Release Skylark


Blackcurtain

Member
Joined
Aug 28, 2010
Messages
175
Age
35
Location
Sweden
Website
www.blackcurtainstudio.com
Time to reveal my second Caanoo game, which currently is in demo stage. (Now also available for Pandora)
It's called Skylark and is basically a RPG platformer with lots of monsters and lots of items and stats advancement. The demo has been entered in the RIOT digital competition.


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Story (spoilers left out)

A man by the name Borealis, finds a young boy out in the woods, alone in the night, forsaken to his own dreary fate. The man takes the child in and cares for him. The boy seems to have an odd relation to birds, which all around befriends him where ever he goes. Hence, he names the boy Skylark. Twenty years later, Borealis gets brutally murdered by an unknown assailant. Once Skylark discovers the murderer's identity, he traces the assailant for days to an old castle, far out into the ancient woods. Skylark ventures deep into the castle, to hunt down his father's murderer. Not knowing what secrets and dangers that awaits him, he will soon discover his higher purpose, and that he is the only one who can seal the dark force that is stirring in the heart of the old castle.

Gameplay

Your goal is to advance further into the castle, through each of the rooms, but you can always backtrack to where you have previously been. Skylark has your normal RPG stats and level progression system, and as you kill monsters you will gain experience and level up. Your stats determine your attack and defense rate. You can also find items through out the game like swords, shields and armors that you can equip to enhance your basic stats. There are several magic Tomes hidden in the castle that you will find, and these Tomes are used as skills/magic. But to use a Tome it costs Action Points and another resource called Eyes, which are basically human eyes that are used as vessels for magic energy to cast Tome spells. These eyes were infused with magic by an ancient order of black mages, that practised their rituals inside the castle, in order to contain more energy for their rituals and spells. The eyes came from human sacrifices to the Dark One.

Ultimately, you must find the 3 magic Lenses, hidden in the castle, that can be used to restore the Dark One's powers or seal them in forever.

Inventory and items

You can carry 30 items in your inventory, but will be able to sell items that you don't need. All items in the game are dynamically generated within 6 categories (swords, shields, armors, helmets, consumable, accessories). So, you might find an item in one game run that you didn't find in a previous, due to the unique way they are generated.

Video



Screenshots

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Team members:
BlackCurtain - programming, art, design
Pontus85 - sound and music

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The Skylark demo is now available for Caanoo and Pandora.

Caanoo release: download
Pandora release: download

Secondary Caanoo download
Secondary Pandora download

NOTE: As the Pandora is a much more powerful device, it have allowed me to use nicer graphics filtering in the Pandora version, which makes the graphics look a lot smoother. It also has twice the in-game resolution than the Caanoo version.
 
Hi !

This RIOT competition got me way much more excited than the last E3, and I now know why :)

Some first quick impressions:

+ Intro
+ Main menu
+ Graphics
+ Music
+ Parallax
+ The shop keeper looks like the one in Resident Evil 4, with the blue torch and all ! "Come back anytime" ;)

- Pandora keys don't work, you have to use the keyboard
- "Enter name" screen doesn't work very well
- Some screen tearing
- Music glitches: alsa underrun occured ?
- Enemies appear right on you
- Collision box
- You can't move while attacking, you've to wait for the attack animation to finish first
- If you decide not to save your game, the "save game" menu remains on screen

Good luck for the compo, and I hope the commercial version will sale like hot cakes :)

Bye, Magic Sam
 
The lack of Pandora-specific controls has been mentioned.

It's strange to have to end the name input by going all the way to the right with the cursor which activates th OK button without further user input.

Approaching the save room it's weird that you leave the screen at the right hand side, but in the next room you're on the far right instead of left. Like you turned the game camera to look at your 2d plane from the backside.

Spawning of the skeletons is a bit tricky, it can occur too close in your back while you're punching away at foes in front of you.

A slot filter for the inventory items would be neat. Plus an "all" tab then I guess.

Is player damage inconsistent or do enemies (skeletons) vary in Hitpoints?




It's atmospheric and looks great!
 
Thaks for the feedback. There may be some minor errors that I've overlooked like with the save menu and whatnot, though it don't remember havig any problems with it last time I played. The input name box can be closed by pressing ESC (Fn+Q). To get to the OK button, just press space till you've gone through all letter spaces. About the save room: I've simply forgot to flip the save room according to your entry point, left or right. The Pandora keys is not working because I haven't figured out how to use them with BennuGD. The Pandora only seems to recognize BennuGD's regular keyboard input.
 
Pandora's D-Pad is the four arrow keys. A, B, X, and Y are Pages Up and Down/Home and End (forget in what order). L and R are Shift and Control, respectively, and Start/Select are Alt and another Control. The Pandora button itself is its own key, and this sort of game doesn't look like it would use the nubs.
 
Blue Protoman said:
Pandora's D-Pad is the four arrow keys. A, B, X, and Y are Pages Up and Down/Home and End (forget in what order). L and R are Shift and Control, respectively, and Start/Select are Alt and another Control. The Pandora button itself is its own key, and this sort of game doesn't look like it would use the nubs.
Thanks for the tip, I'll try these button configurations instead.
 
