Elemedals, a SpiralKnights fan game! (Current module version: 0.3)

Sorry for replying so late your other thread. I'm quite busy recently.

Replying your last post from the other thread:

If you wish, I could try getting the Frogatto team in on this. They might ask you for a certain file or to look into stuff...I'm not sure.
Yes, I wish. I hope it helps with your game.

What I don't get is the last option you have. ("Depurar o programa," meaning "Debug this program"?) I've never seen that.
If I'm not wrong, it was always there. But I believe it does nothing, because I click on it, the window takes a time to dispose and no more than that.

I think I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I'm using the bleeding-edge version of Anura, so I don't think the game will run for everyone. When the next stable version of Anura is released, then I'll stick with that, and everyone should be able to run the game. Until then, sorry if you run into difficulties.
No problem to me. You are doing it all alone. It must be hard. I already thought on helping you, but... well... I had a lot of difficulty to put anura to run and I lost myself on the tutorial. So I just give up.

I have Windows XP Professional -.- I hope that in the future it'll compatible!

Ah, Trats, I might have something that might help us both! This little article is the one I'm talking about. It sounds like you have a bit of computer skill, so hopefully you'll be able to follow the article without too much trouble.

I have Windows XP Professional -.- I hope that in the future it'll compatible!

It shall be! I believe I know what was keeping me from compiling Anura for Windows 8. You see, I think that the compiling guide was written on Windows 7, and a few things are different between Windows 8 and 7. I'll be borrowing my brother's laptop (with Windows 7 on it) and make an attempt at compiling it there.

Also, the prebuilt binaries are back! This means that many Linux users won't have to compile the game anymore! Yay!

EDIT: You gotta love those secret developer errors. (That error message is from the Frogatto team, not me.)

Ah, Trats, I might have something that might help us both!
Nice! I will try to get it running tomorrow. I will have more time left.

And these dev errors are very funny. I found another similar to it. I made a super error on program similar to MatLab that crashed it, so appeared "Game Over" on terminal. Actually, my teacher said to not use a big number on a function, but I wanted to test and see what happened. So this error appeared.

This next update will add the kool kat, the hidden boss of the game. Those who hear his name will find him vanishing until the end of time. You will be horrified.

Say, which one do you guys like the most?

I think I like the bottom right and second column.
A head for what. . .

A head for what. . .

It might be a robot...

I just love it when single lines like this one prevent any progress until they're fixed (Sarcasm) I was getting a strange crash. This was the cause.

The image "tiles/cement.png" does exist. The error was caused by a new restriction relating to multiple tilesets sharing zorders. (It's a little complex.)

This is NOT a triple bump. I'm making progress with each post!

If you still haven't figured it out, I finally got the HUD working. See those hearts? Yeah, Pivot has a lot of health...

Of course, those hearts are just temporary. I'll be making custom HP graphics soon.

Yay!
Since those hearts are silver, Pivot would have 45 Hearts instead of 15.
So yes, that is a lot of health.

Something something Daniel.

Something something Daniel.

Oops.

Also, each heart represents 2 HP. I set the HP to 30 or so just so that I wouldn't keep on dieing while I tested Chromalisk. (Chromalisk is my nemesis. He has killed the hand that fed him so so many times.)

Your terminal keeps saying Daniel like an obsessed ex-girlfriend too. . .
As for the Chromalisk, I know several people who have an obsession with punting it into space or cutting it up into sashimi.

Your terminal keeps saying Daniel like an obsessed ex-girlfriend too. . .
No, that's just my username. Most linux terminals say [username]@[computer name]:[current directory]$ whenever you can input a command. So, all those times it's saying my name, it's because I was inputting commands.

I prefer my console over a windows-style explorer. Largely because I grew up with it. (I'm not kidding. I literally grew up with it.)

As for the Chromalisk, I know several people who have an obsession with punting it into space or cutting it up into sashimi.
I find that highly amusing.

Funny thing. Development has been slow, but I suppose that makes sense; school just finished for me.

So, I was playing Dota 2, and then someone on my friend list comes up to me and gives me this link. So then I pass out, you see?

No, I don't pass out. But, I was really excited! And then I saw this. I passed ou- I mean did a table flip.

This is my chance! It. Is. TIME! And then I remembered Elemedals. Can't just leave it in the cold...

After much deliberation, I've decided to take a month off working on Elemedals. (Okay, actually I only thought about it for about 30 seconds.) I do intend on at least creating one complete level, including a boss, for Elemedals before dropping it permanently, because while the project has taken far too long, I do not want to leave the game in such an incomplete state.

