Asset art decisions

Carrying on from my last post, I'm gong to talk about what types of tiles and sprites I want to use.

  I'm trying to avoid worrying too much about art direction on this project since I mainly wanted to focus on programming and game design. So I decided on using mostly premade free assets. (I still wound up worrying, but I don't spend time drawing so idk) 

  Originally I was going to use LPC style graphics because there are a lot already made, and I'll probably still use some things from that, but if I'm planning on making a horror game, I want something a little less cartoony.

LPC graphics have the benefit of being open source with a style guide, so there are new sprites and bg tiles being made in the style still.

  The next set, (the set that I plan to to go with) is the older pixel work from Pixel Art World. I'm looking to use mainly their pre MV 32x32 environments and objects. Their autotiles are pretty good also. The styling is notably less toony with softer more natural colors. 

I this style is a good in-between of the LPC style and the more realistic "Mack" style that gets used the most in RPG horror titles. Graphics with a little bit of realism work well in horror setting because they are adaptable. 

I fell back into the asset hunter abyss

  So I finally have a decent, concrete concept for a game. And then I proceeded to get no work done. I had the stupid dummy moron idiot idea to switch to 16x16 instead of 32x32, because that's the Yume Nikki resolution, and then I was back on the tileset spiral.

I eventually realized that was fucking dumb, so I didn't go through with it. But that was only after I downloaded a few tilesets, and resized a few more. My art program resizes things blurry so sizing down isn't the move.

I was out Saturday, and then I slept all day today, so no tangible game progress has been made.

first serious steps into game creation using the peyton burnham method

  Next project file. I'm following Peyton Burnham's basic RPG tutorial. I got majorly sidetracked looking for tiles and other assets because I am lazy. More importantly, I don't like having to stop and do something else and then go back, but it seems that I wound up doing it anyway. I took a long cut. 

  After a day(night) of lollygagging I've got the footage above. 

Don't be like me. Don't waste time hunting down tilesets. You might not even like tilesets. I might not even like tile sets. I debated back and forth after wasting time researching tile sizes, and scrubbing through old half broken blogs, if I even liked how tile based environments worked.

  In some cases, tile based can speed up the level building process, but the rigidity can severely slow you don't if you don't know what you want or need. I had the issue where I wasn't completely sure what I wanted to make, so I didn't know what type of tiles I needed. Everything down to the plot, location, tile resolution affects what kind of tiles you wind up using. Art styles clash if you can't find everything you need from one person. Making the 1st room was a headache, but today when I made the 2nd room (a hallway) it was much easier.

It's hard when you're making all of the original decisions, but once it's decided and you're just slapping down walls and floors, it gets much simpler. 

Although, I did the furniture wrong. So I'll have to go back in and change the tileset and then make another one for the furniture exclusively. Very annoying. The process of setting up the tileset in my art program is what was so slow and annoying in the first place.

  Currently as of writing, I have the game set up in multiple layers of tiles. It's kind of annoying though, and since I did the furniture off a whim and didn't go back to the video, I put the furniture on the tileset instead of letting them be their own sprites and objects. This slows the room building down. I also have another layer over the player and other objects, that allows for depth through layering, but again, it is slow and annoying. 

If anyone knows other ways of doing this separate from Peyton's method of making the furniture objects and not background tile pieces, let me know in the comments.

The day I wasn't really working I was also brainstorming whether or not I want to use prerendered flat backgrounds like in the game Moon to 

1. maybe make the game run smoother in the end, because as an old pc haver, I hate unoptimized games.
2. have softer more natural visuals, because tiles are Very Square.

Alternative methods of making a 2d game didn't originally occur to me, because I was so used to the tileset RPG method of map creation. Game maker isn't made specifically for RPGs the way RPGmaker is, so I can technically do whatever I want and just give off the illusion of a standard puzzle RPG.

