Topic: Veil of Shadows

[Corpsecrank]

Veil of Shadows is going to be based on the cancelled 32x game bloodletting.

Not a whole lot is known about bloodletting. We do know what the characters would have looked like and that richter, an unknown character, and maria are all involved. Much of the resources that were supposed to be in bloodletting went into symphony of the night. Because of that I am using the sotn graphics to build the stages. The stages will be loosely based on the original castlevania but I want to stress the loosely part of that.

This is going to be a stage by stage game. Once a stage is clear there is no going back. Stages are fairly open in design which should allow some exploration on a per stage basis before finding your way to the boss and clearing out the stage. There may be alternate routes to the final stage not sure just yet.

Right now I am deciding on audio. I don't know what music is going in for sure or what sfx will be used.

The plot will try to explore what might have happened in bloodletting but since no one actually knows it will be a guess.

That is the concept I settled on for this one.

UPDATE: 5-28-2012

I am at alpha build 009 today. I finally have something to show also. Not the greatest video I have ever done but my software isn't running under 8 very well so I had to record it as an avi and then edit it in vegas. Otherwise it would have been much higher quality.

Veil of Shadows Alpha Build 009

It's pretty rough right now. There are a few issues I want to iron out. Attacking while jumping causes the character to halt forward movement and drop right where you attacked at. The wall jump which you don't see in the video works but not as well as I want. I can fix that when I add running up walls and back-flipping off of them. The cross is just kinda tossed together not really functioning as it should but I needed to have an action applied to the throw button. Attacking is actually 3 parts. You can press attack once twice or three times to combo but in the video it is hard to catch because all the frames are alike and not well timed because of that fact. When I have time to build new frames to fill in the combo it will look much much better. You can however combo with the cross just fine which I will show in the next video. All of the environment was built on the fly so I could test and none of it is staying so you won't actually see any of that in the game it's just test filler. Quite a bit of the character frames need touched up since they weren't finished when I added them in. They were close enough to use though. The music is just placeholder noise and there are no sfx. The title screen is not finished yet either. The start and options will both be styled text that matches the title and I may do a few other things.

Long ways to go. I do have to say that the game plays really well. The controls respond quickly and feel nice. The things that work work exactly as I wanted which means this software is absolutely capable. The control doesn't feel sloppy or cheaply handled at all and I haven't even gotten started lol. At this point I am excited. I can see this is going to work out really well. It might be a while before I have anything to show though. I have a lot of work to do building frames I need and tiles. Once I get enough done and I have something to show I will update again.

[Aridale]

Ive never used construct classic but construct 2 is great. Is 2 similar?

[X]

Sounds like you're really getting into your new program and also enjoying it too. And if you've cranked out a start-up screen in just 3 hours instead of the 3 days with MMF2 then you could very well have a game ready in just a couple of months. Keep goin' dude!

[Mega Man Model T 101]

Now THIS looks a whole lot better than the Games Factory by a long shot! Can you provide the download for the program? This'll help me out a TON!

[Corpsecrank]

Ive never used construct classic but construct 2 is great. Is 2 similar?

Yes it is because this was the predecessor to Construct 2 but the biggest difference is that Construct Classic exports to an exe with optional installer and Construct 2 is HTML5 and since I don't want a browser game or a game that needs flash to run I can't use flash or C2. I tell you if C2 supported exporting as exe I would pay 79 bucks for a copy just to play with it.

Now THIS looks a whole lot better than the Games Factory by a long shot! Can you provide the download for the program? This'll help me out a TON!

This is worlds better I can tell you that much for sure as I tried both.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/construct/

Sounds like you're really getting into your new program and also enjoying it too. And if you've cranked out a start-up screen in just 3 hours instead of the 3 days with MMF2 then you could very well have a game ready in just a couple of months. Keep goin' dude!

Precisely what I had in mind. With something this easy to use I figured creating an example and showing it here might help others that want to create stage based games without all the code learning. Personally I won't hesitate to get my hands dirty and learn code and build that way but not everyone has to time or ambition to do that or code is just not their thing. 

