Guardian [FINISHED]

[HeroesGraveDev]

Well, this is more or less finished. Hope you enjoy it!

The Spritesheet and the engine will continue development for other similar games, so don't worry that this seems very small.



Java 6 compatible version: Here.

I have decided to leave the Java 7 version as is (but not available for download), (because really the only code that's different now is the File IO Utilities).
When OSX catches up and everybody is on Java 7, then I'll copy everything across and things will be fine.

Here is the current spritesheet:



Back to drawing...

[HeroesGraveDev]

Changelog:

• [9/12/12:]
  
  • Doubled Spritesheet size to allow for more animation
  • Done Archer and Warrior animations for walk, stand, and attack
  • Added Skeletons with spears and swords
• [10/12/12:]
  
  • Fixed random pixels. Made the archer's arrow more visible
  • Added Cape and Quiver
  • Added Orc, a Goblin, 2 Assassins, Chuck Norris   and a partridge in a pear tree  
  • Added Arrow and Crossbow bolt
  • Made backgrounds transparent in preparation for the game
  • Got the basic framework for the game working. Can play as any entity. Can shoot arrows/crossbow bolts if the right character. Map working fine. Physics working
• [11/12/12:]
  
  • Tweaked the framework, added more features etc. (I left this too late and forgot what I had done on that day )

[HeroesGraveDev]

Er, image uploads are FAILING.

I'll try JGO upload directly

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[HeroesGraveDev]

First Prototype sprite to get the style sorted:

[Riven]

Because JGO stores images, it is impossible to update them properly.

Er, image uploads are FAILING.

The reason you have problems with your images, is that only you can see them... If the caching wasn't in place, you'd have seen the images in your JGO post, but nobody else would have.

When I copy the (original) dropbox URL in my address bar, I get a broken image too.

As for updating images, I add '?v=1', '?v=2' to the URL, as a nice workaround to cached images. (caching has more upsides than downsides, so, this workaround is acceptable, IMHO).

[HeroesGraveDev]

Because JGO stores images, it is impossible to update them properly.

Er, image uploads are FAILING.

The reason you have problems with your images, is that only you can see them... If the caching wasn't in place, you'd have seen the images in your JGO post, but nobody else would have.

When I copy the (original) dropbox URL in my address bar, I get a broken image too.

As for updating images, I add '?v=1', '?v=2' to the URL, as a nice workaround to cached images. (caching has more upsides than downsides, so, this workaround is acceptable, IMHO).

Thanks!

[HeroesGraveDev]

Okay, got the GIFs working.




YAY!

(Walk, Stand, Attack, Repeat)

[Swami Rama]

Good job, loving the pixel art.

[5c0jt]

Awesome work, man!

[HeroesGraveDev]

More animations...

Skeletons: (Sorry about the flashing pink in the spear one. The gif creator is annoying me with it's stupidity (It always throws exceptions when I load in image too)) FIXED




What next...

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[Jimmt]

Chuck Norris.

[5c0jt]

You are a very talented pixel artist, all you're stuff has quite a unique style, nice work.

[Swami Rama]

Are you planning on developing this in Java? Have you started writing any code for it?

[HeroesGraveDev]

Java? Yes.
Code? Only my basecode and a few unfinished classes for the world (World, Chunk, Tile).

[HeroesGraveDev]

Changed the sword animations to not be so extreme when lifted up.

[Sickan]

May I ask what you are using to draw the images?

[HeroesGraveDev]

Paint.NET www.getpaint.net

And to make the GIFs:

Sprite Sheet Animator http://rmrk.net/index.php?topic=41524.0

And new edits:

[HeroesGraveDev]

Orc & Goblin:




Oh, and I've had 2 people ask if I want them to work with me in a team.
The answer for this project is no, as it is not a BIG project, and I don't have the time or resources.
Sorry for anyone who wanted to work with me.

[HeroesGraveDev]

Assassin:

(With Crossbow and Shortsword)




(About time if you look at my avatar  )

And... Chuck Norris:










Chuck Norris can not be shown by Pixel Art...

[HeroesGraveDev]

Okay, this afternoon I've been working on the code.

So far:

I have a world, filled with chunks, filled with tiles.
I have a sky background (for now) like in Far From Home. I will eventually change to a hand-drawn background when I get the time.
I have entities. (Actually, I only have 1 class, but so far it works for all.  )
I have entity animators. (Same amount of classes as entities. )
I have entity controllers (So the player can play as the monsters too)
I have... pink tiles (need to make a texture for them)

I like how the animations look once the entities actually move around. Much better than moonwalking

Anyway, better get back to work.

