Everything is Sex - 2D Sidescroller

[oranssi]

Hello, I would like to show you the game I've been working. It is still in a very early stage. I've done all the characters and objects to use in the gameplay and level design, and some artwork too. Next step is to actually program the game (that's the fun part for me).

It will mainly be an action sidescroller but has some stealth to it. The plot is character driven. Using 30+ characters and combining every part of them, legs, arms, etc, the player will be able to have very unique characters to fuck.. arrhh I mean, to play. A lot of variability including shemales.

Also, what I expect this game to be different from the norm is that I'm aiming to use sex as a philosophical introspection. The game will be a merge of Braid, The Talos Principle and Dragon Ball, and well.. fucking. How is that possible?? Follow me on Patreon if you like the idea.

Archelementals of Eiss v0.01 - First Alpha Release
It's a rather fast paced beat 'em up with a ragdoll type behaviour and realtime combat sex.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kpdtc93zwuor0cz/Archelementals%20of%20Eiss%20v0.01.zip
or
https://www.patreon.com/file?h=11279853&i=1055429

[grox007]

Is tis real life? everything is cencored with patreon pic and its nothing more than self adv.

[Pr3dator95]

It looks and sounds amazing, I am looking forward to playing this

[Abelius]

This is surprisingly special...

When I saw it at first I almost laughed thinking it must have been drawn by a child... but then I examined it more carefully and realized how beautiful and not-so-easy to design is this kind of art style.

And if the game is going to be a sidescroller, I can't wait to see it animated. Are you going to implement some kind of filter or additional visual effects? The art is screaming for that! And a very carefully picked music would be a must as well.

I wish you the best for the future.

[oranssi]

Hello all, Thank you for the replies.

grox007, it is a shameless self advertisment. But at some point everything will be free anyway.

Pr3dator95, thank you, I really hope not to disappoint.

Abelius, I'm not a graphic illustrator, so I don't think I'm that good at CG art, but I'm improving and learning everyday.
It will be important because the game will have cutscenes to tell the story that I want them to be artsy, some of them abstract.
The animation for 'Everything is Sex' will be "real time", that is, arms and legs are moved with calculated rotation, so that it is possible to have different layers
of limbs from different characters, making every play almost unique.
On the other hand 'Archelementals of Eiss' because it will be a fighting game the animations are fixed images (sprites).

Next week or so I will post a video to show the real-time animation, so you know what I mean..

[oranssi]

I forgot to say, the first pic is a screenshot from the game. Although the characters are smaller. The other pics are illustrations and are not in game screenshots.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I'm a little less in-love with the art, myself. It's a great start, better than most, but it does look kinda weird and slightly childish. Do you see that aspect changing over the course of your project? I'd be happy to give you some pointers.

[oranssi]

Hi Ace! Thanks for your comment and critic.

As of now, I don't see it changing, because I have all the characters done already and I'm going for it as it stands. But definitly for future projects I want to experiment with other drawing style. For the art, I'm using the models that will be used for the game itself, plus a filter here and there. Not really super professional I guess..

Anyways, I'm betting more on the gameplay and the storytelling. That is my main focus. The childish aspect could it be because of the pallete of colors?

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Your palette is fine, what needs work is what's called line quality or stroke quality.

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

line_quality.jpg (28.33 KiB) Viewed 3403 times

Basically, your mood affects the way you draw. If you are "doubtful", your hand tends to quiver, and you get a line that looks shaky. If you are "confident", you tend to make your lines too quickly for shakiness to form and you get a nice smooth line. With computer graphics, a lot of people let the computer do too much of the work, and you get very mechanical, emotionless lines, that I don't much care for. I say "confident" and "doubtful" but there's more to it than how you feel. I made the doubtful line quality example by pressing too hard and moving too slowly on purpose, just relaxing your arm helps or at least changes your line quality. Another aspect of it is trying to avoid thinking and drawing at the same time. If you start making a line and don't know exactly how you want that line to look, it's going to be less confident. That's why it's common practice to make a rough "pencil" sketch and then "ink" over it later.

Stroke quality is more difficult to articulate, but it's basically the same thing as line quality but with full color painting where you are not necessarily making lines. If you do a web search of line quality and stroke quality, you can find a lot of information about the topic.

Your own line quality can be a very personal thing. When museums try to determine if a work of art is genuine or faked, a big part of it is by studying the stroke quality of the original artist. Likewise, when detectives or lawyers try to determine if someone's handwriting is genuine, they look at the line quality of the writing. So your line/stroke quality should be telling us something about you, your personality or the mood of the artwork, but right now it's saying "I'm new at this".

I don't wanna derail your topic, but I love teaching this kinda stuff.

