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Work in Progress / Bushido Shuffle (56K warning, and....it's quite violent...)

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Butter fingers
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Posted: 16th Sep 2009 14:48 Edited at: 1st Jun 2010 00:27
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LATEST DEMO AT BOTTOM OF THIS POST




**EDIT!! If you're not going to follow the blog, but would like to post feedback, please stick it here, and not on youtube or the blog!! Thanks xx**


***First combat TECH demo********************************************
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DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO
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***NEW DEMO MAY 2010********************************************
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DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO
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TheComet
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Posted: 16th Sep 2009 15:20
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Wow, I like it how you make every thing colourless except for the blood... Don't you think your are exagurating a bit with the blood?

TheComet


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Butter fingers
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Posted: 16th Sep 2009 15:35
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Cheers comet.

I figured that the amount of gore/violence would come up so...

If you've ever watched any of those classic oldschool samurai Movies like Ran or Xatoichi, people don't bleed, they spray, like a coke bottle that's been shaken up!

The gore is partly a reaction to the majorety of Japanese sword play games. I always feel detached from the combat because it never feels like you're fighting with a sword .When hits are signified by glowing decals instead of slices and blood it just looks cartoon. As a point, the player is just as vulnerable to blades as the enemies, so using focus and timing is essential to survival.

Obviously I don't want to eliminate a whole bunch of people from playing because of the violence, so the blood can be easily switched off!

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Paul112
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Posted: 16th Sep 2009 17:04
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Looks fantastic, I have no idea how you're calculating the dismemberments or the blood sprays but it looks top notch.

I'll contact Lee and see if he'll be best man for our wedding, yes?

One thing that confuses me is how you're supposed to win? Do you just kill all the guys in the area, or are there other objectives to complete (finding information, secrets, objects etc.)

Very impressive though, can't wait to see more.

Paul

Opium's Poppy WIP
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 16th Sep 2009 17:33
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Quote: "One thing that confuses me is how you're supposed to win? "


Consider this still a WIP. This video is really just showing off where I'm at with the fighting mechanics. It's going to be linear, story based thingy with objectives ranging from get to a certain point in the map, kill a certain character, find something, escape ... etc. The story is being written at the moment, so for now I'm just creating the gameplay mechanics.

Quote: "I have no idea how you're calculating the dismemberments or the blood sprays but it looks top notch."

Thanks! That was the bit I'm most proud of. The game actually uses propper hit boxes, so that it knows which particular limb has been hit by the sword.I thought it would be interesting to take something that is predominantly an FPS technique (hitboxes) and apply that to something other than guns.

The blood isn't too complicated.. there are 1000 individual droplets and a bunch of splats. but it bubble sorts only the active ones, and obviously has some (clever?)optimisations for working out the wall and floor collisions for all those individual drops.

Hard to spot in the video, but the player gets gradually splattered too!

Thanks for the comments and crit. I'll get the rings. You get lee to hold the ceremony.

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The Viking
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Posted: 16th Sep 2009 20:18
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Quite Impressive actually. I love the different angles you slice the enemies on. It reminds me of afro samurai, though more movie like because of the black and white. I don't think the blood was overdone... though if there was more, than maybe it would be... Good job!

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sindore
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Posted: 16th Sep 2009 20:46
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this looks grate, I loved how the play just cuts throe the enemies.

soul sucking devils, twisted body of the damed, slivering slim drips from every poor, sin licking at your ears, and the smell stinging your eyes, and if you don't like it, get out of my kitchen!
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Dreamsenshi
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Posted: 16th Sep 2009 22:49
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Quote: "If you've ever watched any of those classic oldschool samurai Movies like Ran or Xatoichi, people don't bleed, they spray, like a coke bottle that's been shaken up!"


heehee... I wonder how Akira Kurosawa would feel, being the inspiration for such a game. I have to agree, tho! Even the old Bushido Blade on the Playstation sprayed almost just like that! Only, instead of being able to kill someone in one swift move, there was this glitch my hubby took advantage of to kill me after he'd already kill me as many times as possible. :} Additionally, there are also the Tenchu ninja games that have blood spray like that, so it's not really that uncommon at all.

Good luck with the game! Definitely following!

Your error is my treasure. =^--^=
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Sixty Squares
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Posted: 19th Sep 2009 22:56
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Wow this looks great, I love the animation of the player as well as the enemies (especially when they die, the staggering is done quite well).

<-- Spell based team dueling game!
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Benjamin
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Posted: 19th Sep 2009 23:32 Edited at: 20th Sep 2009 11:57
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It certainly looks impressive. I like the way you can just slice through enemies, that's really cool.

One criticism I have is that things seem a bit stiff (but then that's only because I'm comparing it with commercial titles). I have a few suggestions:

Rather than fixing the camera to the position of the character, allow the character to move some distance from the centre of the camera before it starts to follow. For example look at games like the original Sonic and Mario games. Rather than the screen being fixed on the character, it only moves when you get closer to the edge of the screen (although I'm not suggesting you should only move the camera when the character is at the very edge of the screen!). I'm pretty sure this would give the camera a nicer feel if done right. Perhaps also (or instead) add delayed (and smoothed) camera movement.

