Blog - Page 16 of 16 - Pyrodactyl Games

Concepts by our awesome new artist!

June 4, 2010 · Arvind

A lot of complaints I have been getting about the game have been about the absolutely revolting level of art design I have subjected you to. Well, all that is about to change, for I am very pleased to announce that the A.Typical RPG has a new artist – Henri !

He has made a few mockups of what the final game will look like once he has purged my art from the galaxy. To demonstrate just how much more awesome the game looks, here’s a comparison :

BEFORE

AFTER

Disclaimer: The image shown here is a concept image – Henri has told me he will improve the level of detail and quality of the in-game art in the following days. So while this image isn’t exactly final, you can expect the art to be even better.

P.S. You may recognize Henri from the excellent Flesh mod and the promising Visage mod. You can view his deviantart gallery here: Acherontiadomus.deviantart.com

Here’s another of his cryptic sprite designs, which consist of character concepts :

The A.Typical Battle System Explained

May 30, 2010 · Arvind

One of the many aims of the A.Typical RPG is to provide a new and fresh RPG experience to it’s players.

The first thing on my mind when designing the battle system was to make a versatile system, that applies to not only combat but also to other scenarios outside of combat. The RPG experience in current video games is often limited by two scenarios :

1. The role-playing part either applying to either interaction or battles ( Borderlands, Diablo etc).
2. Two concurrent role-playing systems, one related to non-violent interaction and another related to combat – with little relation to each other ( Mass Effect, Dragon Age, etc).

The primary aim of this system is to make every part of the game – from conversations to fights – an integrated RPG to the core. The versatility of the system ensures attributes such as the player morale, non-player character opinion and even the style of play can be used as variables in the game, resulting in more realistic depiction of player choices and attributes, rather than the battle/interaction duo of attributes common in current games.

Here’s what the view is like just after the match starts :

Please note that the MS Paint nature of the art is because I am a programmer, and I suck at drawing stuff in general. If I manage to find a good graphic designer, you can expect better quality images. Do see postscript if you are interested.

Anyway, there are a few things to notice :

1. The list of names at the bottom shows the sequence in which the characters will perform actions. The sequence calculation technique has been explained previously in this post.

2. The menu of actions available – this will change depending on the following situations –
a. If the character has the ball or not
b. The character’s location
c. Other friendly or douche character locations

3. If you choose the to Kick the ball, the location is decided in this way :

4. The move menu is location sensitive – to ensure you don’t move off the ground, for one thing. Here’s the menu for a character in the middle of the ground – he can move in any direction.

However, a character on the right edge can not move further down, as seen here :

5. Football is not just pretty passing – if your location is nearby someone who has the ball – you can tackle him to win the ball back – but skilled players can evade the challenge, so it’s not foolproof. It also depends on how well you can tackle, and your physical strength.

Yours truly is making steady progress, and hopes to get a small demo out for you people to play with very soon. For any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me!

P.S. If you are an awesome graphic designer (2D art) , or an arty type with impressive Photoshop skills who wants to make sure the ugly sprites go away in order to save humanity from further eye damage, please email me and join the cause to make the most A.Typical RPG humanity has ever seen!

P.P.S. Links to your portfolio or deviantart page (or whatever the cool kids have these days) would be super-awesome.

A football match in an RPG – really?

March 6, 2010 · Arvind

The battle system of the A.Typical RPG is the area where the innovation will take place.

My pet peeve with traditional turn based system in traditional 2D RPGs is that it doesn’t feel realistic enough. And by realistic, I mean it doesn’t represent what should actually happen in the battle accurately. Suppose a character Arvind is awesomely fast and all powerful and handsome and rich and gets all the ladies and…okay, got a little sidetracked there. And let’s have a character, say Captain Pathetic, who can’t move 10 feet in an hour even if his life depended on it.

If I would expect a battle to take place between the two characters, I would expect Arvind to beat the stuffing out of Capt. Pat over and over till each and every atom of his body has dissipated into oblivion. However, in a turn based system, Arvind will take one turn, then Capt. Pat will take another and so on.

To remove this limitation, allow me to introduce the battle system of the A.Typical RPG. It uses a unique algorithm to generate a sequence of turns instead of offering turns to all characters one by one (boring).

A concept of the system :

I’m interested in feedback about the atypical system.

About the A.Typical RPG

March 6, 2010 · Arvind

The idea for an RPG set in the present times and without any fantasy or science-fiction elements/clichés first came into my mind about an year ago. I’ll tell you something – I’m a big fan of the RPG genre.

