Splice The Hedgehog: RPG Fangame.

Been taking a break for the most part, but every now and then I've been coming back to fiddle with things. I've expanded on some field abilities a bit, though I can't really show anything on that note for now.

But what I can show is this neat little feature I whipped up just today.

Spoiler:

I also did another thing.

Spoiler:

In two days it'll be a month since the last update.
As much as I wanna change that, I have nothing to show right now. I've still been on a bit of a hiatus. But let me go ahead and throw it out there that I plan to have another big update (like the videos I posted on my birthday,) in December. If all goes well I can have something up by the 15th, which is not coincidentally Splice's birthday.


Since I have loads of motivation but am constantly being pulled aside to do homework and the like, I'm just going to bring up a couple things I'd like to work on next or in the near future.


Remaking Greenflower City

Greenflower City is old. Dated. No matter how much I spruce it up, it really shows in some areas. But that's not the reason I want to remake it; the reason is that I feel there's potential for a whole lot more if I remake the tileset. This is going into some technical stuff but let me just put it simply: The earthbound tilesets I edited off of are not very well optimized. With some work, I should be able to fit more into a single tileset so that the areas look nicer. I've been looking over some backgrounds and tilesets and I've found lots of inspiration in them. It's a big to-do but I really want to experiment with it sometime.


Cymbeline's Moveset

Recently I've had some cool ideas for how to go about Cymbeline's style. To put it simply, she can only equip a certain set of weapons, neither one being particularly stronger than the other (but each one having their own perk.) Yet she is the only character able to change her weapons mid-battle.


Finish the Underground Base

I haven't forgotten about it. This technically takes priority over the above. There's not much else to say about it.




With that being said, I'm hoping to get back to work on this game real soon.

Well I couldn't hold it any longer. Here's a preview of the GFC Remake project.




I've only touched the road and sidewalk so far. While they look mostly the same, save for having been expanded, I've overhauled the tileset so it's actually made quite differently from how it originally was.

Spoiler:

Because of how much this is liable to change GFC as we know it, all my work is going into a separate map. The main game hasn't been dismantled to pull this off.

Well, because i'm still inspired but haven't been able to get much work done lately, i'm gonna talk about more ideas i have planned.


Now the characters; we already know that we have a really big cast here. And I've cut a lot of characters that were originally planned too. (i.e Hyper, Frost, Icicle, Keela,) and made Team Sonic into guest characters. Even then, we still have 15 main characters. Removing any one of them would either disrupt the story as it stands, or generally make things less enjoyable than I had in mind.

So to handle all these characters, I've had ideas for a couple things. One of them I've already put into action; the experience share. With that no character should be fully left behind in the levels (unless you level grind when someone is completely out of the party and inaccessible).
Another thing that goes almost without saying are the unique field abilities each character has. Utilizing those field abilities basically encourages the player to try other characters.

But finally, there's one I have not yet gone into detail about: Having separate teams. Basically, in some dungeons or zones the party will have to split up into different teams to meet separate goals. However, what I'm thinking is that you can set these teams basically any time you arrange your party, so that if you have specific parties you like to play around with, you can switch between them easily. Of course, in the aforementioned split ups, you cannot simply switch between them. If you do, you'll go back to where you left your other team.

Because of how many characters there are, I plan to have a maximum of three teams available. (Two teams can be made if more than four members have joined, and three if more than 8 have joined.)
I plan to revise the party switcher as well. I originally planned to have it as an item you can activate that will lead you to an area that changes based on the terrain. (such as a forest, desert, grasslands, etc.) But now, I plan to use the checkpoints as a means of a quick change for the party. The current style of the party switcher will be moved over to certain other locations, like Splice's house for instance.


Anyway, that's about all for tonight.

I think the issue with a big party is moreso that it's too overwhelming for the player rather than the player not having enough incentive to use everyone. Making everyone super unique with field abilities would make it more overwhelming in all likelihood.

You do have a point. I don't know if I'll be able to give everyone both fully unique abilities and have them required at the same time, so there will likely be abilities that share similar properties (i.e Splice's ice and Thunder's wind both put out torch fires) so that you don't have to decide between 15 specific characters. might have to make it so that speedy lights torches instead of blowing them up. I'm still experimenting to see what all is possible so nothing's set in stone yet.

