Thornbridge Saga - A metroidvania.
Thornbridge Castle is under attack!
Monsters have begun appearing out of thin air within the castle walls! The knights of Thornbridge assembled to defend the king in the inner sanctum, but the outer structure collapsed and they were all trapped within, their fates uncertain. Meanwhile, our heroine Vanisa is undergoing a trial to join the knights to follow in her father's footsteps. Now, as the last knight of Thornbridge, can she find a way into the castle to rescue them and find out what happened? Are they even still alive? Who orchestrated this attack, and why now? What are their intentions? How did they get their army inside the castle walls? What does this mean for the future of Thornbridge?
Thornbridge Saga is a metroidvania inspired by classics such as Super Ghouls n' Ghosts, Castlevania, and Zelda: Adventure of Link. Explore landscapes, caves, dungeons and castles. Use strategy and tactics to battle deadly foes. Discover magic items that enable new strategies for battling monsters. Use the landscape to your advantage, or trick monsters into fighting each other.
I was largely inspired to start development after seeing Jetrel's castle platformer artwork: https://opengameart.org/content/castle-platformer
Current Status and Future Plans
The basic actions the player can execute are all implemented. Eight different areas are implemented, nineteen different monsters are implemented, and one boss fight is complete. Five different music tracks have been written. A Kickstarter campaign is planned for November.
How am I making Thornbridge Saga?
Thornbridge Saga is written entirely in C# using MonoGame. I'm writing the music myself. I do a fair amount of art, but visual art is my weakest skill, so I rely heavily on contributions made at OpenGameArt.org and a few talented artists who make their works available on Patreon and itch.io.
Links and videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbiPP698WdU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpjYnQuvUPA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coI2FT5Zldc
https://wizard.vermiliontower.com/devel/thornbridge_saga
Tools I'm using:* MonoGame* Tiled* PyxelEdit* FL Studio Assets contributors from Open Game Art:* Jetrel* Ansimov* Redshrike and P0ss* surt* dogchicken* Hyptosis* KnoblePersona* PauR* qubodup* Sharm* Gwes* LokiF* mutantleg* rubberduck* xelu* HorrorPen* artisticdude* legoluft* Luke.RUSTLTD* Ogrebane* pauliuw* yd Edit: ul/li tags don't seem to work for lists so I just used asterisks.
Looks really good! ! :D
How long is the game right now?
Oh i see, 8 areas, just couldn't read that on my phone XD
Oh man! I would LOVE to help with this. I have looked at your sprite quality before and am quite impressed.
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
Oh I was just admiring your post on Galactagirl the other day. That looks like a pretty cool project.
What I really need right now for Thornbridge Saga is townsperson sprites. There seems to be a dearth of townspeople sprites for metroidvania style games. I can understand why, since people are not the easiest things to draw and drawing townspeople is not exactly the most exciting work. But since there are so few of these types of sprites available, and these sprites would probably be usable across a wide set of games, I think it would make a good contribution to OGA.
Here's an old man sprite I drew myself to give an idea of style I'm going for: https://opengameart.org/content/metroidvania-style-old-man-sprite
I've attached an example of how he looks in the game (it's an unfinished area with some bad color dithering to make it into a gif, so sorry for the poor quality).
Oh and here's the dirty little secret to my sprite quality - I upscale smaller sprites and tiles with XBR. This retains the SNES-ish feel while reducing the pixelated appearance so they are suitable for modern high-res displays. I'm sure I'll get some flak for that, but it tremendously eases the requirements on producing graphics for high res displays.
How does this work for you?
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
Yeah, I'd say that works pretty well!
My nostalgia senses are tingling!
Looks awesome man! So many great metroidvania-style assets here on OGA. I was very, very close to pursuing a Castlevania-like game using that character spritesheet before starting my current project. Glad to see it being put to good use! :D
Here is a monster you might like.
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
why do I feel so nostalgic? oh right. Metriod and Castlevania were my jam. keep going I would love to see this finished
Here is a child NPC for you now.
