Creacorp

Hey!

I've been working on this game for a week now and I think it's time to start posting my progress here on the WIP forums!

About
Creacorp is going to be a game inspired on the Pokémon franchise games for portables, well, I always wanted to make a Pokémon game remake (although I worked on one 10 years ago in 3dgs, time flies), but I decided to work on my own game now, and the game will also be inspired on similar games like Dragon Quest Monsters Joker and other games that I will not quote .
The game will have lots of things similar to Pokémon BUT it will also have lots of things different too (it will not be a ripoff, I swear). The game will feature a time and weather system, some events will only happen in determined hours of the day and in determined weather conditions too, for instance: some creatures will only appear on sunny days and between 9AM to 3PM, also some NPCs will only appear in some places if some of these criterias match too. Some creatures will be walking/flying/swimming around the map and the player will be able to see them and walk towards them to start a battle and there will be other that will automatically triggers a battle if the player is not able to see too much like in tall grasses, sea, dark caves, ponds, etc. The game will be 3D and will have a huge world.

The last "big" project I worked on was this game, it was programmed in JavaScript so I will be learning a lot since I will be programming in C♯ now!

Links
Development Blog
IndieDB

Cheers!

DEV LOG​

DevLog #16 Creature 6 and 7 done!
DevLog #15 First 20 Creatures Concept Done
DevLog #14 First WIP Video (Battle system, etc…)
DevLog #13 Roken, the first level
DevLog #12 One more sample character
Concept Art #1 Male Character
DevLog #11 Bunny Creature
DevLog #10 New Creature
DevLog #9 One More Creature Done
DevLog #8 A Little More Battle System
DevLog #7 Basic Interaction, Item Grabbing, Etc
DevLog #6 First Creature Concept And Model
DevLog #5 Battle System Prototyping
DevLog #4 Character Style Example
DevLog #3 Weather Improvements, Footstep Effects And Some Minor Updates
DevLog #2 Weather/Time system and dialogs with choices
Forum Threads, IndieDB and New Logo
DevLog #1 Character Locomotion, Simple Dialog and Portals
New Project

 

Hey guys! After 3 DevLogs posted on the blog I will share here a brief of what has been done in the project.

(The top ones were the last updates)

Weather System:
This is one of the little systems I'm working on, it will dynamically control all the weather effects based on the current WeatherState, this weather state will smoothly transition to another state changing the amount of rain, fog, mist, lightnings, wind direction, rain speed, etc.

https://yorkgs.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/rain-with-splats-fog-and-mist.gif


Footstep effects:
This one will spawn effects based on the texture of the stepped mesh renderer/collider

it is also possible to only spawn some of the effects if the player is running or vice-versa.

It is also possible to set multiple textures on the same profile, so it will spawn the same effects on different textures.


Dialog system:
Still a very simple system, so nothing special, the only "special thing" here is that if the next word is too big to fit on the same line, it will starts to appear on the next line automatically. It also have multiple choices.


Game Time system:
The game time will only rotate the sun light, the real deal is that the current weather state being used will dictate the sun light color and intensity, so if it's a cloudy day, the sun light will be grayish and with a smaller intensity than sunny days, if the time is clear but the next weather state is rainy, the current sun light color will be a lerped value between the current and the next weather state sun light color using the normalized remaining time of the current weather state as the parameter of the lerp function, of course the entire day doesn't use the same color, it's a gradient being evaluated. (This gif is an old version, it's a little bit better now)


You guys can see the DevLog posts on my blog!!

Best!

 

Hey @Matt Roper! Thanks for the kind words!! I will do my best on this game!

I will, thanks for replying!

 

Looks awesome! I love these types of games

 

Thanks @WOODSY!

I made this little concept, it's been a long time that I don't draw anything.

I made this drawing just to know which style I will choose to draw my concepts, sorry for the inconsistencies on it, mainly on the left eye, it looks weird, I know.

 

Hey guys I got a new devlog on my blog: https://yorkgs.wordpress.com/2015/11/28/devlog-4-character-style-sample/

This is the model I made based on the concept I uploaded, but it is also ready for character customization, every piece is separated on a different mesh, the hair, eye (pupil styles), clothes and etc. Some parts will be customizable through blend shapes like the nose, mouth and eye shape.


Of course it still needs some tweaks and polishes (this is the third place that I type this ), do you think I should add some normal maps (those I'm using are generated by Unity using the textures), will it look good in an anime themed game? What do you think?

Cheers!

And now, I will work a little on the battle system!

