[WIP] A Piece Of Sun


Hello everyone,
This is not my first project, but the first one I have been working over a month.

About me:
I am a 17-year-old high school girl who is interesting in game dev. Making a game is tough since I have to paint pictures and program with my broken programming skill.
I want to thank all the people who is contributing their knowledge or sharing open sources, without them, I couldn’t go so far by myself.
I have to apologize that I am not good at putting this into words, cause I am not an English speaker. You are welcome to correct my English writing any time.

here is a short in-game cutscene I spent 4 days on.

the character in this video is controlled by the player(which is me).

the scene is basically assembled by many layers of sprites and some scripts.

The Game:
I want to build an RPG with touching story and some actions. In the game, the light is your weapon, with the assistance of elemental fairies, you go on the adventure of dangerous unknown. (so far I can think of.)

When is the story taking place?
200 years after the sun disappeared, a little girl bumped into a mysterious glowing mirror. She will learn more about it during the adventure.

I am now working on the dialogue system and localization which will contain English, Chinese and maybe Japanese in the future.

here is the main menu:

and a poster:

Next, I will be moving on to the battle system.
What do you think about the game style?
Any feedback is welcome.:slight_smile:

(as a solo developer, I kind of feeling lonely :()

6 Likes

Love the art style, and the additional particle effects is done nicely (not overkill with too many).

I might change your menu though

Start
Options
Continue
Quit

The “Light as a weapon” concept is interesting… does that imply enemies/things to fight/kill? or is it more of a puzzle-style you are going for?

Thank you very much :slight_smile:

The main use of light is to fight monsters and can switch to different elements(such as fire, water…). Each element has its own effect like “fire” can make more damage and “water” can slow down the speed etc.

Now I am considering whether to design some puzzle levels since I am not good at making puzzles.
If there would be puzzle levels, I might put some triggers that need to be lightened by a certain element of light.

Thank again for your reply.:wink:

I really like the concept and dark mood there, background looks really solid, but fonts (like menu or title) needs some work to fit better.
Also dont worry, there are many one-person projects out there. Just keep doing what You like :slight_smile:
Good luck!

Thanks! you sure encourage me a lot. :slight_smile:

Here is some fix for the fonts, however, I can’t decide where to put the title.


Or even make a new background?

by the way, Options menu looks like this:

Thank you for the reply :wink:

Menu looks better with the change of wording.

I like the title in the bottom left (any of the corners would do though; top left, top right or bottom left). it doesn’t look right when it’s directly above the menu buttons though, imo.

Cool work so far. P.s you are not the only solo dev here :slight_smile: I think lots forum members are too!

I just watched your trailer and the art is absolutely beautiful. Perhaps I the animation could use some work, but the overall use of particles and the parallaxed background and over all atmosphere sends me off into dream worlds, amazing work!! Will definitely be watching this thread.

For your main menu btw, I would swap the ordering of continue and options :slight_smile:

And don’t be lonely! Most of us on the forums are fairly friendly

Thanks for the encouragement! I really feel the warmth of the community.:smile:
However, I have some confusion about the animation you referred to. Did you mean the character’s walking animation or something else?

Here are 3 animations appeared in the trailer.
Idle animation:
ThreadbareLimpIrishwolfhound

walk animation
ObeseSoulfulImpala

kneel animation
GrimUncomfortableAegeancat

(I really love this community.:))

1 Like

Walk animation, felt a bit jerky. Maybe more frames are needed?

+1

Looking at the video it appears to only be 5 frames. This might not be an issue if it’s what you wanted, but there is a little bit of “snapping” (for example, the transition at 0:50 in the video) the leg just snaps into place and your eye catches it when watching the video at full speed.

However, it doesn’t mean you have to change it - but doing so will most likely give a “smoother” walking animation if that’s what you want.

1 Like

Yeah, this. Maybe try about 10 frames (just prototype, don’t bother doing them properly) and see if that looks smoother. I think the frame count right now just isnt high enough to trick persistence of vision, but frame by frame its great :slight_smile:

1 Like

Yeah, although (and this might be getting to indepth) I prefer cutting off the last frame for fluidity in some circumstances and have found it to produce a slightly better animation (I originally heard about the technique watching a GDC conference post-morterm where they were discussing their animation pipeline and process.)

ie - you want a 10 frame animation clip, but it actually has 9 frames (with frame 1 representing frame 10)

Frame 1 Frame 1
Frame 2 Frame 2
Frame 3 Frame 3
Frame 4 Frame 4
Frame 5 Frame 5
Frame 6 Frame 6
Frame 7 Frame 7
Frame 8 Frame 8
Frame 9 Frame 9
Frame 10 Frame 1
Frame 1 Frame 2
Frame 2 Frame 3

Oh that’s what I do to, makes it more seamless. My 60fps animations only render frame 1 to 59

Thanks for all of your advice.

After some works and adjustments, here comes a simple demo of basic control:

(Don’t worry about the menu is in Chinese, you can change it to English in the game. And also I turned off the BGM.)

Here are 3 basic movements in the video:
“Walk” by pressing left or right arrow.
“Run” by pressing left or right arrow and shift.
“Teleport” by pressing the space bar.

About the mirror:
It automatically follows the player and floats around. The player can control the rotation of light beam by pressing W,A,S,D. (A, S rotate clockwise; W, D rotate counterclockwise )

However, I am thinking about changing the way of controlling.
for example, control the character by W,A,S,D inside, and make light beam rotate to the cursor’s direction.

What do you guys think?:slight_smile: Anything about the game.

1 Like

I like it. Although have you considered using the InputManager so players can set their own buttons?

ie - standard teleport button is space. but allowing the player to set it to anything they want “LMB”, “RMB” etc might provide a little extra polish.

Yeah, if you have some cash that you’re willing to spend by the way, HIGHLY recommend rewired. But that can be saved for a later date when its further in development :slight_smile:

1 Like

Didn’t know that existed. Rated 5 out of 5 stars / 577 user ratings… will have to try that out later.

1 Like

I love the artwork and the moody setup of the game. The Japanese-style-character-close-up dialog though, isn’t really fitting for the game in my opinion. I think it would be better if you keep the side-view narrative throughout the game, because the game, judging from the existing design style, should look more mysterious and the close-up shot of characters kinda kills the mood.
Just a thought. Good luck with the development! It is a great concept you’ve got there!

There is a free trial version available so you can see what you are getting before you buy.