Vagabond enters in alpha
Hi everyone!
I am pleased to announce you that the prototype I showed you a long time ago eventually becomes a game called Vagabond and I release the alpha today. Vagabond is a 2D RPG that features living procedurally generated open worlds.
Firstly, I want to thank all the OpenGameArt community for creating all the nice assets and giving me the idea of the game. I hope I credited everyone correctly on the credits page of the game website and on the credits screen in the game. If an asset or a person is missing, or you want to be credited differently (different name or different URL), please contact me and I will fix this mistake quickly.
The game is not free as I plan to use the earned money to commission new assets for the next versions. However, I offer a key to all the active members of the OpenGameArt community, just send me a message in the OpenGameArt interface and I will send you a key! :)
The game is not finished at all, currently, it mainly features the world generation but I will add more features and contents in the coming months. See the roadmap, for a detailed list of the planned features.
There are some assets I made for the game that I will publish here in the coming weeks:
- Female version of the skirt by wulax
- Death animations for the original LPC monsters, they are procedurally generated, I will also release the script to generate them
- Masks (white and black images) to hide hair under hats, they are procedurally generated too, the script will be published.
I also wrote a script to transform head (hat or hair) from male to female.
I modify most items and body parts to fix small issues. I will publish all the assets I used on a GitLab repo so that people can easily retrieve the versions of the game. If you see anything that you think should be published, just tell me!
If you have any question or comment, you can also contact me at pierre@vagabondgame.com.
Thanks again!
Hey, congratulations! This is very exciting, and I can't wait to check it out.
Thank you for sharing the modified assets and scripts. There are a large number of minor issues with especially the character sprites, which everyone who uses eventually has to re-fix. I think castelonia's LPC Spritesheet generator is the closest to a definitive collection we have for the body parts at the moment. Hopefully any tweaks you make could be merged "upstream" into their repository.
Thanks!
There are small tweaks that will be easy to merge upstream. However, I modified the female base character as there are few issues with it. Subsequently, I had to modify many items but I don't use all the items present in castelonia's LPC Spritesheet generator, so not all of them are fixed.
I am also very interested in any fixes you've done.
I've been wanting to create an updated and better standardized LPC collection, just so we'd have a source for clean LPC assets, that aren't missing animations, and all have the same selection of colors.
I use a special format to store the images: I have grayscale images where the values correspond to the indices of a color in a palette. So to have a colored image, a grayscale image and a palette are needed.
This format allow me to quickly fix all the variations of a body part and to make sure the colors exactly match for body parts that use the same palette (body, nose and ears, or male and female versions for example).
But I am not sure this format is very useful to other people, so I will apply the palettes to the grayscale images to generate all the colored variations. I am writing a script to achieve this automatically but it takes some time.
I think it's still useful! Perhaps more useful actually, especially if you can pre-generate the color variations. That way people can either use the assets directly in a standardized palette, or can easily make new recolors, programmatically or manually. This is what an older version of the character creator/universal spritesheet did for hair and facial hair: https://github.com/jrconway3/Universal-LPC-spritesheet (check out the _build/ subdirectory). They had all the hair objects in 4 directions, drawn using a standard pink palette, then included a set of Ruby/ImageMagick scripts to recolor them against a set of palettes and also generate the full spritesheet with all the different animations.
I also adapted those scripts to work for shields and headgear, so it generates the full sheet from a few images and can do automatic recolors (I think either BenCreating or maybe Basto has done something similar too, maybe for headgear?). I never shared those scripts but probably should if it would be helpful.
[quote]I've been wanting to create an updated and better standardized LPC collection, just so we'd have a source for clean LPC assets, that aren't missing animations, and all have the same selection of colors.[/quote]
I'm using an extended version of the LPC character spritesheet that also fits in the running, jumping and grab animations, as well as a push and carry animations I made myself. I've been planning to clean that up and post it here, along with any clothes I adapted to the new animations.
