The Poppytales (Journal Thread)

NOTE: Point #3 contains potential spoilers for a game that will not come out in a very long time. Skip that point if you want to avoid them.

Hey everyone,

Not much progress on TPT lately but I have a few things I wanna say and perhaps get some advice on:

1) Soundtrack. Currently I have not started on this game's soundtrack since I am so early in development. However, my current idea is that battle themes and music for different areas will be remixes of or themed around the types of music in my different games. I want to do the game's soundtrack myself, but I'm still figuring out what to do with this. Any advice?

2) Animations. At my current rate, it may take several thousand years for one person to hand draw, digitalise and animate every single frame of the game at this current rate. Animations such as the Poppytail gif you can see in my signature run at 25 fps, but considering my hand-drawn backgrounds as well, this could cause major storage and memory issues. So I'm thinking of maybe downscaling the frame rate of animations because there will be loads in this game. Maybe if I can manage 10fps for animations? To make this easier to understand, 10fps is one frame every 100 milliseconds. My current rate is one every 40. Considering the large amount of characters this game will have, animations like the one in my signature may be in their tens of thousands by the time the game is finished.

3) Content. There will be loads of levels in this game. I want to somehow make sure all of them have some sort of twist or something that doesn't make them too boring, so progressing in the game doesn't feel like you're always fighting the same enemy with different moves each time you go into a fight. There will probably be at least 100, so this project is massively ambitious for one person.

In this game there will be ten major "areas":
1) Geometria (Century Game)
2) Easter Island (Easter Fun)
3) Rosemary Games (Pixeltail)
4) Old Rosemary Games (Poppytail 1-4)
5) Non-Existence (Poppytail 4: Special Edition)
6) The Training Grounds (One Million)
7) Trapdoor Graveyard (Poppytail 5)
Hedge Avenue (A Game About Trimming Hedges)
9) The Elecreature Territories (The World of Elecreatures, my book)
10) Boompaint Island (The cancelled sequel to Elecreatures from 2016)

Some of these worlds will be quite small. My estimates for how long each will be from smallest to largest is this: Geometria, Easter Island, Non-Existence, Trapdoor Graveyard, The Training Grounds, Old Rosemary Games, Boompaint Island, Rosemary Games, The Elecreature Territories.

Pretty much the idea behind this is you have the major antagonist: Wracedevil. Picture below.



So, he has twelve minions which will need to be beaten in order to get to him by travelling through The Elecreature Territories. Along the path are ten gates. There are two of these minions who can be beaten before encountering any gates, but the first nine gates require you to have beaten any other world to unlock. After the first two, the path to one of these minions will be behind each gate. The tenth one has a different objective I will not say. So that world will be quite long.

So, I'm going to working on Poppytail 5 and Pixeltail for quite a while. My goal is for the game to be done by mid-2020, but I can't make any promises.

It's not playable yet, I'm still working on character sprites. Ignoring the fact the enemy in this screenshot is SLiM with the background for Fluoride's level, the characters on the player's team are Frostbite (One Million), Creaper (A Game About Trimming Hedges: Final Version), Poppytail, Jenni la Crevette (Easter Fun) and Haunt (The World of Elecreatures).

I only managed to get one screenshot. After the first one, the game wouldn't let me take any more.

Okay, major update I wanted to make. It's been nearly three years since I started working on this project, and I don't want to abandon it. Instead, I'm going to abandon the idea of making it an RPG (since what I want to be able to make, even as simple as it sounded in theory, was ridiculously difficult to try and code). Instead I'm thinking of making it a platformer game similar to my most recent release Easter Fun 2, only on a bigger scale. I think this will be much more achievable than what I had planned before.

I was considering trying to move to another engine like RPG Maker, but I don't want to start with something completely new just for the one game, and if I kept everything to Stencyl I can reuse code from my older games to recreate the settings and minigames from them. TPT was planned to be sort of like a combination of everything I've done before, and I think by changing the style of gameplay, it'll be much easier to make progress on.

I'm just about to start on making it a platformer like Easter Fun 2. My plan is to build the game in the order of the story, so I'm going to be starting with recreating content from my earliest released game, Century Game.

I know I've said this before, but please work on your art (or get a friend to do it for you.) You've got great writing, and you can create games, but your graphics are lacking. Maybe look at creating really basic pixel art.

It's been a while (well, when it comes to this project, that's always been true). I'll be honest. Haven't done much. For the last year I've been posting some of the stuff I've been working on to YouTube, and I'm just getting back into The Poppytales.

