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[hemmingjay]

This looks great! Stick with it and keep fine tuning. Don't be afraid to throw out some of your designs based on input from others. If you find yourself having to explain your reasons for a certain feature or decision, it might be bad. It's hard to cut out what you think of as important, but never forget you are making this for an audience. Decide who they are and please them, not everyone. Good luck!

[Mesa]

I'll keep that in mind.

Still, I'd rather let people know as to why certain feature gets cut or so heavily changed. (for instance, even at this point I'm predicting that the mines and the sniper rifle will require a bit more fine-tuned balancing - the laser-pointer and chargeup time for the sniper rifle are there so people don't feel like their deaths are unfair and to put a bit of a skill floor on the rifle, since I want to stay away from having headshots in this game; Mines have an arming time as well so people don't go facemining others for 9000+ damage (alright, they wouldn't deal THAT much damage but you get my point.)

In fact, that holds true for the SG. Everyone went straight for using the sniper rifle and only one person picked something that wasn't mines.
I guess it's the sole concept that they have the potential of one-shot-killing anyone compared to other weapons.

[hemmingjay]

Yep, that's a good decision! I can't wait to see what comes of this.

[My Name is Immaterial]

PTW.

[Mesa]

Heeey, more sketches! (also check out the forum game)

I've been also thinking about the various forms of government the various mutants could still have, even after the chaos erupted from the apocalypse.
In particular I've been thinking about ants, who would be united under a single queen, unlike other 'tants who would be split into tribes (birds; almost wrote elves, lol - I guess it makes sense, since birds ARE an analogue to elves in this universe) and independent city-states (humans).

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And yet for some reason I gave them ushankas with a Soviet-esque symbol on it. And I can't draw the power armored ants, it seems.


Overly fancy weapon designs. (SMG, shotgun, rifle, from top to bottom)

I won't be able to do much tomorrow (going to the cinema to watch Stones For The Rampart after 2.5 classes, so...), but I'm always looking for new ideas, so if you have anything you think is worth sharing, do it.

[My Name is Immaterial]

I think that communist ants would be interesting. However, frogs present a problem, since they either have to be a dictatorship or communist to build such war machines.

[Mesa]

The ants could've overthrown their queen(s) and put an end to the caste-based society.
Hmm, I'll need to do some extra research on the subject of this, since it's interesting and actually fairly relevant.

Also I've been thinking that the frogs would live kinda like DF's dwarves, but I'm not sure how that would turn out.

GLORY TO ANTSTOTZKA!

[Mesa]

Hey, just letting you know that Gun Francisco is all but dead (well, the concept itself...forum game kinda died off), I just haven't been really able to draw a lot.
But I did whip out my Wacom tablet again after not using it for, like, a month and the results are...Not the worst. Still not quite where I want to be at, but close enough given my relatively poor drawing tablet experience.

Guess I should just draw over a scan of one of my sketches instead of doing this blind...

Spoiler: Well damn (click to show/hide)

[Mesa]

So today I've made this up - a sheet of various sprite parts that I can easily stitch together (and do some individual tweaks if necessary) to create new designs and also animate with much less hassle. (the image is 6x the original size so you can actually see it)


So far I only have the human sheet ready, but others will follow soon, since they're not that hard. Just tedious.
Either that or I'm lazy.

I've also tried experimenting a little more with environment design a little. If you want to call it that. In any case, I made a little scene mockup (which keeps the game style more than my previous scene mockups) with a human and some random crates. What do you think?


I'm the world's only developer who can't code at all. Woop, woop. At least I got the art and design areas covered.

[Mesa]

Me again!
This time I have something a bit bigger than usual (still not exactly professional) - a pseudo-design document of Gun Francisco (I'm saying pseudo-design document because I don't quite know how to write a proper one + it's not really finished yet), still very much work in progress.
Here.

It also shows that I finally got around and more-or-less finalizing the weapon lineup.

Another important thing is that the game now has two modes of play - your standard in-combat scenarios (IC) that take place in the various cities etc. of the game the out-of-combat metagame (OOC). All comparisons to SW Battlefront II's Conquest Mode are fairly appropriate, but I do feel like it'll be different enough in its own right as I further shape its design.

Weapon images in the spoiler below.

Spoiler: Guns of Gun Francisco (click to show/hide)

(fun fact: this was originally the sniper rifle, and I may change it further into a crossbow depending on how I feel about it.)

(been going back and forth between sledgehammer and shovel on this one, but ultimately it'll stay as a sledgehammer)

(this was the hand grenade before, but I felt like it was too similar to the cherry bombs (which are now called Grenade Barrage) so I made it into a throwable missile instead. Ain't that awesome?)
It took me a while to settle upon the final melee weapon, since I didn't quite like the spear.
(this sprite was made in less than a minute, I think. Simplicity, ho!)

In the next few days I'll tackle the OOC mode, maps, as well as the upgrades and mutations. Potentially even expand the story a little, but it's not a huge concern to me right now.

