Genvid & Dies Gaudii Forums

--- Last edited : 06/26/2011
- Engine : 100%
- Graphics : 30% --> 50%
- Story : 80%


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Okay, i'm almost there with my project so I think I can now talk about it.

Bishōjo Senshi Sailor Moon G.
or in english : Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon Guardian

First, this game was originally targeted at me & my friends, seeking to play something like RBO (Ragnarok Battle Offline) or SOR (Street of Rage) with the 3 (to 4) of us.
Well, I decided to make my own game, being somelike beetween RBO & SOR, as well as being a tribute to every fighting games I love to play (such as EFZ, MB, Arcana Heart, KOFs and more)
For people who knows the games I was just talking about, yes, I tried to put advanced battle-mechanism in a scrolling fighting game... and as far as i've tested it, it's fun !
Well anyway, i'll make a complete review and put everything I want to talk about in a "readme" textfile when the game will be finished.


Second, since it's just a scrolling-fighting game, there's no much to say about the graphics, so I won't push this line for too long :
( You may try to refresh your browser if you don't see any pictures below )



- Stage Selection, a bit RBO like. People don't always have the time to "finish" a SOR-like game, so I want to give the player an opportunity to save.
It helps me to add new features, such as keeping progress on which senshis have already cleared a specific stage or not (here no one, yeah i'm lazy)



- Main Screen, as you can see you have a status, a gauge-meter and a life-meter.
The dialogue box below will be useful mainly for, well, dialogues



- Option Screen, yeah, i've finished this. A must have for a multiplayer game.

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The graphics are, for the most parts, all ripped from the PSSM Arcade game, by Banpresto.
Why? Because they are my favorite, and besides the original game wasn't completed, which disappointed a bit some of us.
I'll just say that : The graphics are from there, and you WON'T find anything else in there, aside from the ones i've created, remaked or smalls ones that i've added.
Why? Because I don't really like to do cross-over when it comes to graphs, the differences disturbes me, in the colors mainly, and the ambiance too.


Last, here i'll give you some features of the game, not all though since I want to keep some things secret until I've finished the game :

- 5 players : Well, there's 5 senshis after all...
- Difficulty : For common & hardcore gamers. I wanted to make the game as accessible as possible, so common player will be able to enjoy the game, while hardcore ones will have to unlock specials stages to do so.

- Direction + 4 buttons : Swift Attack, Strong Attack, Special Attack, Jump.
- Basic Movements : Walk, Run, Jump.
- Advanced Movements : Double Jump, Air Dash, Slide.
- Combos / Advanced Combos / Aerial Combos : Chaining swift attacks, strong ones, or both.
- Specials Attacks : Mostly uniques, made for the game.
- Desperation Moves : Senshis' real special moves.

- Save option : The game will be mostly about clearing different stages with limited lifes.
- Key-config option : Self-explanatory.



Advancement / Engine.

Ok, since I never like the BOR engine, i've decided to kinda create one from scratch.
Some people may not like this, but i'm using Gamemaker.
Why? Because it's the 1st free maker I stumbled upon and it does have a GML (coding language) which is not perfect, but not too bad either, and fairly fast if you're not pushing it too much. Besides I didn't want to make something difficult (My intention wasn't to share the game at first, it was only for fun)

Pros : Creating something from scratch means you can put there anything you want, if it's possible.
Cons : Limited by the performance of GameMaker (Lite edition, good software but not worth buying, at least for me)

For people who likes numbers :
- Engine : 100%
As I stated before, the engine is completed. What I mean by that is that I already have a senshi completed (my favorite, Mako-chan) and i've tested everything from the walk animation to special-attacks collisions, and everything is working like a charm.

- Graphics : 30%
For the graphics, I actually already have everything I want, I just need to resize/edit them to fit perfectly my engine, which is taking quite the time.

- Story : 80%
Well, this is a RBO/SOR -like game, so the story does not really matter.
But I've made a little one for people who still wonder : "What am I doing there, Why am I fighting them and Where am I going?". Besides I wanted to introduce one of my small fan-fic in there.

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Well, that's it for now.
Obviously, this game won't be ready too soon, since I want the graphs to be as good as possible, but I want to talk about it and i'm open to any new idea (or new sprites?) that I can still add while developping the game.

Oh yeah, as for the language, I don't know whether i'm going to put the story in French or English.
I'd like to make both, but my english is bad and I DON'T want to release something with too many mistakes (unless i'm taking back my english books if I got the time, hmm...)

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Edit : I'll keep giving feedback about how the game is going here when useful.

Sounds pretty awesome so far, I must say. Are you planning to incorporate the unused special attack animations that were discovered by Makron?

Also, five players? God damn! Awesome. Only game I can think of off the top of my head with more than four players was the six-player version of the X-Men arcade game by Konami. Looking forward to that feature quite a bit. I always sad that the arcade version only had two...my friends and I really wanted to all play it together at the same time.

