I'm making a goblin game!

{they/them} Hi! my art

[jil-hue]

That's shadowg! And he's tiny!

[jil-hue]

That's what I worked on in the last 2 weeks. I'm sick again since last week. I just accepted that I'm sick now half of the time. Seems like I'm not the only one since covid. And with a small child it's nearly impossible to isolate. Okay however. Now the good things:

Chest Inventories working with a few QoL functions.

I really like how the combat scene is coming together. Of course I get rid of the ugly buttons, but they're necessary for debug reasons at this state.

Aaaaaand as Veilguard gained a lot of traction I decided to change the naming convention. The creatures you can tame and battle are now called Sprytes. And I lowkey decided on the name "Sprytewood". Sounds a bit basic, but I like it.

[jil-hue]

That's what I worked on in the last 2 weeks. I'm sick again since last week. I just accepted that I'm sick now half of the time. Seems like I'm not the only one since covid. And with a small child it's nearly impossible to isolate. Okay however. Now the good things:

Chest Inventories working with a few QoL functions.

I really like how the combat scene is coming together. Of course I get rid of the ugly buttons, but they're necessary for debug reasons at this state.

Aaaaaand as Veilguard gained a lot of traction I decided to change the naming convention. The creatures you can tame and battle are now called Sprytes. And I lowkey decided on the name "Sprytewood". Sounds a bit basic, but I like it.

[jil-hue]

Hey. I'm very sorry and concerned and angry and whatnot. Hope everyone is well. I did my fair share of ugly crying in the last days.

Nontheless, I wanted to make an update.

First, I discovered Bluesky. I never wanted to make a twitter account because I'm a filthy leftist. In the last weeks tons of people migrating to Bsky and if you want to join the party - go for it!

If you want to get a nice dive into the game dev and indie dev spaces, this list is great!

Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

A new tool that blends your everyday work apps into one. It's the all-in-one workspace for you and your team

I even found a goblin list! How cool is that?

My tip is to upload a few pics, screenshots and a bio before you start to follow a bunch of people so you can be recognized and followed back.

And please delete your fascist bird app account. At this point it's hard to trust anyone still engaging there. Thank you.

[jil-hue]

Finding a name

I had the PERFECT name. It was short, easy to remember, mysterious and were represantative for the essence of the game.

It's the name of a random roblox game.

Well, my second idea was Grit&Gloam. I want it to be gobliny, without being too gobliny. What do you think about it?

Best name for untitled goblin game?

Grit & Gloam

Muck & Bloom

Veilroot*

Veilspire*

Other - please comment :)

Voting ended onOct 26, 2024

*The Veil is some kind of magical "thingie" in the game. The creatures that accompany our hero are called Veilkin.

I'm thinking about naming the "village" Veilspire. Hmmm...

Oh and the perfect name was Veilbound. It's taken. I could cry.

[jil-hue]

Oh no, looks like you guys are as indecisive as me lol 😂

[jil-hue]

Say hi to Pangodjin

[jil-hue]

Finding a name

I had the PERFECT name. It was short, easy to remember, mysterious and were represantative for the essence of the game.

It's the name of a random roblox game.

Well, my second idea was Grit&Gloam. I want it to be gobliny, without being too gobliny. What do you think about it?

Best name for untitled goblin game?

Grit & Gloam

Muck & Bloom

Veilroot*

Veilspire*

Other - please comment :)

Voting ended onOct 26, 2024

*The Veil is some kind of magical "thingie" in the game. The creatures that accompany our hero are called Veilkin.

I'm thinking about naming the "village" Veilspire. Hmmm...

Oh and the perfect name was Veilbound. It's taken. I could cry.

[jil-hue]

Oh no, looks like you guys are as indecisive as me lol 😂

[jil-hue]

Finding a name

I had the PERFECT name. It was short, easy to remember, mysterious and were represantative for the essence of the game.

It's the name of a random roblox game.

Well, my second idea was Grit&Gloam. I want it to be gobliny, without being too gobliny. What do you think about it?

Best name for untitled goblin game?

Grit & Gloam

Muck & Bloom

Veilroot*

Veilspire*

Other - please comment :)

Voting ended onOct 26, 2024

*The Veil is some kind of magical "thingie" in the game. The creatures that accompany our hero are called Veilkin.

I'm thinking about naming the "village" Veilspire. Hmmm...

Oh and the perfect name was Veilbound. It's taken. I could cry.

[jil-hue]

I don't know who needs to hear that, but art is for you.

No one is there to decide if it's "enough".