 

Hey guys, I just posted a new devlog on my blog about how the battle system is coming out:


About 6vs6 fights, multiple players in the same battle (3vs3) how I will treat moves use (instead of PPs, each move will have a move cost and each creature will have a maximum move points to spent and that will change by level) and many other things, I hope you guys take a look and maybe give some feedbacks:
https://yorkgs.wordpress.com/2015/12/13/devlog-5-battle-system-prototyping/

 

This has all the makings of something wonderful. Keeping my eye on this project for sure.

 

Hi @Schneider21, thanks man, and I will keep these thread updated, soon I will have more to post!
Cheers

 

Once again, studying drawing styles for my concept arts

 

Aaand its model:

I know there are a couple of differences between the concept and the model and I'm already fixing it.

And the blog post about it: https://yorkgs.wordpress.com/2015/12/28/first-creature-concept-and-model/

 

I went throughout this entire thread almost thinking I wasn't going to care, but when I saw your first creature concept art I was sold.

Normally these Pokemon inspired games have weird looking creatures (like Jade Cacoon did), but your first one is impressive.

I'll watch this thread and wish you the best!!

 

Hey @SkyTech6! Thanks for replying and for the kind words!

I never heard about this game before, I took a look at some pics and now I will watch some videos of it, looks interesting! So, I really want to pass that pokémon feel, that's why I will try to stick in that pokémon style, in everything I will do!

Thanks man, I appreciate!

Cheers!

 

Would love to hear an update, how's this been coming along Rodolfo?

 

Hi @SkyTech6! So, I worked a lot on the battle system and now I'm creating some creatures! Here are them:

and:


The battle system is getting very nice I think, like I said how it was going to be, there will be 6vs6 battles in an imaginary arena of 2 rows of 3 lines where the creatures on the back row cannot attack the enemies with moves that makes contact if there are creatures if there ally creatures in front of them, the same happens if you want to attack creatures in the back row of the enemy with any of your creatures in the front row but there are also creatures in the enemy's front row, it works almost like Disciples 1 & 2 battle system, but of course there are several other small rules and different than Disciples you will be able to teach your creatures moves and use them in battle, s basically my battle system is a mix of Pokémon and Disciples, everything I said was already implemented, status conditions (poison, paralyze), volatile status conditions (confusion, flinch) was implemented but there are still a couple of things to do. The player is already able to use items but not all the items effects was coded yet (actually, just some), but I know that there are still A LOT of things to do towards this, I will not show it right now because only the core of it is working, camera takes, animations, vfx, all of this was not implemented yet so the battle doesn't looks exactly like a battle (except for the hp bars ).
When I finish modelling like 12 creatures I will animated them and put on the battle and also start working on the game world creature spawning system, like I said, some creatures will be spawned and the player will be able to walk towards them to engage a battle.

Thanks!

 

Yay awesome! I've actually kept Unity up all day waiting for your reply haha.

I'm glad to hear that the battle system is coming along. 6v6 is a pretty large scale, but if done well might be super fun. Just make sure it doesn't take so long that players will start trying to avoid battles (Something I started doing once Pokemon added more than 2v2).

And yea, I understand gameplay not having that "gameplay" look so not wanting to show it. My game is all dev-art but so far along in coding that I want to show it but it will be judged for not having a game look yet haha.

Also that flying bug, I think the model would look better if you did that tail design from your concept art. His model's body looks really flat and dull with just that solid gray-blue.

Keep this thread updated ^-^

 

So, these 6vs6 (anything above 1vs1) battles will be very uncommon to say the truth, but I need to give them some attention too since the player will be able to battle with his friends the way he wants and I want to make it play nicely too, there are some things that I forgot to mention about the battle system, there will be moves that hits different slot sets, some will hit only a single creature, others will hit the selected creature and all the others around it, other moves will hit the selected creature and the others in the same row and so on, this also counts for moves that a creature can use in its allies and in itself, a move that recover the hp may affect creatures around the creature using this move too, also, every move will have its damage/effect power share, and that could be like: the main target will receive 50% of the damage and the additional targets will receive the other 50% divided between than, again, and the secondary effect that may damage the user, recover the user's hp, and so on, the damage sharing, slots affected, all that also applies to secondary effects too, each move will have 2 configurable effects, all this was already implemented too - but I still need to set up the moves which I'm not going to do now, just some temporary ones to test the system. And I think this will make the battles a little less tedious, 1vs1 battle will still play the same as the Pokémon ones though.

Of course, we don't need to make it look like the final version but in my case the only thing that is moving on the screen are the menus and the hp bar, really, all the action is under the hood.

About the flying bug creature... I decided to not put those stripes because it would look like the aedes aegypti mosquito, this sounds stupid I think but well... better avoid that. Anyway, I will add another detail to the tail later.

Also, if you want you could follow my progress on twitter, I'm posting everything there:
http://www.twitter.com/yorkgamestudio

Best!

