyone's computers. The problem with the quick and dirty publish I did for that demo download is that it doesn't have an MSI that actually makes sure you have the right version of XNA installed and there's about 3 different versions of the XNA frame work that people could have so it causes problems on most systems. Just wait until I have a REAL demo ready and then I'll make a REAL installer and then most people's problems should disappear.

To address the question about the Captain/General:
This isn't something I have been dwelling on lately as it isn't really important mechanically in the game, but it has always been the intent even when I made my lame version for a school project. The concept is to have one and for there to be multiple guys to choose from. It might become mechanically important if I make it so that depending on the guy you choose, your formation forms and behaves differently. For example Gustuvus uses a swedish formation that works like the one you see in my video, Gonzalo uses a spanish tercio formation and can't concentrate as much firepower forwards, but fires shots in all directions instead, etc.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on February 25, 2010, 11:43:34 AM
Alright well, the more I use Cube Kingdom, the more it seems like more work than it's worth.

(http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/3904/cubekingdom.jpg)

It's way easier just to futz around in Photoshop than to get these damn dickhugging cubes to align right. I guess a big part of the problem is how limited the program is terms of not allowing me to select multiple blocks at once, or to copy and past sections. I can't even combine a sideview with the front view and intersect them - you have to do one at a time.

DAWW TA DICKS WITH IT

 :barf:

That said, I'm going to keep it around to make hats and helmets, on account of it giving me a decent idea of where there's depth. I can color farther-off blocks darker to give the sense of their position, which I'd have to say is easier here than in Photoshop.

I don't think I'm gonna keep using this, but it's a nice tool to have for the off item.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on February 25, 2010, 10:15:30 PM
Alright, this is my refined version of Red. Anything that looks even remotely off, lemme know:
(http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/9071/redpike.gif)(http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/6623/redpikeheug.gif)

Here's my new guy, The Beard:
(http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/1351/beardpikewpike.gif)(http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/9035/beardpikewpikebig.gif)

(http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/7567/beardpike.jpg)(http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/9576/beardpikebig.gif)
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Detonator on February 25, 2010, 10:56:28 PM
Beardly is the best
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on February 26, 2010, 09:50:54 AM
Yeah, when Kabbage showed me his original work in progress of the beard I thought it was pretty damn good. The thing is, originally I wanted almost all the guys in the game to have beards, but whenever I tried making a bearded sprite, it never looked right. The first sprite that I did that I really liked, the little armoured pikeman, wouldn't work with a beard and then all my sprites that I made from that base one never got to have beards.

But Jason's beard looks great, I really like the broadness of it and the sort of ragged quality it has without looking messy at all and being very identifiable as a beard. I think the shape of his visored kettle helmet could be improved a little though, like made a little flatter and wider in proportions, just a little. Otherwise I love him though. He might look better with a mustardy colour for his not red sleave and pant leg  rather than white. Just a thought.

I like Red too, but I don't feel like his chain mail thing he's got going on there really equates to anything Landsknechty. My suggestion is just to either ditch it and just give him a slashed doublet or swiss looking clothes instead of any armour or to make it look more like a Bishop's mantle which was the sort of thing a less professional guy like that would have as his only armour along with some leather gloves maybe.

These woodcuts are overly foppish due to being drawn by gay men who were only inspired by how the landsknechts actually looked with their intentionally wild and garish clothing, but they at least give a good idea of the elements of their dress and armour.
(http://www.st-max.org/images/woodcuts/unmodified/Doppelsoldner-3.jpg)(http://www.st-max.org/images/woodcuts/unmodified/Weber.jpg)
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on February 26, 2010, 07:17:37 PM
Yeah, that all sounds reasonable.

Also: I kind of really want to make an undead skeleton pike man guy, and potentially other demonic/angelic/monster creatures just for the sake of variety. If we're really not sure we're going to go with the fantasy thing just yet I could keep it to skull masks and bone armor and stuff - themed mercenary groups - but having them actually be monsters would be pretty sweet. Especially if the retreat mechanic allowed you to absorb them into your ranks.

Alternatively, I could just make all the human characters first and then we could figure it out later. I just think that it would be sweet to fight against skeleton men and bird shotguys and A Dude That Is Basically A Metalhead Version Of The Thing The Dark World Kid Kicks Around On Death Moutain In Link To The Past
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on February 26, 2010, 08:59:10 PM
Oh, by all means make skeleton guys if you like. One of the themes for the game that I am sort of tossing around is that modernization of warfare is leading to man over powering the old magical enemies he faced in the past with practical means like gunpowder, so blasting nercomantic hordes fits that well.

I think Skeletons would be unrecruitable as they always just disintegrate, but they could be just used as cannon fodder by a faction of necromancer and dark knight sort of guys and those guys could be recruitable and could perhaps spawn skeletons for you.

One of the main themes is that most of the people you face are by and large mercenaries. This is for a couple of reasons. Firstly, this is true to the time period where mercs were the most used and most capable infantry in the 1450-1600 era. Secondly, it nintendo-logic explains why you can recruit fleeing troops, they have no national loyalty to their side.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on March 01, 2010, 07:37:30 AM
Yeah, I like the idea of a faction that has very gothic looking, black armoured fighters, and then necromancers as their shot troops who conjure a little magic hadoken to throw either in their hands or on the end of a staff instead of loading their arquebus or winding up their crossbow. When they hit guys it can deal damage (usually things are all one hit kills for now but that's subject to change) or instead of having a chance to route the guy like most attacks, they can spawn a skeleton melee guy instead right where the guy was standing. Skeletons will just automatically try to attack whatever is closest to them, little throw away melee menaces for the enemy. This makes them cool to have as well as a unique enemy to face who can really disrupt your formation if he gets a skeleton upon a hit.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on March 01, 2010, 08:20:59 PM
Uh Geo the PR boys are really pushing the rebranding to "Cyclone Stomplerz: Fusion Collect"

I'm fighting them on the z but they want this to hit the 8-12 market like a fucking hurricane. Also it's going to be set in the Ben 10 universe apparently so we should probably figure out how to get this to work
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on March 01, 2010, 08:22:40 PM
Jerry wants to know how you feel about collectible glowing starfish
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on March 01, 2010, 08:31:46 PM
WHAT PR PEOPLE? You mean Jerry? He doesn't get any say, Kabbage. The man runs the slushie machine at an icerink, stop asking him for his thoughts on the game!
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on March 11, 2010, 08:44:36 PM
Tried to incorporate Geo's tweaks. Anything else look off?

(http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/3582/beardpike.png)(http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/3582/beardpike.png)

Also trying to get the walking animation looking right but legs are a right and proper motherfucker to get looking not terrible.

(http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/9861/beardpike.gif)

Ehhhhhhh
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on March 12, 2010, 10:55:33 AM
The helmet is much better now I think. The walk animation needs to be more elaborate and such though, you know, more than just the legs animating, that's what I have now.

This past week although I didn't work on the game as much as I wanted to, I did get rudimentry piking working, and I got melee "engagement" working, that is to say, if two guys collide with one an other, they start fighting with swords. Right now everyone just has a 50/50 shot at winning that fight.

One big thing I fixed is that the formation now works really smoothly in that left or right motion of the formation during an action like the pikemen moving to the back and the shot moving to the front say, does not result in the guys moving the same way as the formations movement taking too long to get to their position and not allowing the shot to fire until they do so. Now, the formation figures out that it is moving in a way that is gonna slow up guys getting out of the way and it makes the guys that could move in the opposite direction of the formation's movement do so to clean up the problem. The result is a much more responsive seeming formation.

