A Koopa's Tail: Under the Weather

[Mr. Jam]

This really does sound like a great game!

I'll have to play it when it comes out

[Star]

As promised..here is the first piece of artwork for A Koopa's Tail!
Introducing..LeBou!

Spoiler

On a side note, I have recently created 4 new characters for this game, which Ridge has fallen in love with their designs. I can't show them just yet, but I think you guys will enjoy them when they are revealed.

[Ridge Troopa]

Perfect beauty has been achieved.
With that artwork finished, the first post has been updated! We're hoping to have some more progress to show soon, as Star said. Myself, I've been working on some sprite stuff, so I'll likely have an animation or two to post soon.

Minor revisions have been made to the first post in this respect, but if any of you had been annoyed at the idea of this 'Albino' character, well, grieve no more! I'm removing her and am going to rework the NPC's a bit. This won't change the overall plot but I'd like to think it will improve the game. Once I edit the fiction version, I'll update the this topic with new info as to how those characters interact.

[Star]

Ridge and I are still in discussion about this..but you guys have seen from the first page that we plan on using different official soundtracks.

It probably won't be until later on(if we do in fact need this)that we'll need some custom soundtracks. If anyone is pretty gawsh dang darn good at making soundtracks and is willing to contribute to making custom tunes that can go with the official ones, we'd like to..have a word with you *sits calmly at his office desk*

[TravixMan]

Ridge and I are still in discussion about this..but you guys have seen from the first page that we plan on using different official soundtracks.

It probably won't be until later on(if we do in fact need this)that we'll need some custom soundtracks. If anyone is pretty gawsh dang darn good at making soundtracks and is willing to contribute to making custom tunes that can go with the official ones, we'd like to..have a word with you *sits calmly at his office desk*

Why I'd love to make some soundtracks for this game, specially since I am making a lot of music recently. I have been reading the fiction since it was on Boo Mansion and DeviantART. I have some samples from early 2013. I have been making music since 2010, and I have been getting better at it since! These pieces are from different projects that I am involved in, with the first one being from my own game!

[Boss] Trevo Jr.'s Theme: https://soundcloud.com/breaking-stones/boss-trevo-jr

Battle With Portrait Ghosts 1: https://soundcloud.com/breaking-stones/b...t-ghosts-1

More music is here: http://forums.mfgg.net/viewtopic.php?f=1...88&start=0

Thank you, and have a fantastic day!

[Phaze]

Your reply reminds me that I seriously need to get my ass in gear.

It's been so hard to get myself motivated to start programming again, even knowing what good can come if I get started

[Kami]

Battle With Portrait Ghosts 1: https://soundcloud.com/breaking-stones/b...t-ghosts-1

0_0
Oh jeeze, I need to get back to working on that game, I completely forgot to do stuff on that as of recent.

---

Your reply reminds me that I seriously need to get my ass in gear.

It's been so hard to get myself motivated to start programming again, even knowing what good can come if I get started

I know how that feels phaze, motivation can be a toughy to get ahold of sometimes. I wish I could help you get yourself motivated, your a good programmer, and you never will know what your best is until you try to your fullest. If we could somehow get you, Ridge, and star fully motivated, I'd honestly love to see the result of that.

[Phaze]

If we could somehow get you, Ridge, and star fully motivated, I'd honestly love to see the result of that.

We've already seen work from Star and Ridge though!

Hopefully I can start soon. I might be tempted to try working directly on the engine's base components instead of the animation tool so I might actually get something done.

[Master Wiggler]

This is going to be so cool! good job.

[Miles07]

First and foremost, this seems to be a great idea for a Mario M&L-styled fangame (I had long since had an idea as to a weather-based M&L game, but had no capabilities of bringing it to light), and I 100% support it.

Hopefully I can start soon. I might be tempted to try working directly on the engine's base components instead of the animation tool so I might actually get something done.

I can offer my coding assistance if you need someone to help you. I could also test out the components, look for bugs, quirks, issues, etc. if it helps to have another set of eyes on the project. (And I offer my services free of charge, too!) Let me know via PM.

