E: Accidental double post, You can ignore this.

Unless the natives are totally secluded from the rest of the industrial world it's pretty safe to assume Moolah would have some value to them. If there are rudimentary trade systems in place then it would make sense for them to convert to Moolah once that became more prominent around them.

If you do something like that you could do cool things with having villages farther out in the sticks that only trade items for other items.

The original Fallout had a system like that. There was a kind of currency, the bottle caps, but for the most part you traded items for items. As far as what to call the currency, I'd go for either Spooce or Moolah. As Phylum said, the natives are not totally removed from the industrial scene.

I don't think I'll be going for Spooce since that's what's being used as the player's energy. Excellent points with the Moolah however, I believe I'll use that, it would also make more sense later in the game once the character enters some of the more heavily industrialised areas to have Moolah as the currency.

When I was first thinking about how I could make this work this morning I had the idea of a bartering system trading items for items, however I didn't want to fall into the trap of having to make a player grind one enemy in order get lots of the item that they wanted. After this money made much more sense, meaning that all drops could be converted to money. However I did still want to retain the requirements of some drops in aquiring certain items. Such as making a medicine from some dusty Desert Witch Doctor require Powdered Scrab Beak, aswell as money, or something along those lines.

Alright so i've got all the shop emchanics down. The only thing that might change involving this is the placement of some of the things in the menu along with some balancing of item values, however now every item in the game has a value and can be sold in store.

Before Selling

http://i1270.photobucket.com/albums/...ps0d719777.png

After Selling

http://i1270.photobucket.com/albums/...psd7ac1907.png

http://i1270.photobucket.com/albums/...ps56e5080c.png

I don't get the two prices. "I'll buy this for...50 Moolah 10 Moolah" is it 50 or 10?

I think the idea is that you'll effectively haggle for the price, or buy it for more than it's worth to curry favor with those selling it.

This is exactly why i said that the only real changes will be balancing and moving things around xD

The amount of Moolah on the far right is your total Moolah, with the "I'll buy this for.." being the amount it will be sold for. Your total Moolah is now displayed above the chat box during transactions, and alongside the HUD whenever you enter an area where a transaction could take place or when you pick up some Moolah.

Though that Haggling idea.. That could be used

I'm thinking something along the lines of
With the difference being the percent difference between the proposed price and the original price and the likeability being affected by how many quests you've done, number of unsucessful trades, etc.

So i've been messing around with stuff again and after testing I decided it would be a good idea to add some kind of melee weapon, so that even in areas where spooce may be scarce you could still do something.

So the question is.. what weapon would it be? A sword? A club? A spear?
Any input would be helpful c:

You could go with the old traditional Mudokon fighting style. The one that every young Mudokon seems to know at birth. The ancient art of slapping. Though if slapping isn't manly enough for you, I think some Mudokon tribes used spears. That's just me speculating from seeing the spear impaled Mudokons from Abe's Oddysee.

Of course you also have the Mudokon's in Much's Oddysee who do use clubs. Spears, I'm pretty sure there's been concept art somewhere for that kind of thing. Swords, I don't think anyone's seen anything of.

Personally, I'm torn between slapping, because not only is it sort of amusing, it's also sort of in line with the whole idea of Mudokons not naturally being warrior types, and some kind of spear or knife, because that'd feel a little less useless than slapping things into submission.

I dunno man, those slaps can be deadly! Have you not ever lined a bunch of Muds up for a slap fest? Many casualties occur.

Thinking about it i've decided to have multiple different melee weapons, so far I've made a Mudohawker's club and a spear, I'm sure I'll think of more soon. Or maybe there could be upgrades for each kind, since the club if swung and the spear is thrusted.

Lovely GIFs for your viewing pleasure.
http://i1270.photobucket.com/albums/...ps97a69725.gifhttp://i1270.photobucket.com/albums/...ps32acd43d.gif

From what I've see. This looks like it could be really fun, now for combat will you be able to posses enemies to use against other enemies? Or is it strictly beat someone with a stick style? Or a mixture of both?

The animations remind me of the fighting in Terraria/StarBound. Not that that's bad.

I only just realised that it looks like that!

Anyways, I currently don't have internet and am relying on my phone so I won't be updating for a while. (Or atleast not with pictures.)

I have been working on this though, if anything more so due to the lack of distractions. And I'm finally getting around to starting the story. So hopefully I'll be able to release a Demo once sufficient progress has been made.

This looks great, I especially like the art style and animation style!

My personal opinion regarding the melee attack is that having the ability to slap is a must for any Mudokon. :) Keep up the good work!

