My Unnamed MML Fan-Game Project!

[wobbumash]

DISCLAIMER: I PLAN ON CHANGING THE THREAD'S TITLE AS SOON AS I GET A GOOD NAME FOR THE PROJECT

Well, for those of you know that didn't read my introductory post, I'm Ramiro, a game developer from Brazil and I'm working on a MML Fan Game. I'll keep this thread as the hub for the project and devlogs as suggested by Dashe , who I also want to thank for the welcoming in the board!

Guys, this game is in it's earliest stages of development, so sadly I don't have much to show you guys to feel how good the game will end up being. But I'm focused on this project a lot because of the passion I have for MML2, so I'm hoping to make this game be as good as I possibly can make it. I'm sending this gif of what I have so far as a demo.



What is done:

To walk you through what I have done so far (2 weeks in development, working only on my spare time since I'm a teacher), I'll go by each of the features that I worked on. Starting with the most challenging thing to make: THE WATER! At first, I thought it would be an easy job to create some water in the game. However, the problem lied on the shading style of the game. Since I'm aiming to modernize the appearance of MML in this project, I went with a custom Cell Shader for everything. The problem with that is the fact that the water uses a surface shader and I had to correct it's normals in code for it to work properly. After a bunch of trials I've managed to make it work as intended, and in my honest opinion it looks pretty darn good. 

The 3D models for the characters was actually the most straight-forward part of the development so far, since I had a bunch of reference images to work with. On Data however, I had to "remake" it's looks, since the psx models were really simple and flat. Both models turned out pretty cool for now, so there's not much to talk about with them. However, the modelling of Elysium's Central Area was really challenging. I had to constantly go back and forth if I wanted to go full 3D or use texturing. I stuck with 3D so that it would be easier for me, since I hate painting.

What's to come:

Now, to talk about the things that I'll add next:

The main character is the next addition, It'll be a female digger with a passion for doing things on her own. She'll be a digger and a spotter at the same time, since she likes to work alone. I have a good idea of how I want her design to look, however, if anyone reading this thread wants to help or give some suggestions, you're more than welcome to and I'll try my best to engage with all of your ideas!

I'll finish the different types of horrokos and their attacks so that they can interact with the player as soon as I'm done with the main character. Probably all the animations will be rough for now, because I want to have a demo-room ready to play for you guys before I polish animations and alike.

Next I'll add the combat system. Our main character (who doesn't have a name, yet), will have two weapons (for now): a Gatling Buster for it's main attacks and a Compressor to compress enemies and use them to blast others. This will probably be the next major road-block for the demo, but I wish to finish it in less than 2 months.

I'll keep updating this thread as I make progress with the game, so you guys can follow along my progress. If you have any questions or suggestions, just drop them down in the comments and we can talk about it! I want this to be a game for the fans of the series, and I know that I may end up being biased sometimes on decisions so any suggestions are more than welcome!

Progress Report #001:

I've used this entire week to rough out the MC's design. At the moment I can only show you the earliest of stages in her design development, however I plan on finishing her in about 2 weeks maximum. Anyway, here're some pictures to showcase what I've done so far:

#1



#2



#3



#4



I hope you guys liked what I showed in this post, and thank you for reading it. Now I'm going back to working on this thing, wish me luck!

[Rockman Striker]

Hello and welcome Ramiro! If there's something I love about the Legends series is its cell-shading style, and I think your shader looks awesome as well as your 3D models.
Now, I'm not a pro game designer but I know a couple of things that may help you with your project, I had a project called "The Master System" you can find the thread on this same forum, it's a project on which I spent 6 years of my life basically because I, 1) had lots of ideas I wanted to throw in but 2) I didn't had the necessary skills to make them a reality, I also 3) had no real guide or plan on how to develop the game and features, and 4) I had really high expectations of my project and I did not allow myself to lower the bar even a little according to my capacities.
I don't want to sound rude or discourage you, it's all the contrary! I want you to know what are some of the problems you might face while developing your game and think how to avoid them or overcome them according to your preferences or abilities.
It might help you reading the thread of my project, it's a 6 year long thread so it's quite lengthy, but I think you'll catch something useful only by scrolling through it.

That's a lot of speaking about myself, I'm sorry 😅
What are your plans for your game? Do you have any preferred game engine? Is it going to have linear levels or areas free to explore?

[wobbumash]

Sept 8, 2020 16:55:10 GMT -5 Rockman Striker said:

Hello and welcome Ramiro! If there's something I love about the Legends series is its cell-shading style, and I think your shader looks awesome as well as your 3D models.
Now, I'm not a pro game designer but I know a couple of things that may help you with your project, I had a project called "The Master System" you can find the thread on this same forum, it's a project on which I spent 6 years of my life basically because I, 1) had lots of ideas I wanted to throw in but 2) I didn't had the necessary skills to make them a reality, I also 3) had no real guide or plan on how to develop the game and features, and 4) I had really high expectations of my project and I did not allow myself to lower the bar even a little according to my capacities.
I don't want to sound rude or discourage you, it's all the contrary! I want you to know what are some of the problems you might face while developing your game and think how to avoid them or overcome them according to your preferences or abilities.
It might help you reading the thread of my project, it's a 6 year long thread so it's quite lengthy, but I think you'll catch something useful only by scrolling through it.