We did eventually play the Dreamcast version of Sailor Moon Plus, though, which has four player support. But pretty much all we did was beat each other up the whole time.

P.S. Nice K' avatar. You can guess from my name that I'm a fan of his.

You mean something like this?


Anyway yes, that's the idea. Creating one attack for each unused sprite, this is why I think I should share the game here, since i've 'found' so many good graphics (and ideas) thanks to this forum.




Almost there and I'll be able to cosplay him, lucky to have his skin color (even though I don't intend to dry my hair white, hem...)

Swwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetttttttt! Looking awesome!





Hah! Nice! I wish I could cosplay him, but I'm way too light to.
All I've cosplayed so far is Link from the Legend of Zelda. Hah.

A friend of mine did randomly send me a Kyo costume once, though, but I think I lost it.
It was too small for me, though.

Can you use a gamepad with Gamemaker?

Actually this is a tricky part. Yes, GameMaker supports up to 2 joysticks (which was not enough for a 5-players game).

There's supposely a script (& dll) that I can incorporate to the game to make it support more and different types of joysticks, but it sounds a bit unreliable to me.
This is why I've coded some key-config in the option, so you'll at least be able to use a proper software to map your additional joysticks (like JoytoKey for example)

Don't worry, I didn't plan to make 5 people play on a single keyboard

The arcade with special attacks... quite a dream
Nicely done!

That's good. I find it quite annoying one of the fan games here(I've only downloaded one) doesn't have the option to use the gamepad. Since I've only downloaded one I had the impression RPGmaker doesn't let you use a gamepad. It might be the programmer forgot but I'm thinking it might not have been a priority which made me think the other programmers don't intend to program it. I don't plan on playing a fighting game with a keyboard. That is just not right.

Is that engine final already? I would have like it to play something like a combination of Guardian Heroes, Guilty Gear Isuka and YuYu Hakusho(genesis). If not that's fine. I'd settle for a regular beat em up.

By the way. You might want to try playing a game called Denjin Makai/Ghost Chaser. It's an arcade game that incorporates juggling combos to a beat em up game. I don't know if its alreadly emulated perfectly for mame. You could just try the snes version. Snes9x works properly on it.

Just notice your topic and I must say that I like your concept. Any video demos?

Yes, as I've already stated the 'engine' is already finished.
You have way enough moves (and tech-moves) to survive and do/find combos to have fun.
Besides I didn't want to make the senshis too powerful (in which I may have failed), but since the enemies can somewhat do the same things, I think that you won't be bored.

I just didn't want to put 'overrated' combos (even though I'm spamming them in Arcana heart), just picture 2 enemies ganging up on you doing guilty gear's combos-like :
--> Yeah it will be fun the 1st time, but after I doubt it.
And don't forget that it's more like a stage-system game, so you'll have limited lifes and fighting "Sol Badguy"-like enemies on each step may be REALLY, hem.., 'hazardous' to your life-meter.

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I was thinking about this, but...
To be honest, I never liked video-previews (and rarely watch them). I always thought that they somewhat 'kill a part of the fun' I want to have when discovering a game.

Anyway if you really want to see one, I can make it, but my first idea was to finished all my senshis (sprites + attacks) and then show more pictures until the game is completed.
I didn't plan to release a 'demo' too, never liked to have a partial-game.

Err..
Just wanted to confirm that the previous post is indeed from me.
Was logged out in the process.

Tiens, un ami français. YEAH !
(Enfin un jeu de fan Français )

The game seems to be already well advanced. I'm anxious to see how it goes.
In addition if the graphics of the game arcade is two times better. Level history, I wonder what you're going to invent us, because it is true that the original game to appear to be incomplete, and the discovery of Makron plunges us even more in doubt. So I'm waiting to see what's going to give, but already I've seen it looks to be great. In the meantime I hope you will post more photos
Such a result with Game Maker, it looks amazing. At least for me, because frankly I have so far successfully used as RPG Maker (which is great!). Not really waiting to see this game!

I think this project is really cool, is a chance to see how different the arcade game would be if they had use all the all the stuff they made.
Like a reinterpretation.

C'est vrai qu'on est pas beaucoup
Puis pour RPGMaker, c'est pas la joie pour la gestion des collisions, c'est juste pas approprié pour ce type de jeu :/

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Ok, the project is going very well, I've almost finished Mercury (and one random enemy, Thethis)
Working on the sprites is tedious, but they do have a better rendering that I expected :


Anyway, as you can guess while viewing the previous picture, I've tried to make each character have a strong point.
If, while testing the game, I don't see any 'uber' stuff going on, it'll be something like that :

Sailor Moon : - All around character, Have the ability to boost allies.
Sailor Mercury : - Support character, Have the ability to freeze enemies.
Sailor Mars : - Damage dealer, Best with special skills.
Sailor Jupiter : - Damage dealer, Best in one-one battles.
Sailor Venus : - Combo character, can be used either as a damage dealer or a support character with her specials skills.