By the way I have more than just the title in and I haven't even started today. I added a background to the blank area in the video and tonight I am going to start adding the character and making it move. I think building the stage is going to take most of the time. Chopping up the graphics and designing a stage will take a lot of time compared to setting it up in Construct. You spend the least amount of time making your material function in construct and the rest just deciding what and how you want things to work and then getting the art ready.

[Aridale]

Im pretty sure construct2 can export to exe. I dont have it installed right now but I do own it and Im pretty sure I remember seein that option

[Corpsecrank]

Im pretty sure construct2 can export to exe. I dont have it installed right now but I do own it and Im pretty sure I remember seein that option

When I asked on the board they said HTML5 only so guessing it only exports as HTML5. I wish it had the option to go to exe I would probably snag a copy if it did. But classic seems to do pretty good.

Also I updated the first post. I will just be clearing and updating the top post from this point on to keep it simple.

[Corpsecrank]

Just a mini update because of the recent stuff I did not involving this directly.

I just spend 2 days fighting with my system because I installed the win8 consumer preview. I always install the new beta as early as I can I just didn't know they were releasing this the other day. Not a huge problem I have pretty much everything running ok right now.

Construct works and so does all the other stuff I use to work on my projects so it should be business as usual again. I plan to start working on tiles again tonight actually.

I would say it is safe to install the consumer preview for anyone interested. If you do be sure to hit up http://www.eightforums.com/ for any problems you run into. The community is huge and really helpful the entire place is basically there just to help solve issues you have with the OS. I was hanging around the seven forum back when win7 was beta.

Also I was surprised it took AMD less than 24 hours to get a working display driver out the door. I spent almost 8 hours fighting with an older one to force it into the system and make it work lol. I no more than got it working and then they were like here is a working version

[Inccubus]

How is it? it looks like they're trying to turn windows into a PS3/XBOX style dashboard.

[Corpsecrank]

Well it is and isn't like that. It is in a way when using the metro ui but mtero so far only replaces the start menu with a full screen dashboard style deal I should make a video really. Just so you guys can check it out. The "apps" for 8 don't actually close there is no close button anyhow and when you leave the app it suspends. If you do enough and the system needs the memory the app is suspended in it closes it automatically. It's actually really awesome. Suspending allows things to start incredibly fast the next time you go to use it.

the metro ui if setup properly is really useful and good. A lot of people didn't give it a chance and disabled it. That is actually a mistake. It is much better than the old start menu you just have to be brave enough to try it out before dismissing it. Even with keyboard/mouse it works well. You can pin all the things you use the most to it in "clusters" making it easy to access everything.

So far I like it a lot. I plan to stick with it from now until release and then I will go grab a full copy. I did the same with 7.

[Aridale]

interesting... that might be my weekend project. You runnin it off a standard hd or ssd? How big is the full install?

[Corpsecrank]

I'm not sure how big the install is I installed it right from the windows 7 desktop from a 5mb installer file provided by microsoft. It downloaded and installed the 8 preview. There is no going back once you do that either it does not dual boot that way or allow going back to 7. You can download an ISO installer instead if you want to try to dual boot with the 8 preview.

I run it from a western digital raptor who can afford an ssd? The price and reliability of those drives is not cutting it if you ask me lol. I don't know how well an ssd works with 8 I saw there were something you had to know about using them on the 8 boards but since I don't have an ssd I didn't read up on it.

[Corpsecrank]

Here is a quick look at what 8 is all about. I wanted to show just how fast accessing things in 8 can be with the new interface and why people shouldn't be so quick to disable it and revert to old methods like classic start.

Win8 Consumer Preview - Metro UI Advantages

[Aridale]

I have an ssd I run 7 and my most important programs off of =D It really is an amazing difference. Everythin else is on a 2t drive and thats where win8 is gonna go. Its DLin now almost done then Im gonna install it dual boot

[Corpsecrank]

Make sure you get the ISO version of it or it won't give you a dual boot option.