THAT BEING SAID, I'll probably make two levels w/bosses; I began some work on a (secret) boss, and it is not Vanaduke. This is unfortunate because Vanaduke happens to be one of my favorite bosses. Oops! Can't forget him, can we? And, who knows, maybe I'll get a better schedule going and make the game to be half of what I originally envisioned it to be. (Which is much too big for a one-man team. I am not Tom Happ.)

You didn't even spill your coffee.
Anyway; Good luck, as per usual.

Keep doing what you do best.

Update: I've gotten the Humble Bundle. I have two things to say on assets and tools.

First off, I will not be using any assets I got from the bundle for Elemedals. I prefer to keep the proper theme and style. I'm a pixel artist, and even if I pick up other art forms, I will only stick with pixel art for Elemedals. Atop that, Anura cannot encrypt its resources; something which the EULA of all the assets I just got requires.

As for tools, a little more than half of the tools are engines. Can't be used. There are three useful tools: Game Character Hub, Sprite Lamp, and Spriter Pro.

• Game Character Hub seems like it's aimed for RPG characters, but I could be wrong.
• Sprite Lamp looks really really interesting, but I don't think I could use it for this project. (It allows you to do crazy lighting stuff; it basically takes your flat sprite and lets you light it up like a 3D object. Then you can save the output.)
• Spriter Pro looks perfect for creating Vanaduke, with his huge limbs. I haven't tried it, though, and it might kill the pixel effect.

bump

Sings

Into the gears we fly,
Let your heart reach the sky!

It is time again to go around
And round and round and round!

Greave not, for this is just a Wisp
Of what has begun. That's the gist

Of the time when gears whirr again.
Yes! You cannot even begin

To fathom the power under that hood!
Oh bracelet wearer, time you stood!

Be brave, oh little Snipe of mine,
Time to lift your wings again!
Begin all over, donning new rockets,
Lifting this locket of mine to tear the veil...

Come, come! All speed!
Into the Slipstream!

~The Amalgamist

One month... Feels like it's been four.
That aside, Welcome Back.

Hmm...complications...complications... Something crashes in the background.

Err, hi. Sadly we're switching to Unity. Some complications.

Not too bad, though. Things were already starting afresh. I would actually have posted new videos about the...har...new...well, you'll see. Just know that...wait how do I word this?

Oh scrap it. Terminal! A robot clad in SurgeBreak equipment walks up to Autofire and hands him a piece of paper.

Alrighty...actually, this might be a little too criptic. Autofire rips up the piece of paper. Just know that the game isn't going to be called Elemedals. And it will be a different genre.

Wait, didn't I say that before? Am I quite alright? No? Um...maybe...well, Unity ought to help in terms of all the, erm, multiplayer aspects which Anura lacks. Haha...yeah. Anyway, this should be more of my scope...right?

No? Drop that thought, because there's a wild link of that Summer project! Catch it before it runs away! (Note: I apologize if the polish on that game is not so good, and if the sounds are annoying. I had exactly 30 days to make the game, and made it almost entirely on my own.)

EDIT: Though it isn't too far to turn back. I think I'll take a vote!

I wouldn't be surprised if you forgot about spiral knights. I did too for a bit
/shrug
This is honestly the only part of sk I'm interested in if you want I'll help you even though I don't use code and my pixel art is medicore at best.

I second this.

Grrr....I'm just getting started!

Autofire used a Spark of Life!

And I can't fight this battle alone!

If anyone wants to help by digging through the bottomless soundbanks (or grab a synthesizer/microphone), learning FFL, or picking up that pixel-brush, I'm more than happy to have you aboard. That includes you, Lasershield. I can find a fairly easy task to get you started, if you'd like. Like...hmm...spikes? Depends on your skill level.

As time goes by, I shall be working through these tasks. However, if anyone wants to chip in, this will help you get started.

To update, my life is quite busy. I'm a full-time college student now. But I'll see what I can get done. This morning I made some hefty progress on Pivot's sword swing animations. I also refined the animation flow so that the game automatically figures out when to chain which animations together. It's promising!

All (damage) systems online!

Took a crack at silkwings...
Yeah I'll be having some more attempts.

http://imgur.com/ymQEMzo

( I removed the white background and made it transparent after.)

I'm just going to copy and paste what I said in the Discord exchange. (By the way, I'm on the Discord server lately, so if you want to chat, shoot me a PM there! Or on Steam...but I'm on the Discord channel more lately.) Lasershield, I hope you don't mind me posting this, but I'm throwing it here for future reference.