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
Wow those are great!
Are you good with licensing them with a CC-BY license or something of that sort?
Yeah. That's fine.
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
Sweet, I'll get these incorporated soon!
Do you happen to have any large enemy ideas to be created? Like the Great Armors in Aria of Sorrow.
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
This game is pretty sweet and chaotic. You've made a lot of progress here and the assets mesh well. Keep it up!
@Fiveasone: Oh, my. Is there any way that naga could be a submission?! I LOVE it!... What else are you hiding? <.<
Oh yeah definitely. A large skeleton or zombie would be cool. Or large armors. I don't have a lot of variety in bestiary at the moment so I'm open to a ideas.
I have a Stone Golem nearly done for you. I'll explain when I send it how it might work in your game.
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
Here is an early test of what I'm coming up with.
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
Sweet, I think that can work.
Does this work for you?
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
@FiveAsOne: You are a god of pixels. Could I bother you to do a a pallete swap of this fella with a more "robot" pallete/style for GG?
I think you should make requests in a PM. :)
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
Perhaps an idea for a subweapon? Just trying to help out lol
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
Yeah, that looks good but his legs look a bit skinny. Can they be made bulkier?
(PS slow to respond right now due to PAX WEST)
How is this. I just changed the feet lol
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
Oh yeah, I like the feet. I still want the legs to be big and bulky light the shoulders. Otherwise, how could they support all that weight?
awesome :) :)
ASHISH KUMAR YADAV
How is that? The second one :)
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
oh yeah that looks better!
Here is the complete sheet. It's on my page, but I'll make it available to you right here.
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
How is your game coming along? I haven't seen any updates and am eager to see what you have come up with :D
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
I've mostly been working on some under the hood stuff so I haven't had a lot of stuff to show. I have some material for a new video that I'll post in the next couple of days - I've added some variation on weapons and such.
Loving the Castlevania vibe I'm getting from this. The sprite design is excellent. :D
Just posted a new video:
https://youtu.be/6kkRKXNWlMg
I like the little bomb combo! Well done!
Any news on that Rock Monster sprite set if you've implemented it yet?
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
I don't have anything new at the moment. I spent the recent holiday with family and now I'm stuck at their place as my car broke down just when we were about to drive home. Hopefully the mechanic will be done fixing it tomorrow, otherwise we'll be stuck here for another weekend. :(
Wow op. Your game looks fantastical and inspiring!
I'll be that guy then... is this open source? :P
http://forum.freegamedev.net/
Some asthetics or perhaps you can turn it into an enemy.
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
I hope this project did not die. :( :(
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
I haven't had much time to work on it lately. I just started a new job and it's taking a lot of my time. I'm still making updates to the game but it's pretty slow. I'm still really excited to implement your golem boss but I have a few things in flight I really need to finish before I can start on that.
@Charlie no, it's not open source. Unfortunately, many of the graphical assets I'm using don't have licenses that are compatible with releasing the source.
Thornbridge saga looks awesome! What's equally awesome is the support of the community. Warms my heart. I hope things even out so you can continue working on the game!
@eylvisaker
How is your project coming along? Any new progress perhaps?
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
Yes! I've been working on a few things. I've been working on the backend of the UI and also getting Lua scripting support. The result of that is I now have working speech bubbles for dialogs with NPCs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJaNEqvFR_c&feature=youtu.be
So... I'm totally gonna steal your upscaling tactic, since I'm rather terrible at any sprite resolution higher than 16x24. So, thank you for that! :D
@eylvisaker
That looks great! Better use of screen room than the text boxes at the top or bottom that appear in some games.
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
OK I don't have anything new to show at the moment. But I have two and a half weeks of vacation in August and I am posting this to hold myself accountable to putting up a download by the end of the vacation.
@vermilion_wizard
That sounds awesome! I look forward to seeing what you have produced :)
[NOTE: This user has been deactivated for repeatedly using copyright-infringing works incorporated into artwork. Assets from this user may not be legally usable in your project. Discretion is advised.]
Pages