MADMAN and Thank You!
Community Forums/Showcase/MADMAN and Thank You!
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| This is it! Years in the making, Dr. Dungeon presents his masterpiece: MADMAN! An all-new Indy role playing game! This was the hardest thing I ever did in my life, but it never would have got done without you guys. I was on these boards more than my IDE and you guys were there for me every step of the way. You rock! You roll! You rule! Thank you!!! Check out the final result, Dr. Dungeon's MADMAN! http://www.machgryphon.com/ |
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| Looking good Robby. Like the old-skool style. Congrats on the release! |
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| This looks interesting. Congratulations on getting it finished. What tools did you use? Is it to be a commercial release or free? Having looked at the screenshots I have to say I didn't like the character portraits too much - they didn't fit well with the other elements to my eye. Are they done with Poser? Sorry 'bout that - intended as constructive criticism. Good luck with it. |
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| Thanks mkg. I used poser at first, but changed later because all the characters look like Barbie dolls and too similar to the prop characters they are based on. Its important they look pretty good as the game is very character driven. I had to balance a little between making them look good and making them a little more "pixelated" to appear more retro. Have a couple playtesters voting on this. Any ideas? The only tools I really used were Blitz itself and Corel Paintshop. It literally took many years, expanded from an earlier game I had started. Definitely for commercial release, but pretty cheap price-wise. I'm getting a lot of feedback from the testers as well as a lot of guys on various Indie rpg sites, so trying to do a little better than my old DOS Ultizurk games. :) We'll see what happens. It was an unbelievably difficult task making this! |
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| The map and the characters on the map are handdrawn so the insert pictures should be also. The photo pictures look out of place. |
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| Yo mkg and Doggie - I was a little uncertain of the character quality vs. style integrity, so I did a little re-vamping of the portraits, plus added a few new screens. Check it out again and let me know what you think. Thanks, -Rob |
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| I think they are better now than they were. |
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| A little better perhaps. I was thinking along the lines of completely handdrawn so they look more like a painting than a photo. Just a thought is all. |
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| Two new trailers up for Madman! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knDxiGmMWFM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PsPYylaUd0 Get ready for the madness!! |
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| Looking good. I'm sure you've invested a lot of time in creating this. The portraits / avatar / grid character images are a bit out of place for me. |
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| First of all: Congrats on finishing such a big project on your own! Here are some impressions - some good, some bad - on its appearance: -> General: - The interface could and should be improved in several places. Especially since you reserve that much space to it (with a relatively small viewport into the game world). As it is the whole interface looks positively amateurish, IMHO. Here are some suggestions that are easy and quick to correct: -> Character generation: - The character editor with lots of skills, the rolling stats appears to be complex. I hope that you actually use the skills in a way that different characters play differently (and not only get punished for not having certain skills). - You were a bit sloppy on the left/right arrow-buttons on each stat/skill entry: These are "3D" buttons with lighting on the edges but you simply flipped the right arrow image to get the left one. See the problem with the lighted edge? It has to be on the same side to be consisten. So always use the right side for this (imagine the light source shining on the edges on the upper left). Copy the right arrow icon and only change the arrow on it to get the left arrow icon but keep the edges the same. - Why did you give the three buttons INFO, ROLL & DONE a completely different shading? Such a "reflection" shading is incoherent with the edge-light-shading of the arrow buttons (which is better). It's also OK if you make these buttons slightly larger as the player will use them frequently (compared to the arrow buttons) - but keep the font size! It's a bad idea to "fill" such a button completely with text. The same goes for the SAVE icons in the save game screen. -> Game window (video: "MADMAN Gameplay 1"): - The amount of interactive elements (trim sheep, forge weapons etc.) is impressive! Well done! - The automap is also very nice! - The mouse pointer changing to green is a good idea - but why use a white-gloved Micky Mouse hand? Doesn't really fit the scenario, IMHO. - The inventory is always on-screen? Why? And why