How come you ditched your more detailed pike head? I liked that thing. It looked more like how they looked than the angled one you have on there now.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on March 12, 2010, 01:04:48 PM
I still haven't really gotten around to finding a good picture of an old-timey pike head and sexing it up a bit. I'll put little variations on the pike head when I put out new sprites and y'allz can let me know which ones look cool.

I'll add two or three more frames to the feet and see if I can get this looking better.

Does the mustard color look off? I'm thinking of making it brighter, more of a yellow, but I dunno.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Classic on March 12, 2010, 01:07:29 PM
How tough would it be to make the helmet move with his walk?
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on March 12, 2010, 01:11:03 PM
Does the mustard color look off? I'm thinking of making it brighter, more of a yellow, but I dunno.

Hard to say.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mongrel on March 12, 2010, 01:17:45 PM
The mustard looks a little green right now. Something you guys will need to think about at some point is what kind of backgrounds you'll have and how these guys will look against them.

Also, Classic kind of has it. For a good motion, they might need other parts to move too (bouncing helmet/cuirass, etc.), to give their walk a bit of that "clanky" or "guys in armour" feel.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Miss Cat Ears on March 12, 2010, 01:21:16 PM
I wouldn't call it mustard since it is green, but you could just call it green and be done.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on March 12, 2010, 01:24:42 PM
As for pike heads, Something like this little MSpaint mock up I just did would be cool. Note the struts on the sides of the shaft.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on March 12, 2010, 02:01:45 PM
Dannngg that looks sweet
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: yyler on March 12, 2010, 02:03:52 PM
I think his walk would look better if his pike moved a bit on a small angle, just a coupe of degrees

Ain't no pikeman gonna keep that thing straight up constantly in my opinion
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on March 14, 2010, 05:11:39 PM
(http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/550/beardpike2.gif)

Alright, three more frames definitely helped. I'm thinking about the torso and pike jostle now. I can make the arms and pike a seperate element from the torso, so that I have a jostle animation for when the pike's upright and another for when it's leveled, as well as an impact variant for when some poor bastard gets run through.

Is that possible? Each character having three separate elements - one for their feet, one for their arms/weapons, and one for their torso/head?
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Lottel on March 14, 2010, 05:19:25 PM
(http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/550/beardpike2.gif)
:luv:
That is a beautiful sprite walking animation.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: yyler on March 14, 2010, 05:24:51 PM
It is good, yeah. Much better than the previous.

Uh maybe this question was for Geo regarding the engine, but in case it is more general as an "is this possible" thing: Valve uses separate animations like that in L4D2. Peep 4:42 in this video to learn more (http://is.gd/aEBkh)!
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on March 14, 2010, 05:25:58 PM
(http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/550/beardpike2.gif)
Is that possible? Each character having three separate elements - one for their feet, one for their arms/weapons, and one for their torso/head?

Anything is POSSIBLE.

Currently with my graphics I just have feet as one sprite and then everything else as the other sprite with the legs only caring whether the soldier is moving or not and the upper body doing stuff according to the Soldier's state and a stateTimer.

Currently my pikemen have pike lowering frames with two different endings for a fulling lowered pike, lowered-high, and lowered-low. They also have frames for when they stab someone so that they recoil from the blow, they have a death animation, and they have a melee animation for when they get engaged
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on March 14, 2010, 07:14:48 PM
Anything is POSSIBLE.

 :imagination:

I guess my question would be if it'd be a huge pain in the ass to have the three separate, or if you'd just rather I make it like your sprites. I ask largely because having the arms separate would allow me to make the armor jostle and the helmets move slightly during all walking animations, whereas if they were part of the arm's animations, I would have to make two sets - one with the armor jostling during a walking pike-lowering, and another without the armor jostling when the player's standing still and lowering the pikes.

Like it would be exponentially more simple to have a torso-still and torso-walking animation to be activated whether you're moving or not. Regardless of what the arms would be doing (moving the pike into place or recoiling from the hit or keeping it locked in place), the torso would always be jostling in the right way.

As an aside, having torso on its own would also allow me to make bad guys, bosses, and hero character's expressions change as appropriate during fights. Battle damage would be an option too.

ALSO: TWO THINGS: (1) What's the difference between lowered_high and lowered_low from a gameplay perspective (2) I just realized that the golden age of pirates more or less overlaps with the golden age of pikemen - around 1700 - and that we could totally have pirate shotmen and swordsmen and a fight on a boat maybe against THE KRAKEN

how fucking sweet would that be

edit: awww sheeeee we could even have them fighting mermaids with tridents and shit too during the fight
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on March 15, 2010, 06:37:10 AM
I'm pretty much fine with programming whatever to make graphical effects like that more practical. Adding more segments if you will to my soldier class to each be drawn based on state is a problem, that's what object oriented design is all about!

Currently, there is absolutely nothing mechanically different about lowered-high and lowered-low, I just did it so that the first two rows of pikemen look like the second row is holding their pikes over the shoulders of the men in front of them.

Also, yes to a Seadogs faction and yes to a Byzantis faction (A faction made up of aquatic warriors from the fabled Lost City of Byzantas, located beneath the Byzantic Ocean).
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on March 15, 2010, 10:48:10 AM
PIKE
PIKE
PIKE
PIKE
SHOT
SHOT
SHOT
SHOT
PIKENSHOT
PIKE...N...SHOTSHOTSHOTSHOTSHOTSHOTPIKENSHOTSHOT
PIKE
PIKE
PIKE
PIKE
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on March 28, 2010, 04:05:48 PM
From a Google Buzz convo:

Quote from: Geothermal
I was really getting a kick today about the idea of Pike & Shot having a sort of SMB3/Mario World style map. The map would not have fixed paths, you would just walk around it freely like in zelda or Mount & Blade (Heh, it just occured to me that my title is sort of like Mount & Blade, almost similar setting though the eras are off and the actual game play is about as similar as asteroids to donkey kong, but whatever).

There would be keys that you find in levels that you can use to open big gates on the map screen but there are more gates than there are keys, so you have to choose. Behind one of the gates might be a port city with a little sailing ship that you can jump in like the canoe in SMB3 and sail around with to find levels on other continents, stuff like that.

I wanna come up with more ideas for it though, make it really varied but gamplayless other than just the aspect of exploration, the levels are the real gameplay of the game, this is just a cute extra.

Quote from: Kabbage
Exploration would be cool, yeah. We'd have to figure out how combat would play into the overworld screen though. Would we just enter a level and start in formation? Or would we have a hero character as Our Guy, who at the press of a button would switch from being able to take on single guys with his sword to calling up the formation for bigger battles.

I dunno, I'll have it in the back of my head for a while. It's a good thought, I'm just trying to think of how we'd get in and out of formation battle, and if we would think about how redundant zooming in and out of certain screens might get. It could be worth our while to have everything take place on the same plane, and just have our troops capable of appearing when called when there's a lot of enemies.

Quote from: Kabbage
One thing I'd love to do is undirected exploration of some kind. When I'd play games like Master of Magic or Heroes of Might and Magic 2, among the best parts are finding little caves or abandoned ruins or out-of-the-way locations and finding goodies inside after a fight.

We could do something like Chrono Trigger's overworld in appearance, with our guy moving around in whatever direction until he hit an enterable location. It would then bring up the recon report and you'd get your mans in order before deciding whether or not to enter the fray. Any area you conquered could become a rest and recruiting stop, with troops unique to that area available for purchase. So if you beat a bandit camp in the woods, you'd get mercs to choose from. Beat a volcano and you get some skeleton summoners or lava dudes. A port gets you pirates and sailors, as well as certain travel routes you can take on the sea.