Another possible idea is to alter the moment of the character so that it is based on acceleration, rather than directly acting on the position of the character based on key presses. The character doesn't necessarily have to take a long time to speed up / slow down, but it'd look nicer if the character didn't just suddenly enter a fast run and then instantly stop. Of course, you'd have to alter animation speed according to the speed of the character.

Give the character an idle animation! It looks strange when you suddenly stop and the character just becomes motionless. Although my previous suggestion would help alleviate this problem.

Also, it feels as if gravity should be increased a bit. I realise the player should be able to jump pretty high and far but at the moment it looks a bit like the game is set on the moon.

Overall, I like what you're doing so far! Keep it up.

[edit] Also, add some shadows. Even basic darkened circles (like in the old games) that adjust their size depending on how far away the character is from the ground would be good, for now.
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 20th Sep 2009 15:06
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Quote: "It reminds me of afro samurai, though more movie like because of the black and white. "


LOL, I started making this about a month before Afro came out, and I don't follow games news really, so I was just like, DOH! Because obviously it's quite similar, and looks amazing. But it's cool. I'm just doing my own thing. And I'm not going to play Afro until I'm done.

DreamSenshi.
Thank you. I think he'd be quite pleased that he'd had some influence over some random programmer in another country. I'm not just making a hack and slash. I've actually been buying and reading alot of reference books on japanese mythology, and I'm intending to make a story for the game based on it.

Sixtysquares,

Thanks dude. The very first version of this was actually just an animation test, I had never done sword animations before. As soon as I had 1 basic combo in DB I was off, I love the freedom from guns etc. No raycasting bullets etc, and the freedom to be more creative with how the player moves ( jumps, flips etc).

Benjamin.

Thanks for the detailed feedback, much appreciated! THe camera movement is something totally need to do. Not only do I want to do your suggestions, but when jumping the camera needs to move back further, to give you a better view of your surroundings. Since posting this video, and WIP,I've stopped working on combat, and have been totally focussed on the movement side of the engine. I still need to implement your accelerated movement idea, because not only will it smooth the game, but it will mean I can affect the forward motion of jumps. ie,
low speed makes the jump go less far forward
high speed can jump long distances

Right now I'm not happy with the walking animation, and I'm going to change it to jog and sprint instead. You're also right about the Idle, I'm going to add a little breathing and shoulder movement. Also, when you enter Chi mode (where you can time a 1 hit kill), there needs to be some variation. At the moment, the Chi Mode stance and the idle stance are identical!

With the shadows, there is shadow mapping on the level, I wanted to use stencil shadow on the characters, but becuase of the amount of animations I'm using I have to use compresssed format X files, and for some reason they mess up the shadow shader

Thanks for the feedback though, it's really appreciated.I guess some of animation is clunky etc, but do bear in mind that I'm literally making everything here, and so, sometimes I'll rush an animation sequence, just so I have some kind of placemarker to program around, most of the time, when a feature is finished in the game, I'll go back and smooth the animations for that feature. THere's no point in spending hours making the animation when sometimes I'll add it to the game and decide I need to scrap it!

Anyway, thanks for the feeds please keep em coming! I'm considering putting up a movement demo, but I'm very concerned about my media getting stolen!

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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 20th Sep 2009 22:02
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It's very good, the controls look responsive and the animations themselves are fine. I just think that the movement is a bit jerky. There's no acceleration or braking, the players just either move or don't.

The 2D design is fantastic.

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Neuro Fuzzy
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Posted: 20th Sep 2009 22:30
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Heheh, I've been following this for a while on your youtube account.

It looks like a really awesome game. My only question is... how will the game work? like items, leveling up, stronger enemies, bosses, etc.
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Inspire
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Posted: 20th Sep 2009 22:42
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As cool as this is, what happened to your other games?

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Butter fingers
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Posted: 21st Sep 2009 13:04
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*UPDATE*

As was suggested, I've altered the camera to move on a curve rather than sticking to the X position of the player. It looks fantastic, really showing off the 3D-ness of the level.

Quote: "It's very good, the controls look responsive and the animations themselves are fine. I just think that the movement is a bit jerky. There's no acceleration or braking, the players just either move or don't.
The 2D design is fantastic."


Thanks. Having sorted the camera out a little bit, the next task is to add momentum to the player's movement, so that there is accel and decel, as you run. This should really improve the platform element too, meaning you have to take a run up for long jump.

And thanks for the comment on the 2D design. It was a big decision to change from free roaming 3D to linear 2D but I'm glad I made it!

Quote: "Heheh, I've been following this for a while on your youtube account.
It looks like a really awesome game. My only question is... how will the game work? like items, leveling up, stronger enemies, bosses, etc."

LOL, that means youve seen this when it was just a hit-nox tech demo with 1 combo! Well, at the moment I'm making all the moves and powers for the player. Once I have all the powers, combos and abilities in there, I'll start limiting them, so that when you start the game you have maybe a 10th of your full powers. As you play through you will earn Ki points for things like accurate kills and big jumps, and for finding secret areas. You can then spend Ki points on new abilities in the Dojo. Other more powerful abilities will be awarded for defeating bosses, completing chapters etc.

The floating isle is a bit like Mario World, in that you will need to replay some areas of the map in order to fully level up. Returning to an early level in the game once you have gained the double jump ability will mean you can access new areas and gain new powers!