---
[3:36 PM] Autofire: I've quadrupled the size of the sprite to make it slightly more clear. (Normally, sprite sizes are doubled) While I don't like pointing out areas that others went wrong, I still wanted to say what changes I made.

One thing I did is I cut the color count a little by merging a few colors that were really similar, although this isn't necessary. I also brightened the greens up a little. I did throw in another light-red, to make it look like the veins in the Silkwing's wings. The problem with sticking with the dark red for the veins is then it stands out too much, but making the lines fad makes them seem to "shrink." I admit that my job isn't perfect, either; now it looks a bit like I was dithering, which isn't what we wanted.

I added the legs because it broke the dark green of the lower body a tad, and threw in the other antenna. (I couldn't quite tell if you had one or two in your original picture. I know that the left one is hard to see, but if we animate this it will become more obvious.)

But all in all, you did a great job! Your original picture was clear, and the shape was well defined. (When I look at the silhouette, it looks like a winged creature.) All I did was clean it up in a few areas, but this is something you probably could have done. I go through this process with my own sprites, and usually make adjustments a few days after initially creating them.
[3:38 PM] Autofire: Also, now that I look, I forgot the wing on the bottom right. 😛
[3:39 PM] Autofire: Then again, also Silkwings aren't that green. Whoops
[3:41 PM] Lasershield: Ha
[3:43 PM] Lasershield: I'm always open to criticism so fire away. Thinking about it now, I really should have use more sources instead of the first google image
[3:43 PM] Autofire: Have you ever tried Spiral Spy?
[3:44 PM] Autofire: I've used that extensively while drawing Pivot
[3:44 PM] Autofire: But you don't want to get carried away when using a model as a reference. There are a lot of details which you simply have to drop when drawing with so few pixels
[3:44 PM] Lasershield: Yes I've tried but it's difficult to get it working on a mac. Mac has so many restraints
[3:44 PM] Autofire: Ah, ok
[3:45 PM] Autofire: Sadly I can't help you there; I've used Windows a lot and Linux a whole lot more
[3:45 PM] Autofire: I do want a Mac, but I just don't see myself getting one in the near future.
[3:46 PM] Autofire: Also, if you're using GIMP, did you ever try the indexed mode?
[3:48 PM] Lasershield: Nope, downloaded it because I upgraded macs and the old program I was using, SAI (just some wineskinned version from someone on deviant art) no longer functioned.
[3:50 PM] Autofire: Alright. Well I've usually used GIMP, though I have been wanting to try http://www.aseprite.org/
[3:53 PM] Lasershield: Looks interesting
[3:53 PM] Autofire: But if you want to count colors/shave off extra colors, or do a palette swap, you can do (Image >> Mode >> Indexed), and then you can open Colormap editor (Windows >> Dockable Dialogs >> Colormap) to see all your colors
[3:53 PM] Lasershield: Oh ok
[3:54 PM] Autofire: Uh I gotta AFK. If you have anything else you wanna say, go ahead and I'll respond when I get back
[3:54 PM] Lasershield: Alright
[3:54 PM] Lasershield: TBH ive been playing a comp csgo game this whole time and yeah it was a bad idea(edited)
[3:55 PM] Autofire: Oh, and thank you for helping out! The silkwing will work great! (I'm not going to code it quite yet, I can go ahead and add it to Elemedals as a dummy object)(edited)
[4:49 PM] Lasershield: Got any tasks you need help with? I'd love to help but I have no idea where to start. What kind of coding are you using? I can maybe learn a little through some tutorials on the internet
[4:59 PM] Lasershield: So I looked into it, and they tell you to grab a copy of frogatto the game. Is there a way I can get around this?
[5:09 PM] Lasershield: I think i'll stay away from coding for now...
[5:09 PM] Lasershield: Way out of my league at this point, as I expected.
[8:53 PM] Autofire: Hm? Sorry I was afk for quite a lot longer than expected
[8:53 PM] Autofire: Anyway if you want to code, you don't necessarily need to grab Frogatto.
[8:54 PM] Autofire: It can help, but you can also just look at the Frogatto code here: https://github.com/frogatto/frogatto
[8:56 PM] Autofire: ATM I'm kinda busy with something else, but when I get a chance I'm going to create a download of the mac version of the engine bundled with the game. You could get experimenting there, if you like.
[9:02 PM] Autofire: Assuming you've coded before, I could probably help get you up to speed. Until then, there is https://github.com/Autofire/elemedals/issues and all the files are in https://github.com/Autofire/elemedals

I'm curious...would anyone be interested in a livestream or something of the sorts? I mean, I'm pretty busy, but pretty soon I'm going to have one of my other projects all tied up, so I'll have a bit more time. I might be able to regularly stream or record or something. I'd probably be showing what I do for development, answering questions, and make brain-cell-killing puns.

