Elysian Shadows

[Lord*Hypnos]

@Naiaru: Yeah, that's a good idea.

I'll probably be satisfied by whatever vmu features, the ES team wants or doesn't want to implement, in any case.

[Falco Girgis]

We're baaaaack! Adventures in Game Development Chapter 22 is uploading right this minute... We have some pretty exciting progress to share with you guys... Patrick decided to join us this time too.

It's been SOOOOOOO--owait, no it hasn't... Team ES picks back up right where they left off in Chapter 21, with dynamic shadows, 3D perspectives, AI, battle system, level design, and pixel art development.

We are preparing our engine and assets for our Kickstarter campaign this summer. If you want to see ES become a reality, please help us spread the word and support our Kickstarter when the times comes!

Here is a message from us to the Dreamcast scene:

Since Chapter 22 has really been a continuation of Chapter 21, and we are still trying to complete the intense graphical R&D we had undertaken previously, we have still not had a chance to bring the Dreamcast build up to speed... Despite this fact, Falco has been doing lots of research and planning for exactly how we will attempt to pull some of these lighting effects off on the platform.

Our long-time friend and partner in crime, Tvspelsfreak, is developing an all-in-one texture tool to integrate with ESTk, our toolkit, to automatically generate optimized paletted or compressed textures to minimize our VRAM footprint on the Dreamcast. This will give us more room to play with some of the hardware effects we have been itching to get our hands on... Specifically dat dot3 bumpmapping.

As we keep trying to emphasize, we will be working our asses off over the next few months, pushing our technology and engine, in preparation for a Kickstarter campaign in the summer. The Dreamcast build of ES is a planned Kickstarter goal.

We are trying to establish ourselves as a truly unique, "next-gen" 2D RPG experience and distinguish ourselves from the crowd. If you would like to see ES happen, please help us spread the word of our upcoming Kickstarter... We are pouring our hearts and souls into this engine and game, and we would like nothing more than to bring our RPG to your Dreamcasts.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bpfaEpfo-k[/youtube]


Omni-directional dynamic point lights


Bump mapping, dynamic lighting, and a 3D perspective

[Grey Fox]

Been following this for years and the more I see the more impressed I am. Really looking forward to pledging when the KickStarter opens. Keep working the magic - the Soul still Burns

[mazonemayu]

awesome!! buy why don't the trees cast shadows? :p

[Falco Girgis]

Not quite there yet. They will be casting shadows, but I only implemented shadow volumes for the entities, not the tiles.

That's coming next.

edit: Thanks so much, Grey Fox! It means a lot to us!

[naiaru]

Wow, this episode came out super fast and it definately looks better at an angle rather than flat. Can't wait for the Kickstarter. And are you guys planning on a keep case or jewel case for the DC?

[Lord*Hypnos]

Wow, that was quick. No time to watch this tonight, but it looks pretty exciting. If ever there was a kickstarter campaign that I would support, it would probably be this one. You guys are doing unusually well as far as proof of concept stuff goes. That being said though, I have no idea whether I'll have enough money to, BUT I CAN TRY!
Keep up the good work ES project!

[Lord*Hypnos]

Okay, so I just watched it. I gotta say that I'm likin' the true 45 degree perspective. Although, I'm remembering that the most recent pokemon game had largely fixed camera angles, and the control is actually pretty bad in that game, not that it's that important in a turn based RPG, but it was noticeably bad. On the other hand, it might be that the camera angles are not fixed enough in that game, 'cause there is some camera movement (scripted) as the player moves, and I'm not actually sure which part is the culprit. I'd probably have to try it again to figure that out. Additionally, the fact that you can only move in 8 directions (or 4, or whatever), might offset the issue. There's never any movement problems in a traditional overhead RPG style perspective though.

Another thing that crossed my mind, when I was watching, was that if you're going to zoom in on a character ever, it might be wise to put in some kind of mipmapping, and just in case I'm using that term wrong, I mean using a high res sprite for up close and a low res sprite for far away. Not sure what your memory constraints are though. A lot of 3D Dreamcast games use mipmapping, though, I think.

In any case, I'm really liking how your progress is looking, and how the game in general is looking. ES rocks!