Quote: "
As cool as this is, what happened to your other games?"

Um... well, Invaders Reloaded is really a work project, and that is almost complete. Grand Theft Retro, or the cell shaded thing as it has kind of morphed it cool, but I reached a point where I realised it was just not finishable. Looking at what it does right now, and how efficiently it does it, and then looking at what I want it to do, there's just no way it's ever going to handle it at more than like 2FPS. I've realised I need to be realistic in what I can achieve, and these Epic projects just aren't finishable. I don't know. Doing games for work has taught me the importance of having a well designed project, and I think that alot of my previous things have developed freeform, and that's a really bad way to work. I'm considering cutting GTR down and making it into a kind of sandbox shooter, but don't quote me on that.

x

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Butter fingers
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Posted: 21st Sep 2009 16:29 Edited at: 21st Sep 2009 18:30
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I had a bit of a filming session in Fraps... I find it's good to film the game and watch it back, because often I miss things when I'm concentrating on actually playing. Anyway, I couldn't resist saving some frames out of the video...



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Plotinus
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Posted: 21st Sep 2009 17:12
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This looks amazing. I have to say those death animations are hilarious. In fact all the animations look superb in my view, as do the excellent background graphics. I can really see this becoming a great game.

I like the way that the bad guys sometimes seem to fall out of the front of the scene. Is this deliberate - like what we are watching is really just a film, and the characters are falling out of it when killed? That would be a lot of fun.

One other idea is that it would be good to have footprints in the blood.

I do hope you finish Grand Theft Retro (or whatever it's called now) - even if you don't add lots of new features to it, just finishing and tidying up what you've already got would still make for a fantastic little game, I think. However, in some ways this one is even more impressive, so if GTR is going to get abandoned, I'm glad it's to make way for something like this.
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 21st Sep 2009 18:29
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Plotinus.

Thanks dude. Theres around 6000 frames of animation already, and I'm being as economical as possible! Im glad you think they're amusing, the idea is that it's super violent, but also kind of fun, like it's so over the top that it stops being offensive and hopefully turns back to being funny... like the way some enemies will stagger about with their torso spliced in half!!

The falling out of the front of the scene is deliberate. Without wanting to sound too pretentious, it's kind of breaking the 4th wall. Like accepting that it's just a game and then playing with that idea, like the enemies will stagger out of the scene when they're killed.

Foot prints!! Yikes! I would totally love that, but in practice I'm not sure if it will come at too much of a cost. I've done alot of learning and experimentation to get the current blood to be fast and efficient.. splattering the player, the walls and the floor. footprints would be the icing on the cake, but I'm not sure if I can spare the FPS. It's a tidy 60 right now, and Ideally I'd like it no lower than 40... the collision detection between sword and hitbox can get a bit ropey when it starts running at a lower FPS than the animation.

I've had a thought with regards to my old projects... like GTR. I may release some as open source, with media, for people to play with. I might take your advice and tidy up GTR to the point of being a playable tech demo, where you pick a unit and just have to survive. I'll discuss that over in the GTR thread when I get home perhaps.

Thanks for the input though!
Cheers
J

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djmaster
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Posted: 22nd Sep 2009 19:24
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This looks awesome,I hope it comes soon cause I wanna play.

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Diggsey
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Posted: 22nd Sep 2009 20:36
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Looking very awesome

A few ideas for new moves:
- Run up wall and backflip
- A move that throws the enemy into the air


New DBPro IDE + integrated debugger!
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Ermes
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Posted: 11th Oct 2009 01:17
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great great great! remember me afrosamurai.
just add ground shadow.

ciao faccie da sedere!
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 17th Oct 2009 23:30 Edited at: 18th Oct 2009 02:30
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Quote: "This looks awesome,I hope it comes soon cause I wanna play."


Your Wish is my command! There is a demo link in the first post!

Quote: "Looking very awesome

A few ideas for new moves:
- Run up wall and backflip
- A move that throws the enemy into the air"


Thanks Diggsey! And the suggestions are good. I've been working on a wall run, but it's quite difficult to make a good wall run code! I keep finding it either mis-calculates the normal angle, or over runs the edge of the wall, etc etc. Quite frustrating. I have a vertical wall run move in there, but again, it's a little buggy right now!

Air moves and juggles are something I'm considering, but they would have to come from kicks, because launching enemies with such a sharp sword would simply kill them!

*********************************************************************
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DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO DEMO
*********************************************************************
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OK, so the game is by NO MEANS perfect, or even close to finished. And I'm sure that anyone who plays it would be able to come up with TONS of improvements, changes and additional gameplay, but I realise that. I have a design doc and story that are pages and pages long. Not to mention tons of research on Japanese mythology, but this is really just a test. I want to see if people like it, if you have fun, and if it's worth me continuing making this.

PLEASE READ THE TUTORIAL TEXT AT THE START.. IT'S THERE FOR A REASON.


Anyway I hope you enjoy! If you suffer low framerates, please post your system spec with your crit.

I hope you enjoy, and look forward to hearing your thoughts!

LINK IN FIRST POST AND HERE

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Mazz426
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Posted: 18th Oct 2009 02:43
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awsome! I'll download when I'm on my computer

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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 18th Oct 2009 04:40
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I think that the camera could be improved, but apart from that it is great!

