New Art, Berserk Game, etc

Serpico

Farnese is the bomb diggity
Since a hard disk failure which wiped out a bunch of my old projects I started a series of new and better ones.

I have a lot in the works, many Berserk related, but its hard to find time to color them or polish them up. I might just start posting lineart if anyone is interested in trying their hand at coloring it. Here is one of the ones I completed. Bob made some suggestions on the lineart for this one so I figured I would post it here.

farnese_rocks.jpg



EDIT:
added a small demo of the game I am working on. So far I only have about a week that I've put into this specifically so there isn't much as far as content. I still need to expand the dialogue, combat, and inventory systems, which are all very tedious tasks, before I bother with making more sprites or improving what is there. I basically just slapped the graphics together.

Probably within a couple weeks I will improve the map generation system so that I can make a tool others can use to build their own levels and whatnot if people are interested. When I finish all that I will work on improving the combat system to be more engaging. I've considered going pure RPG style with it but I'm not sure. Its coded with C++ if anyone is interested. I am still an amatuer with game specific stuff but I am learning as I go. It should be fairly solid in a couple months.


you can DL the demo here
http://www.ninetenths.org/Berserk_demo.zip

the password to the .zip is skullknight

the basic controls are, arrow keys, space to attack, T to talk, I for inventory. Like I said not a lot there atm, but any suggestions or bug reports if it runs funny are welcome.

screenshot
brsk_demo1.jpg



Update : 6/24
some of my older artwork I revised
cf_gangsta2.jpg


bside2.jpg
 

Grail

Feel the funk blast
Re: New Art, etc

Great job, Serpy! :serpico: The details are all nice, and the design for Farnese's guitar is a particularly clever touch!

In terms of criticism, the first thing that jumped out at me was that fog. It seems pretty dense, and the transition from what looks like a solid shape to the airbrush needs a little more smoothing out.
 

Serpico

Farnese is the bomb diggity
Re: New Art, etc

Thanks for the comments guys

SaiyajinNoOuji-Trading Cards said:
Farnese and the Pussy Cats? :guts:

That popped into my head so many times while I was drawing this that I am suprised they didn't end up with cat ears.

Grail said:
Great job, Serpy! :serpico: The details are all nice, and the design for Farnese's guitar is a particularly clever touch!

In terms of criticism, the first thing that jumped out at me was that fog. It seems pretty dense, and the transition from what looks like a solid shape to the airbrush needs a little more smoothing out.

Thanks, yeah, the smoke there is the only part I kinda slapped on. I'll probably either fix it or crop it out.
 
Checking it out now!!! will update. :guts:

Update: AHAHAAAHHA this is frickin hilarious I love it. That sound when you stab shit lol. Great, I see that some color is missing for the characters but even like this it's pretty cool. Is there an ultimate objective? Well I guess I'll find out. I do kinda wish there was more then one way to attack though.

So far it's great.
NOOO I can't find the shed. In fact it doesn't exist. It would be cool if you put some trees around the place.
Cute art btw.
I really hope you continue to work on this, I'm now officially a fanboy of this project.
Oh and no problems so far. I use xp so I can't speak for Vista users.

Edit II:
Suggestions:
Giving more sides to the characters and movement. So the characters would have 8 sides. All different when travelling left, right, up, down, north west, north east, south west, south east.

And of course a bigger map, more enemies, being able to play as Farnese (After you finish an objective with one character, being able to switch to another.) Since Farnese can't really fight, a puzzle or maze would be interesting.. with traps or something. Or if you plan on just keeping it as Serpico's quest, thats fine too.

More songs in the soundtrack, I do like the song that's currently in their though.

Thats all for now. I wish I could somehow help, but I have no skills in anything relating to game making. Apart from suggestions, and play testing.
 

Serpico

Farnese is the bomb diggity
Ramen4ever said:
Checking it out now!!! will update. :guts:

Update: AHAHAAAHHA this is frickin hilarious I love it. That sound when you stab shit lol. Great, I see that some color is missing for the characters but even like this it's pretty cool. Is there an ultimate objective? Well I guess I'll find out. I do kinda wish there was more then one way to attack though.