[Phaze]

I can offer my coding assistance if you need someone to help you. I could also test out the components, look for bugs, quirks, issues, etc. if it helps to have another set of eyes on the project. (And I offer my services free of charge, too!) Let me know via PM.

It isn't so much help but I'm having major issues with motivation for some reason. I did a little stuff a week or so back but I've been in this rut for the last 6 months. It's frustrating.

Bug testing would be handy though, I might give you a call when I have something more substantial done.

[E-Man]

I can offer my coding assistance if you need someone to help you. I could also test out the components, look for bugs, quirks, issues, etc. if it helps to have another set of eyes on the project. (And I offer my services free of charge, too!) Let me know via PM.

It isn't so much help but I'm having major issues with motivation for some reason. I did a little stuff a week or so back but I've been in this rut for the last 6 months. It's frustrating.

Bug testing would be handy though, I might give you a call when I have something more substantial done.

So, I take it that you are the primary coder for this project then? How much progress have you guys made?

Edit: Sorry for asking these dumb questions, but I was only wondering.

[Ton]

Wow, I just stumbled in here, and of course I really love everything I've seen. I will definitely be checking back.

Reminds me of that M&L sprite movie I did years ago with Zeon...

[Phaze]

So, I take it that you are the primary coder for this project then? How much progress have you guys made?

Edit: Sorry for asking these dumb questions, but I was only wondering.

The only coder, actually.

Ridge has been doing sprite work and tweaking the story here and there.

As for me, I have two separate things to do for this project. The first is a tool that will enable Ridge to make sprite animations out of individual pieces of a character, along with other things like sprite transformations/palette changing either parts of the whole frame of a sprite. It'd be much more efficient and hopefully less tedious than making whole sprite frames for animations by hand, "GIF" style. If you notice animations of bigger characters like Bowser in BIS you'll notice that parts seem to move individually.

While I admit I'm having trouble being productive, I'd like to be doing this by myself for now. Legal reasons, I guess. In short, I want to cannibalize part of the AKT engine in order to work on another game and not having any others involved in engine production shall prevent legal issues since we're keeping the game engine proprietary (I've discussed this with Ridge in private, previously)

I have to admit that if I can't get started proper soon I wouldn't be too opposed to help on the animator since I want it to essentially be a FOSS program.

Then after that is the engine for the actual game itself. I'll essentially be doing that from scratch, but I think I'd probably have an easier time with the engine instead of the animator because I'm honestly unfamiliar with GUI programming and thus don't quite know what to use in order to perform a specific function yet. I need some specific things like a graphics editor's "layer" dialogue and such.

Obviously the engine will use the animation files made by the tool along with tile sheets in order to animate characters in the engine. However, I guess I'm trying to do the animator first since it'd be kinda hard to move on without proper graphics unless I use really flat placeholders.

As for actual progress, I've sorta done a bare skeleton of the GUI thus far,but it still has some "problems" (trying to get resizing parts of windows to work correctly and the splitters don't want to inhabit the same space as other components I put in there as placeholders) and it has no actual functionality yet. I do have an idea of how the animation format would look (at least in XML) but I haven't made a formal spec for the format as such, yet.

Man I almost make it sound like I know what I'm doing!

[Miles07]

Let me know if you're stuck on some problems, too. I could help out in those cases (and I'd only need a small amount of code in order to solve these littler problems, so you wouldn't have to worry about proprietary issues and whatnot).

As for motivation, I feel your pain, dude. I have tons of projects that are just collecting dust (figuratively speaking) on my computer that aren't getting close to finished. best to pick one thing at a time (like the engine), work on that until you're stuck, then get yourself involved in a smaller "project" that works a different part of your brain (like playing a video game or sketching or reading a book). That way you end up getting a sort of a recharge and your mind and focus is more able to go back to that major project. (And who knows; you might be inspired with a solution to whatever dead end you encounter in your major project while distracting yourself!)