AlarCity: Development Thread

[Tsak]

Will do soon

[Tsak]

But first a few words about the actual 'story' of the game. I think this will make connecting the dots easier once we go to a more detailed analysis on the new features. Here's a short synopsis:

"The world is in turmoil! AlarCity, the ethereal God-capital has recently been invaded by a group of nasty -yet powerful- extra-dimentional false Gods! With their strange, exotic magic and technology they managed to overthrow the old order and have now established their dominion over the lands, bringing chaos and dissarray!

In a desperate move facing certain defeat and their inevitable demise, the old Gods managed to funnel all their remaining powers and essences to various vessels (known as 'power crystals') and scattered them across the region!

You resume the role of "Zoid", fire elemental, offspring of the God of Fire! Your goal is to travel through the continent and gather all the elements and powers to restore the world order while enforcing godly justice upon the usurpers!"

[Tsak]

Now that we've got this out of the way let's go to the revised gameplay details with a presentation on the new UIs:



The HUD

- Top left (red gem) = your cash, collect coins and gems to raise this.
- Bottom left (red bar) = your hit points, once the bar reaches zero it's game over! Note that the game will feature no lives but there will be a save system in place (probably between the levels) plus a way to boost your max health permanently as well as an armor feature that will make it even harder to get knocked out (more on those below).
- Top right (blue orb) = your XP orbs, you auto collect those every time you level up. Accross the game there will also be scattered or hidden XP orbs (blue and red) that can be picked up.
- Bottom right (blue bar) = your actual XP. Once the bar fills up it's level up time!
- Middle = your dual weapon slots.
- Note here that the score indicator is gone from the HUD but the game will still track your score!



The SHOP

- Top left = Cash or XP orbs cost. The sign changes from XP orbs to gems depending on what your selection costs.
- Top right = The level of your character. Kill enemies, finish stages, complete certain objectives to gain XP and level up! Once you level up you get an amount of XP orbs you can then spend to upgrade. Standard fare!
- Top middle = the label/name of each one of the four categories of slots within the shop. Top row is Upgrades, then Weapons, Elements and last Items.

- Upgrades row = Upgrade Zoid, your weapons or your elements! From left to right:
1) Health upgrade(costs XP orbs) = boost your max HP!
2) Armor upgrade (costs XP orbs) = boost you Armor. This reduces the amount of damage you get from each hit (percentage % off from each hit)!
3) Speed upgrade (costs XP orbs) = boost your moving speed!
4) Criticals upgrade (costs xp orbs) = boost your Critical hits. This will make cliticals happen more often and be more deadly!
5) Weapon or Element upgrade (costs cash) = boost the effectiveness of a weapon or element you own. With each level, weapons or elements will gain various advances in their stats or even new abilities!
6) Weapons slots upgrade (costs XP orbs) = add extra upgrade slots to your weapons (max=6).
7) Elements slots upgrade (costs XP orbs) = add extra upgrade slots to your elements (max=6).

- Weapons row = Weapons you find are stored here. You can freely equip each weapon to one of your 2 HUD slots by selecting it (note you cannot equip the same weapon to both your 2 HUD slots). To find new weapons you need to track down and collect the power crystals that contain them.

- Elements row = Here are stored all the elements you find. You can freely equip an Element you own to any weapon equipped to your HUD slots. The weapon equipped will take the color of that element. (note you can freely equip the same element to your 2 HUD slots as long as they do contain a weapon). As with weapons, to find new elements you need to track down and collect the power crystals that contain them.

- Items row = Here you can craft (in exchange for cash) specific items. As with weapons and elements, to find new item 'recipies' you can craft, you have to track down and collect the power crystals that contain each. Note here that most of the items that can be crafted you can already find and collect them in-game but they are consumed immidiately. Here's our current items list (from left to right).
1) Red HP potion = recovers some of your health.
2) Blue HP potion = recovers all of your health.
3) Missile = gives to your weapon a temporary boost in it's level for an X amount of shots.
4) Cross = pauses all enemies on the stage for a limited amount of time.
5) Blaze pill = transforms your body into an unstoppable force of destruction for a limited amount of time
6) Hero pill = gives you full level to all your weapons for a limited amount of time
7) Storm pill = Massive damage to all enemies on screen

[Predseda]

Tsak, it has already been said: consider adjusting the font in the shop. It is really not easy to read.