 

Oh when you explain the attacks like that, it sounds a lot like Atlantica Online, which had a well done combat system.

Anyways, I followed your Twitter, can't wait to see posts!

 

I just saw a video, never heard of this game before, and yes, it looks like a lot, the difference is that you choose all the actions for your party and who will attack first, second, third and etc is decided later based on creature speed, move priority or action priority (running from battle goes first, using items goes second, switching creatures third and etc) like Pokémon!

Followed you back!

 

nice progress

 

Thanks man!

 

Okay, another creature done:
concept:

unity:


Well, time for a break for creatures, I still need more but I will make something else now, maybe an environment...

See you guys!

ps.: I'm accepting name suggestions.

 

@Rodolfo Rubens , So curiosity came to me when browsing the web. I don't think you mentioned it anywhere... How many creatures do you plan to release with?

Pokemon had 151, but granted they also had a full team. I've been trying to think of a reasonable number between indie game, but also enough to make it diverse... And I still feel like that number is pretty high. Anything below 50 I feel isn't diverse enough. However, 100 is a lot for you to make.

Do you have any ideas or target number you're aiming for?

-----

Or is this a long term project to the point you think you have enough time to do a large amount? The studio I'm currently working with has a lot of content in our game.. and huge ambitions, but we also don't plan to release for another 3 years.

 

So, since we now are able to keep pushing updates to the game on the fly I think I will release the game with around 50, but I will keep making more creatures and updating the game with them. I hope I finish everything in 3 years too, but I want to release it a bit earlier on Steam early access... To be honest, the more creatures I make the more fast I get, designing, modelling, texturing and etc, of course I still have to decide everything about them, elements, moves, where to get them, evolutions, and I still didn't rigged/animated any of them, but I think eventually the same thing will happen, I will develop a workflow and start to get faster at making those things too, I hope.

I also want to start a crowdfunding campaign when I finish my first milestone and with the money I hope I can pay someone to help me with the creatures or something while I work only on the creatures.

 

Understandable. Personally, aside from playtesting for someone. I wouldn't buy an early access Pokemon-themed game (aside from just supporting the developer, I wouldn't play it seriously). I'd hate to have put a bunch of effort into the creatures (and I get attached to them... I still have my first Pokemon from Pokemon Red, transferred game to game since I was like six, if an update came that was save-breaking I'd cry lol).

I'd honestly just wait until release to play. Most devs sit in Early Access too long nowadays also. H1Z1 & DayZ being a prime examples. I think a game like yours in early access I'd avoid for a good while.

However, Kickstarter? I'd for sure give Creacorp a decent donation if you put together a great presentation later down the road. This is the kind of game (and initial impression) that makes me feel if you had a team, it could become a major game among the current 20 - 28 market that grew up with Pokemon.

--------------

Initial release 50? I'd give a try, not dedication, but a try.

For example, Software Inc. It's on Steam Early Access (I waited months after, about 6, to pick it up). He updates the game about twice a month since going Full Time during the Winter Sale. I only play for about three hours each major update. I don't want to be dedicated to a game that will change.

Once his full release happens, I can totally see me putting in hundreds of hours into his AMAZING game. Just as I now have TONS of hours into Prison Architect, but only after release, despite having bought it during Alpha.

 

Hey @SkyTech6, sorry for the long delay.
I see your point, unfortunately I have no other option, I'm just a guy with a computer with not much resources making the game that I always wanted to make, but I don't understand, the first 50 creatures that I plan to release will not be removed from the game so you will be able to level up all of them and keep them until you finish the game, and supporting developers is a good thing, I mean... we are just indies after all and the players buying the game must understand that...

From a marketing point of view I don't think this is a bad idea since H1Z1 and DayZ are very successful titles, but of course, I don't want to keep making the buyers to wait for the final version forever, testing is important to don't release a bugged and unoptimized product, but I plan to set a roadmap for everything I want to do, make it public (at least for the alpha and beta groups which will be the crowdfunding campaign backers) and work to get everything in this roadmap done. I really want to see this done and I also want to delivery a good product.

Yes, I have a very big document with a lot of briefings of things I will want on my campaign including detailed things I want to be in the trailer, also a very nice pitch text explaining the features in the games among other things that I want in the campaign, I'm updating this document as I have other ideas for the campaign, oh, and it's not Kickstarter, I'm in Brasil and we can't use Kickstarter here, and I don't think it's a good idea to use proxy so I think that IndieGogo or "that new crowdfunding platform for games that I forgot the name" should do it.

--

Yes, 50, including some evolutions and all, I plan to add more and more creatures as I push new updates, not only creatures but even items, clothing and body pieces for character customization, but my focus for new stuff will be on creatures, for sure.

