Fungi Cappani - A platformer with spores

[Hiro-sofT]

Hi guys, sorry for the long absence of updates … I was kinda busy at the time with other stuff (mainly my private stuff, YouTubeLPs and livestream stuff) at the moment. At the moment, I try to finally set up my own discord channel, which will cover most of my stuff, including Cappani. I will also slowly begin to continue working on this game again (have done some videos to keep the LP channel busy for a few days).


The main reason for this post is however, that I wanted to ask for people, who would have interest in being evolved making this game with me (in other words, people, who want to collaborate with me).

Now, to tell you few things straight away, I’m not very rich or popular. In fact, I’m rather short on money, since I’m still in an apprenticeship and have to give nearly half of my money to support my family and I will need to have enough money to pay my dentist for the upcoming treatment. So, I will not be able to pay big amounts of money currently. However, there will be some way of thanking for the people, who want to help me doing this project (for example I could give people steam games for them over time or draw something for them). I will definitely thank everyone, who is working on this with me, in a special way, other than “You will be in the credits” (being in the credits for helping is a sure thing for me and not enough to thank someone). I want to give you something more valuable, than a "thanks", but the problem is, it cannot happen in an instant.

I can relate to it, if no one wants to collaborate, because I know that most people have their own project and don’t want to waste their sources and time on a project of an unknown guy, especially if you don’t get much for it.


I just will look if there is some, who might be interested. Still need to sleep and think about this “collaborating” stuff, how this could work and what to do.

In case someone is (somehow) interested, here is what I’m looking for Fungi Cappani:

• Music composer/musician – This one is really what this game needs, since I’m not able to this on my own. I tried it myself soooo many times to cover this myself, but my music is very horrible and I simply don’t seem to have the hand for that. I need a person, who is able to do a fitting soundtrack for this game which captures the colorful, adventurous style, as well some serious and darker tunes for specific moments. Now here is a problem… I kinda know, what I want to do and I can roughly tell, what kind of music I need, but it’s properly too much on the list I did (and I think I need to shorten it). Also, the program I usually used to make this music is broken on Win10 and therefore, I'm even unable to do anything music related at the moment.
  
  Here is some music I did. To give you an idea on how bad it is (cover your ears):
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDK93mKHSMQ
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuTJEnRM-_U
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huuTTO0SL-4
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-6KoS1fSUs
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0TQIv_tRCo
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPz-NpQV1aY
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826lpm9AzBE
  
  
• Another programmer – Would be a great help, especially with a big project like Fungi Cappani. The only person besides me working on that project is my brother, who has no clue about programming. Having someone, who’s looking over your code and gives advice on how to improve the code, would be a nice thing. I’m okay if no one is interested in this, since my coding style is horrible, compared to the more efficient programmer. I kinda know most of the basic stuff to make a game, but not all the fancy “advanced” coding tactics.
  
  
• Advertisement guy – Everyone knows from all of my pages or websites, that I’m not an advertisement guy by any means. I don’t know why or how, but I seem to be the perfect anti-discussion-person, by just being somewhere present. Many topics and threads in my past went silent, once I was talking about a thing, and despite my efforts, I’m still a little nothing, no matter how much I try. In order to bring my project to the people, without scare them with my presence off, I would really appreciate someone, who can advertise my game properly and giving my advices on how to tackle certain advertisement stuff.
  
  
• Sound creator – Currently, most sounds from Fungi Cappani are created with simple sound software called LabChirp, which makes mostly 8-bitisch sounds. Having a person, who is able to make better quality sounds for the game, would be kind, but isn’t really that much needed, as it’s only a fine-tuning thing.
  

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not doing it, because I’m lazy. If I would be lazy, I wouldn’t have started everything I currently have for this project in the first place. I’m doing this, because I know how difficult it is to work on a game by your own and I feel like, that I cannot do this alone (especially the music part, because I seem to suck at music and I already do so much, like programming and graphics) and because I want to do a team project, since I never did something like that before, as you can properly already tell. I also not want to force people in

I will give it my best and all to finish this game, but I’m afraid, that I can’t cover everything of it by myself .

EDIT:

Have some new concept art .

[Gors]

I hope you'll find someone willing to help on your project - you've done a lot of good work.

[Cloud6625]

I wish I could help, but I have no knowledge in any of the areas you're looking for . The game looks great so far and all I can really do is wish you luck and hope it goes well.

If you haven't tried yet, post this on some other sites/forums that may be interested. Expanding your reach will help you find the people you need.

[iyenal]

For advertising, by what are you interested in detail ? Maybe I can do publishing.

[Hiro-sofT]

Good, I think, I can drop a kind of an status report here. Okay, first things first .

There has been very little progress being made (most of which was planning and writting). The reason for that slow working speed are current private issues (exams and a dentist appointment) and also the livestreaming thing, which currently eats up 3 entire days (including the saturday, where I normally worked the most on this project). Even my group is giving me pressure again related to video/LP related stuff (when does this or that come?), so there is more I have to kinda manage.

My time sure gets faster eaten than the ghost from Pac-Man, I can say that for sure .

Second, I'm sadly (but I expected this kinda) still running this project solo . Most people I know and ask are either busy or have no interest working on this (which I can understand). The big issue is that the music stuff will properly bite my project, as I will be never be able to do the music part of it as well (all you currently can see from this project I did on my own, like the graphics and engine, with input from other people, in the form of feedback of course). I tried various places to spread the news and advertise my project and its current details, but mostly, I got a few to none response, which I also can understand, as that this project doesn't look finished or promising enough, to be a solid thing, to jump into a collaboration.