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Virtual Nomad
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Posted: 18th Oct 2009 07:24
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nice demo & much appreciated. the only concern for me right now is that upon hitting ESC to quit, the app hangs 2 out of 3 times requiring shutdown via task manager. otherwise, i'm hungry for more whenever you're ready to serve it up

btw, i'll hold off on the suggestions for now since it seems you've got plenty already planned.


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draknir_
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Posted: 18th Oct 2009 22:47
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Very cool demo! I absolutely love the blood splatter XD

Good:
- Visual style
- Blood
- The Way of the Spider counterattacks

Not so good:
- Camera feels unstable, and turns annoyingly. A fixed 'side scroller' camera would work a lot better IMHO.
- I couldn't tell the difference between the A, S and D keys, they all killed my opponents.
- I can't tell if it was a crash or a deliberate exit, but after just a few minutes playing the game it just ends itself and drops me on the desktop. This happens every time I play.
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 19th Oct 2009 13:01
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Mazz, Cool, please do let me know what you think when you get a copy!

Pincho - Glad you enjoyed it so far. I hate the camera too. I wanted to do something a bit different from a fixed Scroller camera, but right now it's horrible!

Virtual Nomad. I haven't ever experienced it crashing on exit, are you on vista or windows 7 (this has only been tested on XP). I'm really pleased that you enjoyed it though and as long as your suggestions aren't insulting (like "change all the animations") then I'd love to hear them.

Draknir_
Thanks for the positives! THe blood was a labour of love and I'm glad it's appreciated! Also cool that you mentioned the way of the spider! Have you managed to dice anyone in half yet? The moves get more extreme the more you manage to do in a row!

As mentioned above I'll be changing the camera- you're right it sucks
A,S,D also will be more defined in their actions, being horizontal, vertical and lunging slashes respectively.

THe crash is annoying. I've been trying to fix that for ages but I don't know what it is. I think it could be a stereo sound crashing the the EAP or possibly a dodgy Gosub. God knows. I'll get a headache over it I'm sure.

Thanks for the feedback guys! It's really appreciated! To the other 9 people who have downloaded and not left feedback, Kenshi is on his way to your IP address now, to possibly cleave some of your limbs off...

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Mazz426
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Posted: 19th Oct 2009 15:27
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Butter Fingers-

well i played it through twice, when i origionally saw the tutorial i was thinking that the controls were way to complicated, but when playing they feel just right. i loved the whole system and feel its really good, what are you planning with it, a story or just a point fest style game?

i feel that you could have encorporated some more arial combat or just a parkour style section

i think one of the reasons that i liked this is because it fused sin city with samuri, two of my favourite things

very good, well done

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Butter fingers
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Posted: 19th Oct 2009 15:43
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Hey, thanks Mazz! I know what you mean about the controls. I think they're pretty easy, but when I started writing that tutorial I was like, DANG this is sounding complicated! Still, I think it's quite straight forward once you're actually playing. In the final version you'll learn controls and combos gradually, rather than being dumped everything at the start.

I intend for it to have an action-led narrative, with the 2 main types of level, ones that are combat focussed and ones that are movement focussed. There will also be some RPG elements to the game, having to choose which "way" you want to follow, obviously Spider favours those with patience and Dragon favours those who like Hack and slash.

I agree about arial combat and parkour, that will be in there, I just don't have the animations done yet! I'm thinking it would be cool to be able to do a diving slash and chop enemies in half from above!

I'm glad you enjoyed it, thanks for the positive feedback!

EDIT:

Camera fixed to position, no longer turns, but it does zoom OUT when the player is in the air for a while, making it easier to aim the falling kicks. I'm going to work a few more weeks on this, then I'l try and get another demo up! Thanks for all the feedback so far. It definately makes the effort worthwhile!

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Profit
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Posted: 19th Oct 2009 22:35
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change all the animations


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Butter fingers
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Posted: 20th Oct 2009 00:37
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WWWWWHHHHHHHAAAAAAATTTTTT?????!!!!

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Valle
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Posted: 20th Oct 2009 04:17 Edited at: 20th Oct 2009 04:20
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you're my hero butterfingers

so much went into the blood in this game, we're soulbrothers in overthetop violence i guess , though your game is much more elaborate than any of mine.

I had no problems of any kind while playing. The fighting system, animations, slowmo and the fact that you really use hitboxes is just awesome

some suggestions for this great game:
-make the blood a bit darker
-screen could flash red when player gets hit
-bloodsplashes on the screen (in the foreground)
-enemies scream louder when dying
-the complementary colour of red is green, maybe this can help you somehow (dark green sky or something like that?)

I'm so interested in how this evolves

edit:
if you have photoshop this brush-collection could be quite useful for you
link to deviant-art


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djmaster
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Posted: 20th Oct 2009 20:51
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I played it and it was just awesome,fun to kill those guys.It took me some time to figure out the jump onto that roof to get over so you should do something else there.Otherwise its just great,blood looks excellent.

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Plotinus
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Posted: 21st Oct 2009 12:44
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This is probably the most fun I've ever had with a DBPro demo. Fantastic!

