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Posts categoriezed as Skunk Werks

TTRPG and other game dev projects I pick at from time to time and never ever finish

pssst

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I’ve been slow to update here again, but I have Actually Done A Thing and pushed an early prototype to the Tabletop Simulator Workshop if anyone is interested in learning the basic strategy between commanding cute fighter plane girls in commander to commander combat.

Click here to check it out.

I have a lot of work ahead in making some nicer looking assets but I wanted to get this out there for some early testing and so far I actually had some pretty good feedback so I’ll be adding the next ‘layer’ of complexity to the thing soon.

You may have noticed a name change and even Crossing the Heavens is probably not final, but the Critical Heaven title actually came from a risk/reward system I was kicking around in the very first stages where your units get a big power boost on their last hit point, but it seemed like kind of a complicated gimmick to work around and probably not all that much fun since you’d need to purposely damage your units to bring out the most in them. Crossing, I think gets across the idea of how the general game flow goes and still says “air battle.”

So give it a shot! Again, it’s very early and requires Tabletop Sim to play, but the rules are more or less rock-paper-scissors combat cross with grid movement. Future updates will give characters unique abilities and the movement types will get more interesting.

A Couple Quickie Originals

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I did this one more or less for coloring practice since I haven’t been doing much of it lately. I’m still not a hundred percent feeling the red armor honestly!

I just kinda tossed this one together one night when I was feeling really achy and craving a hot soak.

Made another pass over Hornet’s armor design, I think I’d still like to tweak the skirt area and maybe change or ditch the hip armor. I’ll have another look at her ‘civvy’ dress sometime and try to make them look closer. I simplified her hair accessories a bit since the ‘wing’ clips on both sides just never looked the way I wanted them to. Her middle lock with the multiple clips is supposed to look like a bee stinger and the white wing clips were meant to be wasp wings, but didn’t really come off that way. I also stopped drawing her hair as tied with a bunch of bands so much as braided with a ribbon running through them to create a similar streak or band effect. I left the wings pretty plain this time since I’d like to make a nice copy of her wasp emblem I can re-use between illustrations of her. I made more of an effort to make the wings a decent size this time too. It’s kind of annoying trying to pick the Super Hornet references out of the regular Hornet references, by the way. I’m picky about this because I do plan to have her become a Super Hornet later on…

Teh Guardical Gaiden

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tgl1It’s been a weird couple of weeks. Every so often I get in this state where the tablet just doesn’t ‘feel’ right and I need to bust out some markers or pencils until my mojo comes back. I say that when I should really be going ahead and knocking off this annotated bibliography for a research assignment, but… Ehhhh.

It dawned on me the other day with my new setup I can stream game footage in addition to the periodic Picarto streams. (Note to self: add sidebar links for my stream pages.) So over the weekend, I started playing The Guardian Legend live before trying my hand at the ROM hack version, TGL: Secret Edition. It’s kind of a trip playing a rearranged version of something so familiar. Playing online with a chat, small as it’s been, has already helped me learn more and appreciate other little things about the game I hadn’t noticed. I just love learning little details like the item drops not actually being randomized, or the curious “rubber band” pattern the Crawdaddy boss has. (If you maneuver side to side, he begins swinging around as well, spreading his projectiles and making him more annoying to hit, but if you stay put horizontally you can use the Saber Laser to cut right through him and his claw tossing with no fuss at all.) Secret Edition turns things on its ear by rearranging the entire overworld, upping enemy counts, changing what items you find where, and in especially interesting cases, puts shooter bosses in the overworld and vice versa. I never realized how much of a help that initial rapid fire upgrade out of the gate was until SE withheld it from the earlier stages and increased the number of enemies, which makes me rely on sub weapons more than I normally would. Which made when I reached an item room selling Rapidfire for 150 chips when I only had a max 100 kind of a kick in the teeth.

tgl2One of us has fists, you know.

I’ll continue to pick at it and probably some other games off and on via twitch when I have free time. I figure as long as I can support it, why not waste time with company?

Guardian Spirits Progress Check-In

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So, I’ve been tinkering with my game off and on again lately, mainly doing my sprite work during drawing blocks or other lulls in production, as well as hammering and fine-tuning the story and concept stuff into place for when I work up the gumption to really experiment with the engine(s, stupid hybrid game style).

The biggest factors I’m undecided on right now are the exact system of weapon management I want to use (one being to have a simple array of weapons that can be leveled up through use, and one similar to Gunstar Heroes or Sigma Star Saga where weapons can be customized through combinations of items which would be cooler but probably a bitch to figure out how to execute), and whether to retain the overhead view for the exploration segments or go to a side-scrolling, Metroid-like overworld which would be both easier to plot out and make detailed sprites for. Not to mention offer more options for crazy movement equipment, originally the Booster gear just let the Guardian (Guardienne?) execute a short dash move, in a side scroller the same ability would make a good air dash or double-jump upgrade.

At least the storyline is fairly congealed at this stage. A space peacekeeping force is sending a crack team of android operatives to figure out why the Cancer Claw, a pirate group is dicking around in an uncharted asteroid field, only to find an ancient relic that looks to be a superweapon crawling with hostile aliens. After a quick assessment, the team decides it’s better to disable the relic site rather than let their goofball nemeses get ahold of it and split up to deactivate the energy reactors deep within the rock.

Of course, it’s still a pretty ambitious (or stupid) undertaking, so it’ll be a while before it sees the light of day. I’m tinkering with a couple of shooter game ideas at the present though, so maybe one of those will pop up soon. Ish. Before that game does, anyway.

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