Thanks! I've been trying to keep working on it so that I don't lose interest, but now it's becoming a labour of love, I enjoy working on this and I can't wait to see how much further I can take this.

Speaking of which...

In less than half a day's worth of solid work, I've managed to do more on this than all of the last week combined. I've finally gotten around to starting Act One of the story and it's turned out so much better than I'd had originally planned.

All the cutscenes look nice and smooth (They're done within the game using the game's engine, as New N' Tasty's will be, though to a much a greater extent.) So from the way it's looking thus far given the seemingly exponential progress I've made I'm hoping to release a demo by the time I get my internet back (Whenever that may be.)

You'll be playing through Act One - Part One which features Kip as a child (He's actually a child through all of Act One) so you won't be experiencing everything that you could do with Kip when he's older, but it's basically the same. Oh and did I mention that you play as Kip as a child? I should emphasise this cause he looks adorable. :I

I know that Gamemaker animations area huge pain in the ass, but you could probably do better with the weapons. They need a bit more energy, a bit more life. There are 3 things that would make them better.

• They need to stay out for longer once you use them, the club especially. If you don't listen to the next 2 things then this at least would give the animation a lot more weight.
  
  
• Again focusing on the club more than the spear, some kind of motion effect. This would mean that you could have fewer frames where the club has to be moving. Starbound does a really good job of this, although you could easily get away with a less pronounced effect.
  
  
• It would look a lot nicer if Kip actually moved. I'm sure you've considered doing this, and it adds a lot of complexity to however you manage the images/animations. If your player can move while you're attacking, ie be in 2 different animation states at once, then the best thing to do would be to split your sprites in half. Have a legs section and a body section. I would also draw the weapons in their own call on top of that. There are other advantages too, like having different facial expressions/whatever without having to remake all of the walking animations for it. It sounds kind of complex but as long as you manage the images and animations from variables that you have total control over (which you should do in GM anyway) then it's not too much more work.
  
  

The weapons themselves look really good though.

Other than N'n'T, I think this is my most looked forward game (demo I guess).

Thanks! I had noticed aswell as maybe mentioning before about the animation for the weapons. The animations shown are my first attempts at them just showing how they'll work. In the time since I have made it so that your character is not just standing still whilst attacking. (The only reason it goes to the standing frame whilst attacking is because that was my placeholder :p)
I've also been making the animations looks nicer, even adding some kind of motion blur like you'd mentioned. The club now has a slight delay between attacks if it hits the ground, stunning the player for a second or so to make it feel like what you're swinging round is a big heavy ball attatched to a big heavy bone.

As for the spear, Kip now holds it behind himself for a short while before thrusting it forwards, emulating an actual spear rather than being able to just push it in front of himself easily. This body sprite used for this isn't yet finished so again, the standing placeholder was used. Unrelated to animation I've now completed the quest that allows you to obtain the spear.

Aswell as this, I'm currently coding it so that the weapons have a different attack depending on if they're used in the air or not. For the club I'm thinking something similar to spinning in the air before dropping to the ground to release a shockwave that will damage and push back enemies. I'm also messing around with "Spooce-charged attacks" whereby you perform a more powerful attack (Yes Phylum, with prettier animations : p) at the cost of your spooce.

Oh, wow!:blush: Thanks, I'll try to make sure it's everything you hope it'll be. xD

Thanks for the great, and helpful feedback!

Good to hear :p

As long as that stuff was WIP the main point to take away was about splitting the image though. I can't say enough how much I hate the way GM handles images. There are so many cases when an "object" could need to be represented by multiple images, yet at least in older versions it was very awkward to run several animations at once.

The name of the first shopkeeper you meet, the one in your home village, is called Gil.

Hue hue hue hue..

Lots and lots and lots and lots of progress. Including optimisation of stuff. I've finally gotten around to fixing pretty much all of my measier code and other errors from early on in production, I'm not sure why I thought it necessary to have two variables just to decide which direction the player's facing.

I'm probably around 80% of the way towards having a demo ready for you guys to playthrough.

I have great admiration for you in tidying up code, because once I've written a code, I typically never change it unless it actually doesn't work. That said, I've only once had a point where my coding has been so convoluted that it has actually significantly slowed down the game (outside of stupid and silly tests).

I certainly hope that progress continues to be this promising.

Same. Cleaning up code is a long, and tedious process. It's awesome that he shows so much dedication to this.

Holy shit, this looks fantastic. I can't even properly articulate how much I love this, being probably the most promising fan game in OWF history.

