Throne of darkness (Card based RPG) (Demo)

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

that is crop to contents and it's a feature krita also has, but it's next to the other options and not spread around 5 menues.

Tomcat creating a light and fast .gif is easier in GIMP. I can't say about anime and cartoons.

since last comment I went to krita and made an entire animation. krita has onion skins and keyframes, which are different from layers. when you add a keyframe you get a new set of layers in a completely new dimension.
in gimp you have to do one frame one layer or group.
there is a play button and other options, you don't have to "compile" the animation to play it.

then I exported it. you can save it as a document or render it, and the options are many video formats including godot compatible theora, mp4, etc, and gif.

Tomcat An icon is actually pixel art. It's probably possible to do it in vector… but… I try to do everything possible in vector, but icons… I do them pixel by pixel.

mhh no. maybe in 1995, but today icons are made with vector formats like svg, that way they can re-scale to different resolutions. that is how it works in linux. if windows is still using ico format then they are just wrong.
but even if windows is being dumb, you can still more easily resize a vector drawing to a new size, while with images you have to remake the entire thing.

Tomcat It's no better or worse — they complement each other.

well I will try to find alternatives to this terrible software and get rid of it entirely. we HAVE alternatives today, it's not 1995 anymore.

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.

as promised, here is the first Demo:

It's pretty stable, but do let me know if you find any bugs.
And as always, any feedback is welcomed.

I managed to finish almost all the rogue cards, but I didn't get to color some of the drawings for the barbarian cards (and there's some really cool ones).
I also spent some time doing small tweaks to make the gameplay better, I managed to add a delay to cards being suffled and it's much better now, I also changed the default resolution to 1536x768, which resulted in things getting smaller (I will tweak it later).
And I added more resolutions based on the most common displays from w3c (no 4k though, I forgot).

Again, there's placeholder art everywhere, there is no story yet, just a gameplay loop, your go from start to finish fighting monsters and gaining cards, you can use the Deck button to reserve cards like the chair or healing potions. the combat begins easy and gets increasingly more difficult.
the game ends when you reach "the exit" card.
Rogue got more testing so it's more balanced and has art for almost every card, barbarian on the other hand is still using placeholder art and very broken, you could think of them as easy and normal difficulty.

The export is for windows, if you want one for linux just ask and I will make one.
The icon is likely not changed, so I packed an ico and svg with the exe. I have to look into it since the documentation is not updated for 4.

kuligs2 where i wanted custom color, but somehow it worked only with predefined colors like you wrote - red blue etc.. maybe i did something wrong in the past because it was long time ago since i played with rich text label.

custom colors have to be written in hexadecimal, it starts at 0 but then keeps going until F: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f.
color selectors usually have a hex tab where you can obtain the hex code.

packrat I made this in ubuntu, it works through wine like most godot games.
But I will try to upload a linux version now, maybe tomorrow.

packrat well you wouldn't believe what happened today , I exported the linux version and my disk crashed, then it would not boot because fsck was damaged. I had to re-download an ubuntu image and flash it and then run fsck from the live usb, it took me all day.
I'm not making this up , clearly superior operating system indeed

anyways here's the linux version: