The World Map

Well, it certainly didn't take long for me to fail at the "update the blog once a day" promise.

BUT.

Some very important things did get done since the last time I posted, so I'll consider it an acceptable compromise.

What got done, you ask?

I'll tell you what got done, but first there's a bit of context for why it's a big deal:

See, for a while we've had a very basic world map drawn up showing where each part of the game world connects to the others. I'd post it here, but the only version we have is currently covered in details and story spoilers that we don't want to reveal just yet.

I CAN post this VERY old crappy version I drew in one of my class notebooks, though!

Like, so old it predates the official game logo.

The current version looks similar to that one there, but things have been moved around and some have been taken out entirely. The Airship Field is now directly above the city (which itself is no longer on the edge of a gigantic cliff), the mountains are directly east of the city, the caves and "deep caves" have been combined into one area, and the crashed airship is entirely underground and connected to the buried ruins. Also "air city" was a vague idea that never went anywhere. Just a "maybe, maybe not?" kind of thing.

Edit: I went ahead and just blanked out the story details from the current version, so here it is:

SO. Now for the important thing that gone done!

We have a lot of story ideas and characters already written out and drawn up. The problem we were facing was that we had yet to put an order to everything. Even though there's an element of exploration to this type of game, you still have to get the player to go from A to B to C and the story has to be experienced in a linear fashion.

The important thing I did was nailing down that order. We now know which characters you meet where, when you get each item and where you fight every boss right up to the final battle. And it took only a few minor changes to the map itself. As in, I switched the direction of a one-way arrow, and added a two-way arrow somewhere else.

Now, obviously I can't post that document because it tells the entire story of the game. But another thing I did recently was create rough color palettes for each of the areas.

So there you have it. The basic look of the game is coming together. Some day you'll see it all in pixel art form. But that's a looooooooooong way off. Still, I consider this a tremendous leap forward.

Location: Victor's Tower and Office (And old logo idea)

So Victor, being the owner of his own multi-billion dollar company, of course has his own private office at the top of a gear-themed skyscraper. I don't think it's apparent in the sketches, but that whole floor rotates, giving him a 360 view of the entire city.

At some point, the Gun Wizard will infiltrate the building and work his way to the top floor, fighting some bosses along the way. We've got some concepts for those guys too, but how much we show of them this early depends on how connected to the route we decide to take with the story.

ALSO, that's a VERY early idea I had for VV's logo. Not much else to say about it, really.

Enemy Design: Clockwork Soldier

Hey, look! It's the Steam Soldier's little brother. This guy is unambiguously a bunch of clockwork crammed into a humanoid shell. Without all the extra armor he's a lot faster than the Steam Soldier, but can't take as much damage before collapsing into scrap.

Also there's a concept for a spider Crawler Turret there for some reason.

Enemy Design: Steam Soldier

Depending on the direction we decide to go, this guy is either a mobile suit of armor filled with steam-powered clockwork mechanisms, or a person in a steam-powered suit. Either way, they can take a lot of damage and deal a lot in return using their weird gear-shaped revolvers.

And just because they're big and bulky doesn't mean they're slow. That steam power isn't just to fit the game aesthetic. 

This very early monstrosity is a classic example of "started drawing and forgot to stop."

I had to simplify it a bit.

Hopefully these will be the ones you run into and think "OH CRAP, NOT THESE GUYS AGAIN."

Enemy Design: Crawler Turret

The Crawler Turret is a spindly-legged little clockwork robot with a gun sticking out of its back. They will be fairly common enemies throughout the game.

The basic model has four legs and really just kind of scurries around at about knee-to-waist height looking for something to shoot with its fairly low-powered guns. They're pretty much mindless drones that aren't very well-equipped to handle anything that can actually fight back.

The idea is for this to be an enemy type, of which variations are encountered as the player explores different environments. For example, in forest areas, the turrets will be more shelled and spider-like. They'll be slightly tougher to crack, but fire their weapons more slowly.

Whereas the Industrial Turret is more likely to be encountered in a factory with heavier security measures in place. These guys are mounted on treads, deal heavy damage, but have a more limited angle for their guns to turn, and have a brief cooldown after firing.

Victor's Logo

Small post for today, just some logo ideas for Victor's company.

There are things I like about both, but I'm personally leaning just slightly toward the one on the right because the left one is a bit on the heavy side. I like the gear, though, so I might just try thinning it out a bit and see how that looks.

EDIT 9/8/15:

Apparently I don't have the PSD for it anymore, so I had to remake it from scratch. That said, I definitely think the left design looks better slightly thinned out.

And I completely forgot I saved it with transparency so you can actually barely see it. My bad.

The villain of our story.

If there's one type of person magic is guaranteed to tick off, it's the guy who makes billions by inventing things that work LIKE magic. After all, who's going to invest in steam-powered generators when you have dudes running around who can literally shoot lightning out of their fingertips?

Enter our main antagonist: Victor Valda. I guess technically he's not like EVIL, evil, but he's going to be the reason behind a lot of the bad things that happen to the Gun Wizard. 

He also has a gear monocle. Which spellcheck is now telling me only has two Os.

