[Devlog] Mystery Babylon

Yo FEU,

Didn’t plan to do an update for a bit, but I need some help.

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That’s a windows build of a battle level.

We’ve been working on eliminating lag. I want to know if this lags on anyone’s computer.

EDIT: I work with a gamepad, but controls are same as VBA basically.

Some known bugs

  • Sometimes AI tries to attack in positions where they can’t
  • Diagonal stairs rendering & movement is broken

Basically, not looking for bug reports but LAG reports.

There’s no win condition if you kill everyone yet, but you will hit a game over if anyone dies.

Not an official demo release, but gameplay should be pretty stable. Higher crit rates for players and hit rate debuffs on enemies are applied here.


Portraits

@L95 Is helping us out:

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Got up and running really quickly, dude’s a beast. Looking forward to working together long-term.

Have lots of concept art for upcoming portraits:

Laila – The Tavern Owner

Kid 1 NPC

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Kid 2 NPC

Kid 3 NPC

Kid 4 NPC – Aspiring Adventurer

Kid 5 NPC — Aspiring Adventurer

Adventurer 5 NPC

Adventurer 6 NPC

With a bunch more to come. 40+ portraits to do. Having each NPC voice acted means an animated portrait for everyone you talk to.


Short update – please playtest that level if you find time. If it LAGS, let me know. Ideally let me know when/where//under which conditions lag occurs.

2 Likes

Weekly Update

Found some good folks to playtest. No lag, but other issues came up. Thank god lag wasn’t one of them.

Lots of changes this past week:

Level Design

The first piece of feedback was that our level was really dark and hard to read. Generally, I hate really bright pixel art – but in this case, they were right. It’s a night level, but it still needs to be visible. First thing I did was jack up the saturation:

Going into greyscale mode helps to see how readable your level is. Ours wasn’t very readable and lacked contrast.

After that, the next complaint was that our level was too barren. It was really merely for testing the AI algorithm’s performance, but I took the opportunity to improve the level:

We got some flags done to decorate the level. I added stationary archer towers – the units there will fire on any enemies within range.

I’ll have Penelope (the only archer) be the only one capable of taking them out.

Also added loads of trees on the borders of the map for decoration and marked those areas impassible. Huge performance gain, doing that. But, since I doubt combat maps will ever be this huge – I likely don’t have to worry much about lag anymore.

UI

I got a load of feedback from a fellow dev about our UI. Fixed a ton of bugs in there, and added some now UI.

  1. Unit Info on Hover
  1. General Battle Menu (when you click an empty grid square)

Still a lot of focus on battle stuff while portraits and sprites are being made. Some stuff coming up:

  • Mouse support in battle
  • Save/Load from Combat
  • Q/E, Mouse Wheel, or L/R Bumper to go to next unmoved unit

Battle Blurbs

I totally stole this from FE3H. In addition to adding new “battle idles” while on the battle grid, I’m adding some VA clips that play when you select a player:

There’s two types of battle blurbs:

Selection Blurbs (when you select a unit)

  • Good Health Blurb (when health > 35%)
  • Poor Health Blurb (when health < 35%)

Deselection Blurbs (when you cancel moving a unit without moving at all)

Each type has a list of playable audio clips that get randomly selected.

Portraits

@L95 continues to do God’s work. Here’s three of his completed portraits:

Two main character portraits by our other artist:

Between these two, we’ll definitely get all our portraits done before April.

Concept Art

We officially have concept art for all our portraits.

The NPCs by Ayveris:

Adventurer NPCs by our new concept artist, Emir:

For NPCs, these mf’ers are better designed than my players lol.

Both artists are awesome, just got another one to help us hit our deadlines.


That’s about it!

Doing more work on battle system and UI. More portraits are incoming. Couple new sprites and animations.

VAs are getting started. Gotta find a solid audio engineer to make all these different clips the same volume and quality.

Still have some casting and writing to do.

Still have to map that new fort interior…

Getting there though.