So far it's great.
NOOO I can't find the shed. In fact it doesn't exist. It would be cool if you put some trees around the place.
Cute art btw.
I really hope you continue to work on this, I'm now officially a fanboy of this project.
Oh and no problems so far. I use xp so I can't speak for Vista users.

Edit II:
Suggestions:
Giving more sides to the characters and movement. So the characters would have 8 sides. All different when travelling left, right, up, down, north west, north east, south west, south east.

And of course a bigger map, more enemies, being able to play as Farnese (After you finish an objective with one character, being able to switch to another.) Since Farnese can't really fight, a puzzle or maze would be interesting.. with traps or something. Or if you plan on just keeping it as Serpico's quest, thats fine too.

More songs in the soundtrack, I do like the song that's currently in their though.

Thats all for now. I wish I could somehow help, but I have no skills in anything relating to game making. Apart from suggestions, and play testing.

Thanks for all the positive input. I appreciate it.

You're right that there is no shed at the moment. I probably should have mentioned that. I will add some trees, and a few more objectives and enemies to the next update though.

As for doing 8 directions and coloring the characters, that is coming, but I have to make dozens of images and animate them for that so I kept the movement simple for now. New attacks will be added as well. The map will be expanded as I make content to fill it up with. I am open to making quests for any and all Berserk characters, so I will almost certainly make Farnese playable at some point.

The maze and traps are a good idea. I will try to incorporate those in once I get a little farther. As far as help, the testing and suggestions are appreciated. Also anyone who is interested in making tiles, sprites, maps, or music is welcome to help, but I haven't finalized the graphics scheme or map layout yet so it is a bit early.

Thanks for the input. I will continue to work on this at least for the next 2 months pretty consistently, then off and on during the semester.
 
Serpico, as luck would have it I am a C++ programmer. I've never done too much work with games, but I have been helping a friend with his project (of creating an open-sourced version of this 2D game we both play) so I've got a touch of experience. I'll be leaving to join the military in a few months though, so I don't know how much I'll be able to help. My suggestion would be to make it open-sourced (under the GPL or similar license) and allow people to submit patches, etc; that way it can continue to be updated even after you are long gone.

I like that you're using SDL, it's an excellent library for this type of thing. Are you using SDL for rendering as well, or only for windowing and event management? You should also try to cut down on the number of libraries you're using. You have more than most larger games do.

EDIT: Haha, like the background music.
Judging by the title of the window, I'm guessing you're a little new to programming with SDL? Or just copying old code and forgot to edit that? :troll:
 

Serpico

Farnese is the bomb diggity
nfries88 said:
Serpico, as luck would have it I am a C++ programmer. I've never done too much work with games, but I have been helping a friend with his project (of creating an open-sourced version of this 2D game we both play) so I've got a touch of experience. I'll be leaving to join the military in a few months though, so I don't know how much I'll be able to help. My suggestion would be to make it open-sourced (under the GPL or similar license) and allow people to submit patches, etc; that way it can continue to be updated even after you are long gone.

I like that you're using SDL, it's an excellent library for this type of thing. Are you using SDL for rendering as well, or only for windowing and event management? You should also try to cut down on the number of libraries you're using. You have more than most larger games do.

EDIT: Haha, like the background music.
Judging by the title of the window, I'm guessing you're a little new to programming with SDL? Or just copying old code and forgot to edit that? :troll:

I am using SDL for the rendering as well, and yeah, and I am pretty new to it. I've only been using it for the last month. Its good for its ease of use it seemed like it had all I would need for 2D, except its text rendering is not too great. I still have to build a function that automates outputting more than a single line of text. I am experimenting with directX but I don't want to write a game with it at the moment.

I might make it open source, however since this is really the first time I've written something like this, my code is in a state of flux while I figure out how I should organize the methods and classes and whatnot. I need to standardize how I am doing things and add a lot more documentation or it would probably be a nightmare for anyone else. I should be able to continue supporting this indefinitely, just not as much at certain times.

As for the libraries I copied over most of the the ones I installed for my IDE just to be certain if someone else ran it they would not end up with a missing dll. 3 or 4 of them are related to the .ogg audio, and I wasn't sure which were needed. Since they are lightweight I just slapped them all in there.