I understand, but I want to get my game on early access when I come to the point where I will only need to add more content and fix bugs (beta phase), so I don't think stuff will drastically change after the game is available on early access, of course, I'm not sure yet, depending on how things go I might be wrong there but that's what I plan to do, release on early access only when I get to the beta phase, which is: all features has been decided and the only thing that might change is the interface and things that don't negatively affect gameplay.

Holy cow, I spent tons of hours on prison architect, argh, the desire to get that most perfect and flawless high security prison! haha, such an amazing game man!! I wish I could get an alpha as good as this one, but I didn't play Software Inc. yet...

 

If your looking for new ways to add content yet dont want to add alot more models, passive skills would not require models (maybe some particle effects) and would add lots of variety.

The game looks pretty cool so far, I like the idea and the models are quite nice!

 

@RavenOfCode Thanks man, I still don't know if there will too much interaction outside of the battles (which will happen on a scene separated from the game world), but I could research if there is anything I could do with passive skills, it's a good idea, thanks!

So, I have some new pics to show, a new character (not a protagonist or anything, I'm still studying lineart and shading styles), I'm going to use this one for prototyping.



The devlog about them: https://yorkgs.wordpress.com/2016/03/28/devlog-12-one-more-sample-character/

 

^-^ Cool looking dude. Very smooth model. Keep it up!

 

Thanks @SkyTech6!

A gif I posted on twitter a couple of days ago:

 

I like the models and textures, good work.

 

Hey, thanks @zenGarden!

 

Hey guys, here it goes some new screenshots of this level:






You can read something about the map on its devlog:
https://yorkgs.wordpress.com/2016/04/07/devlog-13-roken-the-first-level/

 

Walk/Run animation blending, still trying to improve the running animation.

 

Creature following coach screenshot:

 

Hello guys, it's been a very long time! haha
In this time I have made so much things but unfortunately I can't show everything because they are more internal fixes on the battle system, player and creatures movement, etc, etc, but I also made some stuff that I can show, and I made a video about it:

The devlog post detailing a little more of the battle system is here: https://yorkgs.wordpress.com/2016/06/06/devlog-14-first-wip-video-battle-system-etc/

I also made some gifs in case you don't want to see the video:

the player being chased by a hostile wild creature


a preview of the battle


the player's creature following him around

What do you guys think, any feedback?

Next to do is experience points/level up and move points.

 

Looks very cool dude!

 

Thanks @Azami1986, appreciated!

 

I don't like the battle animations, the dog idle is too static , the attack lacks dynamism , attack effects lacks power and are too small, same for the ennemy beetles.
Anyway the overall game looks great and interesting.
Keep the good work.

 

Well, saying it again: everything is still wip, I'm doing all the art, animations, etc just to have something to work with, what I'm really showing is the battle mechanics.

 

It's really cool seeing the progress from last year to now.

I think a well down pseudo pokemon game is something the PC could definitely use. It'll be fun to watch this

 

@Rodolfo-Rubens

Hey I just went through your Twitter and saw all the new concepts ^_^ Looking good as always.

Any chance you have any update video with some more of these creatures battling?

 

Thanks @Acissathar ! I hope I can accomplish exactly what I have in mind to fill this gap in the PCs game library!

Hey @SkyTech6, thanks man! This really cheers me up.
But I still don't have any new videos of the creatures battling, I think soon I will have something since I just finished implementing the experience gaining, level up and move points features.

So, I have some news, I just finished drawing all the 20 creatures that will be available in the crowdfunding campaign prototype, I will post a poster with all of them here but you can check them individually (for a more detailed version of them) in my social media pages.
Here they are:


Now I will start modelling them! I hope you guys like it! ^_^

 

Hey guys! Just made another post!
I just finished modelling/texturing and rigging 2 more creatures!

edit: forgot the devlog, in case you want to leave a like there --> DevLog #16 Creature 6 and 7 done!

#6




#7




I think I should get into some tech details on my devlogs!

But I hope you guys like it!

 

They look great!

What are you using for the models? Blender?

 

Hey @RavenOfCode, I'm using maya for modelling!

 

Hey guys!! So much time!

So, I just uploaded a new video:

The video has no sound but you can read some explanation about it in the video description on youtube and on the the devlog here: https://yorkgs.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/video-log-2-even-more-battle-system/

I hope you guys like it!
edit: next step is to model the rest of the creatures that will be available in the crowdfunding prototype so expect to see lots of updates now!

See you guys next time!

 

@Rodolfo-Rubens Good to see you're still working on this

It's looking good, although I'll note it your attacks should be "X used Y on Z" instead of "X used Y in Z". ^_^

UI in particular is looking very sharp!

 

Animations will need some work to look less rigid, anyway the presentation and game looks very nice