Mister Big T what's up with that dragon anyways... I was meaning to ask that for awhile but it always escaped my mind. Also I see you still making nice games ^_^.

Well I have been doing some more coding for the CBS and redesigned a few parts, so far I got the Party hud almost done and the Monster Hud is almost done, parts of the command windows done and some other bits, anyway here’s a look at what I’am working towards.



The SG (Soul Gage) replaced the Combo system due to how overpower it made the party, its similar to a limit system but instead one of the SG cells will fill up every time you kill a foe, then once it fills the attack command is replaced with a new command that contain powerful spells that do a variety of stuff, but each cost a certain amount of SG cells.
Also changed the command windows location and a minor redesign to it, Changed the Enemy window to now show there LP, though you still don’t see their EN, also made it so when you are selecting a foe to attack or whatever their name in the window will glow (so you know whose bar is whose).
Apart from that it’s mostly the same, though I doubt I’ll have a demo out any time soon.

Er, that is a mockup? It feels rather cluttered...

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It's the bridge... Now we just need the lighting, and perhaps I'll put a NPC in there too.

End of year full release is my hope.

Mister Big T what's up with that dragon anyways... I was meaning to ask that for awhile but it always escaped my mind. Also I see you still making nice games ^_^.

He's the main character series in the satire fantasy game series of mine.

I personally think the gems are what's saving the hud by breaking it up with both a graphic and a color change. But I will admit it looks cluttered.

The biggest problem I see is that there's too much stuff on the left: the menu is the highest there, it has four health bars on top of each other, and all four monsters are squished together. If where the monster names are located could be something simpler, shorter, and not all text (all text I think would make it look heavy to the right), it might help balance everything. I attempted to do this with the screens below.

I also noticed that you have four people in the hud but only two on the battle field. It might be helpful to think about how the hud looks with less people, less enemies, and also how the battle field looks with all four people.

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Two attempts to shrink the right side while keeping four monsters:
   

For gameplay reasons I think you need four enemies, but I couldn't shrink down the left side enough with four so I have only three here. I also relocated the menu into the corner (the menu would need to be slightly reworked if you did this). I think this doesn't look cluttered. You could also move the menu with any of the ones above too. I think it would look better and give you more room on the battlefield. Of course the menu would have to hide when you select a monster so that you see which health bar it has.
   

Could you possibly just make the monster's HP appear above them briefly when they lose/gain HP?

Gongo, that's pretty sweet lookin'. I mean, sweet shiz. Looks finely spaced to me. No point in showing some lame surroundings that lack detail. Less work for you.

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I'm workin' on a new menu for my game. Textures look like shit 'cause I'm running the game in lowest settings. Whole thing is full 3d goodness. Trust me, it's easier to read inside the program.
EH, I think I'll release a demo in a few days.

I still think those look cluttered. It doesn't feel very sleek. I agree that it feels like there's too much stuff on the left, and I think that flattening it out looks better, because the different sized windows feel a little awkward.

Personally I would cut the faces, they take up way too much unnecessary space. And I agree with hedge[1], the gems are what's really holding it together, because well, the HUD's coloring is pretty uninteresting to look at. I personally have nothing against the color (I actually painted my walls a beige-ish) but it just feels a bit like a pale mush. The sprite work on the bars and frames is nice looking, but the background and general color scheme of it is kind of bleh.

What you could do, is have the little pop-up menu (the one that you make battle commands from) show up next to the player, and thus it moves around to be next to whichever character's turn it is.

Although, if you took the time to do what oc_gunslinger suggested, or made them permanently float above their heads (until dead of course) that could save space too. Actually, if you already have the HP bars coded, it would be very simple to do that.

Also, the dark outlines on the monsters make the monsters a different style from everything else on the screen. The REFMAP has smoother edges, but if you look at the rock monsters, they have a dark/black-ish outline that makes them stand out quite a bit.

edit: btw I'm not trying to rip on you a lot, I think it looks good in general, but I like to criticize because typically I find criticism more helpful than just "looks good."

edit:

turn the white outlines to either a light brown or remove it, that's just my personal opinion.

I was thinking the same thing myself, but at the same time I like how white outlines generally help readability. Usually....

Any thoughts on the shadow for the letters? I wonder if the issue is much more the dark, white, light color order for the letters rather than the fact it has an outline/shadow?

Could you possibly just make the monster's HP appear above them briefly when they lose/gain HP?

The easiest way to code a health bar is to move it as a picture behind a background, like the hud. If you place the health bar above an enemy you'd have to create a different picture for each pixel of LP the enemy loses, which is way more work than it's worth. But it would look nice.

Personally I would cut the faces, they take up way too much unnecessary space.

I've struggled with this since it was first shown. The faces do take up a lot of space. But I really like pictures rather than words in a hud. And yet they're not really necessary since the names are there. But the issue here isn't room left to right but rather top to bottom, so does it even help to remove them? I wonder if the boarder on the pictures were smaller if it would look cleaner? Or would a thinner boarder cause the pictures to no longer separate the player stats and make everything look even more cluttered?

So I took a crack at editing this mess.
<image>

Looks nice. I would still remove the words "SG" and flatten the top though now that you have the enemy list short enough. I might also look again at how the enemy LP bars are designed, but yours is the best one so far, I think. I never tried just squashing everything because I didn't think it would work, but the shadow on the enemy names does an excellent job dividing the bar from the letters.

The EN listed in the action menu was for how much EN the action took, I believe. So it wasn't redundant.

skarik yes, pleeease release a demo.

your game looks so cool and i would enjoy playing it!

@Killer Wolf: That is exactly how I would describe it (the zombie, that is). Looking pretty neat, though! I'd love to see a background. Even something simple would do the trick if the colours were right. I like the new enemies. Hopefully you won't have too many medusa-head like infinitely respawning floaters. God damn those are annoying. I really like the old-school Castlevania stairs!

skarik yes, pleeease release a demo.

your game looks so cool and i would enjoy playing it!

give it a week. it still looks extremely unpolished.

then again, it's a freaking wip.

then again, i've only been working on it for 3 years.

then again, it's a freaking wip made with Game maker which we all know is slow.

then again:



yeah the stars twinkle

give it a week or too. definitely before october.

@Killer Wolf
I would probably crap my pants playing that since I've got some bad memories involving skeletons on fire. I think I played Doom too much before kindergarten.

Hey guys!  I just realized that I've like...NEVER posted anything in these threads in the years that I've been lurking in them, so I think I'll show off my canceled Megaman fangame!  Aren't you lucky?   ​

Here's the title screen (the planet is a placeholder.  I'd rather have an original graphic there, obviously):



Putting the rest in hide tags 'cause there's a bunch.


I might take a video of it later if anyone can recommend me any good FREE software.  (I've had little luck thus far...)