itch.io

Hello,

Your series looks great!  I love the world you have created so far with your characters.  I decide to purchase your entire series to help support your future work.  

I am working on a shooter  right now but one day would love to incorporate your creations into a game.

Yes.  With the fantasy knight’s sword, it just would mean, for me, making hallways wider to accommodate character movement that takes up more room.

At one point I hope to post images, game play, etc for the shooter I am working on, but do not plan to show anything publicly until I get more things nailed down.  At the moment I am “bouncing” around a lot on numerous game projects.

The game I worked on for 13 months, spending a good portion on just learning Game Maker, I have planned as a Metrovania-like side-scroller game but realize I could have 2 years ahead of me to nail down the story, level designs, item placement, level unlocks, boss battles, etc.   As my first Game Maker game, and as a lone developer, I may be “bitting off more than I should chew”.

So right now my idea is to still do my Metrovamia-like game, but put it on hold to do a stream-lined version (just a shooter with level progression that does not rely one backtracking.  And that is where your Sci Fi assets come into play.

I was also itching to get a top-down engine done, and that is what I am currently heads down on.  Once  done, I am hoping to combine it with my side-scroller engine. 

I was also talking with my brother about a game we had worked on together on the Amiga, which unfortunately was never  finished as the Amiga gaming scene “died” around the time I had the game engine done with one of four levels fully complete, but at least 3/4 of the graphics completed.  I realize there still is an Amiga community, but do not think I would return to it with a finished game.  But I would love to complete it in Game Maker.   It was initially written in Blitz Basic on the Amiga, then rewritten again in Xcode on the Mac but canned when multiple platforms/resolutions was more than I could handle as  an inexperienced game developer.  So a rewrite in Game Maker would be my third pass at the game.  But with the experience I have in Game Maker now, I am confident the game could be completed far quicker than my first two attempts.

There are too many game projects I want to do.  Too many irons in the fire.  But I will try real hard to focus on the pruned down Sci Fi shooter for now.

I will definitely keep an eye out for your operations/human pack or whatever you decide to release next.  

Thanks for the chat too.

All the best.

Yes.  For animating all the different combinations of armour, weapons, etc option 2 sounds like the better way, but still alot of work I suspect.

I can see anchor points working for things like the helmet on the player (maybe it even becomes the head/helmet), but the sword  I think would be more difficult if it goes through complex motions.  I am no expert with any of this but if it was me I would probably isolate the weapon animation  as its own sprite and just frame by frame layer it over the player animation so the player's “body” animation would be the same, but a different weapon sprite used (e.g. regular sword vs flaming sword).  If armor moves/morphs a lot based on the player's animations, then a seperate sprite layered over the player body animation would work, but again a lot of work I suspect.

 For me, that is why I am leanig towards the Sci-Fi assets as any weapon that I plan to use, I would just rotate 360 as needed with some complexity if I want the back arm to move with the front arm which I already have working in my current game engine.

Also, I have a weapon select system working for the Sci-Fi theme, but would have a lot of work if I wanted to keep track of weapons, armor and other inventory for a dungeon theme.

I can see how the eight-direction movement allows for extra angles to shoot at, especialy if the weapons are static for each one of the 8 directions.  Since, again, I plan to rotate the weapon 360 degrees for the hero and enemies, I don’t really need the 4 or 8 directions (other than if I wanted the characters to look better in terms of actually representing the direction moved as oppsed to just having a left and right sprite).

A week ago I did look very briefly at the small prototype you mentioned, but may take a closer look.  Thanks for the reminder.

I am looking forward to seeing what you come up with for expansions for Sci Fi backgrounds and props.

Currently I use Game Maker for my game development.   Since I only plan to work in 2D at this point, for me Game Maker works very well.  The only disadvantage I see right now is that I have to fake any lighting effects.

It has taken me 13 months so far from not knowing Game Maker to getting a side-scroller engine shooter with inspiration from Metrovania-like games, but I am briefly taking a brake from that to develop a top-down engine which currently caters more towards a dungeon hack/slash but plan to use if for an above view Sci-Fi shooter, using you assets, if all goes well.

Your dungeon hero character animations, including those of the enemies are outstanding.  I want so badly to try developing a dungeon game with your assets but will focus on the Sci Fi theme since my current game engine support it much better.

One thing I thought I should mention concerning your dungeon hero: With the hero's sword out all the time and off to the side, I find in my testing that I needed to add an extra collision tile between my wall and the character; otherwise the sword/arm would appear to be floating over or under walls. Thus I could not have the character next to a wall.  He had to be further out.

Thanks again for getting back to me!

All the best!

Your dungeon assets look great.  Every time I look at them, I am tempted to stop my Sci Fi shooter to work with your dungeon theme instead.