Hopefully this is the last time I'll do it but I'm starting from scratch again, but this time I want to be able to make something I'll actually have a chance of releasing. I've cut down the character roster, I'm going to make less levels, I'm going to make it all less complex. I really should have done this earlier.

Not sure I liked the art style because it was too bad. I started making art that's hopefully less bad. It's probably still not good, but I at least hope it's an improvement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7miDHbb1m7c (Just pasting the hyperlink because I'm struggling to insert it as a video).

Currently only have this test level (which features the Red Duckie from Easter Fun 2, which was released earlier this year), and I have Poppytail functioning as a playable character and I'm working on Easter Bunny. Also figured out how to make the elemental system easier to program in, and how to make a better attack switcher than Easter Fun 2 (you can get some weird results by messing around with different characters in that one).

At this point, I just want something that works and isn't terrible as a starting point. I also had the idea that by limiting the character roster, I can go back to old projects, finish them, and then update the game with the new levels and characters. Seems a lot easier than doing seven or however many games at the same time.

Haven't made a video yet, but I have finished the second playable character for the game. I'm planning to have about 100 when the game first releases (which I don't think is too much considering in Easter Fun 2 I made 64 playable characters), and I'm going through my old games and adding characters from the older ones first. I'm starting with the characters from the original Poppytail, so I have the character called Poppytail and the Easter Bunny. I'm thinking of making Gremlin Girl as a third and then to start focusing on the actual levels. I think three is a good number of characters to start off with so I can test levels to see if they work with each one.

If you saw the video showing the test of Poppytail, you should have noticed the yellow meter on the side. Once this gets high enough, you will be able to use a stronger attack at the cost of a fraction of it, or fill it to the top to sacrifice all of it for a special effect.

Poppytail's first attack is throwing a red poppy out, which is affected by gravity. It's the same attack he had in Easter Fun 2, so nothing that hasn't been done before. His second attack is throwing out a bullet wave of three claws, which was also an attack from Easter Fun 2, except it was used for W Gizmo Girl and her virus variant. The powered up versions of these attacks are a larger poppy that does increased damage and a wave of more claws (seven I think I set it to). When the bar is full, Poppytail can heal himself over time for 20 HP. I'm also planning on giving him an ability that heals him by 1 every so often.

Easter Bunny has some similarities to Poppytail. He moves faster and has a higher jump though. His two basic attacks are a short range kick (which is basically just creating a bullet that looks like his foot at the moment) and dropping an Easter egg on the ground which damages enemies who move along the ground. The powered up versions of these are a long dash that can be done in midair (it's fun to watch him fly across the screen) that damages enemies on contact, and a black egg (based on the colour inverted eggs from the Easter Fun games) that deals more damage. When his bar is full, he does the same thing as Poppytail at the moment (heal for 20 HP), and I'm planning on keeping that for him. The bar normally fills by attacking, but since it's hard to use the kick on moving opponents and the eggs have a very slow firing rate, his bar fills up automatically over time.

Gremlin Girl I haven't figured out all of the details of her moveset yet. I'm planning on giving her the triple claw attack like Poppytail has (I think it'll save a lot of time by reusing attacks between multiple characters), but I'm unsure of what her second attack, full-meter ability, and automatic ability should be yet.

I'll also mention that the type system from EF2 is also going to be in this game. In EF2, characters were divided into the Darkness, Earth, Fear, Fire, Light, Magic, Nature, Technology, Water and Wind types. There are going to be two more in this game: Ice (because it has different properties to liquid water) and Master (which is a category for those who don't fit into the other eleven types). Since this type system I've done before in EF2, it's no trouble doing it again. At the moment this just impacts how much damage the player does to enemies (e.g. fire doesn't do much against water, water does a lot against fire, etc.), but unlike EF2 I'm also going to make it affect the damage enemies do to the player. I think this will make using elementally weaker characters against enemies will add some extra difficulty for players who may want to try this. Poppytail is categorised under Nature, and Easter Bunny under Wind.

This was longer than I expected it to be, but everything seems to be working pretty well so far. My only issues at the moment are that sometimes when a character is in their falling animation and they move in one direction, they face the other; and that the enemies (due to using the default health manager behaviour), can't take damage from more than one bullet at a time (which half defeats the purpose of attacks such as the claw wave). The second one will probably just take a bit of tinkering and the first one I think I have a rough idea of what's going wrong.