The animations are brilliant and endlessly amusing. The only real issue here that I can see is the sliding feet that many of them have, when the animation doesn't match the way the character is moving over the ground. For example, the jump animation when the hero is running along. A lot of the enemies seem to be walking along with butter on their feet too.

Jumping can be annoying when the hero hits the building's eaves as he's trying to float onto the roof. I think it would help if it were impossible to get closer to the building than about a foot (or however far out the eaves stick, at least in the case of the shorter ones). Then it would be a matter simply of jumping up and onto the roof rather than trying to navigate around the eaves.

Overall though, this is really good. I especially like the two different ways of fighting, both of which are effective under different circumstances. I found the Spider best when facing enemies individually and Dragon best when being attacked by many at once. Both are enormously satisfying though. I still think bloody footprints would be the icing on the cake if they were possible. And some kind of "death from above" move would be brilliant (I've been playing Golden Axe recently!).

It's *so* worth continuing work on this.
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Plotinus
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Posted: 21st Oct 2009 15:24 Edited at: 21st Oct 2009 15:42
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I've been playing this some more, just constantly resurrecting the enemies to demolish them over and over again. This is one of those games that is just fun to play even without any progression.

It's good to see such a variety of animations. I just sliced someone's arms both off at once, which I hadn't seen before. The slow-motion Chi effect is also fantastic, especially with the slow-motion sounds as well. It would be good to have some kind of on-screen message or other indication that it's happening, though, especially if it's going to activate itself on occasion.

It's not very clear what the difference is between the three attack keys - I'm just mashing them pretty much at random - although I see from an earlier post that they're meant to be different kinds of slashes. Sometimes pressing them makes the hero lunge forwards and move from one place to another and sometimes it doesn't, but I haven't spotted any pattern to this.

There is awkward jerkiness, including camera stuttering, sometimes when running over rooftops. I think that making the collision detection with the buildings a bit different as I suggested before - so that you can't run into the little nooks and crannies - might help with this.

Also, the way of the Spider seems intrinsically more powerful than that of the Dragon. It might be an idea to make it an option only if the player has been standing still for a couple of seconds, rather than just whenever he's standing still. That would make it a little harder to go straight into Spider mode.
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 21st Oct 2009 17:37 Edited at: 21st Oct 2009 17:38
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Valle:

THanks so much for the nice comments dude!

In respnse to your suggestions:
Quote: "-make the blood a bit darker"
- That is something I have played with endlessly, trying to get something that's
not too dark, not too light, You're probably right, it's a little too neon at the moment, but I'll work on it.

Quote: "-screen could flash red when player gets hit."
- Currently the player takes damage but there is no health bar or
anything. For some reason, even putting one sprite on the screen costs me 10FPS

Quote: "-bloodsplashes on the screen (in the foreground)"
- I actually had this in there at one point but I took it out
because it got a bit too crouded sometimes and you couldn't really see what was going on. Plus to make it look any good I
have to use sprites and again, sprite use seems to cost me 10FPS straight up!
Quote: "-enemies scream louder when dying"
- Fair point. I should point out that the sounds in Bushido are not yet
mastered, so many of them will play at different volumes. Once I have all the sounds done I will get them all mastered so
they dont play louder than each other. Also the slomo really messes with things because it pitches all the sounds down,
which sounds cool but ruins most of the mixing I may have done!
Quote: "-the complementary colour of red is green, maybe this can help you somehow"
Hmm. I like that... but I'm affraid
that I've strictly limited myself to Black Red and White. Although I'm even considering eliminating grey as well literally
just BW and R. I'm not sure. the art style is still quite transient, and I might change the whole look of the game again.
I'm feeling that more and more simple is actually better. It's very hard to do anything too detailed in DB without having
to sacrifice FPS. I think I prefer simple, stylised graphics and more in depth gameplay, to shiny bumpmapped bloomy graphics
with simple gameplay.

And thanks for the link to the brushes! It's totally lovely. I'll use some of them to add more variation to the splats! Cheers

Quote: "I played it and it was just awesome,fun to kill those guys.It took me some time to figure out the jump onto that roof to get
over so you should do something else there.Otherwise its just great,blood looks excellent."


Lol, thanks dude. I'm glad you enjoyed it. That was my bad on level design.. I should have fixed it before release!

Quote: "This is probably the most fun I've ever had with a DBPro demo. Fantastic!"

wow, that's great! And thanks for all the feedback... I'm going to try and respond to it all....
(since there's quite alot I'll just do the negatives. Thanks for all the positive feedback though, it's like, great to
know that the hours of animating and texturing and whatnot are appreciated!)

Quote: "A lot of the enemies seem to be walking along with butter on their feet too."

I did alot of study of animation and movement and so on...but only about halfway through my animations... so the earlier
stuff is a little bit ropey... butterfeet as you say! I think that when I have a free day I'll have to go back and fix alot
of the older animations so that there are steps when they move forward.

Quote: "Jumping can be annoying when the hero hits the building's eaves as he's trying to float onto the roof."

Totally agreed. Writing the collision system for this has actually made me cry like a 5 year old. I broke an ESC key at
one point from quitting in frustration too hard. I think that at the moment it's probably a little too strict, but it does
stop you falling through anything! You're right about the design of the buildings though.. and as I said above really the
level itself needs a redesign to fit alot of the gameplay features I've added. There need to be more vertical surfaces to
bounce off, that aren't rooves..


