Ocean's Heart

[Christopho]

Ohhhh did I miss that there was a map? By pressing M?

[Max]

Cool, I'll look forward to that for 1.6!

And thanks for doing a let's play! I randomly saw it as I was watching Mark  Brown's newest YouTube video,which  was a fun surprise. It a lot of fun to watch! I also got like 6 or 7 notes or small mistakes to fix, which is good. And thanks so much, I'm glad you enjoyed it and think so much of the graphics.

A couple questions you brought up on your let's play I can answer:

-There is a world map- press M : )
-The resolution is indeed 320x240
-There are still a mix of Zelda and custom sound effects. It's going to take a while to replace them all.
-100% of the graphics are my own. (The wooden corner pilliars that you mentioned look similar to yours are because we both based them off Minish Cap's corners, and they're both corners of walls 32px tall, so they're bound to look similar.)
-If I were to estimate, you got maybe 20% of the way through what I've completed so far.
-As far as the dialogues, I definitely use a lot of informal and colloquial language, and also a bunch of specific sea creatures and plants in my writing. Since English isn't your first language, you did a great job! I hadn't thought how odd some of my words might seem (for example, an Egret is a type of bird)


One last thing, a clue for the quest about the phantom squid, if you want it. You were veeeery close and just missed something by a couple pixels in that house. I'm going to go in and take out all the books except the bookshelf after seeing you play through it.

Anyway, thanks again for playing! I look forward to seeing you play more if you do. If you have any other questions, let me know.

[Christopho]

20% only, that's awesome! I can actually do several episodes!

Again I am very impressed by the graphics especially when you say that that are 100% custom. There are as good or better than commercial games. So, right now, only some sound effects are still from Zelda? Great work
I love the ambiance of the game, the jokes. And the informal language: even if I don't understand the details, I get the feeling they want to create.

Your work deserves to be known As discussed before, we can distribute your assets with a Creative Commons license in the official Solarus Free Resource Pack if you agree (with full credits of course). Also I might do a French translation of the game one day when it is finished!

[Max]

Yeah, I don't know if you saw, but in another topic I released some of the tiles from the game for public use. However, it's not intended to be a complete release yet, since I'm still making tiles for the game as I go. I'm planning on releasing a more complete tileset after I've finished the game, for everyone to use.

But once that's done, you'll be more than welcome to use it for a Solarus Resource pack!

[Christopho]

Here is the output from my playthrough episode #3, maybe it will help you fix a few bugs:

Code Select Expand

Info: Solarus 1.5.3
Info: Opening quest '/home/christophe/jeux/oceans_heart'
Info: Sound volume: 100
Info: Music volume: 100
Info: Joypad support enabled: true
Info: 2D acceleration: yes
Info: Turbo mode: no
Info: Video mode: normal
Info: LuaJIT: yes (LuaJIT 2.0.4)
Info: Language: en
Info: Lua console: yes
Info: Simulation started
Error: Illegal direction 3 for sprite 'entities/vase' in animation 'on_ground'
Error: Illegal direction 3 for sprite 'entities/crystal' in animation 'orange_lowered'
Error: In maps/goatshead_island/interiors/brute_hq: [string "maps/goatshead_island/interiors/brute_hq.lua"]:56: attempt to index global 'barbell_boss' (a nil value)
Error: In on_started: [string "maps/goatshead_island/interiors/brute_hq.lua"]:19: attempt to call method 'close_doors' (a nil value)
Info: Fullscreen: yes
Info: Fullscreen: no
Error: Illegal direction 1 for sprite 'entities/items' in animation 'apples'
Error: Missing treasure dialog: '_treasure.apples.2'
1
Error: In dialog callback: [string "maps/goatshead_island/crabhook_village.lua"]:80: bad argument #1 to create_enemy (Bad field 'direction' (integer expected, got nil))
1
2
Info: Simulation finished

[Max]

Thanks Christopho! That explains something I made a note of actually. This should all be easy to fix.

Most of them are just the errors for single-direction sprites that aren't facing their proper direction, which gives an error but doesn't result in any actual provlems, so I've just been ignoring them.

Thanks again for playing!

[Max]

Small update to the current demo! Watching Christopho's let's play, as well as my wife test-playing last night, alerted me to a small handful of bugs that I've dealt with.

I've also tweaked some of the damage and life for enemies in the second half of the demo to make them a bit tougher. I might need to go in and make a bit more armor available, but if you play, let me know what you think about the enemy difficulty!

Latest Build (google drive download)

[Max]

Just thought I'd post to say progress is going well, I'm deep into building out the next major area, half of its main quests are done, as is the mapping. This area is coming along nicely so I thought I'd do a screenshot before I rush off to work. Thanks for following!

[MichaelNG789]

This is quite a feat. Nice job!

Can't wait until the final release is out!

[oclero]

I love your graphics !

An idea: add salmons going up the cascade, it'll be more vivid. 

[Max]

Still working away on this, even if I haven't posted here about it in a couple months. I didn't get a ton done in the second half of june / first half of july because I was moving and between packing, unpacking, setting everything up, etc. I've been otherwise occupied, but I'm back into development now.

I thought I'd post a couple updates here. The mini-boss of one of the later dungeons is done and I'm pretty happy with him, he's based on the 12th century engineer Al-Jazari, who is a cool dude. Here's a video on youtube of me (unskillfully) fighting him:
Fight!

I also have been posting more frequent updates to twitter, in case anyone wants to follow me there:
Max's Twitter

I think as far as the major stuff goes, I'm over the main hump and the end is in sight! Sometime in 2019 I bet this will be releasing.

[Shade Aurion]

Wow dude this looks top notch! Do you mind if I do an episode of it on my channel? Or would it be better to wait a bit for more development. I'd be happy to dedicating and episode to drumming up some notice. Either way, i'm downloading it now and can't wait to play it later this evening <3

[Max]

It's up to you- I'm planning a late 2019 release, so there's still a lot to do, but Christopho has done like 3-4 hours of let's play of this game on his channel, so there's at least that much. I can put out a slightly updated version late tonight if you'd like, it wouldn't go much further content wise but since the last demo I've made a bunch of small changes to things like the sword attack,small changes in the world, replaced most sound effects, etc.

[Shade Aurion]

Thats okay. I might to an alpha build run in a week or two and then revisit it with your 2019 release. Squeeze it for 2 episodes. Or one intially and a full lets play upon launch.

It looks so good dude, you should be proud. After you launch you might get snatched up by a studio pretty quick. Your pixel art style feels somewhere between Stardew Valley and Kynseed and maybe Minish Cap. Either way, i'll be following thsi project closely. When you have a solid beta, you should throw it up on itch.io and gamejolt to help drum up some press too <3

[alexgleason]

Wow, I just clicked through this, and your game looks amazing! Super exciting to see this much work put into a custom Solarus game.

Are you planning on freely licensing the game's graphics and code?