I don't think I'll change thoses specifics attributes, but there willl be more to discover while playing a character and besides I don't intend to force people to play a "specific role", you'll have enough moves to play either way you want - The purpose of the game is for players to have FUN, and only that.

I think it will be very very fun

It would be great for single player the possibility to choose a second soldier played by the computer... not with a high AI, but just to give some help... just an idea I like

A friend of mine will love this game too

Hmm.. can't edit my first post, I suppose there's some limitations about that...

Anyway I just noticed that my title is close to one of the current project running in the forum ;
(aka : Destiny Revival - PGSM Collection --> Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon)

I'll think of a new title, sorry for the inconvenience.

This game looks like it's going to be really great! I was wondering if you're close to releasing the full game or at least a demo?

Well, releasing a 'demo' wouldn't take much time, but like I said I wonder if it's a good idea.
Due to the game-type, once you've seen how the gameplay is, there won't be much to add to it, except for new enemies, news stages or eventually new attacks.
This is why I'm not really into making a demo, It's better to take much time but release a full game I think..

Well anyway i'm still stuck on the graphics, this takes a huge amount of time.
For example I wanted to have the possibility of adding several shadows (depending on the stage) so I have to work on Makrons' sprites once more, so basically just delete the shadow.
BUT, since it have sometimes (almost all the time) the same color as some dots of the boots, I noticed that due to the detailled-graphs of the original game, even when it's just ONE pixel off you notice the difference in the game ; and unfortunately for me all kind of design tips are not working (the "dark-dots" spots are just so irregulars that you don't have any others options but to work on each sprite, so it's like working on 80 differents sprites per sailors)

It's still funny, I thought that the game engine would have taken most of the time in this project, I was so wrong at that time.
Fortunately enough I didn't have to create the sprites from scratch...

How are you doing with removing the shadows?

Fine thanks for asking, almost finished I may say. (Half-Moon & Venus and it'll be done)
I'm still in the sprite part because I'm reviewing the differents animations & combos of each sailors, just to make sure that they're all "fun" to play.

Now i'm also into modifiying / optimizing the game engine.
Checking things left & right allowed me to add 2 new features like an -Air recovery- and a 2D-grab system ; What I mean by the last one is that, even though I first didn't intend to put a grab-system, one like any 2D fighting game (meaning you have to be close AND push 2 buttons instead of just running into the enemy) sounded kinda fun and possible, but i'm still not sure if i'll put that or even if i'll be able to code it properly.

Oh and btw, I think i'll make a video, at least to show how the gameplay is as I was suggested.
Just need to check where I can upload one (don't really feel like opening a youtube account only for that)

I did a little editing on removing shadows for Jupiter. Feel free to edit some of them. Some of them I think aren't that good.

http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/1811 ... piter2.png

Blocked by ImageShack, someone should try tro find why they hate so much Sailor Moon.
Anyway thanks for that, but don't worry I just need to finish Moon & Venus.

You can still open imageshack files here. Just right click and then open in new tab.

Edit:
I'm also done with Venus.
http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/5994 ... evenus.png

Edit 2:
It seems I can open the link cause I'm logged in.

Edit 3:
Got me a new image site to upload.
http://postimage.org/image/2q8wfdw3o/

I am very excited to see your video. When are you going to give us a preview?

Owwwkay.

So, i've finally finished rewriting the code and editing/resizing every graphics I needed for the game.
Yeah, rewrited the code.. I overestimated GM and not coding in C++ backfire at me so much on the speed & loading aspect that it was funny.
No worries though, i've fixed pretty much everything and you'll be able to play at 60fps.

Next is all about frames & effects-animations more like anything, the 'fun' part I may say (was a good idea to save that for the last).

Anyway I've just noticed something : I do have lots of images but not so many musics & sounds.
I've searched over the net but when it comes to sound, it always seems to be difficult to find anything.
If anyone knows where to find some i'm all ears, especially the arcade ones.


I can work on it now - currently coding a "demo" (like the one you usually found in arcade games, explaining controls & stuff) :

But I need more sounds (more like voices) to do what I really want.

The PSX off-battle voices are quite good, but I wonder why the senshis sounds like children in battle...
It disturbs me and just sounds out of place for the arcade sprites.

I can upload the OST to the Arcade sometime tonight. As for the sound, you could references Sarakura's version.

Err.. Mugen characters, didn't think about that one. (sailorvgame.org sure is a godsend)
As for the OST I would appreciate it, even though i'm actually looking for theme songs (like transformations' full song of each senshis, things like that)
I wonder if you can find mixes of these songs too, it's not like there is a bunch of them anyway.
Hmm... I'll check on the japanese Youtube section too, they always loved to make that.

I will upload that as well.

Thanks.

Edit : Since i'm already at it, it may be faster to ask this too :
Does anyone have the separate sounds effects of each senshis' attack?

Edit 2 : Forget it, sailorv.org have done it again.