[Tsak]

Thanx, well I did adjust that already. If you check the previous mockup (I mean the one that Amigajay commented on) it was indeed more difficult to read due to the steep dark shading at the edges. This is no longer the case here. In general consider that the font is quite big already and -of course- in full screen it looks considerably bigger (unlike what you see here) so I don't think readability is an issue no more.

[Gzegzolka]

I must say it once more time - awesome
You made good change.
I would love to play this game more and more.

[Predseda]

The picture is 512x512, so the game will run in Hires?

[earok]

Originally Posted by Predseda

The picture is 512x512, so the game will run in Hires?

Screenshot is scaled up to 2x2 pixels, we're only planning to release in low res/non interlaced (native resolution of the game is 256x256)

[Tsak]

The mockup above is pixel doubled just to be a bit more readable here in the forum.

edit... ah Erik beat me to the punch!

[Tsak]

@Gzegzolka: Thanx man! In general I'm not sure how the public see this. I have a feel that simpler designs are perhaps more desirable (from a retro perspective), while Alarcity has it's fair share of complexity for a shooter.

I'm also not sure if much of the active Amiga crowd has even heard of the project, if it acknowledges what we're trying to achieve here, or how it evaluates the quality so far (which seems to be the general gripe these days regarding new Amiga games).

Perhaps there is a silent majority out there just waiting to see if this is for real and where we're going with it. So, my guess is the sooner we bring to the table some tangible and playable evidence (or at least a video of some sort), the sooner we'll find out

[Predseda]

I already paid some deposit IIRC, so I want it very much!

[Tsak]

Thanks mr president!
We appreciate this!

Oh and one more note: now that the story allows it, maybe -just maybe- we get to see different player characters as well (like other elementals). Not promising, but we'll see!

[Tsak]

[ Show youtube player ]

Fresh update: here is a showcase for the in-game music. A huge thanks to Saimon for this!

I have to say he managed to pull off a real feat here, creating the base for a beautiful song full of surprises, themes and melodies, nearly 7:25min long while managing to stay at 100k and using just 2 channels!

[alpine9000]

Originally Posted by Tsak

[ Show youtube player ]

Fresh update: here is a showcase for the in-game music. A huge thanks to Saimon for this!

I have to say he managed to pull off a real feat here, creating the base for a beautiful song full of surprises, themes and melodies, nearly 7:25min long while managing to stay at 100k and using just 2 channels!

Very nice indeed. I like the progression and it is quite a full sound for 2 channels!

[Tsak]

Thanks!

Btw, our fb page: https://www.facebook.com/pixelglassamiga/

[Gzegzolka]

Cool to see progres, that music sound moody

[Tsak]

Thanx man! There's actually daily progress with the game but we're holding on those small tweaks and features added for a big announcement later. Ingame music however is a big deal and was a point of solid criticism for the early demo, so yeah, here it is now

Originally Posted by alpine9000

Very nice indeed. I like the progression and it is quite a full sound for 2 channels!

This did surprise me as well! We didn't use any merged samples and it's no chiptune either, so my expectation was for a more minimal arrangement. First time for me to work on a 2 track song and I was blown away to discover in practice how beefy and melodic it could get at the same time, despite the shortcomings! (check 2:00 onwards f.e.)

[saimon69]

Had some time to perfect my two channel technique during the last couple years
the best of the two channel tracks i made so far will be in the R3D platform game - when Krzystof and Juen will be able to release it - am going to do some pitch to support it in the near future

The cooperation with Tsak was funny because got pleasantly surprised the way he was able to lead the tune straying away from the main path was tracing, but always able to come back when needed; am open to more four hands tunes!

[Tsak]

We'd be doing more "4-hand" tunes in the future for sure man

[Neil79]

Once again our good friends PixelGlass have contacted us to let us know about their in development action/shoot em up of the Amiga game 'Alarcity', as not only do we have an exclusive image to show you above, but they have also released an in game Music showcase! This game which was originally assembled for the Retro Komp retro gamedev competition, has come a long way from its first showing as now it features music with sfx by JMD ( Simone Bernacchia ).

http://www.indieretronews.com/2017/0...miga-game.html