5 Likes

Weekly Update

Gonna knock this out today, so I can spend the the day playing Bloodlines lol

Mouse Controls

During the last playtest, in addition to the level’s darkness, having no mouse controls was another issue that got brought up.

I personally user VBA keyboard controls or gamepad, but I have to accommodate everyone. All of our UI is mouse compatible now. Plus we got got a cool little gauntlet cursor:

dwarven_gauntlet (I should make it bigger ingame)

Spent most of the work week adding mouse click/hover to everything.

Small sidenote, we did some small updates to this level: animated diagonal banners.

In the process of animating all the flags. It’ll look great and add some extra polish to this level.

Fort Interior Level + Remastered Sprites

We got Teagan’s sprite set completed:

teagan_reveal

Note: I wasn’t aware I was recording sound at this time. Doing a retake was too much work, so enjoy Pushin P.

Done by @Lucky90Happy. Talented as hell. Will definitely be handling more character sets for us.

Just today, I received remastered sprites for Arthur (MC) and Jacques (playable character). This weekend, I finally got started on mapping the new fort interior level.

Below is a showcase of Arthur’s new style and the new level:

Level Design by @dokitsuart. What a beast. He’s totally designing all the levels and handling art direction – this is hands-down the best level in the game (and the only one he 100% designed, so its no coincidence lol).

Here’s the remastered Jacques sprite.

Arthur & Jacques Remasters by @vnittiart. Between him and Lucky, our characters are going to take a huge jump in quality.

Paired with Dokitsu’s levels, the art quality is just gonna be insane!

Speaking of insane art:

Portraits

@L95 continues to crush these portraits. Crazy detailed art from this man.

3 fire portraits in a week. Man is a force to be reckoned with.


That’s all for this week.

Have to:

  • Finish Fort Interior Level
  • Continue to Polish off Battle System
  • We officially sent out scripts to our VAs, so recording begins this week

More portraits and sprites are incoming. Doing some more battle sprites this week, too.

iight, time to go learn how to patch a rom lol

If yall are twitter ppl, a follow is much appreciated: @CodenameBabylon

3 Likes

Weekly Update

Level Design

Fort Valestone’s interior is being fleshed out. Going pretty well, should be done with the level by next week. Then, it’s just NPCs, cutscenes and dialogue for another 2-3 weeks.

Sprites

Got our first few animations for Kenzo:

Really dope work by @vnittiart.

We’re 3/7 on sword bandit’s battle sprites:

Portraits

@L95 is still killing it:


Keeping it short and sweet! Got a VA session literally right now – til next week!

2 Likes

Weekly Update

Level Design

No new footage worth showing – but Fort Interior remaster is complete.

With that, all major levels for the demo are complete.

That being the case, we’re going to focus on redesigning and polishing parts of certain maps. Starting with the guild hall in the town level.


Portraits

Speaking of the Guild Hall, here’s more @L95 portraits in there:

(these embeds expire, so raw link)

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With that, he’s done all the adventurer portraits! I’ll share the stills for any pixel art lovers (dude blows me away every time):

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Obviously not F2U – as for F2E, I don’t really mind – ask/credit @L95 himself.


Sprites

Knights are getting a redesign. Nyreen’s sprite set is in progress.


World Map (24/24 – 100%)

pixel-world-map

Four months later… WORTH IT.


That’s it.

For those wondering, I’m planning a new full demo release around mid April-late May. It really depends, but likely closer to May.

6 Likes

Weekly Update

Level Design

Last week, I mentioned we’d be redesigning the Guild Hall. Our environment artist and level designer got going really quickly:

Just now, I was able to get the map finished:

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Other than that, I’ve been getting started wiring up cutscenes and NPC dialogue, starting with the first cutscene of the game:

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I believe we’ll be polishing off the exterior map for Bethany as best as we can, it’s likely next up for a remaster (though I doubt it will be complete scrap and redo).