(AND NAMES PEOPLE! I NEED NAME SUGGESTIONS! (although 99.9999999% or something like that will be turned down for obvious mathematical reasons))

[ctomni231]

Well, I am interested in how the game play is going to turn out for the game. It sort of looks Dungeon based with a bit of medieval fantasy elements. There are so much of those games out there already, that I think I would need to see a bit of game play before coming up with any names.

In short, it is kinda hard to come up with a name if all you have is a single sprite sheet.

[davedes]

Good progress so far. Interested to see how it all comes together...

Also: normal lighting works really well with this kind of art style. I'm doing similar low-res pixel art for a 4K game, see here to see how the lights affect my sprites. Just a thought...

[HeroesGraveDev]

Good progress so far. Interested to see how it all comes together...

Also: normal lighting works really well with this kind of art style. I'm doing similar low-res pixel art for a 4K game, see here to see how the lights affect my sprites. Just a thought...

My internet router is playing up at the moment, so I'm limited to java-gaming.org for some reason and can't open the link.
I assume you mean like in Legend of Dungeon (google it if you haven't seen it before).

Good idea. I may implement it if I can understand opengl lighting.

EDIT: Router fixed. THAT IS AWESOME. Unfortunately, I have no plans to include lighting in this game. Maybe that will change

[matheus23]

Good progress so far. Interested to see how it all comes together...

Also: normal lighting works really well with this kind of art style. I'm doing similar low-res pixel art for a 4K game, see here to see how the lights affect my sprites. Just a thought...

Intresting... but do you have some kind of editing program for all the normals? I guess a simple normal map generator, which detects edges doesn't work for this kind of pixel art

[HeroesGraveDev]

Good progress so far. Interested to see how it all comes together...

Also: normal lighting works really well with this kind of art style. I'm doing similar low-res pixel art for a 4K game, see here to see how the lights affect my sprites. Just a thought...

Intresting... but do you have some kind of editing program for all the normals? I guess a simple normal map generator, which detects edges doesn't work for this kind of pixel art

Some info here on normal-mapping pixel art

[matheus23]

Good progress so far. Interested to see how it all comes together...

Also: normal lighting works really well with this kind of art style. I'm doing similar low-res pixel art for a 4K game, see here to see how the lights affect my sprites. Just a thought...

Intresting... but do you have some kind of editing program for all the normals? I guess a simple normal map generator, which detects edges doesn't work for this kind of pixel art

Some info here on normal-mapping pixel art

Uh.. oh!... Okey...
I guess people should create a normal-map editor

[HeroesGraveDev]

Some info here on normal-mapping pixel art

Uh.. oh!... Okey...
I guess people should create a normal-map editor

That game is made with Unity. Maybe the editor comes with that.  

EDIT: Confirmed: Unity can convert heightmaps to normal maps. Now to work out how to do that in Java...

EDIT 2: A thread on converting heightmaps to normal maps

[matheus23]

Some info here on normal-mapping pixel art

Uh.. oh!... Okey...
I guess people should create a normal-map editor

That game is made with Unity. Maybe the editor comes with that.  

Yes. I know... And I even know some editors which give you the ability to generate normal maps from heightmaps...

I only wanted to say, that I find this solutions more... like a work around... it would look much, *much* better if an artist (or even a programmer could do this) would have worked on such a normal map....

Then the editor would be able to change the normal's direction by just swiping around with the mouse and then changing the direction the normal vectors are pointing...
So editing normals works like combing your hair

And for smaller scale you could simply edit every pixel's normal independently... I mean... you don't have so much pixels in pixel graphics, do you?

[HeroesGraveDev]

Some screenshots...




No tile textures yet. I just wanted to show off the projectiles .

EDIT: LOL, the projectiles travelled exactly the same distance in both screenshots. 

[davedes]

Legend of Dungeon's article isn't really that useful to us since he uses Unity to generate normals and calculate lighting.

For such low resolution characters you can get away with very basic normal maps, and it should be easy enough to generate them on the fly:

1   2   3   4

//for each pixel in character sprite //convert xy to range [-1.0 to 1.0], then half the result to reduce the effect a bit normals.xy = ( (gl_FragCoord.xy / spriteSize.xy) * 2.0 - 1.0 ) * 0.5; normals.z = 1.0;

For things like brick walls, a more accurate normal map would be necessary.

In my 4K game the normals are hard-coded. The brick normals are easy enough since the entire background is procedural, and the character normals use the code above.

I agree that an editor would be awesome. I have been thinking of that for a bit now...

EDIT: You can get an idea of how normals are generated here: (not necessarily the most efficient GLSL code...)
http://glsl.heroku.com/e#5215.13