always 30 items, regardless how weak or strong a player is? And why is so much screen estate wasted on the character outfit/equipment? Because old games did this? They did that because the computers at the time weren't fast enough for full screen game worlds. So they put stuff on the screen to reduce the amount of drawing operations. The downside: It clutters the screen. - You have a problem with the isometric perspective on some tiles, especially the buckets. The isometric perspective must be consistent to leave a good impression. This means that you have to slant *all* graphics the same way. Example: Outdoors, around 3:50, is a small field with a well and a water bucket. Compare these two elements - see the problem with the bucket? (the well isn't perfect but good enough) - The lighting should be consistent, too! Example: The buildings have two different shades for the outer walls - well done! The light blue windows, however, do not. Change the windows pointing to the lower left into a darker shade! - The graphical quality can be improved in several places. Example: The round carpet in the building at 2:10 and 4:20 look like a bright slice of salami. You really should mute such gameplay irrelevant items a bit down so that they don't distract. Use brighter shades/colors for important stuff like treasure or weapons. Are there always the same birds in the trees, spreading their wings and the same butterflies flying on the same spots in circles? - Also, a bit more logic in level design wouldn't hurt. The character enters the town hall at 4:20 and can look right into a bedroom (upper right) when walking to the main desk as there are no doors? It's also interesting to see those incredibly big animated chimneys on the roofs - only to discover that in the buildings directly under them are no fireplaces or stoves... - "Walls of text" At 6:56 "Art of the Blacksmith". You have a lot to tell. Good. But do it in a way people like to read - and not in those massive text screens with 16 to 20 words per line. Make a nice book background and put half of it on a page (8 words per line or so) - and then let the player turn the page to read more. - Character portraits: I get that you absolutely want to keep them. I have no problem with that in general (many Japanese RPGs have them, U7 also had them) but you either make the game world more photo-realistic or you hand-draw the portraits. This was a flaw in Serpent's Isle, BTW (in Black Gate they were hand drawn and fit the game world, in Serpent's Isle they were digitized and stood out - but not positively). You say that the game is very character driven. Do the portraits change according to the emotional state or body status? Just a thought... In any case it is probably *not* a good idea to use a sad-faced "Halle Berry" portrait for the protagonist of a commercial game unless her management sold you the rights for it... If she won't sue you for using her image without paying her then she will sue you for giving her a beard stubble! ;-) I hope I don't come across as too negative as most of the stuff could be changed quickly. |
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| Hi Calibrator! Thanks for the feedback. Constructive criticism is indeed welcome and especially from the guys here on the blitz forums. Input is invaluable. First, be aware this is by design a retro-game. Much of the interface was the direct result from feedback from the guys on the rpg codex - the type who are likely to buy such a thing. Do you have a link to an Indie game somewhere that is somewhat akin to what you are describing? It could offer helpful inspiration. I agree I can tweak a few things for sure. But like in the case of the inventories, its simply because you can move a lot of objects around and having the inventory on makes it a lot quicker, plus as a one-man game what else would I put there? Same with the character outfit area - it is sized to be proportional to the main inventory for balance, and again quickness of arming and wearing different things. I went through many mouse pointers and designs. The one I made is because the index finger appears to press down, which ended up working much better than a standard pointer. Somewhat akin to the index pointer we see when, for example, clicking a hyperlink, but in a semi 3d world. I can't believe I over-looked that odd bucket??? Thank you so much for seeing this! Already been redrawn. The character create icons - the big ones - are brighter colored because their function is different than the arrows, all of which do the same basic thing. You're right about the shading though. I may recolor the edges for consistency. I guess I could tone down the rugs. They are a bit bright and clean for an old world. :) The birds and butterflies are just moving tiles for a little effect. Couldn't quite get them to fly, but I tried! Same with the crabs. They wiggle on the beach and get the point across. The windows!! I went to such lengths to shade things properly but forgot the windows! It shall be fixed! Can't believe nobody noticed this. As far as seeing into the bedroom, well the gals are pretty lenient overall. Some of the doors are open and just a slot in the ground, others are closed. Now Elizabeth in the town hall is more inviting than others as she is middle age and there's no mention of a husband! Seriously, though, I