I have had mixed history with their gameplay, and almost every RPG I played had their share of features I liked and features I loathed. For example, I liked the Witcher’s combat system but hated it’s inventory management. I liked the idea of what the Last Remnant tried to do, but I got annoyed at the lack of choices and the fact that it got very repetitive, very fast. The list goes on and on.

As for the story department, my relationship started sweetly in my childhood, but has been mostly downhill since then as I played more and more of them. Every new setting had it’s own set of characters and lore, yet they all seemed to translate into the same cliché we have seen too often – start weak, grow strong, kill bad guy, save universe. Note that this does not mean I universally hate RPG plots, just that they are a bit too predictable. I do enjoy them now and then, but it’s like the case of eating pasta every hour – sure, it’s good but sometimes you just need to eat something else.

Some info about the A.Typical RPG :

1. It won’t have a levelling system per se, rather the actions taken during combat itself will shape the character’s attributes and personality.
2. As you might have noticed, the first setting for the battle is a football (what the Europeans call football) match, so rest assured the scenarios will be varied and interesting. I cannot say anything more about the setting and plot at this stage, so I’ll move to the artwork.

I haven’t really decided about a specific art style yet (still perfecting and working out the kinks of the combat system), but more news about that and other stuff pretty soon. I eagerly await feedback/expectations/reactions about the game.

You can visit the ModDB page of the game for the latest news and info.

Protected: Calamitty – A web comic

March 6, 2010 · Arvind

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Two days in Bangalore : A travelogue

March 6, 2010 · Arvind

Day 1:

6:30 am : Arrived in Bangalore. This place is colder than I expected. Travelling with Kunal, another MSP.

6:31 am: The bus actually dropped us off at the wrong station. Great. There’s an auto….

6:45 am: Correction. This place is way colder than I expected.

7:10 am: The auto dropped us at the wrong address, about 2 blocks away from the house. This day has started superbly.

7:30 am: Reached Vipul sir’s house. Going to rest. TechVista starts at 2:30 pm

2:00 pm: Hotel Leela Palace is awesome. Waiting in registration line.

2:30 pm: Inside the convention. I’m not much interested in the first talk, Checking out demos and PhD abstracts.

4:00 pm: Loved Holmes. Trident, Write in the air and Surface are pretty cool too.

4:05 pm: Too many technologies to talk about! Pictures on my facebook page.

5:00 pm: TechVista over. The event was cool. Hope the next day is as good as this. Off to rest now.

7:00 pm: Apparently, we are going to Akhil Bharatiya Sangeet Sammelan. Who knows, maybe it will turn out well ?

7:30 pm: Wow. KK is performing in a concert in Bangalore and we have passes! This is going to be awesome. Going inside….

10:30 pm: Concert is over. Loved every minute. KK is beyond cool.

10:54 pm: Pizza at Domino’s. I didn’t know my mess in Manipal had branches in other cities 😛 ‘Night

Day 2:

8:00 am: Going to OpenDays. And yes, this place is still colder than what I expected.

9:15 am: Registered for the event, and the first talk is about IE8 by Mr. Jacob, a member of the IE8 team.

10:15 am: This one is about Microsoft Indic Language Input Tool. I think this one has serious potential. Wish it had an API.

12:00 am: Mr. S. Shastri (member of Win7 India dev team) is introducing Win7. Knew about most of the stuff, but I like his passion about the topic.

2:15 pm: Talked to Mr. Shastri over lunch. Insights gained on how MS works. Best thing : He speaks Hindi when he wants to.

4:00 pm : Info overload about details of MSP program ! Going to the group photo session, and collecting welcome kit after that.

6:00 pm : I didn’t realize this was over. Well, off to the bus station.

7:30 pm : Dinner at Mc Donald’s (not that good tbh). Apparently, Amitabh Bachchan is inside the mall for promoting his new film, Avatar. (Kidding)

8:35 pm: Rushing to the bus stand.

9:00 pm : Inside the pick-up bus. It will drop me next to the real bus. Strange system if you ask me.

9:30 pm: I hate Bangalore’s traffic. Someone build a metro here already!

10:20 pm : Inside the bus. Destination : Manipal. It was a nice 2 days.

For photos of the 2 days, follow this link : TechVista and OpenDays Facebook Album

Page replacement simulation program

March 6, 2010 · Arvind

I recently wrote a page replacement solver for a few page replacement algorithms we study in Operating Systems. The cool thing I liked about it is that it can also come up with diagrams of the thing happening, not to mention solve all problems in my textbook.

The solution uses Visual Studio 2008. It contains the code and header files too, if you want to use it in a different IDE.

Download the solution here

Note : Uses 7-zip for compression. Get it at : 7-zip.org

Page 16 of 16« Previous 1 … 14 15 16