Topic: Qa'Doth

[BLOOD MONKEY]

Bitch did I say you could recolor my shit I oughta slap you silly

I'm going for book descriptions here. Cthulhu in Call is described as green, flabby, and amorphous. That recolor looks a little too "generic scary colors," but the scheme isn't bad. I'll work with the NES palette and see what sticks.


Jorge, I'll probably release the HC code, but ZSG, again, I'm not releasing Variable Zero. You need to learn how to do this stuff yourself, seriously. All this going around asking for everything else to be done by other people is fine, but you still should learn this stuff yourself as a backup. And, if you do get a team together, learning this will make it easier to understand what you're asking of your crew. I'll give you krw's X engine, but you'll have to edit Zero's gameplay into the engine and everything else yourself. I'm not just going to give you a nigh-complete and pretty complicated engine just so that you conveniently have half the work done for you.

And no there won't be wall-jumping. You're a human and this is a horror game. The only wall-jumping that should be in a horror game are monsters.

Dude i was kidding about the VZ engine. I knew I wasn't gonna get it. I think the problem I'm gonna run into is coding the slashes. That stuff looks hard.

I think your game would be even more horrifying if it had "Out of this world" type gameplay. That game was awesome with the way it limited your movement like a real human's.

[Dracula9]

They're tedious but not hard. It's basically checking whether the slash animation is at or past X frame, and if it is, then pressing the button triggers the next slash, but only if the animation is at or past a given frame.

Okay, so I took your advice, and it does work better. It's not as dark as your recolor, but I do want to stick to the NES palette as much as possible, and I already broke that with the middle-shade of his skintone. But hey, Shovel Knight stuck to the palette really well and even still had to make a few custom colors.

[BLOOD MONKEY]

The dark blue should be dark grey. :I But that does look way scarier than before. The Cthulhu from this game I want to remember is by sitting in a corner huddled over wondering if he's come to eat me yet. That thing on the first post was implying I remember: HurHur. Yur purty.

Glad you made him look scarier, and thanks for the advice on Zero. How do you handle his saber hitboxes? Is it seperate from Zero's sprite? Also, do you have the hitbox the same as his sprite, or in a square-ier shape?

[Dracula9]

I use frame-specific hitboxes over squared parent hitboxes. Saves me a lot of time when dealing with platforming issues (but it creates some new ones, but they're easily fixed). Since you're using GM, make a sprite set of Zero slashing with the saber. Then, duplicate that sprite and remove Zero, so it's just the saber slashes, then go remove the saber from the other one. Now, you have slash frames and Zero frames, using the same sprite and same origin points, so that the saber doesn't spawn a foot away from him or something. Next, for the hitboxes, just use the "Separate collision masks" option and the "Precise" hitbox default. All done!

Fixed it again, because I'm colorblind and thought that one ^there was a dark blue-green. Aaaaaand of course he's bright fucking blue. Broke the NES palette, but I think I'll pull a Shovel Knight and use both interchangeably where I need to.

[Dracula9]

Story update. Let me know if this is good enough to stick with/pursue.

Your character (still nameless) is an archae-anthropologist specializing in lost/ancient cultures and ruins. Word has spread over primordially-ancient ruins spotted in the ice shelves near a large mountain range in the lower Antarctic. Naturally, being high in the field, the protag is called in for exploration and excavation, as only small projections are exposed, and the remaining visible structures are just barely seen through the ice, and at very high altitudes.

For those who know Lovecraft, this is essentially At the Mountains of Madness, only set in more modern times.

Your character (who I'm just gonna refer to as 'protag' from now on since I haven't named him yet) currently resides in Southern California, where he usually spends his non-excavation time in lecture halls. Since Protag has been appointed as head of the expedition, the crew leaves in two groups from California and sails south, past the western coastline of South America.

During the shift in position to reach the designated dropoff point in the Antarctic, the ship and crew (naturally) comes across another ruin at 47°9′S 126°43′W.

R'lyeh.

Wait a minute, what the hell is R'lyeh doing above the surface? Well, according to The Call of Cthulhu, Cthulhu and his hordes can only awaken when 'the time and stars are right.' That 'time' is specified to a time when mankind has become wild and free, with the old laws and restrictive morals cast aside in favor of individual freedoms and pleasures, with a sort of 'do what thou wilt' mentality encompassing the majority of the world's population.

While we're not quite 100% there just yet, we are in the process of casting off the old-old morality and ethics systems put in place and entrenched by the old religions, at least in the States and a decent portion of Europe. Obviously, places like the Middle East, which still adhere rigidly to the old ways, don't fit this bill, but the sublime acts of violence committed by its extremist radical factions happen to fall under Cthulhu's Bill of Rights all the same.

