Archmage - a new fantasy shoorter

[Tovy]

Hello friends,

We are working on a smaller action game ArchMage, it is a fantasy scrolling shooter targeted for the casual market. We would like to finish it in one month. I would be glad to any feedback from you. But we have not any demo yet, so only some screenshots:

http://www.gameofyear.com/temp/archmage/archmage_fog1.jpg

The boss is cooming! ;)
http://www.gameofyear.com/temp/archmage/archmage_fog2.jpg

One of the fire spells (you can set fire to the most of monster with fire spells. Ehmm.. ideal for small children? :)
http://www.gameofyear.com/temp/archmage/archmage_fog3.jpg

One of the freezing spells:
http://www.gameofyear.com/temp/archmage/spells10.jpg

[Nexic]

Wow that looks really cool. But I can't help but feel the player's dragon is far too big. How do hits against the player work? Is it just the man riding the dragon who can get hurt?

Even if the hitbox is still small I think the dragon should be smaller since I would personally find it rather cumbersome.

[Yarlen]

Looks cool!

[Pallav Nawani]

Looks neat, I'd like to play it! Nexic is right though - the dragon is way too big. You could replace dragon with something else, like a carpet or a broom.

[janwinnicki]

Another one impressed by the screens. But how it works in motion?

[urbansquall]

Oh man.. This looks so much like a game I'm working on its a little scary. :)

[amaranth]

I saw this one at GG. I love Styrateg and I can't wait to see how the newest "creature" in your collection turns out! :D

[Pallav Nawani]

Looks neat, I'd like to play it! Nexic is right though - the dragon is way too big. You could replace dragon with something else, like a carpet or a broom.

.. Although I must admit I do like the dragon! :D

[JoKa]

How do hits against the player work? Is it just the man riding the dragon who can get hurt?

I guess that's the case?!? But who wants to care about this little guy while flying such a cool dragon? :)

[Chris Evans]

Seems like a top-down Panzer Dragoon shooter. :)

[Polycount Productions]

Seems like a top-down Panzer Dragoon shooter. :)

Yeh - and looks very good! :)

[Arex]

Ya, looks very cool ! :)

[Tovy]

Hi all, thanks for your feedback ;)

Yes, the dragon is really big, but the "active" area is only a mage on the dragon. We are not sure, if to keep the dragon or not. But it is nice to see the big dragon with the animation :)

Now my artist must work on Jets'n'Guns Gold, so the game must wait for about one month, but I will try to create some alpha version in one or two weeks and I will post info here then.

[Bad Sector]

Very good, i like it :-).

Pump it up with more high-res textures, increase a bit the polycount (the boss seems way too blocky), add some lighting (it's too bright) and you'll have the best topdown shooter i've seen :-).

Well, at least in the way i imagine it with the above modifications, it will be the best shooter :-P :-P :-P.

In any case, i would love to see it in motion. But take your time to make it good before releasing one :-D.

[Tovy]

Bad Sector: hehe, but the problem is, that this game is our low budget game (the "develping budget" is 5000-6000 USD ;) so it is all random generated and we are not able to support it with better graphic. But we are trying to do what we are able to do :)

[Bad Sector]

At least add some light variation and a few shadows... a programmer is responsible for that, so it wont need an artist to do it.

As a last resort, just create a plasma texture (http://student.kuleuven.be/~m0216922/CG/plasma.html) using an "evilish" palette (dark colors, etc) and place it over the whole terrain as a lightmap - or even vector colors if you can't afford lightmaps. It will look much better IMHO.

EDIT: you can also add "poor man's cloud shadows" by creating a bright grayscale plasma texture, project it to the world AND the terrain (just use the vertex position for texture position and ignore the Z or Y coordinate - depending what coordinate you consider as "up") with multiply blending and every few milliseconds, slide it a little to emulate "moving clouds". I think (ie. not tested, but i'm 90% sure) that this will produce a nice effect.

[Tovy]

Hello,

I have not the demo yet, but here is an unofficial video from the game:
http://www.gameofyear.com/temp/archmage_alpha.avi (6.4 MB)

[Glen Pawley]

I'm not usually very interested in shooters, but this one looks really good. I'll be trying it out :)

[Arex]

Very impressive, I loved the GUI animations and the way to mix spells. :)

[Escapee]

The Screenshot looks very impressive , at last we have something different in casual shooter games . A giant size dragon with archmage shooting mixed magic spell on the evils. Ha :)

[electronicStar]

Looks good.
I hope you'll be able to make more varied enemies and levels.

[Tovy]

I'm nice to hear so positive words of all of you, thank you!

[Tovy]

Hello,

The game is delayed. We stoped working on it after one month, because we had to work on our games Jets'n'Guns GOLD and Phantasia 2, but I have worked on it again from this month and you can see some screenshot at

www.300ad.com/archmage.php

and download the beta version at

www.300ad.com/download/ArchMageSetup.exe

I would like to get any feedback from you ;)
Thanks!

[Fost]

There *might* be a problem with the controls - I just had a quick play, and couldn't find the key for fire. Also, space didn't actually seem to launch the cauldron. I have a pad plugged in if that's what caused the problem - fire worked ok on the pad, but I still couldn't seem to get the cauldron up.

[whisperstorm]

Checking it out. Might want to run a spellcheck on your site: it's "coming" not "comming" :)

Edit: you dont have a mac version of the beta ?

[Tovy]

Fost: hmm, it's bad, it could be due to gamepad support, but I have not idea why. It is not control by keys now, I must add it, but it supports mouse and gamepad. I'm going to add some gamepad button to open the cauldron.

I must wait if anybody other has problem with the space key.

whisperstorm: Thanks, I'm going to fix it. I lent my Mac, because we port Jets'n'Guns Gold for Mac these days, so I'm not able to do the beta for Mac now..

[Garthy]

I just want to add my support for keeping the dragon. :) I think people will figure out that the hitzone is just the head and/or rider. Besides, who doesn't want to control a big freakin' dragon with a wingspan almost the whole width of the screen. :)

[Bad Sector]

I like it!

However i have two comments:

a) The wings animation near the dragon's body is a little awkward. It feels like the wings are folding somehow. It's not a big issue to be fixed, i think, but once is done it'll feel much better.

b) Sometimes if there are many particles in the screen i simply cannot see where i'm shooting at...

[jefferytitan]

It looks interesting. I think the dragon is kind of cool. Maybe the wingspan's a little big, but not a big deal. I agree that a few more ploys would make all the difference to avoid the visible corners, but if you don't have the art resource I totally understand. Good job!

[Tovy]

Thanks for your feedback! I'm working on latest changes.

Yes, there are some problems with wings (you can see it with Vasp to), but I hope these problems are small and I cannot change it. My artist dislike this game, he said that it is too bad and he don't want modify anything, because we prepare a big project and we want to finish to develope these small games ;)

[the2bears]

Wow, trippy little look on one of the levels for me... some severe bleeding going on :) All the other levels rendered fine.

Dell Inspiron 6000
Pentium M 1Gb
ATI Mobility Radeon X300

The irony? Best level of the game for me, if the game was supposed to be like that I'd buy it for sure.

Bill

[Tovy]

hehe, yes, it's my mistake, I converted some png to jpg and forgot update datablocks ;) I'm going to fix it..

[the2bears]

hehe, yes, it's my mistake, I converted some png to jpg and forgot update datablocks ;) I'm going to fix it..

Nooooo....