Sprites & Portraits

The Knight redesign complete, at least for unmounted knights:

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Nyreen’s set is also complete:


Unsmeared

SMEAERED


@L95 has moved onto doing civilian NPC portraits:

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Six in a week – what a beast.


3D Models

As you may know, our battle animations are rotoscoped from 3D animations. Before, I used store bought or free 3D models, but since our players are custom designed now – we need custom models.

We have two done so far:

So, their battle sprites are coming soon.

Nyreen and Kenzo 3D models coming soon.

If I ever decide to make a 3D sequel, I’m pretty prepared!


That’s it.

More VA dialogue and cutscenes next week.

Likely more level polish and progress of the fort interior level.

More sprites coming, as well.

We got a new composer on board, I’ll share some of that once it’s plugged in.

7 Likes

Ayyy I don’t know how this is my first time seeing this. You and your team are moving on this. I think the town hall looks stellar! And 6 portraits in a week is insane, kudos to the artist.

3 Likes

Thanks man, we’ve definitely been moving at sonic speed lol

Hoping to finish the demo ASAP and pitch publishers.

Thanks for the feedback, Those Who Rule seems to be making steady progress as well!

2 Likes

Ooh I remember seeing this thread when it was in its infancy!
You sure have come a long way. Wish you the best of luck with your project~

3 Likes

Weekly Update

Spent most of this week:

  • Implementing dialogue and cutscenes
  • Debugging the battle system
  • Working on World Map UI

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I’ve gotten most of the VA audio mixed and mastered – so this week I’ll be focused on implementing those various cutscenes and dialogue sequences.

Pretty soon, I’ll be asking you guys’ opinions on the quality of the voice over.

The battle scene is coming along really well – the new knight sprites were plugged in:




There’s more player sprite redos on the way, soon everyone will have an animated idle rather than standing still.

There’s an annoying bug with our arrows after changing to units that are generally 2x2 rather than single cell.

They’re breaking on stairs.

You know how every unit in FE takes 1 space? This makes rendering the arrow easy, because all you have to do is put the arrow sprites in the center of that grid cell.

But now, the arrows spawn in a different position that can vary based on if a unit is 2x2 or 2x3 like mounted units… complicating the situation.

So, we’re looking into a shader based arrow rather than a sprite based one. Fun times.

World Map

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Working on this menu.

You’ll be able to use Gamepad RS or mouse to freely scroll around the map and select locations. Mousewheel or LT/RT to zoom in/out.

We got some epic music for this level as well! Will likely plug it in sometime this week.

Sprites & Portraits

3 new @L95 portraits:

There’s an owl portrait coming up that I’m pretty excited about lol. Look forward to it.


If you watch the first video, you’ll likely agree – the Carriage Driver sprite is pretty ugly lol. So, he’s getting a redo. He only walks, whistles, and sits – so his animation set isn’t a big deal.

But, he’s got a good amount of lines – so he deserves to look decent.

Battle Sprites

Sword Bandit (7/7)







Won’t be seeing him in the demo – but they’ll get plugged in once Teagan, Kenzo, and Nyreen all have battle sprites (which will take a while).

Next up is Bandit Archer:


That’s it!

Our VAs have basically completed the 105 page script for Chapter 1 after about four weekly sessions. I’m proofreading and rewriting the Chapter 2 script and we’ll begin sessions again in two weeks when it’s ready.

The demo in early May will be Chapter 1 & 2.

More player sprite redos are on the way. @L95 is actually reaching the tail end of portraits to be done for the demo, which is great.

Still a ton to do, but it’s coming along! I started putting out feelers with publishers again :] A few were really shocked by the progress in a year – we’ll see how negotiations go.

Thanks!

6 Likes

Weekly Update

Cutscenes

The whole week has mainly been cutscenes. It’s a fuckton of work, but it’s coming along.

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This one in particular was pretty long. Imagine cutting audio endlessly for each line. Plus, coordinating the sprites.