One thing I was wondering is if you've gotten a chance to experiment with using bump mapping in the Dreamcast version. If so, what's it look like as far as feasibility? Perhaps you should try to use some other of the graphical effects that the Dreamcast hardware supports, but weren't used much, like bloom, for example. Bloom is pretty popular these days, isn't it? Of course it all depends on what's feasible, and I can see how this sort of stuff is kind of low priority, for the moment.

[Falco Girgis]

Thank you guys so much for the kind words and support of our Kickstarter... We have been trying to maintain our momentum and continue to release AiGD Chapters at this same pace to build our publicity before the Kickstarter... Honestly, we're working at a very unsustainable pace, so you have no idea how important this Kickstarter is for us... I'm working a full-time job as a software engineer, I'm a part-time student working on my masters in computer engineering, and everything you see has just been us staying up all night (sometimes abusing our Adderall prescriptions) working on ES during the weekends... We are doing it because we truly believe in our product, and because we see a light at the end of the tunnel.

And are you guys planning on a keep case or jewel case for the DC?

That's a good question... We haven't really thought about that... What is seeming to be more popular in the scene with homebrew? Which would you guys prefer?

Okay, so I just watched it. I gotta say that I'm likin' the true 45 degree perspective. Although, I'm remembering that the most recent pokemon game had largely fixed camera angles, and the control is actually pretty bad in that game, not that it's that important in a turn based RPG, but it was noticeably bad. On the other hand, it might be that the camera angles are not fixed enough in that game, 'cause there is some camera movement (scripted) as the player moves, and I'm not actually sure which part is the culprit. I'd probably have to try it again to figure that out. Additionally, the fact that you can only move in 8 directions (or 4, or whatever), might offset the issue. There's never any movement problems in a traditional overhead RPG style perspective though.

Yeah, we wouldn't bother with any fancy perspective if the controls were terrible... We want it to play polished and smoothly, and we think especially analog controls will be nice.

I forgot what the huge city was with the full 3D perspective in Poke'mon X/Y, but the camera in there was absolutely freaking horrendous... I would literally avoid that city just because of how ridiculous it was to try to navigate... We definitely won't be having any of that in ES.

Another thing that crossed my mind, when I was watching, was that if you're going to zoom in on a character ever, it might be wise to put in some kind of mipmapping, and just in case I'm using that term wrong, I mean using a high res sprite for up close and a low res sprite for far away. Not sure what your memory constraints are though. A lot of 3D Dreamcast games use mipmapping, though, I think.

Yeah, this is something we plan to look into, and you can definitely do mip-mapping on the Dreamcast. We are wanting to convey emotion through the sprites themselves rather than the larger "portraits" that lots of RPGs use on the dialog box. It will depend on how much expression we can convey with the current resolution, as to whether we should consider higher res sprites or not for cutscenes.

One thing I was wondering is if you've gotten a chance to experiment with using bump mapping in the Dreamcast version. If so, what's it look like as far as feasibility? Perhaps you should try to use some other of the graphical effects that the Dreamcast hardware supports, but weren't used much, like bloom, for example. Bloom is pretty popular these days, isn't it? Of course it all depends on what's feasible, and I can see how this sort of stuff is kind of low priority, for the moment.

Unfortunately, I have not... I have definitely looked into the code and have been kind of planning out how I would go about pulling it off in my mind, but I have not actually sat down to play with the actual hardware... I'm honestly not sure when I will get a chance to do all of the serious DC-specific R&D required to move some of the magic over to that platform, but I will say that the Dreamcast build of ES will be one of the very first goals for the Kickstarter.

[Lord*Hypnos]

@Falco: Hey, thanks for the response! Regarding your schedules: That sounds pretty rough. Don't kill yourselves, guys! Maybe you should take a weekend off some time, or something. I can't imagine having to do that much stuff.
Regarding keep case vs. jewel case: I recently got Gunlord, which was my first keep case game, and I gotta say that I prefer the form factor of a jewel case. It's not that important though. One advantage of a keep case, actually, is that you could have a larger image on the cover (and considering how nice the cover art of Gunlord is, that is definately something nice). It does feel a bit out of place with the other DC games though. But if someone had a lot of NG:DEV.TEAM games, it would probably feel less out of place.