Sometimes there's a seedy guy at the newly conquered port bar, going on about an alternative route through the MERMAID INFESTED SHALLOWS.

Quote from: Geothermal
My original idea is in its simplest form is just to have it work just like mario 3 where there is a map screen where you just have your hero character or a scout or something and there are stages that you can enter with that guy which brings your army over and then you enter the level with a simple screen transition as whatever your formation is after the last level ended and you made your upgrades and sackings. It would be more free roaming like Chrono Trigger's world map though and stages would be stuff like enemy armies, towns under attack with visible fires and fight clouds, little enemy forts with their troops clearly visible inside the ramparts, a great seabeast's head in the water, stuff like that. All levels will have suitable cleared state look too, the fires are out and the attackers gone, stuff like that.

We could have mobile stages too like in Star Fox 2 or UN Squadron where there are mobile enemy forces or supply trains, bandits, that sort of thing that you can attack for extra cash or in the case of enemy armies, to prevent them from endangering a stage you cleared by contesting it again.

I do like the idea of cleared stages offering mercs of their "type" though. It reminds me of a reall old idea I had for a strat RPG where you went around ficitional Asia recruiting forces that had different types like sumo guys, Indian warriors, Samurais, Japanese feudal police guys, etc and the game would be designed that certain guys worked well with eachother and strengthened their effectiveness through synergy.

But yeah, just keep in mind that the mantra for this game is elaborateness of features and possibilities AS LONG AS it never leads to complication of the player's interaction with the game. All the player has to do is click his pike button, or click his shot button and then he can wander around a map and select stages

upgrading your squad, I would like to happen as automatically as possible with the decisions being almost not there or handled as a result of who you recruit in battle
if you want a lava guy, route one in a level and then make sure he doesn't get killed.
Eventually he will be a cool high level fire guy.

But really, I want almost any formation to work, so long as you keep enough pikes and enough shot to fit your play style.

They one thing I may allow is the ability to swap pikes for shots, or vice versa so you don't end up with a lop sided formation and no quick way to fix it for yourself if that's what you want to do.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on April 07, 2010, 03:41:23 PM
ALRIGHT FOLKS TRUTH TIME

I saw this guy Metaru (http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/46669.htm)'s style over on Pixel Joint and I kind of fell in love with it so I'm experimenting with the technique a bit.

I like that it's kind of gangly and that all of the limbs are visible and that it would be very easy to animate fluidly on account of the v. basic use of colors. Here's Red done up in the style:

Stern'n'manly:
(http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/5909/bigred.gif)
(http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/5369/red2.gif) vs (http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/9071/redpike.gif)

With Pretty Eyes:
(http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/475/redm.gif) vs (http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/9071/redpike.gif)

Discounting that it looks really weirdly like Scott Pilgrim is this better or worse because I kind of like it.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on April 07, 2010, 04:11:06 PM
I think it's an unfair comparison because the new guy is in a cool pose.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Ziiro on April 07, 2010, 04:14:41 PM
His outfit reminds me of a Star Trek uniform
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on April 08, 2010, 02:55:38 PM
fuck you
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: MadMAxJr on April 08, 2010, 03:26:37 PM
Scott Pilgrim, now with pikes.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on April 08, 2010, 03:52:51 PM
Alright you dickhuggers

CHECK IT:

(http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/8051/redc.gif)

Thoughts?  thumbs up or down

I changed Red's clothing to a doublet, albiet not really a slashed one. This is partially because I couldn't find a color picture for reference that didn't look terrible, and also due to general laziness in not wanting to get in all the detail:

(http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/5909/bigred.gif)

I'm going to make him look less like Scott Pilgrim as I get into it a bit more. I'm on the fence on whether I want to go back to no-eyes or not yet.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on April 08, 2010, 04:54:54 PM
It's an interesting direction.

I would like to see him bearded and such, but there's lot of different guys that need to be depicted so I'm sure there's room for a clean shaven raggamuffin like him to.

My only big dislike is his overly contemporary fashionable appearence with his fitted tops and baggy trousers. Really, for it to look period and correct as a merc or landsknecht, his top should be more billowy and his pants skintight.

Here's a random DoppelSoldier for inspiration.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on April 08, 2010, 05:15:23 PM
As far as how the game is coming:

I had a big lapse of disipline last month that led a bunch of weeks of no work being done on the game. But now I'm back in the saddle and this week has actually been pretty productive.

Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on April 08, 2010, 06:16:31 PM
(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)

(http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/5883/redbeard1.gif)

Better?

It's way easier to edit this now that I've got all the layers worked up nice-like. Whenever I post anything ever be brutal as a motherfucker.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Royal☭ on April 08, 2010, 06:31:42 PM
Could Kabbage make some headless bodies, then a variety of heads and have the game randomly select them?  Totes Increase the motley-ness of your crü.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on April 08, 2010, 06:58:11 PM
Yeah, I'm trying to make them as MODULAR as possible.

MODUSHOT
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Beat Bandit on April 08, 2010, 07:22:42 PM
C-c-Constantine's is bigger!
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Royal☭ on April 08, 2010, 07:27:17 PM
And vastly more terrifying.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Beat Bandit on April 08, 2010, 07:32:58 PM
Whatever, mine is faster.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mongrel on April 08, 2010, 07:34:18 PM
Yeah, but yours isn't properly synched to his walk speed, so he looks like he's gliding.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Beat Bandit on April 08, 2010, 07:35:29 PM
That's the secret to his speed!
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Detonator on April 08, 2010, 08:15:57 PM
(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)
(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)
(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)
(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)(http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/9471/redbeard.gif)
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on April 08, 2010, 08:26:30 PM
FOORR MATTT IIOOONNNN

Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Royal☭ on April 08, 2010, 08:49:22 PM
PIKE
PIKE
PIKE
PIKE
PPPPPPIKE
PIKE
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Royal☭ on April 08, 2010, 08:49:28 PM
AND
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Royal☭ on April 08, 2010, 08:49:42 PM
SHOT
SHOT
SHOT
S
S
S
SHOT
SHOT
AND
PIKE
AND
SHOT
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on April 09, 2010, 09:18:13 AM
hahahahaha  :perfect:
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on April 12, 2010, 09:46:18 AM
Hahah, my Goblin slinger's shoot animation looks so hawt.

Hey Jason, do you have an animated gif capable app handy? I'd love if I could send you the sprites for him and have you make a little animated gif for me to use as an avatar some time. I gotta work on the game or I'd do it myself.

As for other musings. I thought today it might be cool to extend the games initial campaign through a user made levels frame work. They idea is that if I release the game with a level editor, people could submit levels and then we could review them and make new monthly campaigns from the ones really really liked.

We could make our own new levels to flesh out the campaigns if we didn't get a lot of submissions we liked or if we wanted to make some sort of plot happen in that "chapter" and needed an other level here or there to have it make sense, that sort of thing.

Since the game will end up with a distinct graphical style, I'd be hesitant to allow for user created sprites for units, but we could always release new units everyonce in a while for people to use in the level editor.

Anyway, this is a very high level, crazy idea. But it could be cool if the game was actually cool enough to foster a community.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on April 12, 2010, 01:36:49 PM
Little youtuber of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWZ65UR8EfU

Watch in 720p and fullscreen it to really see anything.

Remember again that my FRAPS is only set to 30 fps, is in the actual game the animation is actually much smoother.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on April 12, 2010, 03:47:44 PM
oh god that animates likes BUTTER

If you're up for making a level editor, totally. They'd have to be able to add in dialogue options, though, or at least something to give it context. That could get complicated.

