Questica -- Another Gosh Darn Pixel Game

WIP games, tools & toy projects
#61

Hello lads and gentlefolk! I have just finished stewing you up a fresh and delicious demo ;D This is my first time sharing one of my very own recipes however so make sure you eat this one with a particularly large grain of salt. I probably didn’t put enough in anyways.

Download the game launcher here:
A .jar for those inclined
An .exe for those who like to live dangerously

Utensils

WASD or Arrow Keys - Move
Double-tap direction - Run
I - open inventory
Enter - attack/use thing in hand
Shift - block/high arrow shot
B - open build menu
Tab - say something
1 - open up in-game editor
“-” - zoom out
“+” - zoom in

Shhh, super secret

N - debug mode
Ctrl + Move - Move SUPER fast
say “/giveitem item_name amount” - free items

Let me know what you think, and most importantly, if it works. (If you want to see console output of possible errors, the game jar gets downloaded to C:/Users/YourHandsomeUsername/Questica/Questica.jar) I’ll go over how to add your own objects and items to the game in some future posts and I’ll be updating the game as quickly as I can with brand new features and content.

Please keep in mind this is still super basic and in development. Some things are going to act weird but I’m going to fix them all! Just play around with it and have some fun.

EDIT:

hahahahahahahhahahahahahaha cough hahaha cough cough ha coughs up blood

of course right when I post this all the servers I host my website on go down (not due to my incredible popularity, unfortunately). Here are some alternate download links for your pleasure:
A .jar for those who are open doors
An exe for those who recently broke up

EDIT AGAIN:

hahahaha coughs up more blood hahaha lies on the floor in a puddle

I just realized I gave you alternate links to the launcher, which coincidentally downloads the game from… my website. Genius really. Here just a straight-up link to the game itself for your pleasure
Take it! Just take it already!

#62

I guess the alternative download links don’t help much, if that starter application tries to download the rest anyway…

???

#63

Yeah, just addressed this in my latest and greatest edit. Probably should have thought that through a little bit more. My excuse is that it’s 1:30am and I have an 8am class tomorrow, living the college life with style 8)

#64

well since you made some references to FOOD, i guess i have no choice but to check it out ;D :wink:

#65

It works now…kinda. Albeit I’ve no real clue, what I’m supposed to do. But I zoomed out and it looked like this…this doesn’t seem right to me: http://www.jpct.net/tmp/questi.jpg

#66

Although there was little to do, it was fun to play the demo! The grass animations are smooth and so is the transition of transparency when you walk behind a tree. My hopes are high that you’ll find another artist for your project. :slight_smile: Can’t wait to see what you do with this!

A List of Biased Notes About Uncompleted Code

  • When starting a new game, the town generation button turns red when enabled. This could be changed to something like “Enable Town Generation” (with a green button) for clarity and less ambiguity.
  • Keyboard controls for the main menu would be fantastic. (WASD/arrow keys/ENTER)
  • The framerate dropped at random - what is it pushing for? In the world of 120/144 Hz monitors, it would be cool to have an option for FPS.
  • Movement seemed sluggish. Is this your intent? If so, ignore this point: the character feels heavy.
  • As EgonOlsen pointed out, zooming out keeps the same rendering area and blanks out completely as you go further out.
  • Inventory items don’t stack. Picking up more than you can carry just causes the newly picked up item to disappear.
  • It’s very easy to double-click a weapon, causing a fast equip–>un-equip. Possibly add a buffer between presses? Even something slight, like 10ms, would work.

All that aside, it was cool to see the progress you’ve made. Keep at it, man. :slight_smile:

#67

EgonOlsen: Thanks for trying it out! There isn’t a whole bunch to do yet, but there is a great framework in place for me to start adding all of the things there will be to do. And fixing that zooming issue will be at the top of my list!

EtmosCode: Thanks a lot for that list man ;D

  • I never thought about the red checkboxes being confusing (which is why it’s great to test things out). I’ll try out a few different colors to see what works.
  • I am indeed planning on making keyboard controls for the main menu, just shoved it to the top of my list.
  • The framerate can drop pretty significantly when you hang out around the water, other than that I’m not sure what it could be ???
  • I have just gotten used to the current movement speed, I can try making it faster and seeing how it feels (and make you just walk slowly when covered in armor)
  • Some inventory items do stack! I do need to keep a hint of realism in there. I am planning on either making more of them stack a little or just making the inventory a little bigger
    [li]Nice suggestion on the item equipping :slight_smile: I’ll throw that in real quick as well
#68

Must say, the art is gorgeous, and this launcher is very very sexy. Already, it reminds me of an MMO. Sadly, I experienced the same glitch as EgonOlsen, the screen was completely blue. I tried it twice on separate worlds and players yet, to no avail. Saddens me that I can’t play. Hope this is fixable.

