Throne of darkness (Card based RPG) (Demo)

update: I didn't have much time, but I used it well. I came up with a new algorithm for generating the map that is just PERFECT. I got the idea from the gimp maze filter, so I started to think of a way to do it.
I use the same pathfinding algorithm, but when finding neighbors, I check that the neighbors-neighbors in voxel3 sum a total of 5 or more (every tile starts at 1), and then when adding them to the path I set the tile in voxel3 to 0.
what this means is a sort of tree with random roots is formed, but the roots never touch and there is an end. and it's much cheaper that the wave function collapse people keep talking about so much.

I also added a new rogue card:
ace up the sleeve: shuffles a copy of your hand into the deck.

xyz Watch out. May take months, possibly years.

luckily I have a pile of old drawings to use in a hurry.

Toxe Yeah, I started using it a couple of months ago and it seems really good. As for Gimp, well, I tried it 20 years ago and it never really clicked for me. Have been mostly avoiding it since then.

apparently krita is used to draw anime.
I have been using gimp for over 15 years, it didn't seem bad to me. but the devs have made some very bad decisions, and add to this the deplorable state of GTK usability, like the fact that old gimp versions are not available, compiling GTK2 is f***ng impossible, the stupid thing is written in C, but it was this one annoying GTK3/4 slider widget that drove me crazy with how finicky it was, that was the rhinoceros that broke the camel's back.

Tomcat what IS gimp better at? the only advantage I see is more filters and maybe opening obscure formats, but we have so many more alternatives these days, you just have to go and try them.

Toxe Ugh, this is giving me PTSD. GTK was truly terrible back in the day and the UI of the old Gimp versions that I tried using was atrocious. But to be fair to Gimp I should really give it another try these days.

I actually liked the older version better, it might have been ugly, but it was made with practicality in mind. GTK these days thinks its f**ng apple, with their menu-less windows and gnome integration and fancy yet unusable sliders. The only thing it has going for is it's stable and works.

Toxe Thinking about it, weren't they working on a modernized version 3 or 4 or whatever to be released Soon™?

KDE3/4, a GUI written in C that forces you to write a CSS. the worst of high and low level programming rolled into one. It has been in development since forever.

update: fixed a lot of bugs, glitches and small details and worked a bit more on map generation. also worked towards connecting the parts of the game so I can release a demo soon.
the player now spawns in a tile, and can only move to adjacent tiles left, right, up and down of the current tile. the code is still very messy, but it doesn't matter, I think the "combat" phase is more important.
I added some placeholder images to the world cards so I could setup the shader.
I made some assets for character avatars, like a wizard's robes and a helmet, then connected it to the character creation part and cleaned up a bit. in the character creation it is now possible to select a class and it displays the cards.
I also had to remake the Minotaur to add a death animation, I will add new enemies eventually, for now you go around town getting jumped by minotaurs, and it will probably be like that in the demo.

I also made some assets for the cards and added two new rogue cards:
You've activated my trap: draws 3 rogue cards
We don't need this: sends a non-rogue cards from the hand back to the deck

I noticed from playing the game that the hand tends to get filled with garbage cards from generation, and undesired cards. When using "ace up the sleeve" you don't want to duplicate a card like "use the head" or simple attacks like throw rock. while reckless attack can be used to get rid of these cards, it has a risk of discarding good cards. "We don't need this" gives a change to get rid of undesired cards, and since it returns them to the deck instead of discarding, cards with discard interactions can be removed from the hand this way.
"You've activated my trap" on the other hand plays really well with sneak, since it draws rogue cards, it can draw the sneak attacks or useful rogue cards.

Hopefully I will have a demo ready this month. as soon as I can add victory and defeat conditions.
In the demo you will play as barbarian (with the barbarian starter deck) and maybe rogue if I keep adding cards. you will explore a town that unfolds like a maze and search for the exit.
I should add some "discover a new card" event to make the game more interesting than just fighting the same enemy over and over again, but I will need the ability to edit the deck for that, which will take some time because it requires yet another set of inherited classes and card assets (maybe I can reuse PreviewCard).
There will hopefully also be some "buildings" with events by then.

Tomcat GIMP works better with transparent images. For example, it has cropping of empty fields, which is not available in Krita.

it doesn't anymore XD I remember it being removed around 2.1 and being annoyed at not being able to copy the transparent area of an explosion sprite.
I have been using Krita and working with transparent areas and colors is much faster. you can split the alpha of a layer to alpha filter, duplicate it and move it to another layer. painting then paints the visible and invisible area. but clicking on the (one button) locks the alpha allowing to paint on the colored area of a sprite.
it's SO MUCH BETTER.

Tomcat much easier work with animations (.gif).

how quaint, because I heard krita is used to make anime and has a better animation system than gimp. I haven't gotten to it yet though. as for gifs, gimp has like 3 filters, one of which is to preview an animation, and its really bad. you can only preview loose layers, it doesn't work with groups, so I had to create the animations in different files.
as for layers, it's impossible to select more than one layer at a time so you have to pack the layers into a group to move them to a different file, and then you have to move each layer out of the group one by one to do something else, and once all your layers are in the same group the preview animation becomes useless.
I had to install an addon (tilemancer) to create spritesheets, and in order to do that I had to install some python3 library or something because script support is currently broken.