Also, hey look! He's the first character that I've done 100% of the concept art for. By which I mean I drew that first sketch, then did some quick colored versions. Then I did this one like 2 years later around the same time I did the previous ones, but it came out a bit more cartoony that I meant it to.

It's *TIME* for some more art!

Time is a bit of an enigmatic figure. He's a character John created independently of the Gun Wizard project, and we wrote him into the game to serve as a recurring boss fight. Aside from that, I can't really say too much concerning his role in the story, but I can at least show you what he looks like!

Time channels strange time manipulation powers through his sword, Clockwork.

And here we see the ever elusive "colored concept art by John."

Of the possible colors, the yellow scheme was picked so the game sprite would stand out from the other characters, and provide some contrast to the Gun Wizard's red look. Most of the sprite designs have ended up being the first examples of colored art for most of the characters, which is kind of ass-backwards now that I think about it.

Finally, the drawing I did to serve as my official interpretation of the character design. Eye color subject to change.

Putting the "Gun" in "Gun Wizard"

Going off of "a game about a wizard who uses guns," the inevitable question arises: "What kind of gun would a wizard use?"

The answer is, obviously, "a magic one."

BUT WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? A gun that shoots magic? A regular gun that has some kind of magic ability? A gun that's powered by magic?

Shown above, the answer is "yes."

These drawings are from John's "draw a bunch of ideas and see what sticks" stage of conceptualizing. The arm cannon, while undeniably pretty freakin' cool in magic-tech style, is a bit on the nose considering how much inspiration we're already taking from Metroid. And the gauntlet isn't even a gun, but that design may yet have a part to play in the end.

Eventually, I threw my own idea for the design into the mix, this one factoring in the steampunk style I mentioned we decided on in a previous post. What could be more steampunky than  A FLINTLOCK PISTOL?

Come to think of it, I don't think we ever *officially* agreed on this as the final design, but I like it and I'm gonna push for it.

Eventually, the Gun Wizard will discover magic gems that just happen to fit into a slot on the gun and allow it to cast powerful elemental spells like fireballs or lightning.

These spells will definitely be utilized in puzzle design, and may or may not have certain effects on certain enemies. Being a steampunk world, there is a lot of potential for fire/water interaction mechanics, so that's also something for us to keep in mind as we develop the idea.

Our Protagonist, Everyone!

At the very beginning, there was the idea:

"We should make a game about a wizard who uses guns, and call it Gun Wizard."

Then there was a LOT of talking and drawing and typing up ideas. Here are John's concept costume designs for the Gun Wizard, or GW as we like to call him because we're playing up the nameless character trope out of laziness and also it sounds badass.

Pointy hat and beard were a given from the very beginning.

He uses guns, right? HOLSTERS. Yes? No?

 

I'm not entirely sure when we decided to go for the steampunk look for the game world, but I do know it was very early on. This kind of outfit is better suited for a different character, though.

Ultimately, the fancy boots, gauntlets, and trench coat type cloak all made the cut.

But the detail will be tremendously cut down for sprite purposes.

Here's a cartoony, colored version I made when I realized the only colored artwork we have of final design GW is from sprite tests.

Logo Concepts

Figured we can start with the concept and current versions of the game logo.

John's original sketches, with some rather presumptive ideas for the sequel.

Cleaned up version, ready for coloring.

The current colored version. There's a version with a more pronounced outline, and one that's lighter.

Welcome to the Gun Wizard Development Blog!

Hello! I am Nathan (a.k.a. Leko), and I would like to welcome you to the blog I've set up to document the progress we're hopefully making on our game, Gun Wizard. Joining me on this project is John (a.k.a. Zanshlou or Zan). If you've heard of us at all, it's most likely from our webcomic Comic Shorts, our YouTube channels or John's Terraria adventure map. 

But we're not here to talk about that. We're here to talk about Gun Wizard!

SO WHAT IS GUN WIZARD ANYWAY?

Sit down for this one because it's going to seriously blow your mind.

Ready? Sitting down? Okay.

Gun Wizard will be a "Metroid-Vania" action platformer with 2-D pixel art graphics.

I'll give you a moment to scoop your brains off the wall behind you and back into your head.

Okay, to be fair John and I had this idea like 3 years ago before the indie game market was completely saturated with this exact thing so cut us some slack for being slow on actually getting it started. Also it's not going to be 8-Bit. We're two people with little to no programming experience, and we have lives and jobs and responsibilities that take priority over something that we "might be able to get Kickstarted."

That said, it is my hope that maintaining a development blog might spark some motivation into us and start moving things along at a slightly quicker pace. Additionally, we hope to build interest in our project and maybe bring some people on board who actually know a thing or two about the "making a game" part of making a game.

See, that's really our biggest hurdle right now. We're artists and writers, not programmers. We've done some dabbling with Game Maker and produced some results. Personally, I'm proud of what we've accomplished considering we started with pretty much nothing, but it still falls many miles short of what we hope to achieve with Gun Wizard.

We have characters designed, a basic story planned out, even a few simple level design ideas. We just need to start bringing it all together into something that shows off how serious we are about wanting to make this game a reality.

So stay tuned as we start throwing out some concept art and non-spoilery story info in the near future!