[oranssi]

I didn't really draw the art, it is only filters on layers and then I deleted here and there to give it some texture.
But it did came to me when I first started this project, if I should use vectors or bitmaps. I choose the later knowing that pictures wouldn't be perfectly smooth and I don't have a digital pen

You haven't derailed at all, I'm always willing to learn. As I have other ideas for games, no knowledge comes to late.
Much appreciated for your tips. Thanks Ace!

[Biles]

I'm kinda curious at what point can we expect to play a sample or a demo at least.

[oranssi]

I've been playing around with some simple moves I have implemented like running, kicking and punching. Needs some improvement for smoother behaviour.. But I think development is going well! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RA1otSs2tE

[AcetheSuperVillain]

If you are doing brawler things, feel free to examine my brawler source codes and open brawler engine.

[oranssi]

So I've been playing around with what I got already (characters and stuff) and by arranging the animations I decided to make a little tech demo. You can try it out at http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/688392.

How to play the game? Keep on punching and kicking or just let the symbols fall on you. This is a very simple arcade game. How you play the game will determine how the character transforms. There are 3 different basic forms and the combination of those, which gives way to many possibilities.

Consider this more like a template for my main projects.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Wow, it's really bad, a major disappointment. I would not advise you to continue doing it this way.

[oranssi]

Hi Ace, care to elaborate?

Thanks

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Oof, where to start?

Everything is weird. There's a really bad feeling to the controls. It has a feeling like the creator has heard about this great new thing called "video game" but never actually tried one. There's no sense of animation, just vaguely shifting body parts into place. The hitboxes don't feel like they are where they should be. There's no sense that you're accomplishing something or figuring anything out, it's very unsatisfying. If the point is eventually to be sexy, transforming into a frankenstein patchwork monster thing isn't sexy.

To some extent, I can't blame you for failing to make a good actiony punchy kicky kind of game because Flash devs almost always completely fail at that. If that's something you want to make, you really need to study a game like that, such as Smash Bros, King of Fighters, Dynasty Warriors, Golden Axe, River City Ransom, Bodukai, Streets of Rage, Final Fight, Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Soul Caliber, Guilty Gear, Dead or Alive, Scott Pilgrim, Knights of the Round, Captain Commando, King of Dragons, Onimusha, Devil May Cry, Sengoku Basara, Okami, Legend of Zelda (Link's Awakening or later), Double Dragon, Battle Toads, That Sailor Moon Arcade Game, Ninja Baseball Bat Man, Star Ocean, Kingdom Hearts, Sly Cooper, iNinja, God Hand, Rogue Galaxy, Shovel Knight, Elsword, GetAmped2, Rumble Fighter, Zone 4: Fight District, Dungeon Fighter Online, Rusty Hearts, etc. Find one you like, figure out how it works and make your game like that.

My advice is to think of a fighting/brawler game like a scrolling shooter, at first. Instead of shooting bullets across the screen, you make an invisible bullet that appears in the same place as your fist or foot or sword or whatever, and lasts for only a few frames. Try to get a hang of the wind-up, impact, cool-down formula.

[oranssi]

I can see what you mean, but I want to make something very clear.

I don't want to make a typical cute-hentai-drawn-inspired game, or using the same formula as most here use like visual novel stuff or the same old mechanics in brawler games. I just want to make something different and that is why indie games are slowly exploring boundaries that established formula has no guts to traverse. Of course most 'inovative' ideas fail, but that is OK. But what I can assure you is that I have a clear idea of what I want to do and it is not easy I admit, because there is no real established form for this.

First of all I want to make a philosophical kind of game, it just happens that it has sex, but surely not in a sexy kind of way (but even that depends on fetiches). More specifically, sexual reproduction like cells and stuff. So with that said, for who might want to keep an eye on my projects, please don't compare with RPG maker, RENpy, hentaiesque games or the same-old brawler pixelated kind of games.

Don't get me wrong, those games have there niche, that is why this community exists, but for me it doesn't cut the mustard.
Sorry to be so blunt, I know I might be a minority here

[Dead2112man]

minority is not a bad thing

[AcetheSuperVillain]

I'll repeat what one of you NewGrounds reviews said, because it is spot on:

it seems a lot like you just made a very poor game and tried to pass it off as something meaningful

This doesn't feel philosophical or innovative or any of those things. It feels like like you are throwing those words around to excuse yourself from doing work and study.



And there's a good reason why all of those physical violence games have a same-old feeling, because they are based on Physics, and Physics is not a suggestion, it is law. If you try to invent your own physics, you will have a simulation that feels incorrect and awkward. Animation and game design must have some basis in physical reality, or it will not stand.