However, since we're not completely 'free' yet, the Great Old Ones have not yet awakened from their aeons-long slumber. R'lyeh has risen due to an onset of that 'time', but the time of the Old Ones is not yet nigh.

Naturally, being an archaeologist, you and the first wave of the crew go in to investigate, while the second stays outside as a precaution. Once your group finds a way inside (which is very difficult because fuck your human geometry), they discover massive monoliths and sculptures, sculpted out of unknown stone and by unknown methods (because again, fuck Euclid), as well as gigantic statues of strange creatures unbeknownst to any man in any age. Several of the crewman lose their shit and take off to the safe mental haven of the ship. Those brave enough to face the monstrosities press onward, with Protag taking point. Eventually, samples are collected and sent back for study by a few more crewmen, leaving only Protag and two others. At a staggering depth within the ruins (noted by water beginning to fill more and more of the structure), the remaining three come across a massive threshold. They find that the huge door can be lifted rather easily (because fuck physics this time), but falls shut again immediately. Steeling his resolve, Protag instructs the two others to hold the door up enough for him to pass, leaving him to whatever lies beyond. When they protest, he tells them to first fetch him a scuba suit (which they would have needed for the inevitable Antarctic plunges), and to bring more crewmen to reopen the door and come looking for him should he not return in an hour. They grudgingly comply.

Now the real gameplay begins. You navigate through the corpse-city of R'lyeh and its black waters, never once suspecting that the 'statues' are cosmic deities from aeons long before human existence. Protag, being human, has all the limitations of an ordinary man.

That means no double-jumps, no wall-jumping, and no unrealistic physics. You will take fall damage if you fall from too high, you will drown if you remain in water too long without scuba gear, and most injuries will kill you outright.

Basically, I decided that Oddworld-styled gameplay would be more fitting than trying to mold a 2D platformer after something like Silent Hill.

I should mention that there will hardly be any enemies in R'lyeh, if I put any in at all. But you never know what might happen if a 'statue' starts to move...

Eventually Protag comes upon the chamber of the Star-Spawn himself, Great Cthulhu. This muthafucka big. Real big. So big it takes three or four screens of vertical ascension to fully see all of him. There's no goal to this climb other than to see all of his horrid majesty, but once you return to the ground level of the chamber, something happens. He appears to open his eyes, yet they remain closed. He appears to move, yet stays still. His muscles appear to ripple, but stay still as stone. Suddenly, the screen begins to glitch out (think NES/arcade debug screens, and you're on the right track), and Cthulhu's color changes from that of a statue to his famous sickly green. Just as soon as this happens, he settles back to stone and all is normal again, but the ordeal on Protag's mind causes him to fall unconscious.

For the time being, that's all I'll tell, and I think once I get around to production, that would be a pretty decent beta demo IMO.

Lemme know what you think.

Also, minor gameplay update, you're not fighting Cthulhu anymore. That sprite of him will probably find a use somewhere, but consider all that shit kaput. It wouldn't make sense to be able to fight something the size of a skyscraper with nothing but plain ol' human powers, even if I went with a Shadow of the Colossus approach or had you run the ship through him like in the story (which still makes no sense, how could a regular ship cause him to fucking explode if it's figuratively only about a fourth or fifth the size of his fucking stomach...but I digress).

And two more songs for R'lyeh. One for traversal, and one for entering the domain where the major GOOs are asleep.
http://www.mediafire.com/listen/0vd5mk1gc7o6or6/R'lyeh.mp3
http://www.mediafire.com/listen/g77py82v83qf381/Den_of_the_Old_Ones.mp3 (yes, I know, lazy variation, sue me)
>inb4 they're not scary enough

Soooo...that's it for now, I guess. :U

[X]

47°9′S 126°43′W

Interesting that R'lyeh would be located there. But from what I remember the ancient city was nearby North America's New England area (off the coast of Boston). It has been a while since I read the call of Cthulhu so I could be wrong.

>inb4 they're not scary enough

Those two tracks a pretty good for expressing 8-bit creepiness! And don't worry too much about the variation thing. You're not the first one to do it, lol!

[Shiroi Koumori]

I find the story interesting.
Maybe the intro parts could be played as a visual novel before the real gameplay.

[Dracula9]

That was the idea, Shiroi. Glad to know it came across well.

And 47°9′S 126°43′W are the coordinates for R'lyeh as noted in The Call of Cthulhu, X. It's off the southwestern coast of South America, at a point in the ocean where the greatest distances from any landmasses converge onto that point. Basically, Lovecraft put the city in a place so far from human civilization that (at the time, this WAS the 20's and 30's) that its location would be largely incomprehensible.

Gotta give him credit, guy did his homework.