This process will probably take a lot of experimentation, since forums tend to not be very helpful in their attitudes. Whatever I discover will end up on this blog.

My very first foray into game maker studio

  I've vaguely wanted to make a top down RPG type of game for a while inspired by various RPG horror games, like The Witch's House, Yume Nikki, and Ib. I didn't want to spend money on RPGmaker, because I don't like spending my money on things I'm not sure about. I wanted to have some proficiency before I start throwing money at my ideas.

So instead I tried out a few different free game engines in the past like Unity and Godot. However, I found them really difficult at the time. (It might be different now.) 

  This time, while I was in a bit of a rabbit hole, going back to creepypasta and watching videos about old exe games, and most of these games were originally made in GameMaker. There were so many of these games and they SUCKED. Straight poo poo.

And that's when I realized that if there are so many (terrible) full games that are clearly made by 14 year olds, GameMaker must be super accessible. Lo, and behold, my theory is correct. 

I started watching tutorials to see how the engine worked before I even bothered to download it, and even the coding seemed baby easy. 

Here's an example of what I could make in less than 40 minutes of actual editor time.

• Top down movement
• collision
• auto tile backdrop
• bare minimum sprite creation
• recoloring imported sprites in editor

All off of one tutorial. And it wasn't even the most optimized code either I just followed along with whatever bro was saying.

Some of the stuff I just f*cked around and figured out myself.

That footage is from the day before yesterday. Like Tuesday I think.

Tiles are stolen from this guy.

A little about me, intro no.2

  I've been wanting to make games since like elementary school where I was watching youtubers (and my older brother) play all sorts of cool games on all different consoles and stuff. However, my brain is kind of scuffed so mathematics and computers don't come naturally to me. Not being able to understand basic math until like 6th grade slowed me down massively. I'm still pretty behind on math and logic, which made traditional programming fairly inaccessible, because those are what computers are built on. Me not being able to fathom how computers worked put a huge road block on me learning code. Until recently.

  I spent most of my life so far learning visual art, and I'm really good at it. I thought drawing would be what I based my career and general internet presence around for the rest of my life. I drew for years, posted on DeviantArt and made good friends, but I didn't get anywhere "career-wise" and then DeviantArt started dying off rapidly, then I got burn out and mostly retired from doing digital art. 

I've only drawn/painted a few things this whole year just for the sake of doing it. Something in my brain just switched, and drawing wasn't something I just did naturally for no reason anymore. After a while of just lying around wondering wtf I was going to do with all the time I used to spend drawing. I started trying to make videos (didn't really like that), then blogging, then I started doing some writing, and playing Roblox, and creating on Roblox, and now I've started learning to actually make games in game maker.

I don't know why, but when my brain stopped drawing, I unlocked new abilities. Like being able to actually sit down and write, and the ability to actually comprehend code.

 Now, all the stuff I listed isn't the comprehensive, chronological skill path I've been on throughout my life.

I've dabbled in game making with scratch a few times on and off, but it never really worked out for me. Even though it's supposed to be a simplified version of traditional scripting, I still had an extremely hard time. This was because fundamentally, I couldn't understand. I could copy block by block to make the most mid dress-up known to man, but most of the time, I couldn't tell you what any of the code actually meant, or what it did. That sort of deeper fundamental understanding is what eluded me for most of my life so far. Drawing was intuitive, math was like seeing a 4th color.

Now I've got that 4th color cone and I finally understand that the code is talking to each other. It all makes way more sense. and here I am now.

I 've been dipping my toes in a little, but I want to start writing about the process before I start going in too far. 

Hello Hello! intro no.1

 This is the beginning of my journey making games. This blog is where I'll be documenting my journey to learn game making and the development of  said games. I'll be pretty casual here, so expect to see typos and hastily written posts.
the blog posts are just for archiving and helping people like me. they are not really made to be content in of themselves. This is for fun basically. 

Thank you for reading, stay tuned for my progress.