I'm actually probably going to put the head sprite and the torso sprite in the thread so anyone who wanted to make a face and an outfit could do so. Judging by how it looked, we could use the heads for variations. I don't exactly expect too many bites, but it could be cool.

I'm working on the upright pike and lowering animations, then it's on to the impact hit animation (complete with grimace), then death. After that, the shotsmang.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on April 12, 2010, 03:51:06 PM
Huh. Does that look slow to anyone else?
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Miss Cat Ears on April 12, 2010, 03:56:10 PM
you are slow
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on April 12, 2010, 04:03:28 PM
That gif stutters during the back swing, man. You repeated two of the frames.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on April 12, 2010, 05:02:48 PM
Alright! Geeeezzzzzz
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on April 12, 2010, 05:16:30 PM
Ahhh, that's the stuff.

They said I was mad when I said I was going to make a Goblin Slinger in MSpaint. Bwahahaha!
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on April 15, 2010, 08:19:07 PM
(http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/1346/redupwalk.gif)

Something seems off. I might have to give the arms a bit of a drag behind the torso, so they and the pike bounces a bit with his high steps.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Defenestration on April 15, 2010, 10:34:19 PM
I think what's off is that the pike is about 8 inches lower than his feet, so whenever he walks he will be leaving a furrow in the ground from the bottom of the pike.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on April 19, 2010, 06:52:25 PM
Skeleton isn't close to done, just felt like posting it at stage 1.

I doubled the size of Red and added in some detail. I'm thinking of doubling the size of my guys and working with more detail, but that naturally makes animation a bit harder.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Rico on April 19, 2010, 11:25:39 PM
That looks totally wrong.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on April 20, 2010, 05:35:22 AM
:joke:

Wait really or are you just making a big red joke
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on April 23, 2010, 01:12:50 PM
From Google Buzz and the Buzzards:

Their mechanics still need to be properly implemented, but here's the swing animation on my Zweihander wielding Dopplesoldiers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLqS3HvA5Rk

JasonKabbage, would you be up for making an animated gif for me?

James SmithGeo T. Hermal - Hahaha, I didn't realize that FRAPS recorded the sound from my ventrilo. Enjoy listening to Ziiro complaining about a HoN game he's playing.

Joel ConstantineConstantine - Man, this game IN DEVELOPMENT is single-handedly destroying Roger EbertCancerman's "Games Can't Be Art" argument. This looks hella sweet. When you finish it, I will totally post it on my blog and my one reader (my friend I talk to anyway) will totally play it.

James Smith Geo T. Hermal- With a grass roots buzz like this building, Pike & Shot will be the next biggest thing since Peanutbutter & Jelly! (The indie game, not the sandwich)
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Beat Bandit on April 23, 2010, 01:51:24 PM
Why do the gunners shoot sperm cells?  :nyoro~n:
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on April 23, 2010, 02:04:55 PM
Why does uncooked pancake batter smell like sperm when cooked pancakes don't taste like it?

Sometimes coincidences just spring up in the universe. They don't always have to mean something.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Niku on April 23, 2010, 03:05:58 PM
Geo please edit your post above the one above this post right here with Ziiro's real name, as using internet handles on an internet messageboard is making me uncomfortable.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Ziiro on April 23, 2010, 03:09:38 PM
Hey, I could totally do the voice work for Pike and Shot if it's necessary. Listen to me, I'm a natural.

I was doing the voice of the goblin that got struck down there. I couldn't do anything because I couldn't move, and I can't stop dying.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on April 23, 2010, 03:14:29 PM
Geo please edit your post above the one above this post right here with Ziiro's real name, as using internet handles on an internet messageboard is making me uncomfortable.

It was copy and pasted from Google Buzz which uses whatever people have as their name in their profile. Sorry?
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Niku on April 23, 2010, 03:26:10 PM
Ziiro please start using Google Buzz as your internet handle shenanigans are bothering my delicate sensibilities.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Ziiro on April 23, 2010, 03:31:14 PM
Never.

Suffer in the shadow of my pseudo anonymity.

Topic at hand:

At first I was wary of this game and this project, but the more of the videos I see and the gameplay in action I'm excited to try it.

Hurry up with those backgrounds though - the black is so boring goddamn.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on April 23, 2010, 05:25:17 PM
Well, the movies are not really indicative of how the gameplay will really work, to me anyway. I mean, they do show how it is a battle of formations and such, but the formations in that last video anyway, were just for testing purposes and where very irregular in terms of make up and primative in terms of behaviour.

The top formation simply moves left for 1000 ms, idles for 1000 ms, fires for 1000ms, repeat.

The bottom one just loves left, idles, then right. These were just test formations created to see that my level files work.

My formation is just the pikeman that the game generates as the player formation automatically at start up now, and then I added some Dopplesoldiers to it and started recording. But I'm glad that even in this primative prototyping phase it still seems interesting.

As for the background, I'm actually moving forward with the idea that the main background will always be black with little pieces of terrain scrolling by depending on what level it is and what's in that level. There would also be a top bar of terrain that looked like the horizon. It would sort of look like the battle screen in FF1.

(http://www.zabery.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/final-fantasy-1.png)

I dunno if I'll stick with this though.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on May 06, 2010, 08:57:32 PM
Okay, so I'm still working on the level editor so that I can get down to making you know... LEVELS.

But here is the current state of the engine as it were.

INSTALL THIS (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6521d889-5414-49b8-ab32-e3fff05a4c50&displaylang=en)

and then

INSTALL THIS (http://tsamurai.pyoko.org/downloads/PikeAndShot.rar)


Stuff you can do:

arrow keys - walk around
Z - pike
X - shot
hold Z and then press X - slash

A - decrease formation width
S - increase formation width

Q - spawn a pikeman
W - spawn an arquebusier
E - spawn a crossbowman
R - spawn a goblin slinger
T - spawn a dopplesoldier

XBOX 360 control equivalencies

A = left shoulder
S = right shoulder
Z = A button
X = X button

dpad for walking
back button can be used to close the game


Stuff you should do:

Mess around with it and then tell me what you think of how everything handles and stuff. Should the guys be smaller or bigger or whatever? Stuff like that is what I am interested in at this point. Of course stuff like that will be easier to provide opinions on once I actually have some sort of level put together.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Royal☭ on May 08, 2010, 06:16:36 AM
That's pretty neat!  Some observations: If you have a large enough group, it's possible to advance in spite of yourself by using SHOT over and over again.  Controls seem smooth, but guys probably need a bit more space or something to define them more when they're together.  Kind of creates a giant visual mess when you have a bunch together.  Otherwise, looks fine.  Looks like the doppelsoldiers might have limited range compared to the pikemen though
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on May 08, 2010, 08:32:30 AM
Quote from: Constantmean
Looks like the doppelsoldiers might have limited range compared to the pikemen though.

Well the current idea - and this as with everything is subject to change based on how people like it or not - is that Dopplesoldiers (and halberd guys which serve the same purpose etc) are there for two gameplay reasons

1. To maybe kill guys that get past the first row of pikes due to pike recoil, etc.

2. To knock enemy lowered pikes out of the way (a pike head that gets hit with a slash sends its pikeman into a recoil state) so that your pikemen can stab them.

So they are really just meant to be an augmentation to your pike attack to make it more powerful and durable in a push.