really did put in a lot of these sub-conscious things to sort of jolt the player a little. But since I don't have real fireplaces inside, I may move some of the braziers to be under where chimneys are. That's a good idea. As far as the walls of text, I REALLY wanted to make a book-like thing like you mentioned but alas my art skill is lacking. In any case, I have a huge Mac Cinema display that I use on my PC - the 2560 x 1600 so constantly I had to remind myself a lot of people will be playing on notebooks and smaller screens, so I had to make sure things were big and clear. The character-driven part refers to what the characters say, much as in Planescapes "What can change the nature of a man?" One character portrait does indeed change a few times - the player's love interest. Its incredible I re-created Halle Berry. I thought only God could do that. Everyone thinks they are photos. They are actually made with high-end face bone modeler software used in the medical industry. Every character in the game is from the same bones, and madman uses real races of real people, black, white, hispanic, indian, etc. Of course, God made Eve from Adam's bone. But seriously, its really weird I made the one look like Halle. She was morphed from Archie! I'll make sure to re-draw her, then put in the agreement "All characters in this game are fictional. Any resemblance to people living or dead, or undead, is purely co-incidental." I suppose subconsciously I may be in love with Halle Berry and drew her from scratch as I did the others. But that doesn't make sense because I'm actually subconsciously in love with Tatum O'neal. :) |
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| > Do you have a link to an Indie game somewhere that is somewhat akin to what you are describing? It could offer helpful inspiration. I had no indie games in mind but more the old RPG games of yore - some features and polish of those I'm sure can be expected of a modern game. Mind you, I'm talking 20-25 year old games here like the old Ultimas etc. Later in my reply I consider the first Thief game which is also now about 15 years old... Of course it's clear to me that a single person can't be a perfect jack-of-all-trades but you asked what could be improves and I see enough potential in your game to spend some time criticizing it (positively & negatively). > I agree I can tweak a few things for sure. Some tips are meant for general advice - not only for your game but also perhaps for your next one. Or the one of another reader who may stumble upon this thread at some later time... > But like in the case of the inventories, its simply because you can move a lot of objects around and having the inventory on makes it a lot quicker, plus as a one-man game what else would I put there? A larger game world window, for example. > Same with the character outfit area - it is sized to be proportional to the main inventory for balance, and again quickness of arming and wearing different things. It's OK if you did that intentionally for balancing gameplay (which I can't judge right now). Mind you: I haven't actually played the game - I only considered the looks of it and what I felt watching the videos. By the way: The sound is good so far! Especially the bird calls in the village (I hope the more cheery ones won't happen in dark forests or other bad places you have planned for the game). > I went through many mouse pointers and designs. The one I made is because the index finger appears to press down, which ended up working much better than a standard pointer. Somewhat akin to the index pointer we see when, for example, clicking a hyperlink, but in a semi 3d world. Many fantasy RPGs use a custom mouse pointer which looks like something out of a blade weapon catalogue - combined with a symbol, when opening doors or taking things, sometimes animated, but not always. Just like above - it's a small thing and of course ultimately your decision. > I can't believe I over-looked that odd bucket??? Thank you so much for seeing this! Already been redrawn. My pleasure! It stood out like a sore thumb to me. > The character create icons - the big ones - are brighter colored because their function is different than the arrows, all of which do the same basic thing. You're right about the shading though. I may recolor the edges for consistency. Good decision! The brighter color/shading is OK then. > I guess I could tone down the rugs. They are a bit bright and clean for an old world. :) Exactly. > The birds and butterflies are just moving tiles for a little effect. I know. I poked here because there were too many identical of them in close vicinity. Stuff like this is very dominant. > Couldn't quite get them to fly, but I tried! Same with the crabs. They wiggle on the beach and get the point across. I don't want to put more work on your plate and a game has to be finished (it's bad to add new features all the time!) but think about it for your next game (I'm sure there'll be one): Organize the game world into layers and draw them accordingly, the lowest level being the ground: - ground - objects & walls - people - player - roofs & trees that can overcast stuff like the player - birds & other flying stuff - finally the clouds (if you want to add weather) I'm sure you already looked up tile-mapping for this game but consider