[Developing] [Unity] AWAKE

[TBM_Christopher]

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Hey everyone. Been a while. I was going to post this thread sooner, but I've been avoiding PC for a while due to X and Y spoilers. Anywho, this is my current project, AWAKE. The team is hoping to produce it as a commercial work, released episodically, tentatively sometime in Summer of 2014. The game is an original work rather than a fangame, a JRPG inspired by the late 80's and early 90's era RPG works such as Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, and Secret of Mana.

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The majority of the world is under the thumb of the Rumford Corporation. The company has managed to beat out all their competitors thanks to their advanced technological achievements in their products. However, the company has a dark side, as Gio and Hector are about to discover. In the late 90's, a few gifted individuals have begun to discover strange and impossible powers, as well as experience bizarre visions of far-off lands in the distant past.


We begin our story as summer begins for the brothers Giovanni (or "Gio" for short) and Hector, two brothers from the town of Podunk. With the beginning of summer, Gio is ready for adventure, and plans to drag his little brother Hector along for the ride. At the edge of town, the two brothers could always see a mountain fenced off by the Rumford corporation, and rumors abound that at the summit is an incredible treasure. The two brothers sneak past the fence and ascend the mountain, and what they find at the top will forever change their lives...


Characters:

• Hector - a young boy from Podunk, Hector is a shy, timid young man who lives in the shadow of his older brother Gio. He often needs help from his older brother, though he's slowly growing to be more independent. He's innocent of the ways of the world, but steadfast and loyal to his friends. He's not as strong as Gio, but he is slightly more clever.
• Gio - Hector's older and much more extroverted brother. Gio is a huge prankster and tries to find laughs in whatever situation he's in. Gio is very supportive and protective of his younger brother. In battle, Gio wields a yo-yo and other "joke" items. He's overall stronger than Hector, but not quite as clever.
• Lyle - the mysterious head of security for the Rumford Corporation, Lyle is a smug and cunning(if somewhat cowardly) villain who tries to stay one step ahead of the party, once he becomes aware of their existence.

These three are only the few major characters we plan to include in our "pilot," and we plan on introducing more as the story advances.

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1. Browser-based JRPG
2. 2.5D Gameplay with stylized graphics reminiscent of games like Chrono Trigger
3. Dynamically shaded sprites
4. Turn-based combat mechanics
5. Episodic releases(Probably going to release the episodes weekly)
6. A large cast of unique characters(I didn't list many above, but rest assured, we've got quite a few character concepts in the works)
7. Character inventories which will remain, even when switching episodes.
8. Procedurally generated dungeons, stocked with puzzles and interesting monsters.

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Current Release: [Prototype]
Next Milestone: Alpha



Tasks to next milestone:
-Finish Overworld Functionality

-Winning a battle removes a monster from the overworld
-Ability to interact with signs, NPCs, and objects
-Ability to enter/exit buildings
-Access to menus and character stats
-Player's sprite changes according to who is at the front of the party
-Player's sprite animation changes facing while walking
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-Inventory/Equipment Mechanics (Pretty straightforward.)

-Finish Menus

-Party Stats
-Equipment
-Inventory
-Dialogue
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-File Reading (This is mostly for ease-of-development on my end; by reading text assets with character stats, I can build and playtest different characters without having to wait to recompile regularly)

-Heroes
-Monsters
-Maps (..Not gonna happen; we're getting way too many weird maps for any automation on this aspect to be wise.)
-Spritesheets
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-Sprite Animation (Wait, sprites are supposed to actually MOVE? :P )
-Finish Battle Menus(Right now, the attack button WORKS, but it doesn't hide itself when it's not the hero's turn, and it's only set up for having one party member.)



Previous Releases:
[Prototype] (10/10/13)

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Concept Art:
[Gio] - the older of the two brothers, wielding his lucky yo-yo.
[Clyde] - A mysterious biker with a troubled past. Will he be friend or foe to Gio and Hector in their adventures?
[Prince Stavros Gogo] - A snooty 8-year-old brat from a far-off land. He wields an adult's sword, but why does he keep it sheathed in battle?

Engine Screenshots:
[Dynamic Shading Test 1]
[Dynamic Shading Test 2] (These were made using a slightly off normal map, hence the weird shading.)
Dynamic Shading Final(You can see that this time it looks a LOT better. Turns out that Unity had some issues with color sampling on the originals, as well as having the normal map offset by the wrong interval.)