So this is an interest check. I'll ask on Discord, too.

Surprise live stream!

EDIT: Surprise live stream has ended! Thanks to all who could come, and sorry for all those who didn't know about it because of the short notice!

Surprise question!

The live stream footage has been saved, but I need to clean it up a tad. Yes I'm keeping the part where Army bombs the stream.

The gears of time turn irreversibly...

CODE FORMATTING LEVEL UP!
Now more stylish!
Better organization!

PIVOT LEVEL UP!
Can now button mash!
Pivot can now execute a third slash!

Coming up next, I'll be finishing up the system that makes it so anyone (with pixel art skills and GIMP (?)) can make a new sword. The system will be very expandable. The goal is to make it so that you can create a new sword by adding the artwork for the animations, the parameters for the animations, and the sword's stats (I haven't added that yet). Once that's done...voila! New sword!

I'll make sure that guns and bombs leverage this system as well. This is really important because, for Elemedals, I intend on only creating a small set of the weapons in Spiral Knights. However, if there's any weapon someone really wants to see, they don't have to ask me; they can make it on their own!

On a related note...charging systems. Can't forget those! Those will probably be a little more difficult to create, as each weapon usually has its own special behavior when charged.

I kicked a couple bugs, refined the slash graphics, and added more refined control systems.

Full speed ahead!

EDIT: Also, sound effects.

Ta-da! I've revised the OP with better links and more stuff! Hope it works!

Another new version!

This is really just a small update to test things. I'll be pushing updates every time I have something significant to put out there.

*Points at game*, *Points at Autofire*, *Points at game*, *Points at Autofire*, *Waves arms around frantically*
I cannot comprehend this awesomeness. Honestly, Autofire, you've really outdone yourself :D

EDIT: Does the game run on Macs that have updated to El Captain? One of my friends is unable to run it on her Macbook :/

Autofire grins.

Thank you for the complement! At the moment I'm actually taking a little break from developing. The stress has been getting to me and I never fully recovered from the pressures of taking finals...feel like I've been fighting some cold. But hearing that someone likes my work...it fills me with determination. ;)

Elemedals should run on El Captain. I have never actually gotten to test the game on Mac, but I know of other people who have been able to make it run. If your friend would be so kind, could you/she give some info on what it does when you try running Elemedals? Does it give an error message? Does it create a window and then close it? Or does it simply do nothing? I can try investigating this myself, and, failing that, I'll pass it on to the engine developers.

(By the way, I'm aware that on a Mac, it calls the game "Frogatto." I intend on addressing this some time, although it would really help if I could get my hands on a Mac system. I also intend on making my own update art...but that'll have to wait until I can get the elevator art drawn.)

For the next couple days, I won't be working on Elemedals. Instead, I'll be working on the engine itself. While there are a lot of parts of Anura which I love, it has a glaring flaw: the builtin code editor. For example, it lacks a "Find next" button, and a couple of things cause it to crash. Because the engine developers are quite busy with other parts of the engine, I'm going to try tackling a few issues related to this code editor.

If all goes well, these enhancements will speed up my future work, as well as leave a lasting benefit outside of this game.

I'll keep you updated! Work should resume on Elemedals by next Monday.

I have been wondering how this game was coming along. Keep at it, Autofire!

Hiya, Artist! Long time, no see! (That's gotta be the weirdest expression ever.)

Anyhow, a nice set of improvements have been made to Anura!

Back to work!

...Well....kinda. My summer class has started. It's online, so I do still have more time than I would with a typical class. But I've got things to do.

Also, for economic reasons, I'll have to switch gears and start another project. One that I can monetize. I'll be doing that sometime next week, though. I have a list of things that I intend on implementing, however! Over the next few days, I hope to create the systems for the guns and bombs. Of course, this means charging mechanics. However, that should be pretty easy since I implemented my handy timer system.

No, not too much in the way of changing enemies. However, there is one key component of Chromalisks that relates to bombs. So there's that!

I've added a new weapon to the game!

No, I won't tell you what it is! You'll just have to guess...for now. ^-^

Made a new version! AI and bullets 'n stuff.

No, the new additions for the player aren't done. The next version will fix this.

EDIT: Uh...whoops. I kinda...screwed up. I forgot to push the new version to the server. ._."