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We’ve been hearing that Arthur sounds too deadpan/lifeless. We’re in a session right now – trying to get more emotion out of him to make it more engaging.

What’s you guys’ take on our VAs? Who do you like? Who could be better?

Portraits

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    THIS ONE

@L95 is a GOD.

Music

New Overworld Battle Theme

World Map Music

Shoutout to @InspectorJShaw


I’ll be stuck on dialogue and cutscenes for a fair bit.

Pixel artists are all busy.

Back next week!

4 Likes

Nice update as always! Really impressed how you’re consistently able to have so much development each week. You’re already pretty far into the cutscene dev work so I doubt you need this, but I used Pixel Crushers Dialogue System for the dialogue in my game. It was super easy to integrate once I got the hang of it. Handles a lot of the stuff you may need.

As for voice acting I definitely see what people are talking about with Arthur. Zenovia and Jacques are my favorites so far. The armored soldier is amazing, well done L95!

2 Likes

Thanks! Congrats on your playtest man, plan to give it go.

I did look into that plugin, but I ended up using Articy Draft 3 + Articy Importer. That plugin has an articy integration too, but I figured it would be easier to write our own implementation.

Yeah, the session with Arthur yesterday went really well, so we’ll see how his new audio fits! There’s some hiccups on the audio mixing side with different volumes, but we should have it sorted now.

1 Like

Weekly Update

Not gonna lie, this week was a tough one. Had some personal issues flare up and I’m down to being the only programmer again. so hard to find good help these days in that department

Have another programmer coming on board this week though to help with a new pathfinding system.

But, I’ve mainly just been speaking to publishers and sharing updates. It’s been going rather well – but it all comes back to completing the demo ASAP before anything concrete.

Anyway, it’s mostly been redoing cutscene audio with retakes – not much new work to showcase this week. Planning to get a ton done this week though, so stay tuned.

Sprites & Portraits

The art team is the star of the show this week. @L95 is doing stellar work.

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I asked for an owl.

Step 1:

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Step 2: Draw the rest of the fucking owl

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Bandit Archer battle animations are coming along well. 4/7, nearly done. After this, we have pitchfork bandit — then we’ll do Teagan’s player battle animations.

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Country Crest of Aedland done for UI purposes.


That’s all.

I have my work cut out for this month – I’ll have to really put the pedal to the floor to hit the mid May release date.

Tons more dialogue and cutscenes to work through.

I also have to get the script for Chapter 2 prepared by this time next week.

FML lol wish me luck

7 Likes

Weekly Update

Cutscenes & Level Design

Spent most of the week focused on getting more dialogue and cutscenes done. About 50% done with Chapter 1.

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There’s some more complex cutscenes happening in Amos Forest that require more animations of Arthur and Carriage Driver.

While I wait for those, there’s more NPC dialogue in Bethany to wire up and I’ve got to edit and translate the Chapter 2 script into Google Docs (which I got started on)

I am preparing for Chapter 2, got a nice screenshot of the Mess Hall in Fort Valestone:

Sprites and Portraits

@L95 is so talented. She’s really killing it:

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It’s really a joy to work with her on these.


More Archer Battle sprites

6/7, just Block animation left (the most unused animation of them all lol)


Harold is getting redone:

Bandit Archer’s map sprites are WIP:


That’s all!

I’m pushing to finish off all the cutscenes and dialogue, then work some more on battle system polish. I’m somewhere around only 55% done with Chapter 1 and zilch on Chapter 2.

We started recording sessions for Chapter 2 only today. The script is 50 pages yet only 30% complete on Google Docs (yet, completely written for the most part since it’s basically all the old dialogue rewritten).

I also want to get the exterior of Bethany to look better – it’s a bit bare and too undetailed atm.

It’ll be a while, because I have our tile artist working on a new title screen:

Remember this? I’m looking to make it into our title screen – King Hirem of Aedland in his throne room, drinking wine.