As for coding help there are 2 things I will be working on soon which I am not sure about yet. One is packing image/audio data into a resource file and still being able to load it with SDL, and the other is setting up and loading savegame data. If you have any experience with those things I might need some tips.

If I get stuck I might consult with you so thanks for the offer. Good luck when you get to the military. I am considering joining myself after I finish my degree.
 
Serpico said:
I am using SDL for the rendering as well, and yeah, and I am pretty new to it. I've only been using it for the last month. Its good for its ease of use it seemed like it had all I would need for 2D, except its text rendering is not too great. I still have to build a function that automates outputting more than a single line of text. I am experimenting with directX but I don't want to write a game with it at the moment.
DirectX is good, but it's only available on Microsoft's platforms so I suggest looking into OpenGL (which is also available on Mac, Linux, etc) instead. I know that most the people here use Windows anyway, but I usually don't so things like that make a big difference to me.

Serpico said:
I might make it open source, however since this is really the first time I've written something like this, my code is in a state of flux while I figure out how I should organize the methods and classes and whatnot. I need to standardize how I am doing things and add a lot more documentation or it would probably be a nightmare for anyone else. I should be able to continue supporting this indefinitely, just not as much at certain times.
It's not like you're trying to develop a library. It's fine if your code changes often.
If you want help in structuring your code and classes, give me a PM. I'm pretty good with that stuff. My personal suggestion for programming games like this one is starting with a mode-based design. Something like this:
Code:
class Mode {
public:
Mode(){};
virtual ~Mode(){};

virtual Mode* operate() = 0;
};

...
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
Mode* mode;
// startup crap
while(mode = mode->operate());
// shutdown crap
return 0;
}
You'd then create a new class that inherits from the Mode class and defines an operate() function for each mode of the game (IE, "Title_Screen", "Game_Normal", "Game_Puzzle", etc).
The operate function will return the new mode of the game, or the current mode if it doesn't change. It should, of course, handle destruction of the current mode and construction of the new mode if necessary.
It's a very simple and effective way of changing the mode the game is in without ugly, messy, and/or hackish code.

Serpico said:
As for the libraries I copied over most of the the ones I installed for my IDE just to be certain if someone else ran it they would not end up with a missing dll. 3 or 4 of them are related to the .ogg audio, and I wasn't sure which were needed. Since they are lightweight I just slapped them all in there.
I see. Generally bad practice (it does make the archive much larger), but I suppose it's fine since the typical computer user is far too lazy to search for those dynamic libraries themselves.

Serpico said:
As for coding help there are 2 things I will be working on soon which I am not sure about yet. One is packing image/audio data into a resource file and still being able to load it with SDL, and the other is setting up and loading savegame data. If you have any experience with those things I might need some tips.
Rather than packing them into a resource file (which is, again, only available on Microsoft's platforms), I'd suggest packing them into a binary file distributed with the game. This way people can customize the game's graphics and audio (with the help of a tool which you could provide if you wanted) to fit their wants and needs, without the need to use an incredibly confusing and unreliable "resource hacker" or recompiling themselves. I've never made my own method to do this, but I have created tools to edit other games that use this method, so I could probably explain the general method to you if you're interested.

Serpico said:
If I get stuck I might consult with you so thanks for the offer. Good luck when you get to the military. I am considering joining myself after I finish my degree.
I'll need it. Good luck to you, too. Are you an American citizen?
 
Okay so I just fired it up again, I was attempting to see what would happen if I died. I let one of the trolls kill me and I watched as my health went to zero at which point my health bar went back to full and no death occurred.

Glitch or dieing is not yet part of the game?

Next issue(s):

I pressed T to Farnese and she talked to me, I decided to walk away and the speech menu remained open. I let it remain open and I killed everything, her text changed and without even returning to her I got the shed key.

When I press the left and right key simultaneously Serpico stands in one place but his legs move as if walking.
Same thing with up and down.

No major issues, I guess.

Thats all.
 
Ramen4ever said:
When I press the left and right key simultaneously Serpico stands in one place but his legs move as if walking.
This doesn't seem unfavorable to me.

