King's Field Side-scroller? Yay or Nay?

[vongrimmsy0]

Hello all! I've been a lurker here for a little while but just recently registered; and in the past few days, I've been working on an idea that I wanted to run by the KF fan community:

King's Field as a side-scroller, along the lines of Castlevania.

I do pixel art, and was thinking of trying to make a game that would tie together aspects of the whole King's Field series (from the 1st Japanese release, up to The Ancient City), while featuring some things from Shadow Tower, and the Demon/Dark Souls series as well! I think something like this is long overdue, as all of these games essentially share the same universe (in my head, anyways~).

A few things I'd feature:
-A hybrid stamina/power gauge system where you will get fatigued as energy depletes; no wildly slashing with reckless abandon, as it will get you killed
-Dodging and blocking, ala Dark Souls; being on a 2D plane would make mastering these essential
-A level-less, class-less advancement system, much like Shadow Tower's
-Many deadly enemies and traps, pitfalls, and other dangers to keep you dead, often. 

I have more ideas as well, but these are a few to give you guys a peek; I guess what I'm really wondering is, does any of this sound interesting to anyone...? I know a big draw of the King's Field series has been the first-person perspective, and losing that obviously changes the game rather drastically. But I think that the same atmosphere and setting can be achieved, even with simplistic, 2D graphics; and I'm hoping (with the assistance of a good programmer; I kind of have one, but the guy is always busy... -_-) I can be the person to do that. 

In closing (and apologies for such a long first post, hehe), I'll leave you guys with a Headeater animation I made the other day; he's rather tiny at his original size of 32x32 pixels, so I blew him up a bit - hope you guys like it! 

[JC Bailey]

I always thought King's Field would be great as a side-scroller after seeing the sprite at the beginning of King's Field NA. I did some top-down stuff in RPG Maker; I had a fully working skill based combat system complete with attacks, magic, and dodging, and had planned to finish it after my current SOM project. But since a new version of RPG Maker is coming out I decided to drop it, and am now planning something a bit different (but still KF-like).

I think your idea is sound, but I do have a couple of suggestions:

For one, if you're going to implement dodging, I would make sure that it can't be abused or spammed as much as in Dark Souls. King's Field combat revolves more around strategic movement than evading every time an enemy readies a swing. What I'd do is make it its own separate stamina bar that has to recharge before you can dodge again, it'd be a great way of evolving KF's hit and run combat strategy.

I'm also not a fan of removing leveling from the game. I think it's a good thing to have a general representation of how far you've come in an RPG, and that's what the character level is there for. The anticipation of hitting the next level threshhold is what makes King's Field (and RPGs in general) so compelling, it gives me something to brag about to my KF buddies, ect.

Anyway, I'm loving the man-eater sprite. If your project ever gets off the ground, hit me up. I'm pretty decent with pixel art, and could compose a soundtrack if needed (or even make remixes of tracks from the KF OST). Good luck!

[vongrimmsy0]

Hey there, and thanks for the suggestions!  And that loading sprite was actually one of the things that inspired me as well - I always thought it needed to be put into a game... :)

For dodging, I was thinking of making it a single hop backwards, very simple; this would force the player to master dodging, or get smacked when they mess up the timing. It wouldn't even be tied to stamina actually, and would even have some 'cooldown' as the character recovers - making frivolous dodging suicidal. So I guess it's similar to recharging, in some way. As for the old KF power gauge, I was thinking the % of damage dealt could be tied to how much stamina is remaining - so a full stamina bar is the only way you're hitting at 100% of your character's damage potential.

Regardless, I'm all about keeping with the slower pace of KF's combat; I want players to carefully consider their chances before each combat, and this sort of ties in with why I want to do away with levels -- because while levels are a great gauge of how far you've come in an RPG, they can also lead to the player quickly becoming 'god'. With stats being raised instead of levels, it makes this climb a little bit slower, and conversely makes each battle a little more deadly for the player, as they don't have the guarantee of their higher level to fall back on! Yet, some sort of title system could still be implemented...

Just my two cents for this project, but I do agree, otherwise. :) I will let you know for sure if I get anywhere with this, as any help would be greatly appreciated! My current goals consist of making animations for all of the monsters from KF1 (US), as well as player animations (which I've already done a good bit for, but need to add details to~); so, if anyone knows a good resource or database for all of KF's monsters (throughout the whole series, if possible lol) that'd be a HUGE help for me. Otherwise, I'll be playing through the games this week it seems. 