Tomcat if need to make an icon in Win, it is done with one command.

that's oddly specific.
but if I had to make an icon I would use a vector app like inskape.

update:
I have been connecting the character creation to the 3d world, it is now possible to create a character and have it spawn in the world. I have also been making some dialog windows for credits and game over. I'm getting closer and closer to a Demo, probably next week at this pace.
I've also made it to 20 rogue cards and 20 barbarian cards, so those classes will be available in the demo. wizard still only has 2.
next I need to work on allowing a second character to join the party, and characters dying discarding their cards from the deck.
Oh, also, I made a deck editor, the standard deck will be 20 cards, and new cards will be added to a different pile from which to choose at any point in the game. this makes it substantially different from other deck-builders where getting rid of cards is important.

Tomcat They may have added it. But when I needed it, it wasn't there yet.

you are right, the option is not there, but there is a crop to selection option, which is a way to do it.

Tomcat What does this have to do with "5 menus"? This is the first, top menu.

Krita has fewer and tidier menues, most things are found in dockers.
gimp has a bad workflow, no shortcuts, things are scattered around different menues, and worst of all they move them in each new version. I don't know why they keep changing gimp, they changed the icons, the menues, the buttons, I had to relearn everything when I got 2.10, so when I need to do an operation I have to start looking around the menues for something I know exists but is no longer were it's supposed to.

Tomcat I just throw in all necessary files at once, they are placed on layers by themselves and just specify their duration when exporting — that's all.

In Krita to place frames is a little more difficult. To begin with, you need to switch to animation...

for that I use ffmpeg from terminal. opening gimp to bake a gif sounds bad.

now, some updates on the game:
I finished connecting things, it is possible to create a character and play the game, reaching the exit spawns a credits window with restart and exit. losing also spawns a game over window, and the game can also be restarted from the menu.
the game was too silent so I added a song I made for combat, I made this in musescore 2 and I'm no professional musician, but it's good enough, and I'm not using AI.
when testing the game, two things became clear: barbarian was too OP with it's healing and blocking, while rogue was too weak.
so I quickly added a new rogue card and mechanic.
Dodge: adds 1 dodge to the rogue.
dodge block 1 attack each and can be stacked.

next I need to fix a few bugs and I will reduce the number of cards to 10, with 5 one use/exhaust/normal cards like health potion or the chair.

the demo will be very sober, as I'm still using placeholder art, and there are some visual bugs, but nothing game breaking.

Devlog: well, I have been trying to get a demo for this week, but as I export it I found a game breaking bug related to the bleed effect on the rogue.
I have been trying to fix this for the last 4 days, which at this point involved changing the enemy from AnimatedSprite2D using await animation finished, to sprite2Ds with animationPlayers and AnimationTrees.
It worked, in part, in solving the bug, but at the same time made it more unpredictable, leading to more bugs, though easier to fix.
moving to AnimationPlayer/Tree lead to some cool features, like when the skeletons appear they come out of the ground, so that's a plus.

I'm still worried about the quality of the game and a bit tired, but I will still release a demo either this week or next week.
I need a name for the game, it can't be "prototype card based RPG", the name of the project is Throne of Darkness, although there is no story yet and have no idea where or how I would fit this throne into the game.
Other than that I have been fixing bugs and testing the gameplay for balance. I think it's too easy at the moment and too RNG. the ability to save some potions for later helps, as they can be put back into the deck as fights become more difficult. some cards will need to be buffed, like the health potion which only heals 4, others nerfed, like second wind which heals 8, draws a card and reshuffles.

Oh, and I implemented rewards at the end of combat, 3 cards appear and you can pick one and its added to your deck. but it needs some animations.
Also, the combats become increasingly more difficult, starting at 1 lizardmen, then more enemies, then skeletons, and at one point one minotaur. 4-5 lizardmen is the point where the game becomes too difficult.

Devlog: after some more bug fixes, I added animations to the rewards and was getting ready to export.
I made a simple icon for the game in inskape, and exported to ico for windows.
then I had to struggle with exporting to windows and the unexpected limitations and conditions, and then 4.3 was released out of nowhere.
I still felt like the game wasn't complete and needed "some" card art to tell the cards apart.
after even more struggles, this time moving the scanned drawings to my PC, I ended up just taking pictures of the drawings and downloading them via google drive.
It must have taken me less than an hour to draw them in paper and then paint them in krita.
I will try to make a few more before releasing the demo.
here's the "new" shiv:

I will keep this "grunge" look for the cards, as it looks good enough.

Devlog: the chair is here and it's the most fun card in the game so far!

Devlog: The game is in a playable state and I have been making art the last days. I realize now why drawing are inked, it's very difficult to get dark lines because there are no actual lines, just a bunch of carbon particles on paper, and also paper is not flat. well too late now, I will keep it in mind for the next batch of drawings.

kuligs2
1 - at first I used renders I had as placeholders. the enemies are renders of models I had, put into 2D animations.
Currently I am transitioning into this hand-drawn style for card art and other things.
the process involves: drawing on paper with a B pencil, taking a picture of the drawing, adjusting contrast to make the lines darker, and finally adding color in Krita. for adding color I first paint each color into a different layer, then I use lock alpha to paint inside the opaque color and add shades.

2 - text is easy, I just used a RichTextLabel. Part of the text is dynamically generated from the effects, using the % to replace parts of a string with variables.
for making part of the text a different color I did something like
text = "deal [color=red]s%[/color] damage" % damage

3 - you mean the flavour text? It needs some work yes, the whole card style needs a rework and better backgrounds, it is pending.

I will post the demo either today or tomorrow, I want to add a couple more card pictures in there first.