• Projects

  • Recently restarted a 2D RPG/adventure style game in Godot

Long back I started doing a 2D top-down RPG style game in python pygame which was later abandoned. Now recently I decided to restart the project with the same assets (I created everything , from font to 2D art to sound FX/music. Very early screenshots are provided.

So far, the game has just movement of the main character, some objects, NPCs and basic interaction. I plan to add NPC dialogues and other game related stuff later.

No big plans. A spare time project, I just plan to expand this game and add features and see where it goes. If nothing else, I'll have fun in the process.

Looks like you've got a bunch of assets, do you have any plans for game mechanics?

@Hippo said: Looks like you've got a bunch of assets, do you have any plans for game mechanics?

Yes. I want to make it an exploration type game with a bit of puzzle solving /combat. I'm still learning the full features of using Godot's nodes, which seem very powerful. I also welcome ideas.

Dialogues with NPCs - planning to make context-based and situation based with choices. Missions - simple to complex Puzzle solving Basic ranged combat with spells/projectiles (not very combat focussed though)

I don't have any animated character sprites yet. Not sure whether I should stick with basic sprites or animated sprites.

I am thinking the game should be a bit educational also. So ideas to develop on this most welcome.

Basically this is all I've got at the moment, but still some mechanics are there: -> Character movement -> NPC movement (randomized at the moment) -> Character interaction with objects (basic) -> A reasonable no. of self-created assets to start with (I need to create more to expand) <iframe width="480" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dKoG8BplR-g" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I will keep posted developments here for feedback and motivation. Will also release the game for testing once I feel I have enough content and game mechanics.

In my experience animated sprites takes a ton of time and effort, you could always stick with what you've got for now and animate them later. Looks like a solid start, looking forward to future updates!

@Hippo said: In my experience animated sprites takes a ton of time and effort, you could always stick with what you've got for now and animate them later. Looks like a solid start, looking forward to future updates!

Yes, animating the sprites would take time. I plan to use the static sprites throughout and maybe add animated movements right at the end.

As I develop this further I want to work on an inventory system as well as character attributes to make it more RPG-esque.

I've added basic conversation (NPC interaction) today. I plan to make these dialogues context sensitive in the future, depending on game situation. <iframe width="480" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6hiIT4TFLuA" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Added basic context-sensitive ‌conversation. Each NPC has a dialogue "level" which increments on successful completion of previous conversation. I also customized the panel background.

A video of what I've done so far. <iframe width="480" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JFKw5hKOqkw" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Nice progress, I like the new dialogue window.

@Hippo said: Nice progress, I like the new dialogue window.

Thanks. I am planning to add a lot more NPCs and character portraits along the way. I plan to add a lot more levels, including dungeons to this game.

a month later

Very cool. Love the modern fantasy art style.

I would go with basic sprites and not animated if I were you. This gives you more time to create more characters, creatures, & dungeons. You can always add animations later for polish if you have time but I wouldn't get lost in the details too early.

I think in order to complete something as a solo dev you have to be super efficient with your time, and sometimes that means figuring out how to make thing look as good as you can on a faster, smaller and more refined character/monster/level creation pipeline.

You may want to also design some characters with re-use in mind as well to save on time. For example, a guard with a helmet you can re-use a lot. Or you could create the story so that you keep returning to this town, to talk to the characters, in this way you could re-use the characters, or have the same characters show up in different places, or just re-use the sprites to represent different characters. Anyways just some ideas.

I'd love to see this town filled out with a few more interesting characters, dialogues. I love that lonely lady that's happy you just walked into her house, i'd be cool if she had some of her back story in the dialogue.

Anyways. Great stuff. Keep it up. :)

2 years later

Sorry been a long time. Ive abandoned the previous game but I’ve developed on the earlier concept with new assets and improved fresh code based on my improvedknowledge of Godot.

I’ve now got some basic animation and player mechanics going. Still very early though. HTML 5 player of the progress here: https://harishankar.org/pulah/game.html

Progress so far : 1 character with a health system 2 movement includes running and walking (run with the shift key while holding down direction) 3 NPC "AI" implemented for random wandering within a radius. 4 simple interaction with NPC, i.e. when you get close to a "friendly" NPC, a random dialogue out of a list of dialogues will be displayed at the bottom of the screen (however planning to more complicated dialogue stuff and also including combat.) 5 hazardous area (fire implemented so far). walking into a fire will cause damage to the player (lowering health and blinking sprite 6 Main menu/pause menu combined - something I didn't do last time - brought up by pressing esc key or dying to restart the game.

I'm concentrating both on developing the game mechanics as well as creating game assets at the moment. Once I have some reasonable level of game mechanics with enough assets, I'll probably build a full fledged playable level with some story/character progression.

(The HTML5 game is also playable on Apple iPad safari, because I've implemented basic on-screen touch controls. Not yet tested on Android touch device though.)

I would love more suggestions on where to go with this, because while I have ideas to implement the mechanics of the game how to bring it all together into a detailed world is something I'm not yet clear on.

Cool to see you getting back into the project! I think that tree sprite looks really cool. The path does look a little blurry though, like it's not at the same pixel resolution. In terms of the direction of the game, do you have some themes you're really interested in exploring or writing about? I think if you can pick a theme then you'll be able to find how you want the game to develop.

@Hippo said: Cool to see you getting back into the project! I think that tree sprite looks really cool. The path does look a little blurry though, like it's not at the same pixel resolution. In terms of the direction of the game, do you have some themes you're really interested in exploring or writing about? I think if you can pick a theme then you'll be able to find how you want the game to develop.

Thanks. It's been a long time. I've redrawn all the assets because I wanted to go for a top-down view with depth (player can go behind a tree, for instance). Also wasn't happy with non-animated sprites, so took the effort to actually draw the animated sprites and learnt AnimationTree with blend space and AnimationPlayer.

Also the road tile is blurry because I wanted the path to look smoother than the grass but have some tiling effect. Probably it looks too blurry at the moment. I may end up re-drawing the path tiles.

<blockquote>I think if you can pick a theme then you'll be able to find how you want the game to develop.</blockquote>

This is where I'm still a bit out of ideas. Please suggest any ideas to develop this further.

Some updates today: -> added simple ray-tracing to the NPC to avoid detecting the player through walls or obstacles when within the interaction area. Also made sure that when the player comes into visibility to the NPC within the interaction area, the interaction is triggered (once). Updated: https://harishankar.org/pulah/game.html

I've drawn some cliff tiles today. Here's a screenshot

4 days later

Some updates - player melee attack is now implemented. However NPC does not react yet (NPC attack mode is yet to be implemented)

Video here:

<iframe width="605" height="398" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U5NxBvpmBPs" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

https://harishankar.org/pulah/game.html

"STAY AWAY FROM TROUBLE." WHACK

Looks good, are you planning to have lasting consequences for attacking random NPC's in the game?

@Hippo said: "STAY AWAY FROM TROUBLE." WHACK

Looks good, are you planning to have lasting consequences for attacking random NPC's in the game?

Mostly likely yes but the effect would probably be limited to the NPCs who have “viewed” the crime. I may also implement a karma system for the player reputation which will reduce with random violence.