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Looks very interesting. :) I did not had the time to play it but the Video and the Screenshots speaks for themselves.
You rendered the Graphics first with an 3D program, right? At least it looks that way, I also did this for testing reasons a while ago. ;) Some of the graphic Elements look a little bit to real for my taste, photo-realism and comic sprites/setting does not that easy fit together I think. maybe "cartoonizing" some graphics could change this (outlines or something like this, reducing the colours maybe too...) but the overall look is still great, maybe some more "soften" the "sharp" edges and colour corrections of the graphic element shere and there (ground top, wood cut faces to bright, Stairs 3rd pic have to sharp edges) and it fits better. ^^
 
fusion_power said:
Looks very interesting. :) I did not had the time to play it but the Video and the Screenshots speaks for themselves.
You rendered the Graphics first with an 3D program, right? At least it looks that way, I also did this for testing reasons a while ago. ;) Some of the graphic Elements look a little bit to real for my taste, photo-realism and comic sprites/setting does not that easy fit together I think. maybe "cartoonizing" some graphics could change this (outlines or something like this, reducing the colours maybe too...) but the overall look is still great, maybe some more "soften" the "sharp" edges and colour corrections of the graphic element shere and there (ground top, wood cut faces to bright, Stairs 3rd pic have to sharp edges) and it fits better. ^^
Thanks for the feedback. Yes, all of the backgrounds are rendered in 3dsMAX and then edited in Photoshop, altered sharpness and contrast, etc. I've added extra sharpening to make the backgrounds look more pixelated to blend with the sprites. Here's one example from 3dsMAX

scene7.jpg
 
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Looks really photo realistic. :) You also could try some "bevel" here and there so the edges are not so "sharp".
I only have some basic Blender skills and because of my lack of Pixel-Art-Talent I had to render alot of level elements in 3D especialy because of "correct" shadows. Orthographic Camera rules. ^^
I've got it "pixel perfect" so 1 pixel was one certain grid size in Blender, made some things more easy. The Sizes and measurements are also all of an factor of 8 so it fits better together when combining. Of course it had to be optimized in Photoshop, I reduced all graphics to 8 bit, this alone made it retro enough to look like it was drawn in a 2D program. :) I didn't use "real" textures in the 3D scene so I don't know how hard it is to get these right for an 2D program.

here, the huge Structures in front of this background scene are actualy all made 3D in Blender, of course optimized in Photoshop. Background in the distance is drawn per hand (it took ages for me. :D )
mittelgrund2sre1.jpg

and everything "in action" with the foreground elements, also done 3D in Blender (most of it like pipes, beams, supporters...):
overview2fp_indusrqws.png

Of course I just borrowed Sonic. ^^
However, it was an interesting exercise, it took ages actualy but it is a nice way to make Pixel-Art. I guess the new Sonic 4 Graphics are also dont in 3D first, at least it all looks pre-rendered.

Your Player Sprite and all the enemies, did you done it by yourself? They look really good and it is something I never could do. Especialy not animated.
 
^ those pics are awesome. And lowering the quality on 3D generated graphics is a really neat way to get 2D pixel graphics. This is similar to how 3D looking sprites were made in SNES games, isn't it?

I also like the hand-drawn portion, sehr gut!
 
kuru said:
^ those pics are awesome. And lowering the quality on 3D generated graphics is a really neat way to get 2D pixel graphics. This is similar to how 3D looking sprites were made in SNES games, isn't it?

I also like the hand-drawn portion, sehr gut!
Thanks. ^^
From SNES I only know Donkey Kong Country and that used pre rendered Graphics but maybe there are more games. Wasn't there "Killer Instinct" even for SNES?
But Skylark looks way more high def, I couldn't do that. As sharper the graphics look, as more you have to pay attention to the details, that is the main reason why I always try to stay as low res as possible. Mistakes can be hidden this way. :D
 
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Is this a Castlevania clone? Looks a lot like one.
Not to say that's a bad thing, Castlevania is awesome :)
Especially the screenshot where he's entering the castle reminds me of Castlevania.
 
Jdbye said:
Is this a Castlevania clone? Looks a lot like one.
Not to say that's a bad thing, Castlevania is awesome :)
Especially the screenshot where he's entering the castle reminds me of Castlevania.
No, this game has nothing to do with Castlevania.
 
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Otherwise it would be a complete insult to any castlevania lover =D

As a player that completed 3 castlevanias on GBA, 3 on DS, I would say the Skylark (if it would be another metroidovania clone) is the shittiest of metroidovania clones.

But since Skylark is a TOTAL new genre of bad physics game - IT IS F$$$$G AWESOME!!!
 
Schnatterplatsch said:
Let's name it Pisslark then?
Why you trying to insult it's name? It is named after fine bird after all!
 
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Just for the record, I'm not attempting to make a Castlevania clone and I never did. It's not even the same graphics style as Castlevania. I assume Castlevania's graphics are all hand drawn, while my graphics are all pre-rendered. I'm going for a realistic look in the environments, not pixelated and cartoony. The only thing that this game has related to Castlevana is that the it takes place in a castle and that the game is a platformer with some RPG elements. Nothing else. The story doesn't even contain vampires or anything of the sorts. Though I am flattered that you think it looks so similar.
 
BlackCurtain said:
Just for the record, I'm not attempting to make a Castlevania clone and I never did.
Can we see your design docs for unicue selling point and other stuff?
 
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