Edit: I have discovered another problem. If I use a basic attack and then immediately use the more powerful version without holding the X key, part of the meter can be consumed without the attack deploying. I've tried to fix this before but I haven't figured it out yet.

Still working on Gremlin Girl. I think I have an idea for her moveset. I'm still going to give her the triple claw move that Poppytail has, but I'm thinking she could use a spare ponytail to attack her opponent at a close range, and then for the powered up version, she could throw it like a boomerang so it would hit the enemy and then come back to her. For her full meter move, I was thinking she could create bursts of steam around her (since she's a water character) and gain increased movement speed temporarily. For her ability I was thinking that if her health gets at or below 25%, her attacks could deal increased damage. Still working on the drawings for her, but it shouldn't take too long for me to put her into the game.

One thing I liked about making Easter Fun 2 is that if I got bored with making one particular aspect of the game, I could switch to making another. What I mean is, if I got bored of making levels, I could make more playable characters, and vice-versa. However, I'm still torn about what I'll do after adding Gremlin Girl into the game. I've got plans for how Snarly Dog (character number 4) could work, but then again there's not much point making so many characters if there's only one level to test them in.

If you didn't know already, I'm focusing on the characters to add from my planned list from one of my old games at a time. I'm focusing on Poppytail 1 for now. So far Poppytail and Easter Bunny have been added, Gremlin Girl is in the works and I have a plan for Snarly Dog. For that game I'm also planning on adding Lizard Hunter, Enderguy, Alex and Alice, but maybe after there are some more levels.

Another thing I need to figure out is what the level backgrounds are going to look like. I have a plan for the game where there are a small collection of bosses in each "world", with each world having a particular theme, but I haven't figured out the specifics of the environment yet. I'm starting with the first world in the game, which is going to be set in a forest (since I've abandoned the idea of remaking worlds from the canon Poppytail games). The bosses I'm thinking of having here are:

Buzzy Boy, Cheese-Apple and Red Duckie (from Easter Fun 2)
Bush Turkey, Guardener, Scopiary and Shrubbery (from AGATH:FV)
Alphox (from Rise n' Brawl)
Moon Chompa and Thrasher (from the Elecreatures book)

Red Duckie's level is already in the game, but it needs more work. Since the gameplay of Easter Fun 2 should be similar to The Poppytales (minus the team aspect and the egg collecting), Buzzy Boy and Cheese-Apple shouldn't be too hard to add in. But the AGATH:FV bosses and Alphox were originally made in different gameplay styles (Rise n' Brawl looks very different to EF2 and AGATH:FV is a top-down game), so I'll have to figure out how they will work. Moon Chompa and Thrasher have never been appeared in any of my games before, but I have ideas on how Thrasher's fight could work.

Once I finish Gremlin Girl, I'll make two videos for YouTube showing off how both her and Easter Bunny will work.

Quick update, Easter Bunny and Gremlin Girl are now both implemented into the game, and I made two short videos showing what they do:

Easter Bunny: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j09CmYwoGa8
Gremlin Girl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K2t1_K5gOY

I might still have to tweak them a bit but I think they're okay for now. It's probably time for making levels now.

New update: I made another video. I had an idea for how to make backgrounds for this game.

So I made this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atmp3P1awkg

It also shows a bit of Buzzy Boy's unfinished level and the overworld. I think I like how the background looks. What do you all think?

I like the paper background and hand-drawn trees. I think it'd look better if the sprite artwork style was consistent with the background--maybe hand-draw/color the sprites, too.

I like the paper background and hand-drawn trees. I think it'd look better if the sprite artwork style was consistent with the background--maybe hand-draw/color the sprites, too.

The sprites are being hand-drawn and coloured. I have to up the contrast so they don't look dull though. Although for foreground/background objects they're only outlined in pencil while players, attacks and enemies are outlined in black.

I think some graphical background elements (simple shapes) between level and background would help to add a bit more depth. Should not be a lot work.

I think some graphical background elements (simple shapes) between level and background would help to add a bit more depth. Should not be a lot work.

I'm not sure how this would look. Do you mean like (since this is meant to be a forest area) to have like silhouettes of trees or something?

Yes and move it with a different speed compared to the background when moving the player.

I tried adding some in, but I think it needs work. I think the added background elements need to be a different size to the green paper background, but I haven't figured it all out yet.

I quickly tried Bombini's suggestion and I made this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcgTb6w07b0