I grew up pretty shitty and learned to absolutely hate everything I create because it needed to be perfect to be likeable. Now in my mid thirties I start to like the stuff I create. After decades of doing art and hating it.

My daughter brings home a lot of pictures she painted and other little craft projects. My society-conscious brain is telling me all the time I need to get rid of them, it's just "rubbish".

But this is not what I really think about it.

If you are not a parent, you probably don't know this. But becoming a parent and going through different stages of development of your children is filled with thousands of triggers. All the things you experienced, that made you you, are coming back. The actions and modeling of your parental figures. Everything comes back. Hauntingly.

But I sustained this one. Our place is filled with her little drawings, no matter how much time she spent on it, or how finished it looks. I try to encourage her whenever she shows me something. I ask questions about it and she tells me little stories about her works.

And you know what? She absolutely loves to do art and you can see how proud she is.

Here are some of my favorites

[jil-hue]

It's already fall, so here's a winter theme for untitled goblin game.

Visit Original Link

The battle system is coming together really nice. But as expected, balancing is something else.

I also created a new crop as a small distraction from thinking too deep about numbers. It's a blast to add new content if the system works right and I'm so happy I made it scalable.

Maybe I should concentrate on NPCs and shops next? Or Leveldesign?

[jil-hue]

Me: Let's make a prototype real quick. Just constant variables to test things.

Also me: Okay, we need an inventory system that holds an array of monster resources, which each holds an array of attack resources that signal their values to the battle manager. We also need a pause menu tab for displaying the attacks and they should be craftable through different items on a special workbench.

[jil-hue]

Paper prototype of my bag building battle idea.

I hope to achieve something along the lines of building a strategic deck with the decision of what to put into your monster (outside the battle), fast combat that stays engaging through random draws and risk/reward decisions (your monster can overload if you're pushing it too far) and still being chill (no time component and different difficulty options).

Every round you channel an attack through drawing shards/essences from your monsters. When you decide to strike, the damage gets calculated and you can then "buy" temporary shards that are different in every environment (think forest, swamp, snowy mountain etc.). Then they go into your monsters bags and the enemy strikes.

The damage is not put onto the monsters, but a progression bar that starts in the middle. Enemy attacks push it left and you need to reach the right end to defeat them and get the loot.

Taming can happen after pushing it to like 80 % and you need to use some kind of item and of course skip your round.

I aim for 3-4 rounds on normal enemies.

What's in your monster bag you ask? There are different shards representing some type of item/power/attack type and constant shards that further the damage, but also give you overload points. The shards could be crafted or dropped as loot. Maybe you need to find a recipe first. There will be different shards with mechanics that give you more control over your bag, hinder or slow the enemy and "heal" your party.

Temporary environment shards can multiply your damage or do other funny things. This is going to be a balancing hell 😂 maybe I use fixed enemy patterns like in slay the spire.

I want to play it now, but that will take soooo long to prototype. And I'm so tired. I had the idea yesterday evening and was so excited that I barely slept.

Oh and you didn't know that the game is going to be a creature collection game? Well I think I haven't talked about it yet. But you saw that slime I posted a long time ago? He's my first baby.

The flame is such an angry boi 🔥

[jil-hue]

Maybe, let's also talk about scope.

Every indie how to, beginner etc. advice is going to tell you to take it slow, make pong and do silly little games first. That's solid advice if you're not me.

I have ADHD and I can't motivate myself to do things I don't want or the reward is not what I'm looking for. That is probably true for a lot of folks, but we ADHDers are extreme in that regard.

I remember a few years ago I created my own Sims 3 worlds in CAW. People in tutorials where talking about weeks and months of work. I created my first (and it was of course a very large one) world in 3 days. I barely ate and slept very little. But it was so much fun! Back then I was not a parent, I studied from home and could take time whenever I wanted. Now I need to care for others too, but I'm also a lot older and a bit wiser. I guess?

My ADHD is so severe, I don't think I can work a normal 9 to 5 without being completely miserable. I tried. It didnt work out and I'm so grateful I can now be a stay at home parent. That in fact has other drawbacks, especially when you think about Isolation. My daughter was born in autumn 2020. It was hard, we made it out somehow and now I try to build something new. I have a few hours every day to work on my game and for being a solo dev I think it comes along quite nice. I learned so much already and it's so much fun. I think I can tackle this because it simply makes me happy.

[jil-hue]

Paper prototype of my bag building battle idea.