Now that said, as the are an icing on the cake sort of unit, you aren't supposed to have a lot of them or even have them at all most of the time. The idea is that if you get a pikeman to the top of the pikeman upgrade tree, you have two options.

a. Make him into an ensign which adds a little flag to his pike and makes him the best pikeman plus it makes him increase speed of the formation a little like how drummers do, only to a lesser extent.

b. Make him into a dopple soldier.

So it's sort of a player choice at that point as to what you want out of this elite guy.

Quote
bunch of other good comments etc

I gotta go eat, but I'll talk about some more some stuff when I get back.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Beat Bandit on May 08, 2010, 05:48:23 PM
I have piked

and

I have shot.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mongrel on May 08, 2010, 06:45:54 PM
Psssst.

They're called Doppelsoldners.

:slow:
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on May 08, 2010, 07:43:35 PM
I know that, but why not just translate Soldner to Soldier? It's almost identical. I mean, I leave in Doppel because it looks classy, better than Doublesoldier. That just sounds like an Eggman meme!

I have piked

and

I have shot.

Damn straight. I envision an arcade instruction marquee style control settings screen that labels the Z and X buttons appropriately as the Pike and Shot buttons.

But back to Constantmean's comments since I HATE EVERYONE ELSE'S ARRRGGGG!

Quote from: Constantmean
If you have a large enough group, it's possible to advance in spite of yourself by using SHOT over and over again. 

This is due to an overarcing formation handling philosophy that is perhaps in retrospect incorrect, at least partly.

See the problem comes from the fact that due to the formation and the soldiers themselves having almost the same speed, if the formation is moving in the same direction as a soldier needs to move to get to a newly appointed position within the formation due to a pike or shot command, he will crawl towards that location and not reach it for a long time, this could prove problematic in a number of situations such as say the front row of shot not being able to get out of the way to allow the next row to fire, shot not being able to get to the rear and let the pikes get to the front when the formation is retreating, etc.

My current solution to this is just to reposition where the formation actually is to make it so that the soldiers who are out of place are actually in place and the other soldiers just have to move against the direction of the formation's movement. This is very easy as instead of fighting against the movement of the formation, they are moving opposite to it and reach their destination very quickly.

This works, and looks good when you are only dealing with a couple of rows of guys, but does start to get unwieldly once get a big formation with the formation basically moving forwards if you move backwards and constantly shot, etc.

maybe this is an interesting mechanic that players have to take into account, you can't fire and effectively retreat at the same time? maybe it's annoying and feels wrong despite being realistic. It's some what hard to say because I'm thinking in practice, I'm going to balance the game such that huge formations like that don't occur normally. But I'm leaning mostly towards saying it's unsatisfactory as it stands now. My current idea for a fix is just to give soldiers super speed when they are moving in the direction the formation is moving equal to their speed PLUS the formation's speed. This will look sort of artificial and silly, but that's what I'm going for with the game anyway and I think it will make for a much nicer control feel for the formation. I might leave it so that enemy formations still work like how it is now though so that they appear realistic and the player's formation is clearly this super thing equivalent to the ships in conventional shumps that seem to move way faster than any enemy and shoot bullets that move way faster too.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mongrel on May 08, 2010, 08:18:56 PM
Oh, I got your intentions just fine.

I was just being a dick. :slow:
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Royal☭ on May 08, 2010, 08:31:03 PM
Actually wouldn't it be more realistic for the first row to simply kneel and reload while the later rows fire from behind?
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on May 08, 2010, 08:46:30 PM
Maybe with more modern looking formations of just two rows, but my formation is meant to be more reminiscent of the much older pike & shot formations like the Spanish Tercio.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on May 18, 2010, 11:18:51 AM
Alright after deciding to double the size of these sprites, I had to redo the legs a bit and touch up a lot of the annoying little frames that I wasn't nuts about. I should be able to color the legs individually now, as well as use it as the basis from any non-human weird legs like skeleton dudes or lavamen.

Working on the pike-down-to-pike-up transition, then it's the gunman.

(Pace of running will be way slower in game, on account of you backing up a lot and inching forward and such)
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mongrel on May 18, 2010, 12:46:01 PM
Hot damn, that's like buttah.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mongrel on May 19, 2010, 06:42:43 AM
The Pike And Shot Society (http://www.pikeandshotsociety.org/)

Hey Geo, you ever see this?
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on May 19, 2010, 11:23:59 AM
Yeah, they have a newsletter called the arquebuiser.

There's a good German reinactor group of Landsknechts with some German name I don't understand too.

Most British Pike & Shot enthusiast seem to be interested mostly in the English Civil war for obvious reasons. But I like the earlier fazes of Pike and Shot warfare like the Italian wars and when the Netherlands were rebeling against Spain and stuff like that.

There's a sort of hokey, but sort of cool Spanish movie about the death of the Spanish Tercio as a battlefield dominator Called Captain Alatriste. It's got pretty cool depictions of Pike & Shot era land battle, sea battles, seiges and duels but it's very melodramatic at times and the acting is all over the place from competent to laughable.

Lets just say, it's entertaining, but a Mel Gibson Epic would frequently be less eye roll worthy.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on May 19, 2010, 12:15:08 PM
Upright pikemang

Again, the walking speed's going to be way slower in-game.

edit: Updated
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Ziiro on May 19, 2010, 12:17:31 PM
(http://brontoforum.us/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=4326.0;attach=2943)

It looks like he has a bit of a hobble.

Also the end of the pike is a little inconsistent. Is it capped with metal? It seems to change between frames.

That's weird. Your attachment doesn't do it, but this one does.

Edit: I'm on to you, Kabbage! Trying to edit your post and re-upload your image so mine breaks! :oic:
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on May 19, 2010, 12:55:07 PM
Still figuring out the armor jostle. IN PROGRESS.

I tried making the arms bounce a bit as well but the whole thing seemed overdone. Perhaps something more subtle like his hair would work better.

Edit: Here's the updated one

Edit edit: I swear! Just terrible timing is all! You posted literally the second I was making a new post to draw attention to the edit
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mongrel on May 19, 2010, 12:58:10 PM
Yeah, I was actually thinking that the hair could use a little life to it - it's like a strapped-on helmet right now. And an armour jostle would really look good, I think. It'll be great if you can give the troops that "clanky" feel, would would be especially fitting with the cartoonish style.

EDIT: That armour jostle needs a bit of work... it doesn't seem quite connected to his motion.

EDIT2: Have you thought about lightening the metal surfaces? The detail you've put into his torso is mostly lost in all the muddy colours, even if it is technically correct.  
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Beat Bandit on May 19, 2010, 04:07:13 PM
Haters gonna' hate.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on May 19, 2010, 04:32:25 PM
<3
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mongrel on May 19, 2010, 04:39:03 PM
The jostle actually does look quite a bit better while the fellow's in motion.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on May 24, 2010, 04:40:23 PM
Alright folks

B E H O L D

(http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/43/bigredready.gif)

I'm thinking we could make a sweet KERRK, WHUNK sound when everyone in the row connects their hand to the pike, then a WHOOPHMPH when they bring the weapon to bare.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mongrel on May 24, 2010, 06:42:49 PM
Alright folks

B E H O L D

(http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/43/bigredready.gif)

I'm thinking we could make a sweet KERRK, WHUNK sound when everyone in the row connects their hand to the pike, then a WHOOPHMPH when they bring the weapon to bare.

Oh man, that's really nice.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on May 24, 2010, 07:52:34 PM
Right now all the sound effects other than the voice clips are being made with this (http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html).

Oh, by the way, I'm trying to make a good NES era voiceclip sound for the title screen using Goldwave and the default windows recorder. Do other people on these boards wanna try to make a lofi sounding sound with an amusing and/or appropriate intonation... Weslie?

