Heroes of Umbra - 2D Sidescrolling RPG (Dec 2013 Updates!)

[dragonheartman]

Last year I showcased a proof-of-concept for a simple sidescrolling RPG after developing it for about a week. It's been a year and I've still been working on the project, so I wanted to post where I am now.





Heroes of Umbra is a short 2D sidescrolling (now networked) RPG that's something of a mix between Maplestory, Diablo, and Zelda II. In it you play as an assassin with amnesia, seeking out memory orbs in the pits of deadly dungeons.

HoU is still in alpha but the current version showcases three of the four planned dungeons with the code mostly feature-complete.

Features:

• Platform-agnostic netplay (More players = harder enemies though!)
• Plenty of equipment to find and customize
• Over 20 spells branched into two tiers
• Over 80 maps to explore

Download
Desktop (Win/Mac/Linux)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/k7nnjjta1jowhed/heroes-of-umbra-desktop.rar (JAR-only)

Android/OUYA
https://www.dropbox.com/s/htavkffv6o49pvr/heroes-of-umbra.apk

If you care to re-map the keybindings, please see instructions here. (It's temporarily manual until the options screen is implemented.)

Facebook Page
Twitter (Commit messages are broadcasted.)
Website

Old topic is replicated here for the curious.

[Pickleninja]

Looks amazing!

Good work



-Pickle

[Mads]

That looks great! I think your pixel art is really good. I like it!

I have a few notes on this. Don't get me wrong, I really like the game. This is feedback.

• The controls are very fast, and it's hard to control
• The jump seems awfully high, for the speed you're carrying
• It's hard to dodge the bullets from the plants, because the platforms allow me to be hit from
  a long distance
• It's a little hard to distinguish platforms from the background. Especially hinge-bridges.
• Attacks are hard to use, because it's difficult to know when I can actually attack. There's delays
• The sheer amount of enemies, and partly their attack speed makes it really difficult to dodge attacks, and make it through the levels

Don't get me wrong though - this game looks amazing! I really like the particles, and animations and awww.

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[dragonheartman]

That looks great! I think your pixel art is really good. I like it!

I have a few notes on this. Don't get me wrong, I really like the game. This is feedback.

• The controls are very fast, and it's hard to control
• The jump seems awfully high, for the speed you're carrying
• It's hard to dodge the bullets from the plants, because the platforms allow me to be hit from
  a long distance
• It's a little hard to distinguish platforms from the background. Especially hinge-bridges.
• Attacks are hard to use, because it's difficult to know when I can actually attack. There's delays
• The sheer amount of enemies, and partly their attack speed makes it really difficult to dodge attacks, and make it through the levels

Don't get me wrong though - this game looks amazing! I really like the particles, and animations and awww.

I appreciate the feedback and find it very helpful, so thank you!

As far as game mechanics go, there are lots of points of adjustment: jump power, friction (on-ground and in-air), attack delays, etc and I'll constantly be tweaking those. The eye/plant enemies used to have an attack animation, but I think I broke something so it's difficult to see when they are about to attack. 

Also the level design, particular spawn points of monsters, will be adjusted so you won't be getting knocked off platforms all the time. You are meant to get hit, but I'll try to keep the frustration to a minimum by not including high drops or lots of enemies on small platforms.

And graphics! Yeah this is a tricky area because I wanted it to be dark but at the same time I'm using a 16-color palette so it's pretty tough. I hope I can fix this as my art skills get better over time.

Thanks again for taking the time to play. It means a lot to me. 

[Damocles]

Nice visuals, sound and general concept.
Also the menu fits the theme very good.

For the balancing:

I would favor being able to move in-air when jumping. This gives the player more control about the jumps.

Double-jump:  a nice way to adjust jump-height is to use a double jump feature. (player has to press a second time
while in jump upwards to gain an extra push)
Then you can decrease the normal jump height and still reach high platform.

Intro level:  make a simple introlevel explaining the mechanics and features (signposts when walking by)
But this is only a prototype of course currently.

[princec]

Really slick looking. Finally we're beginning to see more decent stuff made in Java! It seems to be undergoing a bit of a revival of late.

Cas

[Pickleninja]

Really slick looking. Finally we're beginning to see more decent stuff made in Java! It seems to be undergoing a bit of a revival of late.

Cas

Java is soooo much more powerful than Flash... I really hope more people realize that.

-Pickle

[dragonheartman]

Really slick looking. Finally we're beginning to see more decent stuff made in Java! It seems to be undergoing a bit of a revival of late.

Cas

Thanks for the kind words, princec. I believe Android has something to do with this. 

Nice visuals, sound and general concept.
Also the menu fits the theme very good.

For the balancing:

I would favor being able to move in-air when jumping. This gives the player more control about the jumps.

Double-jump:  a nice way to adjust jump-height is to use a double jump feature. (player has to press a second time
while in jump upwards to gain an extra push)
Then you can decrease the normal jump height and still reach high platform.

Intro level:  make a simple introlevel explaining the mechanics and features (signposts when walking by)
But this is only a prototype of course currently.

Regarding in-air movement, that seems to be the consensus. I'll tweak the in-air resistance to be a bit more responsive. I'll have to take some pointers from Megaman, Contra, etc in this regard. 

The double-jump idea is intriguing too. I'm also considering ladders or ropes.