Still, I want to try and see how I can make a big party work before resorting to cutting the cast down again. Unless you don't mind me making Shade and Lily unplayable (as they are the only two who are optional,) that is. But even then I'd still want to keep Shade around at least.

Well there still isn't a whole lot to report after yet another month has passed. Been too busy to really sit down and work on this game despite all the motivation I have for it.

But I can say that Splice's, Daz', and Thunder's (EDIT: And Tab's) field abilities are all in working order. Tab and Thunder's are only missing their sprites. They're all projectiles though, so it's nothing groundbreaking. Daz is the only one with rapid fire, so I might try some kind of puzzle revolving around shooting things quickly or multiple times.
I think that, given the way field abilities work, I should probably finish them all before progressing too much further. There is a lot of copy/pasting involved since common events don't work well with projectile shooting. I can probably finish the first dungeon though since it's not until afterwards when you gain the item to switch team leaders. So until then you're stuck with Splice's abilities, which are in fact, finished.


Smash is going to have his sprites tinkered with in the future, and Yuri pitched in with a design suggestion in darkening his colors. This is the result:



The darker colors add a bit more contrast to the rest of his look, and I think that's good. Though I kinda feel it might be a bit TOO dark but eehhh, whaddyou all think?
Thanks to Yuri for that edit.


Other than that, I've mostly been messing around with things I can't really show or experimenting with random things.

If it's not too much effort, do you think I could get a quick rundown on where you're at with things and what's currently being worked on? If I can avoid having to sift through the 55 page backlog, I happily will ^^;

Well I haven't been really active in working recently, but I've been mostly experimenting with Field Abilities and trying to see what I can do with the large cast of characters.

Although I did get a start on updating the tutorial in the beginning of the game. Given the changes I've made to the party mechanics, (as well as swimming for that matter,) and the introduction of field abilities in general, it needs to catch up with the times.

Really, this is as far back as you need to backlog.

That was helpful. I took a look at Updates 7 through 9, and the small little posts since, and I must say I love what you've got so far. Very impressive work, definitely. So I'm not wasting space here, I do have some comments to make right off the bat, though it's mostly about polish. The mechanics seem pretty solid so far.

First thing I noticed was that the pipe that Splice hung on in the Sewer dungeon was completely inconspicuous. I recommend trying to distinguish objects that can be interacted with from the background in some way, be it an indicator when you're near, a discoloration, whatever you think works best. The same could probably be done to terrain that you can jump on/over. Particularly in Update 9, I noticed that it was difficult to tell he could even jump down certain ledges or onto certain platforms, until he actually did it. These are very minor things, but every step that can be taken to help give the player direction is important.

Similarly, I noted that when Splice was attempting to push the Golden block, the little sweat indicator was hard to notice. Perhaps a little sound to go along with it would help. I know Sonic Adventure has more than a few grunts and huffs that would work perfectly.

In Update 8, when you were showcasing the story outset, I saw a couple places where you could shave of some time. The very first shot where it pans onto Splice's house shouldn't last so long. Sitting on the house with nothing happening for three or four seconds after the subtitle comes up isn't really necessary. Additionally, when Splice is recapping the morning's events to Clara, it might be wise to just quickly cut away from that. Most games tend to do that so that the player doesn't have to hear the same exposition twice.

Furthermore regarding the story, I felt that Tab sort of came out of nowhere during the encounter at the orphanage. That might need to be smoothed out a bit, but maybe that's just me.

Last couple details I noticed were in the Battles, the Health seemed to overlap with the SP a bit, so that could stand to be spaced out. The enemies, too. They always looked a bit too clustered when there was a handful of them. And regarding your low health indicator (brilliant thinking, btw), while I don't think leaving the whole thing blinking is a good idea, you might want to try letting that little broken heart icon stick around, until the leader's health is restored above critical levels. If the indicator only flashes up once, the player might forget after a while. But the whole indicator is too big to be a constant thing. So after the first warning, having it be just the heart might be a good middleground.

Hope that's not too much constructive criticism for one post. I had a lot of catching up to do ^^;