I hope to achieve something along the lines of building a strategic deck with the decision of what to put into your monster (outside the battle), fast combat that stays engaging through random draws and risk/reward decisions (your monster can overload if you're pushing it too far) and still being chill (no time component and different difficulty options).

Every round you channel an attack through drawing shards/essences from your monsters. When you decide to strike, the damage gets calculated and you can then "buy" temporary shards that are different in every environment (think forest, swamp, snowy mountain etc.). Then they go into your monsters bags and the enemy strikes.

The damage is not put onto the monsters, but a progression bar that starts in the middle. Enemy attacks push it left and you need to reach the right end to defeat them and get the loot.

Taming can happen after pushing it to like 80 % and you need to use some kind of item and of course skip your round.

I aim for 3-4 rounds on normal enemies.

What's in your monster bag you ask? There are different shards representing some type of item/power/attack type and constant shards that further the damage, but also give you overload points. The shards could be crafted or dropped as loot. Maybe you need to find a recipe first. There will be different shards with mechanics that give you more control over your bag, hinder or slow the enemy and "heal" your party.

Temporary environment shards can multiply your damage or do other funny things. This is going to be a balancing hell 😂 maybe I use fixed enemy patterns like in slay the spire.

I want to play it now, but that will take soooo long to prototype. And I'm so tired. I had the idea yesterday evening and was so excited that I barely slept.

Oh and you didn't know that the game is going to be a creature collection game? Well I think I haven't talked about it yet. But you saw that slime I posted a long time ago? He's my first baby.

The flame is such an angry boi 🔥

[jil-hue]

Mangroves can now grow and explode. Maybe I can get the axe working next week.

Oh and that's not lag. It's me cutting the GIF into pieces. This is my last resort! Okay 👌 it's time to go to bed. ... I wanna GIF outside, GIF outside of all of this...

GIF me baby one more time!

I hope I remember to edit this post 🌝

[jil-hue]

What program are you using to make the art?

- nonbinary-coder

HI!

Most of the time I use an app called Pixel Studio.

It's neat because I can use it on pc and android. I really like the workflow in this one, but when I plan to animate something I use libresprite (which is basically aseprite but free?). You can animate in Pixel Studio, but I use a paperdoll system for my character sprites. I have extra layers for hair, arms, faces, clothing, legs etc. And libresprite gives you better control over layers and frames.

Pixel Studio, however, has a cool export feature that lets you directly upscale the image. I usually post my sprites here in 4x.

I use good old GIMP for a few simple touchups or some mirroring and stuff. But that's basically because the other two programs are still opened with some projects I don't want to close. I'm lazy.

When I do animations I just mirror the frames, but you have to do it frame by frame. In GIMP my selection tool is capped to 32x48 (the size of my sprites) and snaps to the grid (which is also 32x48). To be fair, I could just mirror the frame in godot, but that scares me somehow?

If you want to know anything else, I'm happy to talk about all this stuff, because I have no one in person who can relate 🫠

[nonbinary-coder]

ooh, neat. I first learned digital art on GIMP, and I'd probably still be using it if my new laptop didn't arbitrarily decide that it wouldn't run the program.

I was looking into aseprite yesterday, so libresprite intrigues me. I'll have to check it out! And also Pixel Studio. I do like being able to do stuff on my phone. Do the computer and phone versions sync, or are they two separate apps that don't communicate with each other?

and hey— your method of mirroring may technically be more complicated, but it also means that if you ever decide you wanna add a non-symmetric character or hairstyle, you're already set up to do so

[jil-hue]

Yes you can buy the feature for a small fee. I don't remember, but I think it's under 10 €. It then uses your Google drive.

I used this feature a bit, but since I started to take notes with obsidian I now use syncthing which is free and can sync folders on multiple devices.

I also looked into aseprite again and I just bought it, because the tilemap feature looked so neat. It's pretty handy.

[jil-hue]

are you coding this game by hand!?!?!?

Don't know if I understand the question right. I use a game engine called godot. But there's lots of coding involved. The art and music is all selfmade. I don't have a budget so assets are not an option.

Oh and I use my hands! I have two of them 😅

[jil-hue]

Okay for real. I'm sorry anon, you probably wanted to be nice and I'm really bad at receiving compliments. Please don't feel bad because I'm an idiot 🥲

[jil-hue]

are you coding this game by hand!?!?!?

Don't know if I understand the question right. I use a game engine called godot. But there's lots of coding involved. The art and music is all selfmade. I don't have a budget so assets are not an option.

Oh and I use my hands! I have two of them 😅