That's a lot of speaking about myself, I'm sorry 😅
What are your plans for your game? Do you have any preferred game engine? Is it going to have linear levels or areas free to explore?

Thanks man!

So, I've got a bit of experience on game development, so I'm well aware of trying to swallow more than you can chew, but the heads-up and experience sharing is always welcome. Don't fret, you didn't disencourage me, actually I really liked reading about your project and knowing that you liked mine! Also, I'm in a hurry right now but I'll read your thread to learn more about it! Also, if you want to give ideas and suggestions on my project, feel free my friend, those things can only make it better! So, my plan is to make a different game, but with the same type of experience. I want to explore all the things we couldn't on the originals and expand a little bit on the mechanics as well. I'm going for a map like in Legends 2, semi-open world with areas to fully explore. Also, A LOT OF RUINS! But I don't want to think about the world too much right now since it's still too early in development. For now I'm planning on having solid combat and challenging enemies.

If you have more questions about the project as well, feel free to post them and I'll try my best to answer them!

[wobbumash]

I've took the last few days off, had to vent out and get a better understanding of how I want the MC to look like, so there hasn't been much progress on it. However, I've managed to get the basic shape and size of her arm units figured out and thought I should show it to you!

Idle Front:



Idle Back:



Aiming Special Weapon Front:



Aiming Special Weapon Back:



These are just examples for the basic shape of the weapons, next up is to actually model the weapons and texture them. I'm not an artist, I'm really impatient so it's easy for me to get frustrated while working on asset creation. I expect this to be the slowest part of the development of the game. But the good news are that after the MC's done I can focus on the gameplay and hopefully have some working prototype soon enough! 

Feel free to suggest ideas for the designs or to make her look better guys! Also, I still don't have a name for her...

[Rockman Striker]

She's looking pretty good! Does she have any motif, personality quirk or strong characteristic that defines her? It could be used to name her, that's how I typically name my own characters, for example: I turned my incomplete fan game I've mentioned before into my own original webcomic (shameless self promotion again, I know 😅) the main characters are based on Yuna and Sera, and I wanted to create a night vs day motif for them, so I named them "Luna" and "Sol" which means Moon and Sun in Spanish, and it also kinda sounds like Yuna and Sera, so there's also a hidden pun or reference.
If you need any help with Blender maybe I could be helpful, I've recently began using 2.8 so I'm not accustomed to the new UI yet but anything related to modelling, texturing or animation just ask!

[wobbumash]

Sept 16, 2020 19:11:45 GMT -5 Rockman Striker said:

She's looking pretty good! Does she have any motif, personality quirk or strong characteristic that defines her? It could be used to name her, that's how I typically name my own characters, for example: I turned my incomplete fan game I've mentioned before into my own original webcomic (shameless self promotion again, I know 😅) the main characters are based on Yuna and Sera, and I wanted to create a night vs day motif for them, so I named them "Luna" and "Sol" which means Moon and Sun in Spanish, and it also kinda sounds like Yuna and Sera, so there's also a hidden pun or reference.
If you need any help with Blender maybe I could be helpful, I've recently began using 2.8 so I'm not accustomed to the new UI yet but anything related to modelling, texturing or animation just ask!

Sorry for the late reply man, I was struggling with the main weapon's design. Ended up looking like this (Which I think looks pretty ok  ):



Well, I must say that I don't have much information on her motivations yet because I haven't really thought about the story yet. My plan is to make the game first and later worry about story, since I don't want to focus too much on story yet (so I don't get too involved with the story and never develop anything ). At the moment all that I've stablished for the character is that she's really into refractors and how they generate energy. She'll be looking for different refractors in her adventures, not that great of an adventure but she'll probably stumble onto something bigger.

As for the help you mentioned... I don't think I need anything yet, but I have something in mind something for when I'm finished with the demo. But if you want to discuss something just hit me up

[SULucina]

   Both a Spotter and a Digger, eh? Sounds kinda like this little Unit here, since I could never trust anybody to do stuff for me, nor could the character of the same name as I. Excellent. Oh, and uh, hi.

   I presume this is going to be similar the type of gameplay that we see in MML proper already, right? All the power to you because I sure as heck have no know-how on the matter. If I made a game with my main character (sorry, ugly old Paint pic,) it would need the budget of a triple-A title. Hence why I've never bothered to try and create a game myself. I'm also lacking in the programming and music dept. so I guess I can't help you in those areas. If I've got the free time, I might be able to help on the artsy-fartsy side of things regarding the project if you don't mind. Just beware of my lack of presence for a solid month - I usually like to isolate myself from others to better contemplating ideas for my work. So, if you're willing to wait about 20-something days for a response due to my busyness and self-induced solitude, then yeah.

   To be on the safe side, starting with such basic missions like searching and collecting refractors would be a great start; don't attempt to do anything that'll go over your head/cost you too much of a brainache. From there, you can begin complicating the missions and make variations of the same seek and collect and/or battle missions ala The Master System-style. One important side note that I've heard from somewhere especially regarding games centered around a plot is that you should know how your game begins and ends; without either, there's no telling when development's going to end. Then, you can begin to flesh things out and beef up the majority of the game's mid-section.


   ...I could come up with a story for this, but I bet you want to direct the plot out yourself whenever the time comes. That doesn't stop me from giving you pointers though.