Once I get the menu fully finished and the save/load screens done, I can probably start on the networking component. I'm thinking of giving Kryonet a go -- does anyone have any experience with it or any other networking libraries that could chime in?

[Ultroman]

Really cool! A few weeks? Seriously?! Would you mind letting me poke through the source? I'm new to libgdx, and even though I've read through several tutorials, I haven't found a consistently good model (GameObject, Player, Monster etc.) that I'd want to build something from. I'd really appreciate a look.

On another note; to fix the problem of the platforms not being very distinguishable from the background, may I recommend parallax-scrolling of the background? It's working wonders for me in my Java2D project. I have 3 layers of trees and things, plus the cloud-layer, and it really makes everything stand out.

[Damocles]

yes  parallax-scrolling would fit here quite good

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[dragonheartman]

I have implemented parallax scrolling, but the effect is quite subtle. I'll have to add more panning.

Really cool! A few weeks? Seriously?! Would you mind letting me poke through the source? I'm new to libgdx, and even though I've read through several tutorials, I haven't found a consistently good model (GameObject, Player, Monster etc.) that I'd want to build something from. I'd really appreciate a look.

On another note; to fix the problem of the platforms not being very distinguishable from the background, may I recommend parallax-scrolling of the background? It's working wonders for me in my Java2D project. I have 3 layers of trees and things, plus the cloud-layer, and it really makes everything stand out.

Please feel free to poke around in the source. I've included it in the last section of the first post.

But also please be warned this is my first time making a game with libgdx, and due to me rushing to get in and program (this is 18 days in) I do a lot of stupid things that need to be refactored eventually. Namely, the menuing system is really ugly, I'm not passing in game instances to my object methods (there are some ugly constructors), and my Actor -> Player model is gross too. However, I believe everything is fairly well commented, and I'm always open  to suggestions you may have for the code as well.

[Ultroman]

Yeah, I don't really care about the menu-system anyway. The Scene2D UI-framework is so AWESOME and easy to use, when you get past the hump, that you really shouldn't need to do much on your own, other than concentrate on the game. You should check it out if you haven't.

I appreciate the source very much, thanks! It'll be my nightly read

[dragonheartman]

I am 5000 lines of code in and working on the first area of the game:



Yes, you start the game on a beach. How original!

Thank you again for all the great feedback and suggestions. I'll be uploading a new version this weekend.

[matheus23]

Beaches? Good decision

Also, awesome graphics, that's very impressive.

[timtips]

This looks really promising! Don't stop working on it
Did not hear any news about it in a while. Would be sad to see this disappear.
Go go go

[dragonheartman]

Just a quick update, yes I am still working on this! 
Probably the  biggest challenge has been network support, but it's shaping up to be very fun.

I don't have a playable demo released, but I do frequently post progress videos on my YouTube channel.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/HdO3mgzrXso?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/HdO3mgzrXso?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;start=</a>

[lastdigitofpi]

Wow - the artwork looks really perfect! Keep up the good work!

[dragonheartman]

Hi folks,

I'm bumping this just to let anyone who stumbles upon it to note that this is still in-progress.
It's nearing feature-completeness, and despite no real story I've been told it's very playable in its current state.

If you want to follow my progress or play with some buddies, here are a few links!

website | facebook | twitter

[Zhon]

This looks wonderful, my favorite aspect of the game is the art, absolutely lovely.
Keep it up! 

[kpars]

Are you restricting yourself to a certain color palette? That's kind of what it looks like.

I love it so far!

[dragonheartman]

Are you restricting yourself to a certain color palette? That's kind of what it looks like.

I love it so far!

Yes, DawnBringer's 16-color palette. Here's a link.

This looks wonderful, my favorite aspect of the game is the art, absolutely lovely.
Keep it up! 

Thank you! I've not done a lot of pixel art before so it makes me happy to hear that.

[RobinB]

This looks so great
I kept playing this till that green boos ( hes to strong ).
Only point is that the landing on just in / out of reach platforms can be a bit glitchy.

But amazing game, cant believe you made all this.

[elamre]

Nice game! The jumping had some glitching indeed. And sometimes i was still poisoned while being dead. Also you could exploit the green guy really easily. Furthermore, it would be nice to see what gets changed when i upgrade a spell. And the respawn of monsters was a bit absurd if you ask me. There were times, many times, that a unit respawned just as i killed her. This could lead to my death which was very frustrating. Also it was really difficult to upgrade my spells if i wasnt in a village, since anything else than slimes and plants would just look for you and then kill you. But it is a nice game .

this is the thing i was talking about:

basically i would just spam the lightning bolt. Just took a little too long to kill him (alone), even though i had a really high damage output.

[dragonheartman]

Thanks for the feedback, elamre. I'm working on fixing some of the jump physics. UI enhancements to see what changes when you level is a good idea too. (I am constricted somewhat due to the low resolution but I might add a second line.) The respawn rate depends on the number of enemies already on the map, but it can of course be adjusted. I'm working on adding back more safe zones for the maps. Now you can open the menu in Purgatory (the death map) so that should be useful. If you are dying a lot, put points in stamina though.

The third dungeon is complete, so I've bumped this topic again with some updated details. Thanks and happy new year!

[scanevaro]

10/10!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
loving it!