YES, OF COURSE YOU DO.

Because you want to win the annual

Pike & Shot Voice Clip Contest

Rules: Make a lofi voice clip of "Pike & Shot" in the style of something like these

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reE95exnMAo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9knPlgfIeKQ&feature=PlayList&p=EC480732B0278ECA

The prize is your voice clip in the game, forever, immortalized! That's way better than your live journal account in terms of a lasting effect on humanity. ALSO, you get your name in the credits WITH A TROPHY OR MEDAL. That's right, everyone who does work for my game gets awards instead of just credit or money. Unless you do a lot, then you get money too.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on May 25, 2010, 12:22:16 PM
Added a little jostle after he levels the pike.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mongrel on May 25, 2010, 12:43:56 PM
 :perfect:
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on August 22, 2010, 07:00:09 PM
Made a little firebreathing salamander solider for Pike & Shot Lo-Rez Retro™

NO WALK YET BUT BABY STEPS

(http://a.imageshack.us/img826/9117/salamanderbig.gif)
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on August 22, 2010, 09:17:14 PM
Heh, I like the fire.

What would be a good over all faction theme that could have fire breathing shot troops? I mean the most obvious would be dragon or reptile people of some sort but I think that some sort of faction that would just have salamanders as pets or allies seems cooler.

My emphasis is always on the regular human forces and the goblin ones for now though.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on August 23, 2010, 05:33:05 AM
Volcano people, naturally! Could be themed nomadic humans, undead, or lava people who rope the indigenous wildlife into their army. I could see about making the reptiles more feral.

Obviously, there would be dino-rider shotmen as well.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on August 23, 2010, 09:20:32 AM
Ah yes, the Bronti tribe.

My only thematic qualm with that is that I want everything to have a renaissance Europe feel. So I like it better when factions look more like established Kingdoms that are starting to move out of the feudal period and towards a ruling middle class.

Stuff like nomadic tribes speaks to a more dark age stranded, Tolkien view or a neofantasy, warcraftesque setting where everyone comes from a civilization as old as time itself, etc, verdant, etc, brethren, twisting nether, etc.

I really wanted the Goblins to be the only roughly nomadic people and the idea with them was that they as a race were sort of in the midst of being exploited by the developmentally superior and more "civilized" Human society in a way meant to mirror that of the Native Americans or Africans during the colonial period. So the idea wasn't so much that there is a region you can go to that is where the Goblin Tribes live, it's that Goblins have emigrated from a far away land in large amounts due to being sought after as infantry by warmongering kings due to their cheapness and relative effectiveness as shock troops. The reason for the former being that their homeland is badly impoverished due to human exploitation and the only valuable service they can offer for trade is soldiers since their culture and craftsmanship is seen as inferior.

This causes a problem in the game when large companies of Goblin troops are left with no war to fight after the last big war ends. Many of them turning to brigandage and etc out of desperation.

Insert post millennium mandatory moral choice event where player chooses to eradicate the goblin threat and receive source of Royal Gendarmes or help the Goblins beat back would be genociders and establish their own colony in a mountainous region that then provides the player with goblin recruits.

Who wouldn't want to help the goboes though, I mean look at that cute little slinger down there.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on August 23, 2010, 08:00:07 PM
So no dinosaurs.

We're looking at various kingdoms of humanoids with a similar level of technology at this point?
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Rico on August 23, 2010, 09:48:16 PM
Geo T. Hermal I am very disappointed in you; you had promised that your next Pike & Shot post would be about its glamorous new change to incorporate the only two mechanics in gaming: Pie & Shot.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on August 24, 2010, 08:03:24 AM
Geo T. Hermal I am very disappointed in you; you had promised that your next Pike & Shot post would be about its glamorous new change to incorporate the only two mechanics in gaming: Pie & Shot.

That is still going to see the light of day as something in the game Rico. I promise you; the market has spoken and I shall provide just what they desire.

See, I can properly use semi colons too.

So no dinosaurs.

We're looking at various kingdoms of humanoids with a similar level of technology at this point?

I wouldn't completely discount dinos. I mean, we all love dinos, Jason.

See, another core idea for the world1 of the game is this idea that the common man was not only kept down by the might of aristocratic heavy cavalry as he was in real history, but by a combination of that and aristocratic high sorcery.

So, mages summoning things like wyrms and salamanders that were previously terrors on the battlefield but that a well organized pike & shot formation can now realistically handle is a perfectly good idea for enemy types, situations, boss fights, etc.


In resent design "eureka" moments news:

When thinking about how the game should work and what mechanics could be included to make it more fleshed out of a concept and more fun in general, I always have my eye open for things that the better shmups have done already that might translate well to this game's core concept. While Pike & Shot is intrinsically different due to the inner working of the game always being based on the concept that you are controlling a formation of little dudes who will fight dudes they bump into or recruit fleeing dudes they walk over, you are still going to be walking to the right and shooting things a lot of the time. So it stands to reason that a lot of good ideas for mechanics that are fun can be hijacked.

Anyway, I've been thinking a lot more about having your core troop types, your pike and shot, being a lot rarer to come by. Like if you really want an other shot or pike guy or something fancier still, you gotta put some work in and really upgrade a recruited guy a lot to get there.

This is a great idea for two reasons:

Now hold on, that second one is actually really cool even though it sort of SOUNDS lame. When you recruit guys, they mostly are just shit melee guys, well isn't that lame? Melee guys can't pike or shot, who wants them? Well, they form a little "shield wall" in front of your cool guys, your pike & shooters. Historically they would be sort of like the "Forlorn Hope" that the real Landsknechts actually used as a tactic. In Shmup terms, they would be sort of like a temporary shield that you can leave up until they are all dead, or sacrifice to do one big extra shot. In Pike & Shot that equates to having this shield wall and then you can hit the charge button and they run out and charge the enemy, starting a bunch of melee fights in the process (you know, guys bumping in my game starts little 2 second brawls) or just blocking shots if they get fired at when they charge.


1Yes the world of Pike & Shot is "Ropea" the renaissance era of the "old world" continent of the world of Devil's in Heaven.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on September 08, 2010, 09:47:40 AM
Aww yehh just found a sweet thread full of awesome reference shots (http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=96465&page=5) from the Pike 'n Shot times.

Any requests, folks?
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on September 08, 2010, 01:00:07 PM
Yeah, I found that thread a while ago, but I don't think I linked you to it.

I don't like how there's a lot of pictures in it that are too modern. Like I don't want to see flintlocks and tricorner hats, you know?

Pike & Shot is really about the EARLY modern era, the Great Italian Wars basically. Crossbows and bows are still around, firearms are barely out of the hand cannon stage, and armoured cavalry and heavy infantry are still major battlefield entities.

I think that specific period really has it in it to look TOTALLY BADASS, but I feel like it's rarely explored and the very few times it has been attempted by artists or what have you, it hasn't been done very well...

Although Condottiere's new card art is pretty cool.

I like stuff like these:

http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/8161/lafronde.jpg (http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/8161/lafronde.jpg)
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/6800/ivry.jpg (http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/6800/ivry.jpg)


and I totally want to rip this off for a dramatic and macabre in game event.

(http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ATHEISM/hangtree.jpg)
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on September 08, 2010, 01:20:19 PM
Yeah, I found that thread a while ago, but I don't think I linked you to it.

I don't like how there's a lot of pictures in it that are too modern. Like I don't want to see flintlocks and tricorner hats, you know?