I can’t wait to see some of the other character animations implemented in (e.g. roll, lifting).  I don’t know if anyone suggested push or pull, but think those would be cool for puzzles.

Keep up the great work!

I will let you decide on what you want to work on next for your dungeon theme.  I like having creatures and the Wizard.

I admit, I am trying to wrap my head around how one would show other weapons and armor on the paladin programmically.  To me a lot of drawing would be required, because of the different directions of the character and unique animated movements.

That is probably why I am leaning to work with your space theme first as I would just need to rotate a weapon and I am currently working on a game that uses the 360 degree gun rotation.

For your question on the space theme, I am a little biased at this point.

1) I plan to use my own hero that only has a side view sprite which would work OK with most of the smaller robots that only have side views too.

2) I am using a 360 rotating gun which works fine for a side-view sprite (as well as for many of the robots), but would require changes if I had the move the gun behind the player for a back view (which I am sure I could figure out but was not planning for).

3) Since they are robots, I think it is OK to just have the side view sprites, but must admit that 4-way movement for the larger rocket firing robots might look better.

4) I was planning to use the larger robots with a side scroller view if I thought they did not work well enough with their 2 directions.

5) I have other character assets I want to have in the game too and they are only 2 way as well.

So for me, I would lean towards more environmental assets.  Having more of the other environmental assets would help make the world feel more “believable/lived in” and allow more for a variety of levels.

I am going to try to design the enemies to support 4-way animations though, so that if you do 4 (or 8 way), I can support the 4 way.

Is the 8 way movement to benifit shooting in more directions or just to have the character transitions smoother for turns/directions?

More packs, especially character packs, for these two worlds would be awesome!  Your characters are so lively and having 4 directions four you dungeon characters really adds to their dimensionality.

For your dungeon, some creature related packs, where some are conjured up by the wizard would be cool.  I always like the traditional large spiders, demons, eye of the beholder, slime characters too.

Do you have plans for other heroes?  My vote would be for an archer and magic user.

My suggestion for future assets for the space theme, would be packs to suggest human involvement: furniture, computer desks, scientist lab, lockers, etc and assets to suggest bedrooms, bathroom, etc.), a scientist pack,  maintenance crew pack.

If you had considered your space theme to be robot focused only, then perhaps more robots (I think some multi legged, smaller “crawling” droids would be cool).

I see in one of your comments you were interested in working on a space shooter, yet the comment appeared to be after you posted your space themed top-down with robots.

Did you have a side scroller in mind or assets for another space game?

Regardless,  I can’t wait to see what you come up with.  Your work is outstanding and so inspirational.  I can’t decide on if I want to focus on using your dungeon or space theme at this point as they are both very cool.

Hello,

Thanks for the quick reply and for updating the stair assits so quickly!  Everything lines up great.

I am really looking forward to seeing how many of your cool assists (robot packs and Sci-fi level packs) will work with a topdown engine I am currently building.

I also picked up your dungeon level packs and associated characters as they were just too cool to pass up.

I will definitely be following to see what else you come up with.

All the best!

Hello,

Nice work!  I have one issue though:

When I placed all of the wall assets together in one file I noticed that all wall elements fit into a 32x32 pixel grid; however the horizontal steps appear to be 16 pixels short of being a multiple of 32 pixels (was 144 pixels instead of 160 pixels across).  Thus I cannot stamp down the stairs to line up to join up with a wall column as there would be a 16 pixel gap.

Am I missing something here?

I could get around this be defining the entire tile map to be made up of 16x16 pixels instead, but was hoping not to have to do this.

That is great news!  I will definitely be keeping an eye out to purchase.  Thank you!

This game looks great.  Please re-release your game as a physical version for those that missed it the first time.  Thanks.

I see what you are getting at.  

I think for me there are a few factors on the new animation that make it less of a walk compared to the Megaman animation. I think a lot has to do with knee definition and angle.  

Megaman has a defined knee bend on the front leg to suggest the character to running forward where the front leg on the new character just seems more straight.  Megaman's back knee/boot top is lower than the rest of his back boot, but for the new character, the top of the back boot appears to be in line with the boot toe (where the toe is higher for Megaman suggesting more of a bent knee).  

I think another difference is that Megaman's back leg, with its full knee/thigh area works better than the skinny thigh/knee to boot transition on the new character where to me the back leg almost looks warped/broken as opposed to bent at the knee.

It is possible that the size difference (Megaman being shorter) could play a role in the leg movement too.

Finally, the new character's arm covers up some of the back leg, but Megaman's animation does not. Perhaps this plays a role too?

I hope none of these comments come across as harsh.  I am just trying to explain why perhaps the new animation feels less like a run to me.