layers for your next. It makes things easier. > The windows!! I went to such lengths to shade things properly but forgot the windows! It shall be fixed! Can't believe nobody noticed this. Minor thing & easily corrected - but sticking out when you notice it. > As far as seeing into the bedroom, well the gals are pretty lenient overall. ;-) > Some of the doors are open and just a slot in the ground, others are closed. Now Elizabeth in the town hall is more inviting than others as she is middle age and there's no mention of a husband! That's a major many people would want, I'm sure! > Seriously, though, I really did put in a lot of these sub-conscious things to sort of jolt the player a little. Then it's OK. The game is also called "Madman!", isn't it? ;-) > But since I don't have real fireplaces inside, I may move some of the braziers to be under where chimneys are. That's a good idea. This is something that works subconsciously for some players. Others notice it directely like me (I'm a veteran - I even notice when there aren't toilets around! ;-)) And of course some (lots of?) people will never notice it and bother. But it's about having a higher standard and getting more in, so to speak. > As far as the walls of text, I REALLY wanted to make a book-like thing like you mentioned but alas my art skill is lacking. In any case, I have a huge Mac Cinema display that I use on my PC - the 2560 x 1600 so constantly I had to remind myself a lot of people will be playing on notebooks and smaller screens, so I had to make sure things were big and clear. Don't misunderstand me: The large font is OK! It's the mass of text that could be divided into separate parts (pages). When I say "book" here I don't mean a fully functional one with turning pages and perspective correct lettering like in professional mainstream games that cost millions (they have people *only* doing the interface). What I mean is a book-like background with two arrow buttons: Next page and last page (and of course a close button). The old Thief games (Dark Project / Metal Age) take this approach and it's much more atmospheric than a simple text window:  Scrolls or scraps of paper can be are even simpler: http://gropingtheelephant.com/blog/?p=3776 Maps look like this in these games(they are essentially simple images, though some levels have rough automaps which you can ignore) to only "guide" the player: http://thief.wikia.com/wiki/In-game_Maps This is how hobby designers create letters for custom missions for "The Dark Mod" - an inofficial Thief mod based on the Doom3-Engine:  And here are some ideas to design backgrounds: http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=122233 In some places you - intentionally - use a smaller font like in the description area on the main game screen. I had a hard time criticizing it and decided against it because the game is very likely for desktop players with big monitors (and a short viewing distance) only. But I when you consider smaller screens this immediately to mind. And a question: What is with the area under the automap? Do you have planned something for it? > The character-driven part refers to what the characters say, much as in Planescapes "What can change the nature of a man?" One character portrait does indeed change a few times - the player's love interest. > Its incredible I re-created Halle Berry. I thought only God could do that. > > Of course, God made Eve from Adam's bone. But seriously, its really weird I made the one look like Halle. She was morphed from Archie! At least you made a younger one... ;-) > I'll make sure to re-draw her, then put in the agreement "All characters in this game are fictional. Any resemblance to people living or dead, or undead, is purely co-incidental." Good idea! Put it at the end of the credits page if you have something like that. I suppose subconsciously I may be in love with Halle Berry and drew her from scratch as I did the others. But that doesn't make sense because I'm actually subconsciously in love with Tatum O'neal. :) Back when the moon was made out of paper... ;-) |
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| Thanks again, Calibrator. I'm happy to report I've already made some of these changes. The Mickey Mouse pointer was ok if a little odd, but now its a proper short, stumpy slightly golden sword. I actually think it looks better as the tip goes right to the thing being interacted with. Thanks for the tip. I decided to go with an old scroll look similar to one of the pics you showed and am working on this right now. While it is true the back panel is clear and nice, yet in real life the madman would probably have a bunch of paper scraps for his journal, and so it shall be! Also have a few ideas how I might be able to get an actual book-look for the books. I am, after all, Dr. Dungeon! :) The area under the auto-map was an artifact from making slightly different panels for 16:10 and 16:9. I just lengthened the console box now. In 16:9 there was no room for a console, so I had made a pop-up which works nicely. You read my mind with these! - ground - objects & walls - people - player - roofs & trees that can overcast stuff like the player - birds & other flying stuff - finally the clouds (if you want to add weather) A multi-layered map is indeed the next step when I make another game. Likewise I