Pike & Shot is really about the EARLY modern era, the Great Italian Wars basically. Crossbows and bows are still around, firearms are barely out of the hand cannon stage, and armoured cavalry and heavy infantry are still major battlefield entities.

I think that specific period really has it in it to look TOTALLY BADASS, but I feel like it's rarely explored and the very few times it has been attempted by artists or what have you, it hasn't been done very well...

Although Condottiere's new card art is pretty cool.

I like stuff like these:

http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/8161/lafronde.jpg (http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/8161/lafronde.jpg)
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/6800/ivry.jpg (http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/6800/ivry.jpg)


and I totally want to rip this off for a dramatic and macabre in game event.

(http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ATHEISM/hangtree.jpg)

I saw!! Pre-trihat times were all business

I liked these quite a bit as well:
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_8WIjkzT4POU/THAby6LcXLI/AAAAAAAABnU/3nOxcERlNQk/Cavaliers.JPG (http://lh4.ggpht.com/_8WIjkzT4POU/THAby6LcXLI/AAAAAAAABnU/3nOxcERlNQk/Cavaliers.JPG)

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_8WIjkzT4POU/S-HUP4XvFvI/AAAAAAAAAlE/LJnKiJB6cKs/Piqueros%20Suizos.jpg (http://lh4.ggpht.com/_8WIjkzT4POU/S-HUP4XvFvI/AAAAAAAAAlE/LJnKiJB6cKs/Piqueros%20Suizos.jpg)

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/7379/cavalrybattleatdunbar.jpg (http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/7379/cavalrybattleatdunbar.jpg)

I'm likely going to use all of those costumes as variants (as well as the ones you already linked).

ALSO:

how totally badass is this man (http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/5346/siegeofvienna.jpg)
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: François on September 08, 2010, 01:26:03 PM
I think that specific period really has it in it to look TOTALLY BADASS, but I feel like it's rarely explored and the very few times it has been attempted by artists or what have you, it hasn't been done very well...

One of the novels I've been writing on and off for a while now basically follows a company of mercenaries in a landsknecht-type era (on fictional geography so real-world politics don't get in the way), so I know exactly what you mean. The setting is at least as fertile for storytelling, visual or otherwise, as the medieval age, especially from a military/action viewpoint. Unfortunately it doesn't really have much in the way of widely-known myths, legends and martial heroes; as far as the mainstream goes, the Renaissance is all Michelangelo and no Lancelot.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on September 08, 2010, 01:41:41 PM
Many of the great generals of the time who organized really superior armies during the period by thinking really smartly about how fire arms had changed the battlefield are well known in historical circles, but there aren't that many... dashing hero types to be true. But really, that's just the nature of combat itself.

This was formation Pike & Shot warfare, the whole big deal here was precisely that Lancelot was finally unhorsed by the soldiers of this era. Being a white knight on a horse in shining armour is too likely to get you killed and not in a very glorious or valorous manner either.

But there were some heroes to be had. They seem to be mostly in Spanish and Dutch history. There was some big Netherland revolutionary who was a hero to the dutch when they revolted against the Spanish and got their independence. He was some pirate who in the end was know for wielding a big two hander sword, hell maybe even two the tales say, and who clearly stood over 7 feet tall and drank beer by the barrel while grappling with 5 men at a time. I forget his name, but the tales of his exploits are only slightly less outlandish than my exaggerations.

For the Spanish the general that invented the Tercio is seen as national hero back then (Gonzalo or something like that), and they made a movie of some merc guy who was cool or something recently, Captain Alatriste.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mongrel on September 08, 2010, 01:43:09 PM
Also agreed. It really is an underused period, but the true pike and shot era also incorporates one of the most dramatic, grisly, and lengthy wars in european history - the Thirty Years War (which gets way WAY less sttention than, the Hundred Years War, classical wars, world wars, or napoleonic wars). I mean, it might be the nastiest war fought in Europe between the introduction of gunpowder and WWI.

It also covers the English Civil war, which has to be one of the most interesting and idioscyncratic wars ever fought.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on September 08, 2010, 01:55:30 PM
(http://a.imageshack.us/img837/5904/bighills.jpg)

(http://a.imageshack.us/img837/4428/hillsq.jpg)

Some hill terrain for Pike 'n Shot retro. The grass is made of four different 5x5 tiles, any of which can be repeated or mixed and matched. The hill itself is a full object, but could be divided into sections if need be.

The sky's one large object, currently repeatable, but I might end up removing the detail work and making it two or three colors if it looks better. I'm not sure yet... don't want the sprites to look out of place.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on September 08, 2010, 02:02:59 PM
I don't really like how it looks more like a pixelated version of a more hi def jpg image than it does a deliberate pixel art background.

I don't wanna sound like some snobby retro gaming retard, but my sprites were designed that way so I think the backgrounds should have to follow suit so they match, visually.

I really don't think the best thing ever is to make a game that looks like an old NES game, but do like that look enough to want to make ONE game like that and it might as well be Pike & Shot. I mean, it's a game that is aping on old shmups, it might as well look the part.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on September 08, 2010, 02:31:58 PM
Alright alright geez

We'll go more Dinorun with this then - I'll work in some shrubbery and trees later on.

(http://a.imageshack.us/img819/2387/hillslorez.jpg)
(http://a.imageshack.us/img227/2387/hillslorez.jpg)

Any way these could be animated? So the wind could move the grass every so often? It's not a big deal if it's a bitch to program, but it might look pretty nice and give the stages a bit more flair.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on September 08, 2010, 05:05:24 PM
I like.

Sure, any tile could be animated.

Ideas for terrain and doodads and such

-baricades
-houses, tents
-pike and armour pickets
-trees and bushes
-carts
-wells
-fences
-rubble
-dead soldiers
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on September 09, 2010, 04:56:29 PM
(http://img814.imageshack.us/img814/5028/hillsshrub.jpg)

Some shrubs, trees, mountains, forest, a broken cart, and a little work on the sky. Be brutal folks.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on September 09, 2010, 08:35:14 PM
I like the mixed forrested middle horizon but most of the "detailed" stuff in the foreground isn't doing much for me. The trees just sort of look like jumbled messes.

Try going for less detail and a define a bigger shape in something that you can actually accomplish with pixels that size. Like the cart could use more hard angles to it and like, bigger wheels so you can actually define them a little more.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: François on September 09, 2010, 09:02:31 PM
Hmm, I agree. The trees and nearby foliage look too busy for something that's in the play area, especially if there's gonna be projectiles and stuff flying around. I dig the landscape in the distance though.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Classic on September 09, 2010, 11:27:31 PM
... Are shadows out of the question?
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on September 10, 2010, 06:36:04 AM
In what sense?
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on September 10, 2010, 08:12:50 AM
By the way Kabbage, if you want my current plans for the game to influence what terrain you want to try and make first, my current idea for the opening of the game has changed a little lately.

Originally I was really in love with the idea of doing a very Japanese video game, arcade attract mode style opening with lots of big sprites shifting around the screen and then animating a little. You know, real X-men arcade game, Ninja Gaiden story sequence stuff. It would sort of tell a condensed, inaccurate tale of pikes and matchlock firearms being made and then being used to thwart mounted knights that in the first little sequence seemed to be unstoppably routing ill-equipped, medieval infantry. And then of course the title card announcement and subsequent menu appearance as the logical press-button-during-all-the-rest-of-that-to-skip-to-point.