Quote: "It's good to see such a variety of animations. I just sliced someone's arms both off at once, which I hadn't seen before.
The slow-motion Chi effect is also fantastic, especially with the slow-motion sounds as well. It would be good to have some
kind of on-screen message or other indication that it's happening, though, especially if it's going to activate itself on
occasion."


Yay! Its so nice that you noticed! There are around 5000 frames of animation on each character, and that's taken hours to do
I'm glad that the slomotion thing is cool too. The fact that their limbs are detachable and that you can collide with hit
boxes instead of just that character mesh, means that there should be quite a variety of ways to chop people up... my
favourite so far is the one where you split them down the middle and they stagger about.. anyway, in response to the crit,
I intend to add a kind of motion trail / bloom effect when you are in chi mode. my girlfriend thinks that it should do
cinematic angles when you're in chi mode, but I'm concerned about the player seeing the "empty environment" behind the camera.

Quote: "It's not very clear what the difference is between the three attack keys - I'm just mashing them pretty much at random"

Lols, yeah totally, right now I've just added moves to the combo system as I've animated them. They really now need to be
re-ordered into the propper places in the combo system. So I'm sorry about that. Yes, right now they are random!

Quote: "There is awkward jerkiness, including camera stuttering, sometimes when running over rooftops. I think that making the collision
detection with the buildings a bit different as I suggested before - so that you can't run into the little nooks and crannies
- might help with this."


As I said above. The camera will swing and move alot less. I'm going to have it track the player much more like an orthographic
camera, with less rotation. You're totally right about the jittery roof movement. I'll look at switching his downward movement
to a curve instead of an absolute.

Quote: "Also, the way of the Spider seems intrinsically more powerful than that of the Dragon."

haha, yes it is...I think this is a product of the fact you are playing an unfinished game. At the moment everything that is
available is unlocked, but in the final game you will much less powerful initially and will have to upgrade the way of the
spider and the dragon in order to be able to do certain moves. At the moment, I've done more on the way of the spider, so
it is definately more powerful, but once I've got the combo system more solid, and you can build more damaging and flowing
combos, I think the way of the dragon will be equally powerful. There are actually 2 other modes I haven't even started yet.
Way of the Shadow, which is similar to the way of the Spider, but it kills enemies much faster and drains Chi, and the way
of the Crane, which is based around ariel moves and juggles.

Thanks so much for the detailed and very helpful feedback, and thanks to EVERYONE who has downloaded and commented. This has
been a long long slog to get to this point, and it's really amazing that some many people are commenting and enjoying it.
I'm inspired to continue! so... cheers![i]

I want robotic legs.
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Plotinus
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Posted: 21st Oct 2009 18:28 Edited at: 21st Oct 2009 18:38
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All sounds brilliant. I'll be watching out for the next update!

I think the greyscale palette looks good, and pure black/white would be too harsh. The colour of the blood seems fine to me as it is. I agree that simple, stylised graphics can look very good, and in my opinion you've got the right sort of look here.

I think you're right about cinematic angles for the chi sequences being a bad idea, since it would be confusing for the player. They look very impressive as they are already (the slowed-down sound is what really makes it). With the bloom or motion trail as well they would be truly awesome.

One idea that occurred to me is that it would be fun if sometimes severing a limb didn't actually kill the bad guy. For example, if while using the Way of the Dragon you could slice someone's arm off and he carries on attacking you with the other, or chop off a leg and he has to hop everywhere. I don't know if this would be getting just too silly - but on the other hand we've already got people staggering around with their upper bodies looking like peeled bananas (which makes me laugh mightily every time I see it), so it might fit in well.

[EDIT] Just killed someone by chopping off both his legs and his head in a single blow. That'll teach him.
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Mazz426
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Posted: 21st Oct 2009 18:33
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i was playing through it again, and was thinking of a few ideas but one i had that may be a nice touch would be an orange tone rising sun, the one on the japanese flag, at the beggining and end of each level, also the game area seems a tad... barren mabey some trees or plants would liven it up, that also might be a good way of implimenting Valles green idea

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Dreamsenshi
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Posted: 21st Oct 2009 22:05
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Everyone has already said everything I can think of to say, but I finally got to play the demo and LOVE LOVE LOVE IT! It is, without a doubt, the best demo I've played from the forums so far. And, all the improvements you're planning on making sound great! I hope we get to see them as well! Especially the not getting stuck in nooks and corners. :/ That was really the only thing that broke immersion in the game for me.

Great sounds, great animations (and wow, you did so much work in there! IMPRESSIVE!), and I love how he gets all stained with the blood and the way his feet move when he's jumping. The slow movements and the quick movements . . . It's so nice to see a variety all in one game! Somehow, the style of it all makes it a very classy kind of gore. It's definitely inspiring to look at, and shows what DBPro is really capable of if you put in the effort.



Your error is my treasure. =^--^=
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 22nd Oct 2009 12:54
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Quote: "One idea that occurred to me is that it would be fun if sometimes severing a limb didn't actually kill the bad guy."