#69

Huh weird :clue: is the entire screen blue or just the edges? Any way I could get a screenshot?

#70

Really loving the art style keep it up!

#71

It was the absolute screen, however the health bar and GUI was still present and when I clicked arounf it seemed to notify me that I was clicking a tree, however, this tree was of course masked by the endless sea of blue.

#72

Thanks Archive!

And do you have a skype or something Jacob? I’d like to figure out what the problem is just in case other people are getting it too ;D

#73

@purenickery, you are pure awesome. I’ve been waiting for ages to get my hands on the demo!

#74

Tried the demo, particularly loved the effect when you walk on water — one remark though, I noticed vertical lines moving to the right when walking around on the water for a couple of seconds; maybe that was due to the fact that the said water was at very left of the map? Also, is it normal that I got no sound, and nothing in the options menu?

Anyway, this is getting great! I want to see more! :point:

J0

#75

Thanks ShadedVertex! hope you like it!

J0: that water effect happens when you load in new water tiles from off the screen, they start off with a random noise for their height map to make then wavey and coincidentally it causes a bit of a wave to flow through the rest. I’ll come up with a fix eventually ;D (and yeah there’s no music in there yet, I’m going to add in the menu music really soon though) Thanks for the comments!

#76

I absolutely love the art! I don’t know what you did with the water, but it’s got trails man, trails in the water. The trails move with the wind too! Beautiful attention to detail.

To build on EtmosCode’s list,

  • The character does feel sluggish. But it’s perfectly fine for the walking animation, any faster and it would look like he’s covering too much ground in one step. Try adding a running animation, and make it toggleable with the shift key or something…
  • The menu is amazing! I always loved the look of transparent UI, but it needs some animations on top of some keybindings…
  • The menu should have a bit more life too, try adding a parallax background with the mouse in the future.
  • The menu UI is out of frame when you resize the window, take a look at how CSS manages its positions and sizes and how HTML manages its content. Cascading DIVs and Percentages! If you want some more info on how to implement this PM me, I’ve got some old code laying around…
  • The font is nice and all, but it blends too much into neighboring characters… How are you rendering them?
  • The grass animations are awesome! Everything flows with the wind and gives you a feel on the weather. The water should have periods in the animation where it sparkles. (The flattest part of each wave that is)

Keep up the good work! There’s not much to do in the game, but it’s already got some replay value for me! I’ve signed up on the forum, it’s a bit bland, but I like the theme it’s going for.

#77

Hey all you beautiful people :wink: thank you so much for all your comments and support! It has meant the world to me.

I think it’s time I let you all know what’s going on with the game. I tried looking around for a new artist but so far have been unsuccessful. There’s no way I’ll be able to get this game done without quite a bit more art help. Ludum Dare is coming up though, one of my favorite ways to spend a weekend. I’ve been getting really excited about it and coming up with little engines and features to put into the game made me really excited. Pretty much right after that is a brand new game jam – LibGDX jam, which is coincidentally what I’m making Questica with. That jam lasts a month. I’ve decided I’m going to dedicate my free time to working on a game for a month for that jam and take a break from Questica. After that, hopefully I’ll have more luck finding an artist and will be able to continue working on that after hopefully completing a pretty great smaller game.

Once again, thanks everyone! ;D

#78

Just a word of advise man, don’t abandon this. Take a break if you need it, but you have something REALLY amazing here. This game is beautiful. And Idk if money is a goal, but you could EASILY make a ton of money by putting this on steam. Just don’t give up on it, alright? :slight_smile: Also, consider putting this on kickstarter. You’d easily make enough money to hire a professional artist!

#79

Put it on kickstarter sure, but wait till you’ve got a good demo going. If you don’t have time to make a demo, really bump up the art. For some reason art > gameplay in kickstarter campaigns.

#80

I didn’t really like old boxes I was using to show something was selected in the game, so I’ve decided to think inside the box and give all the objects soft outlines!

http://www.questica.net/Images/DevLogs/outline_change.png

The only issue with this is my texture packing algorithm doesn’t put any padding pixels between all of the images, and some of the images that get loading into the packer are already packed themselves since it’s easier for Cody to edit them that way. I’m going to need some padded pixels between every single image to get this to work, so my texture packer has to get a bit more complicated.

First, I’m going to pad every image that gets sent in to the packer. Since each object can have it’s own packed image, I have to get the width and height of each cell, then generate a new image where there is padding between each cell in the original image.

http://www.questica.net/Images/DevLogs/outline_padding.png

Since these images get padded on the outside as well in this process, when they get packed by my texture packer there’s going to be padding between them all as well. Now, I can use a form of gaussian blur to generate some small soft edges around all of the objects in a separate image. Then, I can draw that outline image over the default image when I want it to be outlined. These outlines look so much better than the hard box ones and will even work on animations and moving parts

http://www.questica.net/Images/DevLogs/outline_door.gif