But lately I've been leaning towards doing away with any needless "cinematic" things like all of that. It seemed obvious in my mind before that making the game very homage heavy to old arcade experiences was the way to go with this due to the fact that the initial elevator pitch synopsis of the game was "It's a game that sort of controls like Gradius or R-Type, but you control a formation of renaissance mercenary infantry." But I think I sort of changed my mind on a lot of that after I was reading an interview with Saltsman, the guy that made the Flixel engine and Canabalt. He said that when he was making the game, a lot of people assumed and were telling him that the music in the game should and would be chiptune based. I mean, the game had such cute, retro, pixely graphics, right? But he insisted that what it needed was a really cinematic sounding action scifi movie sound, with lots of bass when the alien ships flew overhead and stuff like that. I think it's obvious from playing the game for 10 seconds that he was totally right.

Indie developers frequently go to pixely graphics because they are easier to accomplish without looking terrible and they remind them of the games of their youth. But it's too easy to then get trapped in this mind set that it would be cool to make the whole game this old game homage piece when really, that isn't necessary at all. It's been done a million times already anyway.

Anyway, TLDR; the point is, I'm more open to letting the game find it's own personality now.

So I was thinking of more of a gameplay right from the start sort of concept for the opening now. I still want to do that drunken parade square idea somewhere early in the game, but for the opening I'm thinking of just giving you control of your player character on a battle field where you are an infantry man facing a hard battle against better equipped enemies. Some sort of peasant rebellion like the one in Germany just before the period the game takes place in.

You can just walk your guy around and chop at guys with your sword or halberd or something like that. you are frequently joined by other friendly infantry who frequently get killed. It's almost like a one button beat'em up at this point.

As soon as you get killed by a mounted knight or get far enough forward in the "level" (not very far, just like a screen) you are joined suddenly by crude pike equipped infantry that form a formation around and help you up if you got knocked down. You maybe get a prompt for the pike button and cavarly just keep charging you until you successfully pike one of them, your ranks refilling slowly from off screen if you actually manage to lose guys. The cavalry guys are scripted that if you pike a wave of three of them, the one guy always gets knocked off his horse dead, the other guy always gets his horse injured, falls off gets up defensively and then runs off, and the middle guy always gets sort of hung up, slashes at your pikes and then turns and rides off screen.

You pursue him and find that he has fled to a just off screen barricade with lots of perhaps bowmen, but certainly crossbowmen behind pavise shields. Their range is short enough and they don't advance so you can just stand far enough left and not take fire from them. You now start getting re-enforced with hand cannon or matchlock equipped guys and you get the prompt for the "shot" button. You progress by using volleys to knock down the pavises and kill the crossbowmen.

The battle won there's some fanfare and then you march towards the title card:

"Pike an shawwt!"

when you start the game that last part is presented as a sort of flash back and now your guy is an older, wiser condottiere.

*Joke only for Kazz and no one else*
"That's when everything changed..." (http://5secondfilms.com/watch/little_ben_monster_hunter)
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Classic on September 10, 2010, 10:46:52 PM
I mean, can foreground objects have some kind of shadow that falls marking their rough position on the y planes? Where y goes towards the background.

It's helpful to have some indicator of where an object's and your character's "feet" are for maneuvering close to obstacles.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on September 11, 2010, 01:59:09 AM
I'll give it a shot, to see how it looks.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on September 12, 2010, 06:21:01 PM
I'm not sure about shadows right now. It works only if everything else in the game has a shadow, which we'll probably figure out once we see how the thing plays further down the line (i.e. whether or not it's necessary).

(http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/5028/hillsshrub.jpg)

Toned down the detail in the trees and removed the supplies from the busted cart, while boosting the overall size a bit. I wanted to keep the cart relatively the right size next to a guy, so I don't really want to make it too much higher. What did you guys want for this, exactly? Looks naked now.

Maybe I should set it on fire or stick some dead guys around it or, I dunno, barrels? Gunpowder barrels?
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Classic on September 12, 2010, 06:54:35 PM
It only works or has purpose if everything's got a shadow, and if everything did the whole thing could probably be too busy. With the sprites the size they are, it's probably a bad idea.

I didn't register how big your pixels were, I guess.

Is that little rock an actual obstacle? If it is, it probably needs higher contrast with the grass.

It might also be cool if the trees had less dense leaves so that you could see other sprites moving behind them, but I dunno how you've set up your layers.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on September 12, 2010, 07:31:43 PM
For the trees, Mothra, I'd try to just create one branch or cluster of leaves well and then repeat that to create the rest of the tree after you have like, 2 or 3 leaf clusters or branch styles that you like.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on September 12, 2010, 08:08:20 PM
So symmetrical trees?
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Classic on September 12, 2010, 08:31:22 PM
... You could do that, but that's not what he's suggesting. He's saying craft a few small branch designs and graft them on to tree trunks to create a large number of different trees with the same small set of parts.

...
That sounded retarded when I rephrased it, it's probably not what he meant.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on September 12, 2010, 09:58:40 PM
No, that's what I was suggesting. Just cause, I think a whole tree is a hard thing to get to look right in pixels sometimes. So I thought breaking it down in to base components and then just patching those together to make one finished tree might work better, but I don't know.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Classic on September 12, 2010, 10:23:25 PM
With each pixel being so valuable, the kind of detail he CAN put in is limited. Making several trunks might make sense, but I don't know if even that's going to cut into the amount of work he has to do.

The trees look pretty serviceable, I'm just worried that they're going to make play needlessly difficult.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Detonator on September 13, 2010, 05:07:56 AM
Just take the leaves off the trees.

Boom.  Cool winter setting, doesn't look like ass.

Though now that I think of it, it would be cool to see seasons progress and cycle as the game goes on.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on September 13, 2010, 05:31:02 AM
Yeah, I was sort of thinking of that. I can do both! I'll make a couple base naked trees, then some modular branches we can throw on if we want to sex them up a bit.

Seasons would be cool, though I don't know if we've got any sort of time-progression set up yet. I suppose we could just have the season change for the entire world at different moments in the game, like once the player gets halfway through, winter sets in, then when he's on the home stretch, summer.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on September 13, 2010, 09:46:22 AM
We could have the game poll some sort of dependable system variable to determine the real date and then adjust seasons in the game based on that.

Even weather if we had a web service that polled something and just have the player create a profile or ask them for their location during installation.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Detonator on September 13, 2010, 03:22:32 PM
Personally, I find the idea of regular progression better for this game.  In the setting of a long military campaign, it would be neat to see the seasons slowly change as the game progresses.  It gives you the feeling that the whole game isn't taking place in the afternoon that you play it.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on September 13, 2010, 03:37:03 PM
Well, that was mostly a joke although I do like the idea of real world modelled weather. But then I like anything that makes the world of a game dynamic.

I guess it makes more sense in something more about just one guy's journey though, where it makes sense that it happened in a day or a couple days. For a military campaign it would be a little off, you're right.

I'm thinking we will probably just have areas where it is cold and snowy rather than seasons that affect the whole map. But maybe.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mongrel on September 18, 2010, 06:24:54 AM
Possibly useful? (http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=19889.0)
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: Mothra on September 25, 2010, 11:35:09 AM
Reworked the trees. Only have two right now - shown here both with leaves and without - but if you like the look I'll make two or three more. Enough to make a serviceable forest background or foreground from.

BE BRUTAL

(http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/9985/newtrees.jpg)

(http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/2439/newtreesbig.jpg)

Possibly useful? (http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=19889.0)
That is really dang impressive.
Title: Re: Pike & Shot
Post by: James Edward Smith on September 25, 2010, 12:07:24 PM
One of these days, I'm gonna teach you how to resize pixel art without deforming it, Kabbage.

(http://tsamurai.pyoko.org/archives/newtrees_lg.gif)