It looks something like the attached, but I messed up and merged some of the layers (meaning I don't have the base sprite for some of the modified animations).
Anyway, that should probably be left for a different thread so as not to derail this one into a general discussion on the LPC assets.
Congratulations on the Vagabond progress; I'm finding it hard to justify setting aside time for my own game, so progress has been slow there, but this encourages me to actually do something with it over the holidays. I should probably set up something like a devlog to record progress. Looks like we use a similar algorithm for casting shadows on cave walls!
@bluecarrot16 OK, I will publish the grayscale images, the palettes I used, my scripts, and generate all the colored variations.
Yeah, I think it would be nice to have a repo with this kind of scripts. What would be perfect is a reference script for each body part type, it would drastically ease the creation of new items, which is currently a pain.
You are still using Ruby/ImageMagick?
@Evert You adapted a lot of body parts to the new animations?
Thanks! Sharing with others is always a nice experience, I have so much feedback from this first version, it will take me weeks to fix/improve everything. I would be delighted to read your devlog.
The shadow casting on walls was a last minute addition, I was not sure but one of my brothers convinced me to add it. It still needs some polishing. Do you know any other game that uses this? I would be glad to see a screenshot of yours!
Here are the body parts used in Vagabond: https://gitlab.com/vagabondgame/lpc-characters.
There is a README that should explain everything.
If you have any comment or suggestion, let me know.
Hey, the version alpha 2 of Vagabond is released on itch.io! :)
Chopping, mining and crafting are the main features added in this version. In addition, with this release, a free demo is now available.
The next version is expected around May and will add farming and housing features. I have already commissioned some new LPC assets to bluecarrot16 to achieve this. I can't wait to be in May. ;)
If you find the time to try the game, I am interested in your opinion and any feedback.
Here is the new trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_WrCYR2YIQ
Have a nice day!
Love to see it! And obviously excited to work on the new art :)
Some minor visual feedback from watching the trailer:
- The way the arrows fly looks very strange. It would be great if you could implement some kind of visual arc and have the arrows rotate in the air, something like this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38692488/how-to-calculate-initial-ve...
- Obviously there are no animations for falling trees or breaking rocks; I wonder if you could hide that by having a little puff of smoke when the rock/tree disappears; then, after the smoke clears, the wood/ore is there behind it. Breath of the Wild does something similar I believe when you chop downed trees into wood, or when you hunt animals.
I also think it's very amusing that when you hunt those snakes in the cave, they drop drumsticks labeled "chicken" :p
Thanks for the feedback bluecarrot16!
I have already planned to rework a bit the arrows for the next version: they currently do not appear at the right place. I totally agree with you that the trajectory of arrows would benefit from a pseudo-3D effect. I think items would also benefit from this when they are thrown. I will have to think about this. Thanks for the idea and the link!
Yeah, it is a well-known technique. I will surely work on that when I will add magic as I plan to use particles for spells (version alpha 4 or 5). I also plan to make the chimneys emit some smoke particles.
Haha, I have heard several times that snake tastes like chicken so I found it funny to drop chicken meat. Maybe I should rename the item "Drumstick", or maybe not. :P
Maybe "drumsnake," and it can have flavor text about how it "tastes (suspiciously) like chicken"? :p
When walking around the overworld, the vegetation still feels very sparse. It would be great if trees (and other decorations, like plants, rocks, etc.) were more tightly clustered and there were less wide open space.
I hope to test it out more later!
That looks great! Nice trailer, looks like a lot of content already :)
I do agree on the arc of the arrows that is missing. And in the character menu I think it might be nice to add the shadow to the character as well, to give it some more "body".
Cool to see the new axe animations in action btw!
And the music is very nice! is it also from here on OGA?
Good luck!!