I redrew one of the new characters with 8 frames which works much better for me anyways, allowing for a smoother transition as only having 4 makes it more challenging I think.  Also, this Megaman sprite may be a classic, but I don't find the run cycle to be the best anyways (at least visually for me when I view it).

Perhaps this is different to when the sprite is actually in motion as I was only viewing the frames in a still position.

All the best!

Hello,

You have some cool character designs here.  Nice work!

I was wondering though if you could take a closer look at the walk animations for the player and enemies?  For me the characters appear to hop on one leg instead of walk as I do not see the back leg coming fully down and forward at any point.  The back foot appears to just wiggle back and forth in a raised back position.

Thanks

Hello,

This asset pack looks great!   Cool characters!

Looking forward to seeing what you add in the future.

All the best!

Thanks

Thanks for the information.

This game looks great!

So sad to have missed the physical preorder window.  If you ever offer a physical edition again, please do let me know as I would love to purchase one.  Thanks.

Great work!

By the way, is the floating star animation (shown by the sword) included?  I could not find it.

Hello,

What has changed in this asset pack?  I do not see any change log on what the recent changes are.

Also, for some reason, all of your assets packed fail to unpack on my mac mini (where all packs I have purchased from everyone else work fine).  When using Stuffit Expander it states the following message:  The structure of the archive is damaged.  Luckily I had a PC I could use too where the download/unarchive was fine.

Great work!  For such small sprites you have created some very lively characters here.

Thanks for the kind words.

Thanks for the Instagram link.  You have some great work on display there and on numerous characters from films that are favourites of mine.

I especially like the Aliens related art piece.  Great job!  

I have always been an Aliens fan, as you can see at my instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/tomkstone/ .   You have to scroll down a bit to see the two illustrations I did many years ago in pen/ink with a brush..

I know  what you mean by having tons of ideas but only so much time to get any of them done.  I have children's stories I have written and want to illustrate, two comic books I would like to do (and an old comic book project still to finish), a chess set I want to sculpt/ 3D print, puppets I would like to work on (Muppet style) and now at least 3 video games I want to work on but with only so many hours in the day it is probably better if I just focus on one of the 15+ projects I want to do.

At one point I would love to see a pic of what your Ghibli/Metal Slug inspired prototype game looks like.

Hello,

I purchased both of your Dark Series bundles as they were too cool to pass up.  I do have one question though:  If any new asset packs are released/added to these bundles do I need to now buy them separately, or since I bought the bundles will they be available for me to down load and if so how?

Thanks

Hello Wayne,

As kindred spirits I agree, especially on the artistic side.  I am an artist myself, but it has been only recently that I have gotten back in to doing pixel art again.  Usually it has been pen/ink but mainly in Photoshop these days simulating pen/ink still and now dabbling in Blender.  I was working off/on on comic book and children's story projects but found it hard to get motivated to make it to the drawing table.  Once there I could draw for hours, but it was getting me to actually sit down and not procrastinate on other things that meant most of my projects are still on the go.

When I actually sat down on Feb 27 to learn Game Maker I realized making games is my real passion as I have not been this excited about a project in decades and have not missed a day on working on my current game.

I took a look at your youtube channel and facebook page on your Scourge of the Underkind game and think it looks fantastic!  It definitely has the Gods/Chaos Engine/Alien Breed Amiga vibe.  I see it has been a passion project for many years now, but the results speak for themselves.  I look forward to seeing it physically.

I take it your first game prototype in Gamemaker is different than Scourge of the Underkind?

I loved the Amiga but unfortunately I do not see myself returning to it, at least not for game development.  I could probably jump back into Blitz Basic on the Amiga to complete that Valhalla-like game, as the graphics for three levels were mostly done with the game engine almost fully complete and the first level fully working, but the last levels would still needed a lot of work as would remembering what story and puzzles were need for these levels.

Game Maker is allowing me to get a game up and running far quicker than I could in Blitz Basic and I like the options of being able to hopefully with few changes have the game run on multiple platforms (PC and (dream, dream) the Nintendo Switch are my current goals).  It still is in the early stage of development but I look forward to the challenge of making a Metroidvania inspired game.  I think the boss battles will challenge me the most.

Great to meet you too!   I will be following your Scourge of the Underkind with great interest.

Hello,

Thanks for getting back to me.

No problem on not wanting to sell your tile set at this point.  I totally understand.   Should you change your mind, do let me know.  I would not have time to do anything with it at this point anyways ( although I may have been tempted to stop my current game to try something with your cool tile set ha ha).

If you have a passion to complete your game in Game Maker, I would say go for it.  I am currently working on my first game in Game Make and only started learning how to develop/program with it at the end of  February.  With great tutorials on YouTube on how to do platform and above view games, there are lots of tutorials to help get a game engine up and running.  I am very impressed with Game Maker so far.

Too bad your game  had problems compiling.  Out of curiosity, what were you developing it in?

