Marrow Development

WARNING: BIG POST
Well, I originally planned on finishing Yo Ghost, and giving it the content that I planned on it having in the first place, but by request from the original author, It'll stay just as it is.

So! Now I'm gonna start on my own, completely original project, Marrow

I guess I'll start by telling you a bit about the game;
It's gonna be a Sci-fi Horror game, and I'm not gonna use the default OHR Battle system, if I can help it.

I'm gonna try scripting a Legend of Zelda styled system for the combat ( With some help from you guys, of course. :p ) , but for the most part, this wont be a very combat-oriented game. I'm aiming for something very story-driven and interesting in that sense. Interesting characters, deep plot, and so on.

Now, to where this thread comes in:

I'll try to have a decent-ish demo up in due time, but until then I'll use this thread as a means of sapping you of your help, guidance, opinion, and soul.

So anyways, Here's a bit of the story:

You'll be playing as a player-namable character, which from this point on I'll just call Ryan.

The year is 4275, and a recent project founded by the T.E.C., an international space program, has sent five groups of two hundred people into different areas of deep space, providing them with enough supplies for about ten years. The point behind this is to study the affects of human survival away from home during long periods of time. Keep in mind, the ships move plenty fast, and are each in range of about 2 - 3 habitable planets, so that the people may acquire extra resources and/or "Settle down" for a bit.

As part of safety procedure, each ship needs to report back to Earth on a bi-monthly basis.

You, Ryan, are part of an investigation squad. Should a ship not report back, you'll be sent over to check it out.

The ship themselves are huge. I might draw up some diagrams of them and post 'em next week or so, but for now; the ships are huge. We'll leave tit at that.

Anyways, one of the ships, I.D.'d #4, hasn't reported, and you're sent over. Upon arrival, everybody seems decent, and there's no problem. According to them, in fact, "Life's been so good here, we just forgot about our duties -that is, to report back."

But, of course, that's not really the case. Everybody aboard is corrupt, and so mentally fucked up that one of them's even decided to dig out his spine. Now It's external. Half of the crew's been killed, and a lot of whom's left over is hiding in the storage deck of the ship. I'll tell more about the people on the ship ( Which'll actually be the focus of the whole game. ) and how they got the way they are later.

One last thing about the game and your character: When you begin the game, you'll hve no idea or memory of whom those people are, or where and who YOU are. Actually, the first third of the game'll be about figuring out everything that's going on and such. Which'll happen via gradual memory recovery and flashbacks ad such.

Now, back to this thread: I don't have any screenshots or concept work yet, but i'll hopefully have loads of it to share next month.

Until then, any thoughts or opinions on the game and It's story?
And anybody wanna go ahead and start with the LoZ styled battle system?[/b]

Some game-related art!

Well, some portraits, actually.


This guy's name is Richard. He's the one with an external spine, that's also your early care-taker. He's actually considerably sane compared to some of the other people, and for the first third of the game, will be your closest friend. He's also gay, and his partner is Branwin. ( I'll have art of him up, later. )

Next up, is you!:

It's worth saying, you'll have about six different stages throughout th game, as you'll gradually become less controlled and more serious. This is you at the beginning, young, alive, and partially confused. Note: unlike richard, the protagonist's character desgin is more or less a WIP.

And lastly, here's You at the end of the game:

Your hair's longer because, obviously, it hasn't been cut. I'll probably end up making this version slightly "Messier" and darker than it is. ( More like Richard, per-se. )

I have several other character ideas and concepts, that I'll share later. ( As well as that, I'll provide more in-depth info about you and Richard. )

But this game's going to have tons of different characters!
I'd love it if you guys could contribute some character designs! Think slightly to extremely insane, and in a sci-fi-ish setting.

Maybe some time next week, I'll habe portraits or WIPs of:

Metal-Man: He needs a name, still. But he's covered in shards of metal, and he has terribly long, frayed hair. He's very pale, and when you meet him, he "Comes" out of the wall and begins screaming random junk, like "They're coming, they're coming, they're coming!" And "Fuuuuuuuuuck me!", and such.

Branwin: He's actually going to have to do with some major plot elements. He looks fairly normal, but has developed a means to climb on the ceiling. He's also Richard's partner.