Oh, and here's one more of Mr. Maneater (or headeater..? whichever..?), attacking:



EDIT: and I meant to ask (but forgot, because my brain is dumb) - do you have a deviantart page or anything? curious to see what you made! :3

[JC Bailey]

Nice, that attack animation is dead-on!

I haven't done a lot with pixel art lately, just a few things here and there. The top two sprites in this thread I made (there are updated versions below): http://www.swordofmoonlight.com/bbs/index.php?topic=858.msg11572#msg11572. I also made this Bloodborne sprite a couple months back. Also, if you care about music, below is something I made for use in my current SOM project.

I'm a little rusty at the moment, but since my upcoming RPG Maker game will use entirely custom-made assets (that means a lot of pixel art), I should be getting back into it soon.

[vongrimmsy0]

Very cool stuff - the song, the BB guy here, and the others in that link! And it's pretty damn cool seeing Dark Souls in pixel art fashion, I must say! 

Before I recently went off on a yarn in creating this side-scrolling KF thingy, I''d been working on (and am still working on, really) a side-scrolling beat-em-up RPG in the style of River City Ransom; I'm doing all of the graphics and animations for that, so I've been eating/sleeping/crapping pixels for the past few years, straight. O_O The main problem is, my programming ally is across the world, while I'm in China, and emailing back and forth doesn't work so well usually; the time difference doesn't help either. So hopefully, eventually, I'll be able to finish THAT initial project; but I've resigned myself to working on this one for now, while my friend drags his feet a bit~ (and I've already finished large chunks of my beat-em-up game's areas, so I'd honestly be more than a little ticked if the guy bailed on me >_<)

And glad you like the maneater!! But I'm by no means an expert (it should be obvious in my work lol); I've been learning as I go, and I can say I've only gotten marginally better since I started at it. ~_~

Here's something from the game I've been toiling away on - an animation of my main character Baldy attacking with two unique weapons... 



(btw - I haven't played BB yet, and therefor know little about it; is it - somewhat like Dark Souls 1/2 - seemingly tied to the KF universe...?)

[vongrimmsy0]

started on this guy earlier today:

(and yes, he's heavily based off of the headeater, because they're family!) 

EDIT2: a little more work done... -->

I'm thinking I need a better way to get the colors for these monsters (for all of them in general), because getting them from screenshots is sort of inaccurate with the colors being so muddied together~

I have the textures from KF1 (U.S.) - does anyone know offhand if the other KF game textures are lying around on the web somewhere...? If not, it looks like I'll be delving into getting them myself... >_<

EDIT: nevermind - I found how to rip themself, and am now replete with textures to sift through~ @_@

EDIT3: whee, he's done! -->

[vongrimmsy0]

...and here's one of the player; colors are somewhat modeled after the Alexander/Aleph/wth-ever-people-wanna-call-him loading sprite w/ the Moonlight Sword: (uploaded at original size - a 50x50 pixel square)

<-- EDIT: and I'll add this guy for size reference sake; also keep in mind that the player is running, so he looks a few pixels taller than he really is

and just in case I didn't mention it (and scanning through my posts, I see that I didn't), feedback is appreciated on any of these things I'm posting, as well as the whole idea in general!! 

[JC Bailey]

Nice work so far, though I'm not sure if the player sprite is very fitting. The run animation seems like a bit of an over-exaggeration, though maybe that's just what you were going for? If not, you might try adding some more armor and increasing the width of his arms and legs to make him look more realistic.

Here's the full sprite graphic from KF2 if you want to use it as a reference:

[vongrimmsy0]

thanks for the feedback! :) (and for the sprite - but I already yanked it from dmpdesign's avatar, as I see you did as well!  )

I actually adapted this player sprite from an old running sprite I made; think I used a Castlevania sprite sheet for inspiration, if I remember right... that's the kind of look I was going for, but admittedly, mine is much more toon-ish than theirs! maybe I should just transcribe that Alexander sprite in Castlevania style. seems legit. 

but I'll fiddle around with it some more, and re-post tomorrow probably; getting late on my side of the world (about 2AM here, and I got work in the morning lol).

[vongrimmsy0]

worked on the Mantrap's attacks a little today -->

will probably work on/update with Alexander-ish stuff later~!

EDIT: added more motion to the pixie wings~