Yes! That would be the nuts! I had that happening but sometimes it means that the animations look a bit funky. I do think it would look hilarious though, having the baddy stagger about flailing his good arm and randomly spurting from his severed limb - I'll look into that!

Quote: "[EDIT] Just killed someone by chopping off both his legs and his head in a single blow. That'll teach him. "

Ahhh. Learning the ways of the spider you are.

Quote: "... a nice touch would be an orange tone rising sun, the one on the japanese flag, at the beggining and end of each level, also the game area seems a tad... barren mabey some trees or plants would liven it up, that also might be a good way of implimenting Valles green idea"


Cheers Mazz. I think I'm going to end up saying this alot, but the colours in the game ill only be Black, White and Red. I'm considering having some levels that feature 1 other color... like pink in the cherry blossom orchard, and blue in the mountain..
Also, as a random fact I found while researching... the dot on the japanese flag does not represent the "rising sun". That's a Western interpretation. It's actually a highly simplified version of the Japanese national flower - the chrysanthemum. Which was the crest of the ruling dynasty at the inception of the Japanese flag.

Dreamsenshi, I was hoping you'd get around to playing this!
Quote: "It is, without a doubt, the best demo I've played from the forums so far. And, all the improvements you're planning on making sound great!"
Hurray! Although I'm also sorry that you kept getting stuck in the ceilings! I'm working on a fix for that at the moment.

Quote: "and the way his feet move when he's jumping."

LOL. Strangely this is actually my favourite bit of the animation so far, and I'm kind of Hyped that someone spotted it! It's a total rip from Ultimate Ninja.. I literally had the jump bit of the movie on loop...
Anyway, I'm hyped that you enjoyed it, and really pleased that you noticed some of the smaller details to the animations and design. It's always nice when someone notices a detail that is small, but was difficult to implement.

Thanks again for all the feedback people! It's totally inspiring me to continue.

I'm currently changing the engine to a far more dynamic way of handling all the effects and AI, using arraylists. So that only objects that actually need to be checked are controlled during the main loop and everything else is ignored... no more for-to loops for 400 objects!

Ontop of that, I'm playing with the idea of using a cartoon shader on on some of the characters, and drawing the levels by hand, and scanning them in. Going back to basics with creativity!

Updates coming soon.

Peace and Harmonicas

I want robotic legs.
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Dreamsenshi
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Posted: 22nd Oct 2009 21:39
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Quote: "Strangely this is actually my favourite bit of the animation so far"


Me too! That's why I mentioned that one specifically. It is such a perfect touch to the style you have going throughout. Even having him use the proper motions of putting the sword back in its case after each attack is wonderful. It makes me miss Japan and okonomiyaki and fresh momiji no monjyu! (posting while hungry; sorry :} )

=^--^=

Quote: "It's totally inspiring me to continue."


Yay! I really hope you finish this! I'd totally scrounge up the money to purchase a finished version!



Your error is my treasure. =^--^=
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Valle
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Posted: 22nd Oct 2009 22:51 Edited at: 23rd Oct 2009 01:59
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Quote: "I'm currently changing the engine to a far more dynamic way of handling all the effects and AI, using arraylists. So that only objects that actually need to be checked are controlled during the main loop and everything else is ignored... no more for-to loops for 400 objects!

Ontop of that, I'm playing with the idea of using a cartoon shader on on some of the characters, and drawing the levels by hand, and scanning them in. Going back to basics with creativity!"


that sounds so awesome, can't wait!

edit:
Quote: "For some reason, even putting one sprite on the screen costs me 10FPS"

Do you use these?



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Mazz426
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Posted: 24th Oct 2009 21:30 Edited at: 24th Oct 2009 21:30
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I'm liking the hand drawn idea, will you be going for a more traditional japanese style, if thats so I'd recomend that you should pick up a copy of a game called Okami (PS2), its not to well known but is a superb example of an artistic game acctually working as a game.

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Bizar Guy
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Posted: 26th Oct 2009 21:30
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I tried the demo, and it was pretty fun! Please go somewhere with this project, you've released a demo, it has gameplay, and everything.

Suggestions just for combat and movement I have, are these:

When you attack you move a lot. I liked this, but I also had trouble facing the enemies. Either the attacks should be tighter, or your character should automatically turn a bit more towards the baddie you're attacking. I loved the death animations and the two styles of fighting, and the blood was great. You might want to work on improving the performance though. I know I have an older machine, but it should not have lagged as much as it did later in the game. Also, one minor complaint, I'm really used to using the wasd keys, and with w not doing anything I felt a bit weird. Maybe map something to it?

Then the movement. Sometimes it felt really slow and unresponsive. Maybe that was lag, I don't know. But it also was sometimes difficult to go where I wanted, particularly when jumping. Roof ledges were constantly in my way, and sometimes it felt like pressing a key did nothing. The lag when he crouches to jump was fine, it was other things usually.

I assume that you will make some way to tell how much health there is later. Also, you should consider how you will design levels. Most definitely you'll need to make it more clear where level boundaries are, but also things like exploration. Clearly there could be a ton of exploration in levels like this and still have them be linear. I'd love to see multiple paths through a level, and so on. maybe puzzles to, but this is all getting way ahead.

Great demo!