Years ago I was working on an above view explore/puzzle game on the Amiga, very much like Valhalla, but abandoned the game when it was evident the Amiga was dying.  I later converted it over to the iPad but because I was creating the engine from scratch I was not experienced in handling all of the resolutions that were changing on the iPad, iPhone, iPad mini, etc and stopped development again.

With Game Maker, I would not have had this issue.  I may still go back and convert the game over to Game Maker once I get my current game done since most of the graphics was done.  What took me a year to do in Blitz Basic would be done in a month or two I suspect to get my top-down engine running for that old game I suspect.

All the best!

Tom

Hello,

In your included sample pictures shown in this asset pack you have a purple coloured underground cavern (the third sample picture from the bottom) with some crates below and two staircases off to the right hand side with crates at the top of the top-most staircase.  Above a purple pillar (next to three blue lights) there are some large “square” architectural objects (one supporting the lower staircase and two above the blue lights for example) that I can not find in the enclosed tile set.  Am I missing something?

Five of these large square architectural objects are shown in the picture below where I can not locate them in the supplied tile set.

I also do not see the darker column shown in the same sample image:

Thanks

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for the quick reply.

I just started learning Game Maker at the end of February and as a lone developer plan to make a game and (dream, dream) maybe if entertaining enough release it commercially.

I am still deciding on what kind of a game I want my first game to really be, even the resolution, etc, and must admit that although I am leaning towards a certain kind of game I keep looking at your cool characters wondering if I should try to incorporate them into a game.

One question I do have is concerning your statement you include in you asset packs:

 “You can use this asset pack for commercial project until you credit me :)”.

Does this mean after purchasing an asset pack from you that I can freely use it in a game if I do not credit you, even it I decide to sell it commercially later?  However, if I credit you in my game, does this then mean I can not us it for commercial games?

Regardless, I am really looking forward to seeing what other packs or updates you release over time.  Of all the other pixel artists I follow, your work stands out at the top.  You create so much life with so little pixels!

All the best!

Hello,

I purchased all of your Dark assets which have inspired me to include them in a game I am working on.  Your character designs are so imaginative!  Great work!

I plan to pick up your tutorial bundle soon, but do have one question:  I had assumed these were just tutorials only but noticed in some of the comments that you state that the assets can be used in a game.  Do you specifically state anywhere for your tutorials what can be used in games and not and also if they are free to use or not?

I can't wait to see what else you come up with.

All the best!

Boy, does the artwork ever bring back memories of the Amiga!  Great work on the artwork.

If you ever decide to sell the tile set, i would be all over it to try to do an Alien Breed-like game.

All the best!

Hello,

These assets looked to cool to pass up.  I can not wait to add them into my game.

After purchasing them, I notice there are two download links:

1) RunninBloods_HUGE_16x16_Asset_Pack.zip372 kB   Jul 06, 2019

2) DownloadRunninBloods_HUGE_16x16_Asset_Pack_V2.zip654 kB May 13, 2021

Do I need to download both or just the latest 2021 link?

Thanks

Hello,

This character asset pack looks great!  

I take it that the characters are most suitable for 16x16 pixel world assets?

Also, congratulations on the response on your "Sheepy: A Short Adventure" release too.  From the trailer I saw, it looks outstanding.

Finally, I was wondering it you still had plans to release any further character animations related to this pack, providing you have some time now that Sheepy has been released on Steam.

All the best!

Nice looking pack!  Does this contain any left and right trigger buttons (e.g L, ZL, R, ZR for the switch)?

Hello,

Thanks for getting back to me.

I was finally able to extract the files but had to use the individual package links.  Trying to extract the full bundle would not work for me.

The music is awesome, by  the way.

Hello,

I tried extracting Atmospheric Fantasy Bundle.part1.rar on my windows 11 PC and on my Mac and in both cases they came back with extract errors.  Any idea what is wrong?

  The fantasy bundle part 2 and the Sci Fi pack worked fine though (at least on my PC), and sound great.

Please let me know how to get the  Fantasy Bundle part 2.

Thanks

Hello, 

Your asset packs are outstanding!  I have looked at others by many, many other creators, and there are some nice ones out there, but I really love your creations and art style.  Keep up the great work!

I do have one question for you:  For the gun assets, what does the blue circle icon to the left of each gun image represent?

Also, any idea how many more environment/character packs you plan to do for this series?

I am currently learning Game Maker to hopefully create a fun side-scroller game and already purchased your robo assets to help with my learning (using your assets as I learn how to make a platform game as well as for studying what makes great pixel art).

I will definitely be picking up at least one of these assets pack too.  Even though it caters more for a semi-above game, I think some of these assets will still work as I learn doing a side-scroller.

Offering a pack bundle at one point would be cool.

All the best!