People actually E-mailed me about this being a "kids dream project" and how unlikely this is to happen to become a real game and that I should learn first to how to do games properly, by starting small. While, I kinda would agree on that, I can't really agree on that, as I do this for like... ten years by now ? Sure, I never finished a game (besides one, but that one was just a horrible RPG Maker 2003 shooting game), but I have the experience of ten years working on games and by now I should know a lot of game development (I'm not a master in this, but I'm far for being a absolute beginner in it).

What you guys think ?

To make this not entirely boring for most people, here is my current design for bonus-/specialrooms (which also shows off the springs):

Maybe I can do publishing.

Thanks for the kind offer, but I think, its currently way to early to start publishing. I haven't even finished the first level and I'm still working on the engine. But I will keep that in mind for later .

[iyenal]

People actually E-mailed me about this being a "kids dream project" and how unlikely this is to happen to become a real game and that I should learn first to how to do games properly, by starting small.

"kids dream project" -> this "dream" is very achievable. You just need time.
A real game, from my point of view, is many small games group. Continue in your own time.
Time is factor of everything.

[Kold-Virus]

I've said it before to loads of people, and I'll add you to the list too.

Anyone who tells you who can't do it is a jealous idiot who can't stand to see you succeed. Your dream is their failure

Press on, and most importantly. NEVER let people tell you that your dreams won't happen.

[Hiro-sofT]

Sorry for the late response guys and thank you for your kind words .
Here is a short status update, because I think, that you guys want to know, how the project is going etc...


To make things short, I was rather busy the last weeks. I did a lot of classroom tests and projects related to my apprenticeship, which did of course eat on my motivation and time for this game . I also did livestreaming a short time ago, but this has been cancled for now, as it wasn't really worth it (nobody besides a very few of my friends watched it anyway). So I drop the livestream idea for now, to have a bit more time for my indie project .

Currently, I only do minimal bursts, since I kinda have a hard time, keeping my motivation at the moment , but soon I will have a week vacation, in which I could properly motivate myself to do more on my game . Still no luck with a composer/musician sadly...  I have written down a little bit more of the stuff, I want to put into my game.

I did a few little things, like I finished a bit of Squirlls sprites, began to make a digitized version of an artwork I drew earlier, added now different idle animations for the player, if Cappanis health is low and redid the bubble design, to look now more like soap bubbles :



I will keep you guys up to date with my project .

[miyabi95_]

some advice, take it as you will:
when you livestream, don't worry about whether or not people show up. stay on air for like 20 minutes at least. even if a couple ppl only show up, keep in mind that as long as you continue to host livestreams, EVENTUALLY someone will come across you and think "i really like what this person does. i'm gonna go spread the word."

it's definitely worked for my art stream. tho i haven't streamed since college started, my stream hit its prime with about 7 people or so - which to me is pretty amazing and unexpected.

[Hiro-sofT]

Since you could only move very slowly within the soap bubble (which was kind annoying after a while), I now implemented a faster moving function, which allows the player to speed up the bubbles upwards speed. This should allow some interesting level design for the future as well .

when you livestream, don't worry about whether or not people show up. stay on air for like 20 minutes at least. even if a couple ppl only show up, keep in mind that as long as you continue to host livestreams, EVENTUALLY someone will come across you and think "i really like what this person does. i'm gonna go spread the word."

it's definitely worked for my art stream.

The problem is, I seem to not be as attractive as others in terms of viewers (In fact, I seem to scare people somehow ). I did 3-4 hour gaming livestreams and I did get a few people, but mainly for one thing only (SMM userlevels mainly, but this kinda dies now thanks to the Switch) and those were mostly people, who only showed up once and than never again sadly .

Sad is also, that I live in germany and I have work, which means, if I want to attract people from the US for example (only did german streams so far), I will have to do it either very early or very late, which I both can't do .

Here are my times (Deutschland) and the US times... as you can see, the time most people would watch, is the time where I have to sleep... that really sucks .

[Hiro-sofT]

Okay, after a long hiatus (of stress and no motivation) with this, I will continue to work on this game .

I tried to program moving plattforms yesterday and have the constant issue, that Cappani falls throught the platform, if she is jumping while the plattform moves upwards. I have no idea, where the problem is and I really tried everything. Man... I always have problems with that (next to slopes, which I will properly leave out for the sake of my mind) .

Another thing is, that multiple people are saying the graphics for the background are to dark, the background is to busy for the eyes and the player is still to hard to tell apart from the background. What they think would work is to entirely change the player design, change the background (as well entirely) and change the level palette to something else (like back to the boring, green grassland again).

In other words, change almost everything...  


I don't know if I'm changing anything here... I will wait a little bit to hear more opinions from different people to see if I should do that and redo almost everything graphically from scratch .

I will probably start to work on the plattform issues some more and then move on to finish some basic enemy stuff (like the code to finally beat enemies).

[iyenal]

I see that you make some sad emojis when you write to change the graphics.
Why don't listen yourself and make your game seem what you want to see ? Otherwise I can tell you that it will be difficult to continue in your development plans...

[Hiro-sofT]

Tried to get the platforms working... still no success. I tried everything... I'm thinking about dropping the moving platforms and continue with the enemy coding instand .

Why don't listen yourself and make your game seem what you want to see ?

I don't know. Maybe because I feel I could do something wrong. I used to ignore everything, doing it completely my way and it didn't end well for my reputation back then. Nowadays, I try to aim for the opposite, to use and take as much help offered to me as possible.

The problem is, that it will take a lot of time I could put into different things (a background like that is not done in like a few seconds) and I don't know, if it's that big of a problem as people make it out to be. That's why I'm asking .

[Gors]

you don't need to redo if you can change the hue levels on photoshop

[Kosheh]

you don't need to redo if you can change the hue levels on photoshop

Bullet Safe, Homie (always wear protection)(like a jacket, pants, and shoes)(like Gors)