The Viking & The Ninja - upcoming Mega Drive co-op action-RPG

[Zebbe]

cowboyscowboys: Thanks! Yeah, it's a lot of fun but also a lot to do .

Thank you, BigEvilCorporation!

Oh, I thought I was the only one with open tabs. All my classmates keep telling me: "So many tabs you have open!" and I'm like "Yeah, I know, I'll read them later!". But I hate it when I close the browser and the next time open it, they're gone, even though I configured them to return the way they were when I last used the browser.

Anyway, have a nice read .

[OverDrone]

Like Gauntlet and Dungeon Explorer? Sounds great. Looking pretty snazzy in the graphics department as it stands, too. Looking forward to seeing more.

[Barone]

Oh, I thought I was the only one with open tabs. All my classmates keep telling me: "So many tabs you have open!" and I'm like "Yeah, I know, I'll read them later!". But I hate it when I close the browser and the next time open it, they're gone, even though I configured them to return the way they were when I last used the browser.

Please, quit that.
There's a superb plugin called OneTab - Chrome Web Store. Thank me later.


Your game looks promising and I like the art style, it's refreshing and unique IMO.
It needs more contrast and more defined edges for some of the tiles (especially the trees in the second screenshot), the HUD can use some better layout and be less bulky; but I think you already know all that.

I wish you all the best with this project and let me know if you need anything.

[Zebbe]

OverDrone: Thank you! More to come later .

Barone: I would, but I can't use Chrome anymore. Almost all videos are black (but with sound) when I view them. I tried to troubleshoot, including removing adblocker, but nothing worked, so I switched to Edge, which is slower and less reliable, but at least I can watch videos with it.

Your help so far has been great and I've edited all my sprites according to your feedback. Now, there are a few updates on the first page too . Feedback is invaluable and welcome! I'll surely ask you again for it soon!

[Sik]

In practice that plugin wouldn't be of much help, in my experience one ends up opening more tabs than they can read and so they end up accumulating badly over time.

[Barone]

Well, me and my colleagues at work find it very help but to each his own.

[Black_Tiger]

I know a lot of people keep insisting that the Genesis "needs" more (J)RPGs, but something like this is far more interesting. Especially with a unique visual style.

I love huds with lots of info and I think that it would really suit this game to have a stylized background for it. Like a golden ancient tablet or decorative relief or something. Similar to Raiden's superfluous eye candy.

Without adjusting it, there are already enough colors in the Viking palette to do something with detail. You could save space and have more freedom to organize the stats if each icon had a small font overlapping it.

[SEGA.GENESIS1989]

I know a lot of people keep insisting that the Genesis "needs" more (J)RPGs, but something like this is far more interesting. Especially with a unique visual style.

I love huds with lots of info and I think that it would really suit this game to have a stylized background for it. Like a golden ancient tablet or decorative relief or something. Similar to Raiden's superfluous eye candy.

Without adjusting it, there are already enough colors in the Viking palette to do something with detail. You could save space and have more freedom to organize the stats if each icon had a small font overlapping it.

Yea, I'm really glad that Zebbe has chosen to create an action oriented RPG rather than a jrpg. With respect to the HUD, (taking into consideration of criticisms of past games) one thing that Zebbe could consider doing is allowing the player to add or retract the HUD as well. As illustrated below, the player could choose to display more or less of the play field/real estate at will:


https://imgur.com/a/mQFUT

[Zebbe]

Black_Tiger: Pier Solar is already made, no need for a new JRPG in a while (though I am already planning to rip off Shining in the Darkness with my next project after this one :P). And I was thinking the Mega Drive could need a better equivalent to Secret of Mana (which I actually didn't play until last year, about a year into the development of this project). Gauntlet IV and Dungeon Explorer has almost no story/character development, so I wanted to improve on that a bit.

I got some feedback on my original HUD (seen on the upper most pic), and they said it was too cluttered. So I cut some things down (and edited the gameplay, later). But yeah, I like your idea! I decorative HUD would really be a nice facelift. The character palette has both gold and "ice" colours in it, so maybe I can make two of them. All icons are max 14x14 pixels in size, so they can be framed.

SEGA.GENESIS1989: Detracting the HUD, why not? If it's possible technically, it will give more gamefield space. Some critical information won't be available all the time though, so the player(s) has to pick his poison . The third party hosting doesn't work here, but I went directly to Photobucket and could see the gif there, it looks nice! Definitely worth checking into .

Thanks for the feedback, both of you!

[Vludi]

Looks pretty cool, hope it'll be more on the action side than rpg (which seems true with the Gauntlet and Dungeon Explorer influence, I advise looking up some arcade overhead run n gun too). It could look a bit nicer but just focus on making a fun game above all.

[Bramsworth]

Wow Zebbe, nice work! I'm considering attempting pixel art somewhere down the line and glad to see you picked it up so well, kind of encouraging. I'll be keeping up with this.

[Zebbe]

Vludi: Thanks! Yeah, there will be lots of action . The RPG part is the leveling, story telling and maybe some puzzles here and there. Any specific games you had in mind?

Bramsworth: Thank you, Bramsworth, and nice to see you! Go ahead, it's not so hard once you get into it. Here is a good link:
http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299
Also, you did an excellent job translating Barver Battle Saga, which is actually getting an official physical release soon. I'm sure your translation skills would be useful for other games!

[108 Stars]

The detracting of the hud is a neat idea, although I assume it may be hard to do on the MD. I remember Zombies ate my Neighbours. It had a detractable HUD on SNEs, while it was static on MD. It may have been simply for practical reasons (the MD offering a wider horizontal res, so you had 64 columns of free space you could fill), but maybe it was an issue with the MD only having 2 background layers plus sprites. The SNES has more layers, so it is easier to have a HUD come out without removing sprites or something I would think. So it may be impossible to do while the action is running. But then again programmers have made the MD do stuff you would not have thought possible again and again, so who knows what you can achieve with clever tricks?

[OverDrone]

Looks pretty cool, hope it'll be more on the action side than rpg (which seems true with the Gauntlet and Dungeon Explorer influence, I advise looking up some arcade overhead run n gun too). It could look a bit nicer but just focus on making a fun game above all.

This. And regarding the HUD, I'm another player that doesn't mind a big fat bar loaded with statistical info. Especially if it's presented within a nice thematic border as has been suggested. Instead of having a toggle to remove it, personally I'd have a button to flip it over to reveal other status/inventory related guff on the fly.

[Sik]

As long as the HUD retraction animation is done in 16px steps (the minimum horizontal granurality for the window plane) it should be doable... though at 64px wide that only gives 4 frames. May or may not be enough.

I suppose the viewport itself will need to scroll to compensate (to keep centered things actually centered). I suppose if needed the above could be hidden by animating the window slide at 30FPS but the viewport scroll at 60FPS, the latter helping hide the limitation of the former (and getting 8 frames to do the animation).

Or worst case, just use a column worth of sprites for the 8px steps :P