God damn that looks fantastic! Are making these sprites really as insanely difficult as people say they are? Is it that much harder than going with say 3D models?
It is a handmade process very delicate and time consuming. Each key frame of an animation requires a new illustration from the scratch. There’s some cases when a key frame may utilize a sprite of another animation, but they are exceptions.
On the other hand, 3D models can be much more difficult to create than a single sprite, but the possibility of using the same model for all animations makes it much more economical.
The characters in Traf have an average of 100 animations. And it takes around 2 months to finish them. I would say that this time can be reduced at least by half in a 3D game. But in game development you can’t see only the numbers, but the result you want to reach as well. We are pixel art lovers and we want to keep this kind of art alive in our games.
Thank you for giving me a straight answer on the subject! Also, as said before, the game looks great. The entire theme, atmosphere, and feel of the game screams “Brazil” which is a very welcome change of tone for the genre. While I may be part of the “It is pretty sexist to have women in games always being in skimpy outfits” the Lucy character is very well designed and sexy, Lourenzo is well designed as well. That being said, I don’t want to be that guy, but I would recommend having characters from different racial backgrounds. So far all four characters seem white.
Excuse me for not informing you guys about the campaign. I was waiting for the English page was ready for you to understand everything, including the converted amounts of approximately BRL to USD.
Let me officially announce then: We started a crowdfunding campaign so that we can work on the game full-time and release it complete in February 2017: http://trajesfatais.com/kickante/en/
Unfortunately we could not create the campaign on Kickstarter or Indiegogo because of the restrictions they have for Brazilian users. The platform we chose, Kickante, is one of the biggest crowdfunding platforms in Brazil and it allows contributions through PayPal.
I ask you to test the beta of the game and if you like it and if you see its potential, help us, please. The Brazilian currency is very undervalued against the dollar and the euro, so with little, you can help us A LOT.
I also ask your opinion and suggestions on how to make it easier for international contributions and I’ll be here ready to answer any question.
Thank you, JetKinen, for posting about the campaign.
Hello, friends! Sorry for the lack of updates here!
It’s crazy to manage so much things with the little time we have. Well, my intention was to use this thread as a Devlog for my game and I know I’m failing with this. I wanted to involve you, FG community, in the Traf’s development process. Gathering feedback, refining the gameplay, explaining the concepts behind each game design decision…
We recognize that we are mistaken in not be explaining the basics of the game, instead only showing up combo video and character trailers.
Talking to close friends, I was advised to begin to explain more technical details of the game and show real matches, as fighting games players give much importance to this.
It has been very difficult to engage a wider audience because of the language barrier and also our limited international networking. This was critical to the success of our crowdfunding.
Last Sunday we managed to draw the attention of Maximilian Dood through Twitter, asking him to make a video about our game, try to give help in spreading, as he had done with the Beast’s Fury. At a conference on EVO he had revealed interest in supporting indies with different game ideas and we hope it like our system. But time is cruel and we only have 3 more days of the campaign to still raise about $30k USD.
Brazilians are not accustomed to participate in crowdfundings and do not yet have a greater awareness of the costs involving the production of a professional game. Not being able to open the campaign on Kickstarter or Indiegogo was also quite bad.
From now on we will try to be more open and communicative with the community!
To begin with, we have created some videos that serve to compensate for the lack of information so far.
They are subtitled in English but we’d love if any of you to volunteer to dub an English version.
So I’ve been keeping an eye on this thread for a while.
I liked the idea and the spirit of your game and, in my opinion, the art is strong. The art style isn’t terribly unique, but I don’t really think it needs to be.
Anyways, up until your video explaining your spheres system, I didn’t like it. Now I do. It seems like you really thought it through and it actually does have some good practical purpose rather than a new health system that exists just to be unique.
Having said that; I personally feel like you really need to find a way to get this going on Kickstarter in the future. I would fund it if you do. Definitely try to have more videos that explain what your game is before you do as well. Seriously I had minimal interest in this game until I really understood your spheres system. It seems like you are aware that it is a potential turn off for a lot of players. More explanation and demonstrations of practical application are pretty important.
Either way, I hope you and your team don’t get discouraged and try to push this through again. There’s a lot of potential here.
With this crowdfunding basically done, I feel like you guys need to branch agressively more.
The fact that you guys are in Brazil means you can’t show your game in events in the US which is where more people learn about new indie games and shit.
Get the email of every big E-celeb and keep contact with them.
Just dropping by to encourage you to keep this up. There’s some neat stuff on display.
My only beef with the orb system is aesthetics. I feel like a segmented health bar would accomplish the same thing while being easier on the eyes. At the very least, if the orbs drained towards the timer, rather than away from it, I’d certainly be grateful.