The pixel version should look way better, we’re rotoscoping it based on the 3D reference I made:

3 Likes

Weekly Update

This week has been more cutscenes and script writing. So many VA sessions and Chapter 2 is twice as long as Chapter 1.

I’ve been piecing stuff together, ay least a half hour of gameplay (not including talking to EVERY NPC) so far.

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Here’s an updated look at Fort Interior:

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Portraits

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dog_talk

@L95 did eight new portraits. THAT DOGGO THO.

Really good at animals, she is.


There’s more but I’ll keep it short this week.

Working on a site with @Klokinator, so I’ll be working on that every weekend.

7 Likes

“Master. You have not thrown the ball for me in two days. This displeases the dog gods.”

5 Likes

Weekly Update

Nearly through with Chapter 1. Takes about an hour to complete.

Two more rather short cutscenes and we’re off to the more action-packed Chapter 2.

These cutscenes I put together this week are really interesting, it’s been awesome to see it come together.

Ofc, it’s spoilers for the demo so don’t watch if you care about that.

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Sprites & Portraits

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Only a few more portraits needed for the demo. Totally plan for @L95 to do a ton more for the whole game.


Closing up on Chapter 1. Half of Chapter 2’s VA and script is done.

Chapter 2 is really remastered version of what we had, so it should be done faster. Maybe in about 2-3 weeks.

If all goes well, we’re looking at a mid-May release. About 2 hours of gameplay, there is a fair bit of dialogue and such to reach combat (hopefully it’s well-written enough so players won’t care). There’s definitely a way to skip the dialogue, anyway.

Submitted the game into BitSummit 2022 and Guerilla Collective’s 2022 showcase – we’ll see if we get in.

5 Likes

Late Update

It’s been a pretty busy time for the game. I’ve gotten Chapter 1 about 90% done and chucked it into a build. Spent all the last few days patching it to it’s rather stable state.

There’s still a whole other chapter to get done — but getting a playable build has been really important. I’ll share it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yNgt7Cl0qlu1DzZ91Jq9w-lM1p96hI_h/view?usp=sharing

NOTE: It’s like half of what to expect next month or two. Not the official public demo, yet.

Aside from that, I’ve been in business and playing Triangle Strategy design mode.

If I could go back in time and tell myself to “chill the fuck out” before posting to Steam and KS, I’d do that shit. We were waaay to early for that. It’s sort of biting me in the ass now with these publishers – but we’re definitely getting somewhere.

Gamedev Life Pro-Tip: Don’t launch it til it’s ready. “it’s never too early for a Steam page” – yes the fuck it is lol

They want to control all that jazz to make a “splash” – doing it too early just makes things hard to them.

I get asked for a design doc by publishers and I’m like: “…my brain is the design doc?”

Which is a bad answer.

It’s not a bad thing to not have a GDD, but it leads to a more organized development progress and makes sure everyone on the team knows what’s expected in the final cut.

Granted, not everything in there is going to make it – but it’s definitely better than it living in just my brain.

I’ll share it when it’s done.

One way you can help: give me romhack recommendations that have interesting skills/mechanics.

I’m told combat is pretty basic/barebones in terms of tactics right now – and that’s by design because making that shit work first and foremost was my biggest priority.

It’s pretty stable for the most part now, so it’s definitely time that I design the new mechanics I want to explore with it.


Sprites

Really, it’s actually been mostly battle sprites. Between @L95 and the other artist, lots of stuff to share:

Pitchfork Bandit is complete:







Garwain – a new playable character

@L95 is doing Teagan’s battle animations since she’s out of portraits.

Lil preview


But yep – VA is still going for Chapter 2, more battle sprites being done, more character animations incoming.

As for myself — I’m getting my ducks in a row before I get back into any development and sitting through meetings

Srsly tho, give me romhacks with cool skills to possibly steal

6 Likes

Try Eternal Winter, Cerulean Coast, Ethereal Light, or Last Heavenly Throne! Hopefully this helps, and looking forward to trying the demo soon!

2 Likes