Blogs - lukasIrzl

Battle Soul Memories - #1

Introduction

You might ask yourself: "What's Battle Soul Memories about?".

Do not die!

Easy!

Well... yes and no. In Battle Soul Memories, you will encounter different enemies, different bosses and walk through different stages. The further you progress, the harder the game becomes.

How will it be possible to beat the game then?

As you progress, you will unlock new items and skills, each resulting in different ways to play. There's an almost unlimited amount of item combinations, resulting in different runs each time.

What happens, if I die?

Death is permanent in Battle Soul Memories. The only option left is to choose a character again and try your best to not die.

So far, I covered the basics of Battle Soul Memories. If you have additional questions, be sure to leave a comment and I will answer them.

Key Features

• Action!
• Random dungeons!
• Even more action!
• Bosses!
• Items!
• Even more items!

Screenshots

Social Media

Itch.io: Lukasirzl.itch.io

Twitter: Twitter.com

Hi there,

this week I was working on following stuff.

Scaling issues

I was struggling with the scaling issues. As you might have seen, the "pixels" displayed on the screen did not always had the same size. Now, this issue is fixed and it looks way better. Check it out:

Mouse dragging

Because of the scaling issue, now not all the tiles are visible on one image. In order to navigate through the map, you can now use the mouse and drag the camera around. You're going to use this feature in greater maps in order to navigate your characters and get an overview.

Title screen

Finally, I implemented a title screen. From here, you can navigate to a new game, your settings and exit the game. It is currently under development, so it might change a bit. The background image should stay the same.

That's it for this update. Be sure to follow this blog in order to stay up2date. :3

Thank you for reading! :D

As always, if you have questions or any kind of feedback feel free to post a comment or contact me directly.

Additionally, if you want to know where I get my ideas regarding pixel arts from, you can check out my Pinterest board.

Hi guys and gals! :3

Here's my third blog entry for Forest Strike. This week I was designing the AI, which give me more struggles than expected. So, there's not much graphical stuff to show this time. That's why I am going a little bit more into detail and explain the game a bit.

Project Idea

Forest strike is a 2D round-based strategy game in pixel-art style featuring animals as characters. Each round is divided into multiple phases, such as:

• Pre Phase
• Dice Phase
• Move Phase
• Action Phase
• Post Phase

Pre phase is resetting and initializing needed variables each round.

After the pre phase (which is handled within a single step), the dice phase randomly picks the number of steps you can move.

Now, after we got the number, we finally will be able to move the characters. Moving the characters is limited to an amount of steps (dice phase). During the Move Phase, you can move your characters and use items, such as the simple bomb.

Items are split into two groups: "active" and "passive". Active items will be shown in the inventory and can be used during the Move Phase, while passive ones will influence different values of the game.

The active items are not handled instantly, they get a sequence number and will be handled in the next phase, the Action Phase. If there are items placed (like a bomb), the action phase handles every item sequentially (by their sequence number). This way, the game provides a great variety regarding building your own strategy.

Lastly, the Post Phase checks some stuff and jumps to the Pre Phase.

So, what is planned:

• a bunch of items, characters and maps
• different game modes
• local multiplayer
• local singleplayer (with AI opponents)

Optional features:

• online multiplayer
• story mode
• boss battles

Technology

The game is running in Game Maker 2 in order to deploy the game to multiple platforms. Additionally, I really love working with Game Maker, because of its simple, yet powerful, UI and features. The software I use to draw the resources is Aesprite. Also, I am learning how to use Pyxel Edit to create awesome tilesets.

Regarding platforms, I want to cover at least Windows, Linux and Mac. Eventually, a mobile export will be done as well with slight modifications.

Currently, no music or sound is included in the game. In future, I will compose a few tracks in Cubase with a few external VSTs (depending on the genre). I'll keep you up to date as soon as I have a few tracks.

Creating sounds has never been one of my strengths, so I’ll have to buy a bundle or hire a composer. Eventually, I’ll try creating a few sounds on my own.

Key Features

New explosion animation

I changed the explosion quite a bit. Instead of blowing up the things in one way, I added a small delay to the single explosion.

Random starting player

If you start a game, the starting player is now randomly chosen. Should be a general thing... and this week I implemented it. :D

New character

Here we go with another character. I was thinking about a mouse, which reminded me a little bit of forests. Currently, I only did the "idle"-animation.

Thank you for reading! :D

If you have questions or any kind of feedback feel free to post a comment or contact me directly.

Hi there, round 2 of dev blogs! :D

Quite a few new features (and bugs) were implemented this week. Check them out: (just a quick info, I won't be listing bugs ;))

Key features

New floor tiles

The floor tiles changes and I added random grass/flower sprites. Now, the game does not look static anymore. Additionally, the destroy-able blocks are randomly placed at the start of the game.

Cursor sprites

Instead of the old casual windows mouse, I added a bigger hand sprite, which fits the game better.

Inventory

So, the biggest feature I had to struggle with is the inventory system.

The inventory icon is on the left upper side of the screen. It is only shown, if a character is selected. All active items you obtain will be listed here. The bomb is the only item, which is always shown.

The cursor sprite changes if an item is selected. In this case, I chose the bomb, so the sprite changes to a hand holding a bomb. The item can only be placed on red fields. The red fields depend on the item selected.

Number roll

Here is a GIF of the random number roll at each round. It represents the number of steps you can walk with your characters. If you gather "Step+" items, a info will be shown within the number roll.

Thank you for reading! :D

If you have questions or any kind of feedback feel free to post a comment or contact me directly.

Forest Strike - Dev Blog #1

Hi there, I want to introduce you to a project I am working on - "Forest Strike". It is a round-based Bomberman-like game which features animals, a bunch of items, strategic elements, great pixel-art and explosions of course.

Key features

Movement

Forest Strike is built upon a round-based system, which means, you can choose from your characters which one you want to move if it is your turn. The character moves block by block using the A* path finding algorithm. At the beginning of each round you get a random amount of steps you can move with all your characters. See following example:

Bombs and Explosions

Forest Strike offers an old-fashioned way to get rid of stones, which are in your way, or to defeat the opponent - Bombs. In each round, you can place as many bombs as you want, but be careful, because they can harm your character as well. Here is an example of using a bomb:

Items

There will be a whole bunch of items you can collect in order to gain an advantage over your opponents. Some of them are passive like the "Step+" (increase the amount of steps you can walk) while others will be available in your inventory to select and use manually. Here is a short GIF of a fox collecting an item:

Thank you for reading! :D

If you have questions or any kind of feedback feel free to post a comment or contact me directly.

Hi there!

I did a new website for my game called "Tales of Vastor".

It is now a one page site instead of the old causal one.

Additionally, I added a new enemy. Its the "Old baron", which is another boss in the game.

Check out the new website here: www.lukasirzl.at

Hopy you guys like it! :D