may shift to the 2:1 perspective, like the "Eschalon" games and others. Another future thing is multiple light sources. Right now I have one which the player holds. This works nice for effect but originally I wanted little lanterns, etc., dotting the streets of the towns. Haven't mastered this yet as they are tricky mixing algorithms. But I shall! I plan to re-draw "Halle". I should be able to make a new character to replace her, but it could end up looking like Tatum O'Neal. Oh! The beard! Believe it or not that was a shadow problem. I simply could not remove that beard from her. Hopefully in the new one she'll look a little more feminine. Thanks again for the tips. I'll post here when I get a new vid up showcasing some of these improvements. Thanks again for your comments. Anything I need to do to make this rock I will do. Made too many design mistakes back in the DOS days, and definitely willing to improve. Type in ULTIZURK in google and you can see a lot of my old DOS stuff from more years ago than I can count. Arrgh! I'm getting too old for this. :) -Rob |
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| The Madman DEMO is out! It works!! Finally done! Wheeeeee!!! What an insane project - can't believe I spent years on this. Give it a spin, let me know what you think. Wouldn't have happened without soooo much help from you guys. Thanks a zillion!! http://www.machgryphon.com Even if it doesn't become a big hit, I'm just happy for the accomplishment. The full version will be up pretty soon. -Dr. Dungeon |
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| @Robby>>Well done for this achievement, your game seems quite complex (many components, many possible actions/interactions) I have tested the demo, here are some comments/suggestions : -no possibility to set the volume of the sounds/music, i recommend to add this, because on my computer i was forced to decrease the volume at 6% (with headphones) -no possibility to configure keys, this could be useful -the shop system with items displayed on shelves is very cool ! Good idea. -the tutorial is good enough to understand the basics but then i am a bit lost in the world, maybe add a screen with suggestions on what to do next -the portraits of the characters are not consistent with the graphics style of the game, i suggest to make it more consistent (similar shapes colors lighting/shading) -the appearance of the character ingame is not the same as the appearance of the character in the window at right, this is confusing -there are too many attributes and skills, i would simplify that. Also, imo, an attribute should influence a damagevalue/successrate of several actions/interactions and a skill (training) should influence a damagevalue/successrate of an action/interaction, so as i see it, the 2 are complementary, and an attribute should have no influence on a skill (you could be strong but not skilled in combat, you could be fast but not skilled in dodge, you could be charismatic but not skilled in bartering, etc...) -the scale of the buildings, passages, doors, trees is too small compared to the characters -when saving, it does not seem possible to use numbers, and this is annoying because i have the habit to save my progress like this "playername001", "playername002", "playername003" That's all, do what you want with this ! |
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| I forgot to mention that Madman uses the Humble Bundle company to purchase through the widget on the site. I chose them on purpose because not only do they give a significant amount of revenue to the developer, which in turn allows the developer to make even better games, but a portion goes to many charities like ablegamers, childsplaycharity, specialeffect and others. Many of these places are helping children with disabilities. By the end of the 2014, the total charitable amount raised by Humble's Bundles exceeded $50 million across 50 different charities! http://www.ablegamers.com/ http://childsplaycharity.org/ http://www.specialeffect.org.uk/ That's always a good thing, not just for my game, but for any other developer's games you buy using this service. Something to think about. Dr. D. Madman - a bizarre land and a lot of off-the-wall characters, available now: http://www.machgryphon.com/ |
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| I'm happy to report that Dr. Dungeon's MADMAN! has been Greenlit on Steam! http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=457828980 |
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| Congrats! ;D |
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| WoW was than on greenlight for a whole year waiting to get enough votes? |
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| Hy Robby, I looked at the video and your game looks not only good but brings me warm memories about 90s computer gaming. Truth is, I have a fond heart for isometric graphics, but mostly play them in RTS form, well, except for roller coaster tycoon. Truth be told, I was not even in kindergarten in the 90s! o: I consider my self a retro gamer, I would be that guy at good will digging for old pc software, hardware, and of course games. I play them and I simply love exploring computer history. Any way though, I like your game and your game art. (: |
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