The rest should all be fixed though, they seem like they could become serious gameplay issues down the road.
 

Serpico

Farnese is the bomb diggity
Thanks for the tips nfries. The code snippet is interesting. I wasn't sure how I was going to handle that stuff yet so its good to have an idea of where to start. My way was going to be hackish, hehe. I will probably go with a binary file like you suggested as well for holding the data. I am learning DirectX and more interested in that than openGL, but if I need more power on this particular project I probably will go with openGL just to keep it portable. I've been trying to keep anything windows specific out of this one.

Ramen4ever said:
Okay so I just fired it up again, I was attempting to see what would happen if I died. I let one of the trolls kill me and I watched as my health went to zero at which point my health bar went back to full and no death occurred.

Glitch or dieing is not yet part of the game?

Next issue(s):

I pressed T to Farnese and she talked to me, I decided to walk away and the speech menu remained open. I let it remain open and I killed everything, her text changed and without even returning to her I got the shed key.

When I press the left and right key simultaneously Serpico stands in one place but his legs move as if walking.
Same thing with up and down.

No major issues, I guess.

Thats all.

Well, I didn't write in any death sequence yet. The health bar goes back to full because your health ends up at a negative number which makes things screwy.

Thank you for the tip about the dialogue. I had no idea it there was any consequence to leaving it open. Never would have caught that. I will have it fixed on the next update.

As for walking in place I will probably wait to resolve that. I am going to revamp the controls for movement and attacks later to use multiple keys for different things so I will probably work the kinks out then.

Thanks for the diligent work!
 
Serpico said:
Thanks for the tips nfries. The code snippet is interesting. I wasn't sure how I was going to handle that stuff yet so its good to have an idea of where to start. My way was going to be hackish, hehe. I will probably go with a binary file like you suggested as well for holding the data. I am learning DirectX and more interested in that than openGL, but if I need more power on this particular project I probably will go with openGL just to keep it portable. I've been trying to keep anything windows specific out of this one.
Well, as long as the SDL rendering remains as an option, it can be built and run for pretty much any system. OpenGL will be good for hardware acceleration (basically so that those guys with the $500 GPUs won't need to suffer with ~20FPS like those using cheap integrated graphics).
Another thing I should tell you that SDL uses DirectX under Windows already anyway (read or view code). You might just be wasting your time implementing it as a rendering engine, though I guess there could be some speed benefits from removing overhead caused by the internals of the SDL library. However, it doesn't use OpenGL under Linux/Mac/etc, and in some cases OpenGL operates better than DirectX anyway, so there would be serious benefits to implementing an OpenGL rendering engine.
 

Serpico

Farnese is the bomb diggity
@nfries

Well, for this project I wasn't going to be using DirectX, I just meant in general I am more interested in it. The SDL/openGL combo, seems popular and logical. I'm just not sure how much effort I want to put into learning openGL yet. So far I don't think framerate is a big issue. I have it intentionally slowed atm or it goes into hyperspeed.

I am an American citizen by the way, forgot to answer that before.
 
Serpico said:
@nfries

Well, for this project I wasn't going to be using DirectX, I just meant in general I am more interested in it. The SDL/openGL combo, seems popular and logical. I'm just not sure how much effort I want to put into learning openGL yet. So far I don't think framerate is a big issue. I have it intentionally slowed atm or it goes into hyperspeed.
Okay. Framerate shouldn't be an issue on Windows at all. I was thinking mostly of Linux or Mac users. :p

Serpico said:
I am an American citizen by the way, forgot to answer that before.
I'm actually joining the Navy to help get my degree, my family can't afford to send me to school for longer than a year so I never bothered going. They'll pay for my entire tuition (I need to buy the books, but making over $1600/mo I'll be able to buy them just fine) and they even have a program where I can test out of required classes which is good in my case. I'm also in horrible shape so I'm in the delayed entry program to get into shape before boot camp, that's why I won't be leaving for a few months.
Just thought I'd let you know that you may very well be wasting money. :p
 
!! the game is awesome so far! its so weird cause lately out of the blue I've gotten back into Berserk and I was wondering why nobody has ever made a berserk game for those rpg maker program things. SO i decided i was going to make one but rpg makers are too complicated for my simple mind...

