🎱 Helmut Game
Update 3
After another month of hard work here's an update to the Helmut game :D
I added some animations for Helmut and tried to remake the bedroom from his and Leslie's bed scene XD
It's possible to click on things like the bed, the painting, the bookshelf... oh please ignore that you can dress up by clicking on a bookshelf, it was meant to be a dresser but I've yet to model it :D
For now I'm not sure of the game's genre, just wanted to finally make a good-looking game after all these years and maybe use some ideas from Helmut's pictures like the bathroom with bucket-training, the barbell gym, the flex-cafe where he did the oversplit, etc..
I'm also not sure if this should be his home or Leslie's because in the story it's actually Leslie's home but I'm still not sure what Helmut is going to be doing in the game... :P
-Kada
I'm so glad you liked the sprites! Just need to think of what to do next and add more characters... So far the tech stuff took a lot of time, so little time left for the sprites :P
I haven't played Resident Evil but I imagine almost every point'n'click game has the main character talking to himself about every thing he sees XD In Helmut's case I'm hoping to add more jokes and puns when clicking around... Also glad you liked the animations, they sure took a lot of time with that many frames, but then what in this game didn't take a lot of time? XD I'm just glad it's like my 20th attempt to make a game so at least I know what I'm doing... XD But also finally getting that vibe of getting somewhere :P
So far I'm thinking what will be the rewards for playing it, like maybe improving some of Helmut's skills he can use... 😏
Other than there's sites where you can get free sounds or maybe even buy some soundpacks/music for like $20 :D
Visual game assets are great, some superb, like bed from fantastic fantasy!!! :-)
Dressing up animation is amazing too! As well as walking animation as said by other people.
And I laughed a lot while clicking on abstract art description :)
After long thinking I have 2 suggestions which could make game much better in my oppinion. First is scrolling - I am fully aware it must be hard to programm and might be bit problem to implement on smartphones. But on desktop that is a "must" at least for me in every RPG. To be able to go with mouse on the edge of screen and scroll to sides, up and down... to center my screen where I want it to be centered.
And second idea I found to be very world immersing but not used in AAA titles anymore is text hint for every game asset. Be it floor, book shelve, window, wall, carpet which somehow describe thing more. Mechanic should be different than with main items which you already implemented as it should be. Such unclickable items should not blink but just show its description if you ie hower long enough (2sec) over them. The best implementation I have ever saw was in Fallout 1 + 2 old games. Still remember how I laughed at description of most unremarkable items like rocks :-D
Bonus idea - what about some "level" secrets which reveal some of your existing art in full beauty ie in popup window?
In any way superb work.
I think the first time I started making a game was in 2007 or so, since then I only managed to finish small puzzle games cloned from Mahjong, Tetris and 2048, but not the adventure game I always wanted 😐
This time it's finally a breakthrough because I learned how to do animations and sprites better and finally not spending a week on polishing ONE sprite like some time in the past, which was greatly demotivating ;D
It was also a great change to use an isometric view as it allows to show the world better compared to that straight view where you only get to see one wall out of four on a building. Well, here you can see two walls, so I think it's twice as good :D
Hmm, with so few assets and ideas right now it's hard to think what would be the best controls for the game but it's definitely something to think of ^^
Or there could be places where character can do some special bendy pose which he can't do anywhere else. Like some pose could be done only on chair, other on stairs... and well that "description" thing I was talking about could hint player to that and to press special "pose" button. Like it would not be obvious part of game but more hidden one for bit more currious and hardcore players.
And there would be special page with poses you already discovered this way and you can watch them there :-)
Sorry for multiple comments but I will post them as I get ideas if you dont mind.
Maybe it's also a good way to highlight objects you've never interacted with by adding red dots to them like some games do to attract attention :3
Yeah I wanted to add special places that trigger special animations, like maybe backfolding with a barbell in the gym or folding into a bucket in the bathroom.
Guess maybe each room could have a number of things you can interact with, so you can see the % of completion in every room, but some objects have special requirements before you can interact with them like winning the minigame gives you a power potion that you can use to do the barbell exercises. Then the goal of the game can be completing all the rooms :3
So I tried simple vertically scrolling shooter, but at the time I wanted somehow nice graphics so I started learning C which turned to be bit of a nightmare. So next atempt was python and there I managed to do very simple prototype but it took months and again I realized that for even simple game which would be ugly (can't do graphics) years would be needed... so I gave up. Same story as with learning japanesse or painting... each of these things I tried repeatedly like 3-4 times before relizing there just isn't enough time if I want to keep doing other things I already do.
So the fact that you obviously MADE IT now at least... is amazing you made it past that worst hurdle finaly!
Plus I think this "RPG" style is like "real" game I used to like 2D platformers but always regarded them as too 2D :-D (even 3D ones) ehm :-D I hope it make sense.
Highlighting of unfinished places might work fine via certain hotkey like "tab" or on smartphone via special icons. Red dots or gems in default view would ruin your art in my oppinion, break immersion.
Minigames uaaaaa I get the point but in that case I probably never see most of rewards X-D Iam just not too got at them.
In any case wish you most of luck and will!
Now I'm using the Godot game engine, which has a Python-like language and I think it's practically the Blender of the gamedev world, it has incredible features yet very lightweight and optimized for performance, very amazing resource system and memory management that doesn't have enormous memory leaks like Java and also doesn't crash like C++, also the games work on the web with WebAssembly making it faster than Javascript, best of all it's free, like Coco Chanel's famous saying "best things in the world are free", I think Blender and Godot are on the list XD
I dunno, i just learn most things with Google and YouTube, thanks to a lot of tutorials you can find nowadays... I'm even starting to get better with Blender, modeling and rigging, so my current goal is to switch over from DazStudio to Blender and make my own characters instead of altering the Daz people, maybe even some stylized characters, and experiment with shaders, hopefully change my art style again to something more interesting.
But I agree, about 10 years ago gamedev was hell and very little you could do than learning it the hardcore way…but yeah, I don't wanna make my games super hard to play so no worries about difficulty…my goal is to make Helmut walk around the world based around my art just for fun but mini games could make activities more interesting I think.