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Butter fingers
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Posted: 27th Oct 2009 10:44
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Quote: "Yay! I really hope you finish this! I'd totally scrounge up the money to purchase a finished version!"

Ideally this will be some kind of free.... wait.... I don't want to commit to anything yet!

Quote: "I'm liking the hand drawn idea, will you be going for a more traditional japanese style, if thats so I'd recomend that you should pick up a copy of a game called Okami (PS2), its not to well known but is a superb example of an artistic game acctually working as a game."

Mazz, thanks man, yeah I have Okami on the PS2, it's one of my favourite games! I've actually just started working with Kris Turvey (Lightpunk), who is a digital artist : check some of his work here:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=162816

Bizar Guy,

Hey dude! Was wondering if you would drop in here! Thanks for the comments and very full review. So! TO respond:

a) Yes you do move alot when attacking. there will be a toggle auto aiming on and off
b)Performance at the moment is terrible! Your PC is probably fine, it's my coding that is bad. It was initially written very roughly, because I was only playing, there are some elements that need to be vastly sped up (it's easy, but just a bit long to do!)
c)I know what you mean about W! I used to have jump mapped to it.
I don't know...I might change the attack keys to Z,X,C
d)Again, you're right about jumping as I said before, the level design of the demo was very poor, and bears no representation what-so-ever to what the final level designs will look like!
Cheers for your comments though, much appreciated and very useful.

I want robotic legs.
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Mazz426
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Posted: 27th Oct 2009 18:16
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i had a look at the guys stuff and it looks very good i hope that this will have the same artistic flare as okami, its one of my favourite games as well.

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baxslash
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Posted: 30th Oct 2009 22:03
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This is totally amazing! Downloading now and I will post comments but from the trailer on YT it looks fantastic!
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baxslash
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Played it to death (har har) last night after a few too many ales and I have to say I absolutely loved it. I assume you are a Kill Bill fan?

Anyway, I was hoping to have lots of ideas for you but you seem to have it working nicely!!

One thing I think could be worked on though is the jumping/double jumping. It's a bit un-intuitive and a little un-realistic speed-wise but that is my ONLY critisism!!

I look forward to future updates!!
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Lukas W
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Posted: 31st Oct 2009 23:15
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I've just tried the game, and to be honest it was spectacular!
Have you played a game called Kengo Zero? It's a samurai game similar to this; but I can say with certainty that Bushido Shuffle, once complete, will kick Kengo Zero's butt. For one thing (the most important) in Kengo Zero you can not chop off limbs, however there can be lots of blood.

Good luck though!

A mod accidentally your signature
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2009 15:22 Edited at: 3rd Nov 2009 15:23
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Baxslash:

Thanks for the feeds dude!
Quote: "I assume you are a Kill Bill fan?"
It's a great movie, but Tarantino really just stole the best bits from other films and added snappy dialogue! Bushido is probably closer to movies like Ran, Xatoichi, Drunken Master, etc. These were the movies I grew up loving!
Quote: "I think could be worked on though is the jumping/double jumping"
Quite a few people have crit that, so it's something I'm going to have to work on!
Glad you liked it though, having seen your project, the fact you enjoyed this is praise indeed!

Lukas
Quote: "I've just tried the game, and to be honest it was spectacular!"
Pow! Thankyou!I've never played Kengo, but I just grabbed myself a copy from Ebay (all in good research). I'm glad you were into it!

A MASSIVE THANKYOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS DOWNLOADED AND PLAYED! YOUR COMMENTS AND CRIT WILL GO TOWARDS SHAPING THE NEXT BUILD OF BUSHIDO, SO CHEERS!! HAVE A ON ME!

Right now it's kind of back to the drawing board! Now that I know people dig the concept I have to make this into something that can actually be built. I have a basic editor created now, that can load and lightmap my Maya Maps, add spawnpoints, enemies, trigger zones, sound, collectables and so on. Also creates culling zones and AI containers.

The entire art style for the levels is changing and going to be hand drawn by Kris Turvey. He's got alot of my reference pictures and design doc, and well be doing a mockup map in a few weeks, so expect a test demo for the new environments by Mid November. I'm off to seattle for work soon ,so will have a 8 hour flight to work on this.... YAY.

Again, I have compiled all the feedback into a big list of neccessary changes, and things that people didn't like. Also made a list of things that people really enjoyed, so that I can start to build on those features and make them even cooler!

I now have 2 other people on the team - Kris(LightPunk) who is basically lead Art design, and Ethan (OnToastDesign), who is going to be doing the sound mix and 2D hud/menu/branding, and Ollie Benett, who is a professional tester and level designer. With this growth from just me, to a team I'm having to take alot of ideas that were just sketchy notes in a pad and whip them into a design doc. I'm sorry if playable updates are a little thin on the ground, but I don't really want to release unstable/crappy builds. This ISN'T a team request, but if there are maybe 4-5 people who would like to be solid testers for this it would be amazing. Also, if you're out there Green Gandalf, I would do pretty much anything (bar foot kissing) for a couple of customised shaders!

anyway, I have nothing hugely constructive to post righ now, but here are some screens from the doodle pad - movement and Chi controls are getting an overhall!



PS, Gutted I didn't get into "From the Forums" this month! I felt sure this would!

I want robotic legs.

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