So I am making a video game.....

[CoffeeHorse]

I got delayed too. I've only been working on level 1 for about 3 weeks.

 

[Ungnome]

Doing better than me at the moment, I can't seem to get out of idea phase lately. So many ideas, can never focus on anything long enough to get more than a quick proof of concept or crude gameplay mock up built before moving on to another idea. Not sure if it's an undiagnosed ADD thing or the fact that my anxiety and dysphoria have been spiking lately causing trouble focusing.

 

[The Predaking]

Putting some effort into finding some time to work on some game development.

I am starting on a smaller project to work on, and its supposed to be a 16 bit brawler/beat-em up. However, I am not digging my artwork I have come up with for it. It looks to me to be more 8 bit than 16 bit.

 

[Pocket]

Hmm. I wonder who out there does good guides on making pixel art. Brandon James Greer is one that keeps popping up in my YouTube recommendations, but not many of his videos have interested me enough to sit through, so the algorithm hasn't started leading me further down the rabbit hole.

On a related note, speaking of YouTube, Brackeys, who was apparently one of the premier Unity tutorial guys back in the day, has announced that he'll be starting a series on Godot soon. So if anyone else out there was interested in getting into that but won't actually get around to it for a while, maybe go check him out when you do; he might have some useful material by then.

 

[Ungnome]

Actually, he has released his first video in his new Godot series

There are a few other pixel art tutorials on YouTube, but Brandon James Greer seems to be the most prolific. There's also techniques to generate pixel art in Blender.

is an example. Dead Cells used a similar technique for their sprites, though I think they only modeled and animated in Blender and used an internally developed tool to do the final rendering.

 

[The Predaking]

I am watching his channel and it has some useful information in it.

So here is some character art I am working on. Its for a character called Bits.

Here is some of my first draft for this one character:

He is basically an amorphized Gameboy that is essentially a 90s kid. The design isn't mine, it's from a youtube channel, and I wanted to incorporate it into a little brawler type game.

Design 1 and Design 2 are basically the same with design 2 getting some more shading and larger eyebrows and tongue.

Design 3 I shrunk him down a bit and made him less boxy. Still not happy with the legs, but I might work on that some more. Overall I am leaning on using design three for this project.

 

[The Predaking]

Here is design 3 reworked with some better legs:

 

[The Predaking]

Just my little messing around. Here is my little NES artwork for it:

 

[The Predaking]

Here is my revised version side by side the inspiration for it.

 

[The Predaking]

So I got back to it this weekend. Looking at youtube, sadly I can't seem to find much help for Beat'em Ups in Gadot. The only two that I found were in French and the other in Spanish. I was able to glean a little bit of info and ideas from them though.

 

[Ungnome]

Most of the tutorials will focus on platformers, side scrolling shooters or FPS games just due the mechanical simplicity of those types of games. Beat-em-ups are a bit more complex as far as input handling and hit detection goes.

 

[The Predaking]

Yeah, that is pretty much all I found as far as tutorials go. Maybe I should make one when I am done? It might get some views!

 

[The Predaking]

The wife had the kids down at her mom's all day yesterday, so I got some work done last night. Not much accomplished , but I did get started on the level design for the first level.

Going to work on the player character next.

 

[The Predaking]

Called in sick today, as I was just exhausted. Slept like 12 hours last night, and I needed to be of this afternoon for an appointment.


So I have some time to work on this, and I am trying to get the character to move on the floor of the artwork.

if  Input.is_action_just_pressed("ui_up") and is_on_floor():
        velocity.y = 1 * 1
    if  Input.is_action_just_pressed("ui_down") and is_on_floor():
        velocity.y = -1 * 1

I am wondering if I need to try to work on the physics layer, as the game probably just thinks the character is standing on a big rectangle.

 

[Ungnome]

Are you using a tilemap for level layout or a different method, also is your game more Bad Dudes or more Double Dragon? Was wondering because the style in this case would greatly effect how you handle said input and collisions.

As far as the code goes, I do recommend setting up an axis instead using individual buttons for character movement. It will make things simpler in the long run.

if  is_on_floor():
     velocity.y = get_axis('ui_up', 'ui_down') * 1

*edit I simplified the code a bit to remove some unneeded conditionals.

 

[The Predaking]

Yes, I am using a tilemap for the level layout. I was going for a more TMNT2 style game.


Well, I didn't see your post until today, so I tried a different method. I removed my gravity, and setup the movement for all four directions like a top down game, as the way I had set it up previously was more for a 2D platformer. Then I removed the physics layer of the middle section and just put it on the tilemap pieces on the bottom and top. Now I can move my main character all around the screen.


One of the things I want to work on though, is creating artwork with a transparent background. Any software recommendations for me on that front? I used to work with GIMP back in the day, would that be a good choice for that?

 

[Ungnome]

Gimp will do that and if you're going for a more pixel art style, I tend to use either aseprite or pixelorana might do the trick

 

[The Predaking]

I will give Pixelorama a try tonight since it is free.

 

[Ungnome]

Interesting thing about Pixelorama is that it's actually made in Godot. Btw, Aseprite is free as well, as long as you compile it from source.

 

[Pocket]

Which, unless you use Linux, probably means buying a copy of Visual Studio or something.