Some Women: While you will meet some fleshed-out, plot-involved women in the game, most of the ship's women were raped, had their eyes removed, and then locked away in the storage room.... where the monsters live.

Aaaaand, that's it, for now. I'd love some feedback, by the way.

Okay, so, I was in the middle of doin' some of the portraits when I decide to start all over with a new graphical style.

Original Style:


NEW Style:


Both of these are of the room you start out in.

I originally planned on everything appearing "Fine", and for the graphics to be pretty plain until you got to the storage area of the ship, which is where things get fucked up.

But then I thought it would be better if the whole game just had a cool graphical style. Wat do you think? <=== QUE FOR RESPONSE.

Those are fantastic maptiles. Kudos!

Looks good to me
But Beware!
Beware the insidious trap (as I have) of fiddling with graphical styles when wondrous games could otherwise be made!

Is the floor supposed to be glowing in the first one?
I like that effect.

watch out with those floor tiles. i would say they have too many colors, they look at best like they are padded little pillows, at worst like little spikes. im assuming the character will be colorful enough that the grey wont distract at all from them, but they definitely distract from the rest of the objects in the room.

beyond that, it looks good.

Hey, thanks!


Actually, yea. I was originally going for a very "You're seeing light for the first time in a long time" look.

Actually, most of the colors in my floor are just me attempting to smooth it out. The "New" style's supposed to be kinda bold, but I guess the floor is a bit distracting. I'll cut down the contrast and slap on some NPCs next post 'round. I'll also see if I can finish up on some re-done portraits.

Okay, so, if nobody's noticed; I tend to work pretty slowly. Work on my game is more or less an inactive hobby, so don't expect any quick progress.

Anyways, I've been working on the walkabouts, but I can't seem to get them as visible as I'd like.

The first one is my first attempt. Nearly invisible.
The second one is my latest attempt, I've made him a lot wider mostly. He's a bit more visible, but is he still hard to pick out?
And does he look "fat". now?
The third one is just him without a shadow.

I also made two different looks for the flooring, as you can see in the shot. Which one's better?

In some other news, I've made the hero's portraits, and they look really good. I'll have 'em up once i finish some other portraits.

Keep the wide dude.
I think you need more contrast between the dude and the floor.
I'd recommend either
1) Giving wide-dude more colour
or
2) Play with other non-grey metallic colours for the tileset -> copper, shin
or
3) I think shakey had a good point on making those floor tiles more simple.
There's not much need for the kind of shading you did (a tile with black outlines and two other colours might suffice), and it somewhat obscures the form of your guy.

Okay, so, I've been messing around with the colors and what not, trying to improve contrast between the two, and this is what I've come up with:


I like it, personally. I think I've successfully made it possible to see the guy, so I'm ready to move on, at least for now. I'm gonna start work on the intro of the game. Although, I'll definitely come back later and enhance these graphics further. :]

Next up on my not-so-strict to do list: Plotscript the intro ( Which include general game elements, like doors that slide open ), write a bunch of textboxes, and finish up some early portraits.

Woo, progress!

That looks considerably better

Well, because of the Heart of the OHR contest, Marrow is on hold.
But because I still wanna post something, here's a screen from Lightning Heroes:

I have some pretty ambitious plans for this game, but I hiope more than anything else that It'll be able to at least come above last place, or the place before that. Haha.

By the way, would anybody like to compose music for this game?

I like that skyline. The tree needs work, though. It looks like you've been following someone's tutorial a little too closely. Real trees have a much narrower base with respect to the leafy area and they don't look like pom-poms have been stuck all over the top.

The trunk is nicely done, but for it to work in its present form, the tree needs to be at least three times as tall as it is and the branches need to extend much further.

...Sorry, I came here to compliment your skyline and got distracted.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Who's tutorial? I mostly just copy and pasted the bunches all over the top.

But yeah, the tree's proportions need some help.
I'll see what I can later, but right now I'm working on a battle backdrop and the intro of the game in general.

I think he's referring to when Tsugumo was analyzing Seiken Densetsu's trees and broke it down to a bunch of spheres.

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<TheGiz> oh hai doggy, oh no that's the straw that broke tjhe came baclsb