Also, been toying around with the idea of glitching out the screen when seeing the Old Ones. Right now my favorite build uses a pixel shader distortion, which obviously the NES couldn't handle, so I don't know whether to convert it to sprite somehow or keep the shader in as a visual hook. I still don't know how NES-accurate I want this to be. I'll probably find a use for the NES debug screens regardless, though. They just rock.

[X]

And 47°9′S 126°43′W are the coordinates for R'lyeh as noted in The Call of Cthulhu, X. It's off the southwestern coast of South America, at a point in the ocean where the greatest distances from any landmasses converge onto that point. Basically, Lovecraft put the city in a place so far from human civilization that (at the time, this WAS the 20's and 30's) that its location would be largely incomprehensible.

The guy didn't have to do his homework. Much of this stuff came from his mind (or dreams) which just proves how awesome a horror writer he was. But he did do research on ancient middle eastern civilizations which is why we hear about creatures like Dagon in his works. H.P. Lovecraft was the man of his day.

I like how you got Cthulhu to mold and bend. It's as if his very presence is warping space-time. However my only concern is the glitch effects going on in near-rapid succession. Some people might be visually sensitive to that. Worst case scenario would be for those who've suffered a seizure due to this. Also it might be a little distracting and take away from the effect that is Cthulhu itself.

[Dracula9]

Well, I do want there to be some degree of making the player question what they're seeing. If I make Cthulhu's (or anyone else's, really) sprite begin to warp in a way that the NES could never be expected to handle, and then simulate a visual hardware crash with the glitchout screens, then that would sell the notion that the Old Ones are too much to fully comprehend in the real world, even on a gaming console. Of course, having it all stop just as quickly would be equally unsettling. Since I can't rely on things like fog filters and dynamic lighting for the subtler horror aspects, glitchy mindfucks are a good way to go, I think.

Also, R'lyeh tiles. Spriting Giger stuff is a pain in the ass, but it sure looks good.


Just a mockup to give the picture. The mirrored...thing there is actually the two halves of what will be the edges of the very bottom of Cthulhu's throne.

[Dracula9]

The guy didn't have to do his homework. Much of this stuff came from his mind (or dreams) which just proves how awesome a horror writer he was. But he did do research on ancient middle eastern civilizations which is why we hear about creatures like Dagon in his works. H.P. Lovecraft was the man of his day.

Actually, Lovecraft did a lot of research on the stories that warranted it, despite the popular belief that he just dreamt everything up. For instance, all his knowledge of Egypt came from incessantly visiting museum exhibits. When writing the Necronomicon (as well as a good portion of his deities), the names of the gods and demons mentioned are derivative of extremely ancient cultures, some of which were as early as the first beginnings of Babylon. Cthulhu's name probably came from the Semitic-Sumerian deity Kutulu, who is mentioned in the Necronomicon with the same spelling. Even one of his earliest works, The Beast in the Cave, was researched heavily by looking into cave settings, tours, and descriptions of Mammoth Cave here in Kentucky, as well as many other large cave systems.

Funny you mentioned Dagon, since I was going to bring him up as the Sumerian god of fishy endeavors.

Of course, his purely dreamt stories can't be downplayed as anything but sublime. Look at Nyarlathotep for example. That whole thing was a dream, and Lovecraft actually wrote the first major paragraph of the story while he was still half-asleep.

[X]

Since I can't rely on things like fog filters and dynamic lighting for the subtler horror aspects, glitchy mindfucks are a good way to go, I think.

Actually you can do a fog-like effect with NES hardware. It was done in CV III for some segments of the forest stage and at the beginning of Dracula's tower (final stage).

[darkmanx_429]

That was the idea, Shiroi. Glad to know it came across well.

And 47°9′S 126°43′W are the coordinates for R'lyeh as noted in The Call of Cthulhu, X. It's off the southwestern coast of South America, at a point in the ocean where the greatest distances from any landmasses converge onto that point. Basically, Lovecraft put the city in a place so far from human civilization that (at the time, this WAS the 20's and 30's) that its location would be largely incomprehensible.

Gotta give him credit, guy did his homework.

Also, been toying around with the idea of glitching out the screen when seeing the Old Ones. Right now my favorite build uses a pixel shader distortion, which obviously the NES couldn't handle, so I don't know whether to convert it to sprite somehow or keep the shader in as a visual hook. I still don't know how NES-accurate I want this to be. I'll probably find a use for the NES debug screens regardless, though. They just rock.

I am loving this idea! Alot of forth wall stuff going on.

Stuff like that reminds me of that old N64 game, Eteneral Darkness. You should definitely check out that title if you haven't heard of it.

The sanity sound effect gimmick could def add to you title as well!

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

That was for Gamecube, and an AWESOME title (I loved it).

[theANdROId]

I was gonna suggest looking to Eternal Darkness and it's sanity effects for trippy ideas!  I like your thoughts for this though...tying that stuff to the Old Ones because they're just too much!