Spoiler:

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Overworld Gameplay(Just a test to make sure the dynamic shading looked right in a generic overworld context)

Spoiler:

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Connor Anderson - Design Lead
Christopher Knapp - Programming Lead, Art Secondary, Design Secondary
Hans Qu - Art Lead

 

[MKGirlism]

Great to see another commercial Unity3D user around here.
If you struggle with the Programming part, just ask, I'm pretty good at it.
Do it preferably during a Weekend, because I'm to busy on Workdays.

 

[TBM_Christopher]

Great to see another commercial Unity3D user around here.
If you struggle with the Programming part, just ask, I'm pretty good at it.
Do it preferably during a Weekend, because I'm to busy on Workdays.

Agreed; it's awesome to see another Unity dev around.

I appreciate the offer for help, though at this point I think we're pretty happy with our current team roster. If I do have any questions, though, you'll be the first person I ask! :)

So in terms of development news, I think I should share some new stuff with you guys. We don't have much news in-game right now, but here's a new piece of concept art:
Clyde - A mysterious biker with a troubled past. Will he be friend or foe to Gio and Hector in their adventures?

 

[TBM_Christopher]

Hey guys, just a quick update - I've modified the front post to be a bit more readable(hopefully) and added new concept art of Prince Stavros Gogo

 

[MKGirlism]

Looking at the Credits, I see your Team, working on a Browser-based game, is even bigger than my Team, working on a Wii U game, is.

The Overworld looks quite nice.
I know it's just the Alpha Stage we're talking about, which means it doesn't matter how the Graphics look like yet, as long as the core features are finished.

 

[TBM_Christopher]

Looking at the Credits, I see your Team, working on a Browser-based game, is even bigger than my Team, working on a Wii U game, is.

Haha, I only just recently saw that! I'd like to say that, having seen your game, we've set up the bigger team due to scope(it IS a browser-based game, but we're hoping to release multiple smaller "episodes" which add up to a longer ongoing story), but it is definitely a bigger team than I've worked with in the past on similar projects, so I'm admittedly in untested waters. Normally I'm more comfortable with a smaller team(usually 2-3), but right now everyone's working really well together and we have a great dynamic going on between the five of us, so I think we're doing decently.

The Overworld looks quite nice.
I know it's just the Alpha Stage we're talking about, which means it doesn't matter how the Graphics look like yet, as long as the core features are finished.

I'm glad you like it thus far; at this point the prototype's overworld graphics were dolled up to be nice and colorful so that everyone involved could see what the intent was behind them, but as you pointed out, once we're past Alpha, they'll become much more refined. As for core features, we've completed work for our core gameplay, but we still have yet to implement some basic components to the project such as animated sprites and more intuitive menu buttons, so we still have quite a ways to go before considering ourselves "feature-complete."

 

[MKGirlism]

I was talking about a second Project, we didn't announce it yet, so I can understand you can't find it.
There is one Designer, one Programmer, and one Artist and Componist, at the end of all Stages, everyone is Quality Assurance.
I'm the Programmer, and the nice thing about Unity is, I'm almost finished, after 2 months of work.
Now we're only waiting for the Assets to be done, and after that, we start doing all the legal paperwork with Nintendo and Age Rating companies, which take yet another few months until release.

 

[TBM_Christopher]

I was talking about a second Project, we didn't announce it yet, so I can understand you can't find it.
There is one Designer, one Programmer, and one Artist and Componist, at the end of all Stages, everyone is Quality Assurance.
I'm the Programmer, and the nice thing about Unity is, I'm almost finished, after 2 months of work.
Now we're only waiting for the Assets to be done, and after that, we start doing all the legal paperwork with Nintendo and Age Rating companies, which take yet another few months until release.

Ah, I was under the impession you meant your two-person team for Chimpuzzle Pro.
QA's a tricky role to have - a lot of people do it decently, but when you find someone who does it well, you get blown away by HOW well. I did a decent enough job with it on my freshman project last year, but then I saw how one of my teammates handled it, and it was simply amazing.
It's awesome how powerful Unity's toolset is for game development. My first Unity project lasted about that long,
How does the legal paperwork generally go? I haven't had the opportunity to take any relevant law classes or do any reading on the subject yet, though I know I'm going to before my degree is through.

 

[MKGirlism]

It starts with a simple NDA, then it goes to a one page Contract, then it goes to a two page Contract, then 6 pages, and in the end, you'll have a 60 pages long Contract.
At least, I don't know if that's the end or not.