Heresy - Particle effects and Minions
Here’s a look at some of the particle effects and the minions in game. Also me just messing around with the spider bots. Right now there is AI for them but its still super simple, eventually I wont be able to ride them anymore sigh
Player - Special Moves
Countering is the players safest option and is the only way that he can recover health, but he does have special moves that can deal more damage to the bosses and minions. One of the special moves is a rising uppercut with the shield much like a shoryuken.
Heresy - Blade Spin
The machine sharpens its rusted blades against the ground and sends sparks flying everywhere. Inevitable that the player would join them.
Kickstarter Coming Soon
Excited to announce we’re doing a kickstarter soon. It’s been a long descent into the inferno but this is only just the beginning. We want to make this game great and we don’t wan’t it to take another two or even three years to finish. which is why we’ve decided to do a kickstarter to help fund development. It’s going to be a hectic next couple of weeks but I’ll keep this thread up to date. Also I made this unreal thread initially to get feedback and just chat with fellow unreal devs. So whenever I post dev updates, I’m always down to talk how I went about making any of the effects for The Devil’s Eight. Lastly, there are other places to make sure your caught up with the most recent Devil’s Eight news
Here’s the link to our monthly newsletter, where we will announce when the kickstarter is going live, along with other important development news.
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Again I’ll try to keep this thread up to date with the most import updates but for daily news and gifs our twitter is the best medium.
/SecondStepGames
A mashup gameplay gif we made for today’s announcement
Gluttony - The Third Circle of Hell
Gluttony, the third circle of Hell is our most recent Boss and his world is really starting to come together. I finished modeling him, his ring, and what will eventually be his music visualizer. Right now I have the ring and visualizer in game and I am working on texturing the boss. We have lots of fun ideas for this boss fight and I can’t wait to start seeing him come to life. Definitely expect more Heresy and Gluttony updates coming soon.
Hey , really liking both the core gameplay concept as well as the aesthetic. It doesn’t look strictly like what I would expect from a game about fighting the Rulers of Hell - instead, the monochromatic palettes and radically different forms of the bosses, from glowing Tron-like humanoids to hulking machines, make for some pleasantly surprising visuals.
When I watched the first Limbo trailer I thought of the huge final bosses like Apocalypse and Onslaught from the mid-90’s Capcom Marvel fighting games, heh. Those were fun, but you’re focused here on delivering a more robust boss-rush-style experience, where every fight is against something much larger than the player. I think that’s a good call - gives you a better chance to deliver unique mechanics and a well-polished, cohesive product. I like that the main character has to fight defensively and reflect attacks back at the bosses, and the decision to have the music and rhythm be tied to gameplay also appeals to me. (Speaking of which, all the music in your videos so far is sounding great too!)
The VFX are looking fantastic, but I’d agree with other posters who’ve commented on a bit of animation stiffness in the bosses, mainly the humanoid ones. To my eye it looks like mostly a lack of follow-through: for instance when Limbo swings his hand across the stage to try and hit the player, I expect to see some final frames of slowdown/inertia on that motion, but right now it seems to stop abruptly. I also expect more of a sense of impact when he slams his fist into the stage (besides VFX alone).
I’m also concerned about the communication of the boss’ music visualizers as health bars: even with the red flashes when the boss takes damage, I didn’t notice that or make the connection to the boss’ health until I read your post about it. I assume it compresses downward vertically depending on how much of their health is left, correct? It’s possible that will be clear enough to the player by the time they defeat the first boss (at which point the visualizer will be squashed down to nothing), but I would still look into a way to convey it more clearly. Maybe by filling the portion of the visualizer that represents the remaining health with another color, so that it contrasts against the black space above it that represents the health they’ve lost. After the boss takes a hit, you could also show a “ghost” of the amount of health they just lost in red, before having that drain away a second or so later, as most fighting games these days tend to do (e.g. Street Fighter V).
Good luck with the Kickstarter, I’ll be keeping an eye on this!
bro, put this up somewhere and Let me put in custom music and take my money!
Thanks for all the feedback DMalley. One of our eventual polishes is to redo Limbo’s animations and add the missing follow throughs and weighted impacts in his motions. Also you brought up another of our problems which is the music visualizers being the bosses health bars. It’s true, so far from all the play testers we’ve had, no one has made the connection. We may just end up trying to find a stylized way to flash the bosses health through UI and still keep the music visualizers shrinking, but it no longer being the only representation of the bosses current health status. Again, thanks for all the compliments and feedback. Super busy as we get closer to kickstarter but I should be posting a bunch of updates here soon
Haha thanks, working hard to finish this game as fast as we can. Finished game will have a designated soundtrack though since we use the audio to control the AI and some effects.
aw man, it would be x100 more amazing if you figured a way to allow custom music to work lol. Anyhow awesome concept nonetheless!!!
Lots to talk about in this post. We officially announced our date for Kickstarter, Sep 12. We have a thunderclap going and could still use a lot of support.
Not sure if everyone knows what thunderclap is, but it allows a single message to be mass-shared. Through a one time post on each individual supporters account. It helps people be heard by saying something together.
If you can, please support our Thunderclap. Here’s the Link –> http://thndr.me/QH6Axv
Aside from that we’ve been finalizing our reward tiers for the kickstarter. Here’s a potential t-shirt design, feedback very much appreciated.
Also we Added the ability for shield slam to hit the pistons down. Giving the player some control over Heresy’s ring
whew… well thats all for now, be back soon with more updates
Here’s a couple of throwbacks comparing how the bosses use to look versus now, we’ve come a long way but there’s still much to do. Kickstarter is now live and needs all the support it can get
Kickstarter link:
Limbo
Lust
Heresy
**We’ve been getting great feedback from everyone and one of the things people wanted to see from kickstarter was more gameplay. So I made a new video of me playing against Limbo. This is still prealpha footage, the final experience will have additional attacks, improved animations, better sound effects , and more. **
Windows demo build now available on Itchio showcasing the first two bosses Limbo and Lust. It’s still in pre-alpha, so expect rough edges like unfinished features, placeholder animations, temporary user hud/UI and bugs. The final game will have additional attacks, improved animations, better sound effects, and more.
Suggested Specs for best Experience:
GeForce GTX 960
Intel Core i7-4770 3.40GHz
8 GB RAM
1920X1080, 60hz moniter
An Xbox controller and Headphones
So far the feedback from the demo has been super helpful so please make sure to let us know what you think in the comments.
Finally getting back into the rhythm of my old schedule of part time indie dev. Been working on Gluttony and the effects necessary for one of his attacks
First, I needed to get the ring to do a ripple effect. I though it would look cool but also work for introducing the latest attack type nicely, Shockwaves
After I got the motion effect for the ring I needed to add a particle effect for the attack. Sticking with the art style I went for neon spike/teeth looking shape and had it trigger with the ripple effect
Lastly, worked on an animation for gluttony and threw it into the mix. Gluttony is blind so this attack works great because he can just hit around trying to find you and create multiple shockwaves