[My Name is Immaterial]

A concern that I have is that there will naturally be places that only the frogs and storks can reach, because of their jump heights. Unless you put in an arbitrary interaction or a new movement mechanic for humans, then you will probably have a balance problem.

[Biag]

I'm really, really liking the pixel art. Your sprites are well-crafted enough to pull off the "floating hands" style, which is impressive. You should show us an animation!

Minor feedback on your design document: you're probably going to want to use a word processor instead of a spreadsheet, as spreadsheets don't give you much room to expound on your ideas. Also, what do you think of changing the "lose a ticket on death" rule to be "lose a ticket on respawn"? Battlefront did this, and it made for some very tense and enjoyable situations when you knew that you were on the verge of losing and couldn't respawn anymore.

[Mesa]

A concern that I have is that there will naturally be places that only the frogs and storks can reach, because of their jump heights. Unless you put in an arbitrary interaction or a new movement mechanic for humans, then you will probably have a balance problem.

Eh, not really, since when I get around to map design, I'll balance them around humans' mobility, and apply additional tweaks based on other races' mobility.

Also, what do you think of changing the "lose a ticket on death" rule to be "lose a ticket on respawn"? Battlefront did this, and it made for some very tense and enjoyable situations when you knew that you were on the verge of losing and couldn't respawn anymore.

That sounds a bit better, actually, especially if you consider this idea I had:

In the OOC mode, you can not only allocate troops, but also equipment. Every weapon that you get is actually only available to you if you have it allocated in the given location, and you can change your equipment between deaths. (also what mutant you play as, if you somehow have multiple of them at a given location)

One other thing, since your troops can only move around the maps in vehicles (which you can build in your cities, using some sort of resource - I won't go overboard with these, just something like "metal" (for weapons, upgrades and vehicles) and "mutagen" (for mutations), and the ammunition types (bullets/shells/arrows).), and I'll get around to drawing up some sprites for them in the coming days (I had a sketch of a Frog fortress done but I really didn't like + it turned out much smaller than I anticipated.).
When you attack a city/are defending a city with a vehicle in it, the vehicle can be seen on the map, and serves as an initial checkpoint for the attackers. If the situation gets really tough, you can retreat to your vehicle and get the hell out and not lose all your troops. HOWEVER, you can also sabotage and destroy the enemy's vehicle and cut away their escape route. However the vehicles are pretty damn strong and will take a fair few mines to get rid of.
In fact, you can even try to steal the enemy resources they have brought with themselves, which could really spice up the tactics and strategies you could have.

As for animations, I have never really done those, but I'll certainly try! I mean, that's one of the things I made that spritesheet for. I can do it, but don't expect wonders out of it, not until I get experienced with it. (I'll also probably use the magnified spritesheet for this instead of the 1x scale one, but I don't know yet.)


Speaking of maps, similarly to how Battlefront did it, most locations provide the player controlling them with a bonus of sorts. (ranging from simple ones like extra resource generation to unique upgrades and mutations)


All in all, I am having a lot of fun with this, and I know that at some point I'll have to actually start working on it, but until then, I'll make sure I have a solid vision to work towards when that happens.
(although dreams of online multiplayer are probably out of the question for the time being...)

[Mesa]

(Good lord, look at all my multiposts in here...)
Anyway, recently I've decided to tweak the Frog sprite a little (which of all the sprites went through the least revisions...like one, maybe.) and this is the result:


It's mostly the skin color, really (which can also vary from frog to frog, moreso than in humans), but I might as well have done that.
I also made a frog spritesheet (which made me realize how less complex they are in comparison to humans) and even mocked up a Frog soldier with a shotgun.



I've been also (very sluggishly) making a vehicle sprite (which in reality is a combination of multiple smaller sprites since it also includes stuff like barrels and crates) which I should be able to showcase Soon™.
(I've been really sidetracking myself with this...)

[Mesa]

So after realizing that I cannot use my GM Studio license key on the Steam version (thus having to use the standalone instead), I did some more art-related stuff, but I do have some plans for making a very basic gameplay prototype (which is probably just gonna include movement and shooting at best, because I can't do much more than that) to see how that thing would even fare.

For now though, I did say I'll do some animation, and so I did! Granted it's extremely bland and I could do it better, but I'm merely dabbling in this area.
Also have a frog fortress concept art and a poorly-drawn frog. Yeah, I'm in a very froggy mood lately. But frogs are basically the dwarves of GF, so I have my reasons.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also while I haven't done anything regarding the doc, I did brainstorm a few mutation ideas:

Highlander - melee kills grant the user +x% movement speed and +y max HP. Stacks n times. Lost on death. Killing other Highlander mutants will transfer their power to you.

Bloodlust - gain n HP back on a kill. Melee and explosive kills grant more HP.

Turtle Shell - reduces damage taken from primary and explosive weapons by n.

Chameleon Skin - become invisible after a few seconds of not using any weapons. Using a weapon will break the invisibility (and delay your next atack slightly).