I wanted to make a game that starts when you arrive in elfhelm and the king becomes like casca's therapist and so the whole story takes place inside casca's mind, the object of the game would be basically to regain casca's sanity. You would play as Casca at different ages, like young casca, teen casca , etc and basically go through her life story. Each stage would be a different part of her life where you run around and solve puzzles and fight things and the like and ANYWAY the end of each stage would be a battle against one of the many characters whom at some point tried to violate casca and when you win you receive a marble until all of casca's marbles are collected and the grand ending would be shes sane again! AND the final villain why you'd think it would be Griffith would be the beast! :chomp: However i lack the time and talent and understanding

YOU however!!!

I thought it was really awesome! it suddenly just ended though when i tried to talk to Farnese but after all its a demo i think you should def keep working on it. It's A*mazing . And it i know its probably not the compliment you're looking for but all i could think seeing Serpico's little feet shuffle around was how cute he looked.
Great work<3

Band pic's hot too<3
 

Grail

Feel the funk blast
I really enjoyed this game, as short as it was. The little characters are adorable, and the music gives it such a whimsical feel. I look forward to playing future versions. Keep it up, Serp! :serpico:
 

Serpico

Farnese is the bomb diggity
Shouki Slann said:
!! the game is awesome so far! its so weird cause lately out of the blue I've gotten back into Berserk and I was wondering why nobody has ever made a berserk game for those rpg maker program things. SO i decided i was going to make one but rpg makers are too complicated for my simple mind...

I wanted to make a game that starts when you arrive in elfhelm and the .... (shortened)

YOU however!!!

I thought it was really awesome! it suddenly just ended though when i tried to talk to Farnese but after all its a demo i think you should def keep working on it. It's A*mazing . And it i know its probably not the compliment you're looking for but all i could think seeing Serpico's little feet shuffle around was how cute he looked.
Great work<3

Band pic's hot too<3

Thats an interesting idea. It sounds like a pretty good plot. I will add caska into the game soon but it will take awhile to get entire quests and levels built. I actually had a similar idea about doing missions for the characters at all different ages so that might happen. I can always use help thinking up ideas. I'm glad you like it so far.

Grail said:
I really enjoyed this game, as short as it was. The little characters are adorable, and the music gives it such a whimsical feel. I look forward to playing future versions. Keep it up, Serp! :serpico:

Thanks Grail. I wish I could say I made the music but I borrowed it from a professional game. I should have a longer version up in 1-2 weeks.
 
Serpico said:
Thats an interesting idea. It sounds like a pretty good plot. I will add Casca into the game soon but it will take awhile to get entire quests and levels built. I actually had a similar idea about doing missions for the characters at all different ages so that might happen. I can always use help thinking up ideas. I'm glad you like it so far.
I think the idea would be great for a Flash game or an "RPG Maker" game, but I think it's too limited for a continual project with its own engine and no issues with size.
 

Serpico

Farnese is the bomb diggity
I added 2 pieces of artwork to the top post. Both are reworked from stuff I drew awhile back. I know Serpico doesn't usually use a cutlass but it looked better in perspective than the rapier I gave him originally.

Still working on the game but for the most part I've been making coding changes and not adding tons of content yet so there isn't much point to post it again. The next version will have 4 directions for attack and actions. I fixed the dialogue issues and added support for multiple lines of text. I fixed a few issues I had with the map and placing sprites. Working on refining some timing and framerate control stuff. Unrestricted it runs for me at 120fps so I think I can still add a lot of features.

Making content is sloooow though without any help just for the mere fact I can only do 1 or 2 things at a time, so it might take awhile to get anything else out.


nfries88 said:
I think the idea would be great for a Flash game or an "RPG Maker" game, but I think it's too limited for a continual project with its own engine and no issues with size.

I dunno about RPG maker but I would have a lot of trouble fitting her idea into a flash game. I actually started in flash before and decided it just wasn't going to work how I wanted.
 
I love the art. There are a few issues with proportions like Farnese's left boob in the gun picture. Although maybe it's just me.
The faces are all great. ^_^

And man am I looking forward to an update for the game. :guts:
 
Top Bottom