@bluecarrot16 Nice idea! :) But I plan to translate the game in French (my mother tongue) soon, I will have to find an equivalent pun. :p
I just realize that in the trailer we mostly see biomes where the vegetation is sparse on purpose. I attached few screenshots of biomes where the vegetation is denser. It is not very tightly packed like in The Legend of Zelda as it is not what I am looking for gameplay-wise. But I may revisit the biomes to pack more the vegetation. I am also thinking of not mixing all the different types of trees in the same forest to have oakwoods, pinewoods, etc.
@castelonia Thanks! Yes, there is slowly more and more content. But it still lacks a lot of content to fill the world and for the game to be a good sandbox game.
Thanks for the feedback, it is noted! :)
Yes it is, the music in the trailer was made by Hitctrl and is called RPG For Wenches, Ale, and Loot!!, I also use RPG Never Go Full Bard in the main menu. There is no music in the game yet, only environment sounds. I have to work on this.
Those screens look better (although they remind me that the trees need some work; some are very stylistically inconsistent :p). However, I think they reveal two other, subtler issues:
- there are many different kinds of trees, and they are all about equally common. Counter-intuitively, I think this makes the scene feel less diverse. I suspect it would look better if most of the trees were one symmetrical simple shape (like the base LPC tree), with a much smaller number of the other, more asymmetrical trees sprinkled in.
- the trees still seem to be somewhat uniformly distributed within each space. I know this probably isn't exactly the case, since you've written about it before https://pvigier.github.io/2019/06/09/vagabond-forest-generation.html , but whatever is happening... it still doesn't look right.
I think the trees would benefit from a few slight recolors too. Having all the trees be exactly the same colors looks a bit strange
I can try to put together some manual examples if it would be helpful.
Sorry for the very late response but I hadn't had the time to work on the forests since then.
The article you cited is quite old and many things has changed. :P Currently, I use noise textures to change the density of vegetation (see image 1 for the noise texture of trees). But as you noticed at each spot all the trees have the same probability (image 2).
Now, we can give different weights to each tree. For instance, in image 3, the original LPC tree is 20 times more frequent than any other tree.
Another parameter of the generator is how tightly the trees are packed. In image 4, they are slightly more packed and in image 5, it is as tightly packed as possible. I am a bit reluctant of packing trees too much because I don't think it matches well the gameplay of the game.
I think I will experiment more with forests with one dominant tree and a density like image 3 or 4. I would be happy to hear your thoughts on this.
Regarding slight recolors, I may work on that in the next version. I have already planned to support sub-palettes for objects in the next version to be able to change the color of wood and the upholstery of pieces of furniture. So recoloring the trunks and leaves should be easy.
Cool! Personally, I think cell_1.png and cell_2.png look much better. The "dominant tree" idea is good (and similar to real forests in a way). You could have 2 or maybe even 3 "dominant" trees too, but overally having the probability of different trees being different helps a lot.
I see why you want to avoid cell_3.png; if you had a way to prevent the trees from "lining up" horizontally (like in the bottom of the image), I think it could still work nicely. Source of Tales had a similar density of trees http://www.sourceoftales.org/talesworld/, but placed manually, so there wasn't that issue.
For the different colors, I would suggest a similar approach: choose a "dominant" color palette, then make a small fraction of the trees a different color palette. And probably only choose 3-4 color palettes total for a scene.
Excited to see the progress!
Thanks for the input!
I will use parameters like in cell_1.png in some biomes and parameters like in cell_2.png in others. :)
I can use parameters in between the ones used in cell_2.png and the ones used in cell_3.png. I think it improves a bit the aligned trees issue while keeping a high density.
Hi, the version alpha 3 of Vagabond is now available on itch.io! :)
This new version mainly adds two new craft shops (tailor shop and carpenter workshop), the ability to buy a house and to furnish them, and crops. You can have a look at this post for a tour of the new features.
Here is the new trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxMsO9BM69I
If you find the time to try the game, I am interested in your opinion and any feedback.
Have a nice day!
Hype!! The new shops and the denser towns look great (although I think the towns could use even more decorations!) I will try it out later this evening.