I can see that for most it would be an overly ambitious task, but you seem to have a huge amount of motivation behind you and I respect that man. You really know what you're doing.

Thanks, it's great feedback like thisand lots of coffee, that has kept me going. Right now I'm just finishing up some sub quests for you to play around with until the abrupt end of Act 1, Part 1.

One of the main problems I'm having at the moment is sound. I had someone who was meant to be doing some music for this but never delievered. I feel I'd be ripping you guys off giving you a soundless demo, but also ripping you off just the same giving you some stock sounds. And I really don't want to commision someone again.

It's a pickle. :I

I music, and I have exactly one month until Uni starts. I also have no experience making anything digitally, but I'm sure it can't be too hard...

Shoot me a PM or something.

I've only done electronica music, sounds fine and all, but I don't think it'd fit in Oddworld well. Do you have sound effects though? I know a thing or two about making sound effects.

http://s3.postimg.org/6e3qu5tsj/Meet_The_Muds.png

Should have just called this, "Meet Some Muds" but it's atleast something till I can update properly. Have fun.

Woah! Those Mudokons are awesome! I am so looking forward to this!

The only thing that bothers me is that the Mudombie's colors look a bit "washed out", it might be because the clothes have "degraded" the same amount as the Mudokon itself in the sprite.

In my opinion it looks better without the "washed" out clothes, I attached an image to show you.

Remember, this is only my opinion, I think it all looks awesome and that this is turning out great! ;)

Thanks! The mudombie's clothing colour was something that I had noticed whilst drawing the sprites, however I felt the washed out colours gave a better impression of them having been dead for a while than the normal loincloth colours did. The character design change fairly frequently (The Mysterious Nomad has had an alteration in the few hours since this was posted) so these are by no means final designs.

On a design related note, remember how Lorne wanted it so that Abe's ponytail would grow the more spirtually attuned (or something) he was? Well Kip has that, depending on your maximum Spooce count, and current Spooce ability your ponytail can be small or large. Wonderful, yes? C:

E: Oh, and your tattoos will do this aswell.

I am jealous of your ability to do creatures. I've only been able to do machines when it came to spriting.

I'd like to say the secret it practice, but it's mostly trial and error. xD

Anywho, I'd love to be able to give you guys more substantial updates than this, but unfortunately I stil don't have internet at home, so I'm fairly limited with what I'm able to show off. Sorry I'm poor! So here are some ways that your ponytail and tattoos will grow as your Maximum Spooce Count, and your Spooce level increases.

These are just rough ideas that I drew up last night, whilst making more "casting" animations, so that using your powers wouldn't look so dull.(Phylum) Anyway, have fun!

http://s11.postimg.org/zcv5ilaoj/Kip_Levelsa.png

I have to say, I love the extremely long pony tail, and I also like the idea that tattoos actually occur naturally on Kip with enough Spooce.

Thanks! That's probably my favourite aswell just because it looks so luscious. I'm picturing Kip in an Oddworldian L'Oréal advert. Anyway, the tattoos don't really occur naturally, the first tattoo stage is brought about from something afterwards they begin spread naturally with enough spooce. (Unless that's what you meant)

Anyway, I don't have a picture for this right now, but when pausing now opens a screen which shows your inventory; misc items, weapons, quest items; aswell as your character's status; HP: Spooce: Spooce Level, and your character's current Mission and Subquest. From here you can also use items, so that's new. Hooray for 2-dimensional Arrays!

E: Oh and in my cleaning up of code, I managed to fix some n00b-esque coding I had done much earlier, thus reducing resources for Kip by half. Woop.

So here are some pictures of those updates I've been talking about.

http://s30.postimg.org/sw4t5lin5/screenshot124.png Pause screen, including status, missions, and inventory.
http://s30.postimg.org/57pbabm3l/screenshot131.png Meech Meech Meech Meech.
http://s30.postimg.org/gy38rpew1/screenshot140.pnghttp://s30.postimg.org/8h3qgsa75/screenshot142.pnghttp://s30.postimg.org/mwh21xxup/screenshot149.pnghttp://s30.postimg.org/4ywby4yox/screenshot155.png
And a few screenshots from the area where the first boss is located. You have to fight a released Kinto Slave, it's attacks vary from slamming down into the ground, throwing rocks at you, or charge into the walls causing boulders and debris to fall from the ceiling. Oh and I kept losing so Kip died. :I

And here's an image of my new favourite area in my game. The Great Mudoko Tower, click for full image.
http://s30.postimg.org/px2hw7yjh/Mudoko_West.jpg

Oh, this is really making me look forward to seeing this released.