Jul 20, 2021

NPC

How much is an NPC supposed to be capable of? I know some suggest giving them the player's capabilities, but does that help when they exist mostly for narrative rather than aiding core gameplay? I feel like mine are lacklustre... but maybe I just need more animations lol.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the matter?

Jun 18, 2022

OptOut encounters. I need to add more sound effects, an alarm sound for when one of these pops would be fitting.

Tutorial Rooms

Both of these ended up getting scraped. oof

Dialogue Box

Holy shi* the frames on this recording. Anyway, here is my dialogue box! it reads a JSON file with all the lines a dialogue has and plays them with a silly sound that I might change... It has support for some cool stuff although it's not implemented yet since I'm really lazy and suck at writing.

Don't mind the other things in the background... However, if you can't control your curiosity, listen closely. I heard there is a hidden archive on a particular discord server full of other development snippets, including snippets that haven't been posted here!? If anyone asks you didn't hear it from me (plz join, k thx bye)

Mar 5, 2021

got one of the UI elements working in engine, Kinda sleek but miss the drop shadows...

📚 A List Of Useful Websites When Making An RPG 📚

My timeloop RPG In Stars and Time is done! Which means I can clear all my ISAT gamedev related bookmarks. But I figured I would show them here, in case they can be useful to someone. These range from "useful to write a story/characters/world" to "these are SUPER rpgmaker focused and will help with the terrible math that comes with making a game".

This is what I used to make my RPG game, but it could be useful for writers, game devs of all genres, DMs, artists, what have you. YIPPEE

Writing (Names)

Behind The Name - Why don't you have this bookmarked already. Search for names and their meanings from all over the world!

Medieval Names Archive - Medieval names. Useful. For ME

City and Town Name Generator - Create "fake" names for cities, generated from datasets from any country you desire! I used those for the couple city names in ISAT. I say "fake" in quotes because some of them do end up being actual city names, especially for french generated ones. Don't forget to double check you're not 1. just taking a real city name or 2. using a word that's like, Very Bad, especially if you don't know the country you're taking inspiration from! Don't want to end up with Poopaville, USA

Writing (Words)

Onym - A website full of websites that are full of words. And by that I mean dictionaries, thesauruses, translators, glossaries, ways to mix up words, and way more. HIGHLY recommend checking this website out!!!

Moby Thesaurus - My thesaurus of choice!

Rhyme Zone - Find words that rhyme with others. Perfect for poets, lyricists, punmasters.

In Different Languages - Search for a word, have it translated in MANY different languages in one page.

ASSETS

In general, I will say: just look up what you want on itch.io. There are SO MANY assets for you to buy on itch.io. You want a font? You want a background? You want a sound effect? You want a plugin? A pixel base? An attack animation? A cool UI?!?!?! JUST GO ON ITCH.IO!!!!!!

Visual Assets (General)

Creative Market - Shop for all kinds of assets, from fonts to mockups to templates to brushes to WHATEVER YOU WANT

Velvetyne - Cool and weird fonts

Chevy Ray's Pixel Fonts - They're good fonts.

Contrast Checker - Stop making your text white when your background is lime green no one can read that shit babe!!!!!!

Visual Assets (Game Focused)

Interface In Game - Screenshots of UI (User Interfaces) from SO MANY GAMES. Shows you everything and you can just look at what every single menu in a game looks like. You can also sort them by game genre! GREAT reference!

Game UI Database - Same as above!

Sound Assets

Zapsplat, Freesound - There are many sound effect websites out there but those are the ones I saved. Royalty free!

Shapeforms - Paid packs for music and sounds and stuff.

Other

CloudConvert - Convert files into other files. MAKE THAT .AVI A .MOV

EZGifs - Make those gifs bigger. Smaller. Optimize them. Take a video and make it a gif. The Sky Is The Limit

Marketing

Press Kitty - Did not end up needing this- this will help with creating a press kit! Useful for ANY indie dev. Yes, even if you're making a tiny game, you should have a press kit. You never know!!!

presskit() - Same as above, but a different one.

Itch.io Page Image Guide and Templates - Make your project pages on itch.io look nice.

MOOMANiBE's IGF post - If you're making indie games, you might wanna try and submit your game to the Independent Game Festival at some point. Here are some tips on how, and why you should.

Game Design (General)

An insightful thread where game developers discuss hidden mechanics designed to make games feel more interesting - Title says it all. Check those comments too.

Game Design (RPGs)

Yanfly "Let's Make a Game" Comics - INCREDIBLY useful tips on how to make RPGs, going from dungeons to towns to enemy stats!!!!

Attack Patterns - A nice post on enemy attack patterns, and what attacks you should give your enemies to make them challenging (but not TOO challenging!) A very good starting point.

How To Balance An RPG - Twitter thread on how to balance player stats VS enemy stats.

Nobody Cares About It But It’s The Only Thing That Matters: Pacing And Level Design In JRPGs - a Good Post.

Game Design (Visual Novels)

Feniks Renpy Tutorials - They're good tutorials.

I played over 100 visual novels in one month and here’s my advice to devs. - General VN advice. Also highly recommend this whole blog for help on marketing your games.

I hope that was useful! If it was. Maybe. You'd like to buy me a coffee. Or maybe you could check out my comics and games. Or just my new critically acclaimed game In Stars and Time. If you want. Ok bye

love me as a worm

twitter/ insta/cara/ store

Terrain

So walking around a flat world is fine, but my game is isometric so having terrain feels like a must. too bad it's a pain in the ass to implement. I spent months on this and in the end, it wasn't good enough. It wouldn't play well with other props like trees well, The player could glitch it out and clip through it, render order and collision was abhorrent and it couldn't stack on top of itself. I'll be honest the whole reason for why I switched to 3D in the Godot 4 version of the game is because a fake z axis in 2D isn't very fun to implement.

Some of the collision shapes I had to setup

I drew them out so I could turn them into tiles for the tileset

Anyway, word of advice to anyone who wants to make an isometric game, make a 3D game that looks 2D not the other way around.

Mar 26, 2022

Bam, isometric character controller with followers (the followers aren't all that cool and I had to make compromises, but whatever)

Psuedo2D

A dump of some things. I briefly mentioned how I had rewrote the game in Godot 4. During the transition I decided to give up on pure 2D and just make a 3D game that looks 2D... so in my own words, pearlessential is now a Psuedo2D game. Here are some captures from early in the transition.