Scoreless Music presents.... The Wishstone Saga (and really Final Tap Pro)

scorelessmusic

IT IS DONE!!!

In the past two days, it seemed like I suddenly became aware of many among us doing trailers for their upcoming games/apps. When ToastKitten offered to use Final Cut Studio to make HD Game Trailers for us in the community, my brain went off a tangent and told me:

"Use GameSalad to make an app that can generate your Game Trailers which you can capture with Quicktime Screen Recording for HD (or something close enough)."

So I came up with Final Tap Pro. :P

And here is the first trailer I made with it, after putting it together for about 2 days.



Hope everyone enjoys it! It was a wild idea that I wanted to see attempted, at least. In light of the other game trailers that we now see floating around from the other makers, I feel like there's so much more that I can add on to Final Tap Pro, but well, this is a start.

The Wishstone Saga teaser trailer was made completely "live". All the scene transitions and fades etc were all triggered with the computer keyboard, like how you might operate BoinxTV.

DimensionGames

That looks pretty cool!

scorelessmusic

Thanks PossesiveGaming! I'm just glad that I managed to come up with something possibly decent to show so that it won't be like one of the many wild ideas I so frequently have but did not follow-thru with.

DimensionGames

So would I place images from my app and place them into this app?

butterbean

Very nice trailer!!

chosenonestudios

Im not fully understanding how this works... You made a GS app. Check. You used it to edit a video. Check. How'd you edit the video since GS doesnt support video files!???

quantumsheep

I kinda get it... it's a nice idea - basically 'perform' your trailer, right? Using the keyboard to trigger certain actors/actions etc?

When will it be available?

QS

scorelessmusic

Yup, QS got it right. GS has some pretty nifty things you can do simply with interpolate and all the other live transforms you can perform on actors. What you see, chosenonestudios, is a video that has not been edited *at all*. That's the essence of a 'live' performance.

Usually, the main issue with video trailers is syncing things nicely with the audio track, so I used Final Tap Pro to 'manually' sync action while the music plays, all 'live' and in a single take, no video edits required.

As for The Wishstone Saga, it's a very early work in development. The irony is that I have probably spent more time (2 days) working on the app that makes its trailer than on the game itself. But it's definitely in my head and just waiting for a fair execution!

scorelessmusic

Oh, unless you meant if Final Tap Pro will ever be available for the public, QS. In which case, I'm not sure. At the moment, the only way to 'load' your own actors in a very manual hack job that digs into the package contents to replace assets.

Or, you'll have to stick with the library of assets which I bake in.

gyroscope

So sorry, scorelessmusic, but.....that's just too good. (I feel like giving up sometimes, when looking at your stuff from all you guys and gals...)

:-( :-)

scorelessmusic

Hey, don't give up, gyroscope! I do believe that when the GS community puts up stuff, it's really meant to spur others along to believe they can do the same.

For me, I always try to do things as rapidly as possible as I'm pushing that particular angle of GS. It doesn't always end up as being very polished however, not like some soon to release apps (*poke QS and utopiangames*) which definitely involve a much longer bake time.

Well, I know for a fact that if/when I do work on Wishstone Saga, it's not going to be a 2 day job!

scorelessmusic

@PossesiveGaming, yup... unfortunately, there isn't really a good mechanism for loading assets from files which have not already been baked in. If you are working on some JPRG like Wishstone Saga, your sprites and backdrops are probably in the same dimensions so they might be able to do a one-for-one replacement. but even that would be a manual preload process.

quantumsheep

Hang on a second!

Wishtone Saga is all your own work?

I thought you'd used existing artwork from some other game just to show off how Final Tap Pro works...

I'm bloody speechless...

QS :O

scorelessmusic

Oh.. I guess I should come clean and say that the teaser trailer isn't really cleared for true public consumption because of the last cut scene. I have yet to actually clear the backdrop for "The Wishstone Saga" with the artist that did it. It was done mostly as a visual mood sample and not really meant to be the actual game splash. But I didn't really have anything else to work with on short notice so I baked it in. ~.^

But, yeah... game-wise, I'm quite psyched to do this if/when I can. I hope it can turn out to be a decent tactics-type RPG, which is what I really love playing on my GBA and PSP (before the iPhone came about).

quantumsheep

Well then - bloody looking forward to this one!

gyroscope

Ditto! Like what QS just said! :-)

beefy_clyro

cracking dude to everything

scorelessmusic

Work on Wishstone Saga: Dusk Of Dreams begins today! Unlike the trailer which was meant for a tactics-like RPG (which involves some mechanisms that I'm still trying to work out with GS), WS:DOD is going to be my attempt at rogue-like dungeon crawl, hack&slash with a semi-live feel to it (rather than strict turn-based). It's still based in the same game realm and I do hope to weave in a decent backstory behind all the game action. It might even be a prequel of sorts!

Wish me luck! ^_^

beefy_clyro

Good luck matey, i'll be following this one with a lot of interest

scorelessmusic

There was a recommendation I read once someplace that suggested that keeping a log of your project helped to move it along, and sharing it with friends tend to keep one motivated (especially if they poke you) so...

Day 1 - Battle Screen Layout (proof of concept)



I'll also share a bit of the game development as I go along so that the screencaps make sense and people following can make suggestions for adjustments / insights / improvement. Hopefully some of the things that I'm actively developing might spinoff something that could help other creators here.

For Wishstone Saga: Dusk of Dreams, I'm toying with the concept of a 'real-time' combat system where every party member's action can be performed in any real-time order. Once an action is performed, there is a cooldown timer before it can be used again.

The enemies also attack according to their action's cooldown timers. This makes the Agility and Spirit attributes important (for both heros and monsters) as it will affect how fast you can act and re-act (for physical and spirit actions correspondingly).

Since everything is in 'real-time', I have thought to optimise every possible desired action to just a single tap (or tap and slide). For instance, the bars next to the heroes are their Health and Spirit levels (with the exception of Hero 1 who only has a Health level, but that's more into the storyline). To drink any available health or spirit potion, simply tap the bar that you want to raise. So tapping a hero's health bar will make that particular hero drink a health potion. etc...

To attack (with physical or spirit), simply tap-and-drag the action icons above the respective hero to the targeted enemy to execute that action on that enemy. Upon activation, the icon will become inactive (maybe fade?) and the cooldown timer should kick in until it's ready again for use, maybe flashing slightly as a visual cue.

Well, that's all for Day One. Let's see what Day Two brings. ^_^