The Legends of Owlia

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GradualGames
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The Legends of Owlia

Post by GradualGames »

The Legends of Owlia is our second release for the NES. If you wish to support us, cartridges are available at infiniteneslives.com.

ROM Download

The Legends of Owlia Trailer

Before and after dungeon exits video 2-16-14:
Dungeon Exits: Before and After

Intro and pre-alpha gameplay videos 12-30-13:
Intro
Dungeon gameplay
Boss fight

Hi everyone! We had so much fun making Nomolos we've started on a new title. This has been in progress for several months already as we're developing most things from the ground up. The tools we made for Nomolos have been a big help though! Here's a video of our in development title, The Legends of Owlia:

New Project: The Legends of Owlia

The germinal idea of this game was created when I was about 11. I attempted to create it when I was a teenager several times, but lacked the discipline to see it through. Now, I have both discipline and confidence built from one successful project, and this game will get finished unless I die first.

The central gameplay mechanic involves the main hero and her bird, an owl. The owl will learn new techniques throughout the game and may be able to do things like fetch keys, carry the hero across a ravine, etc. The first technique the owl has is to simply rush enemies and return to the hero. The hero's name is Adlanniel.
Last edited by GradualGames on Tue Dec 19, 2017 7:31 pm, edited 21 times in total.
Denine
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Re: New Project: The Legends of Owlia

Post by Denine »

A RPG for NES? Nice, bro!
:D
Visuals are ok, but music could use some improvements.
strat
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Re: New Project: The Legends of Owlia

Post by strat »

That looks like something I'd play.

One thing that's not clear, are there separate hit boxes on the player for flying enemies and ground-based enemies, so the player can get hit either in the head or the mid-section?
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jayminer
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Re: New Project: The Legends of Owlia

Post by jayminer »

Looks very promising, great work!
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NESHomebrew
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Re: New Project: The Legends of Owlia

Post by NESHomebrew »

Denine wrote:Visuals are ok, but music could use some improvements.
Really? I thought the music was great. Also, if you have seen his other videos you would know that he is quite musically gifted.
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MottZilla
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Re: New Project: The Legends of Owlia

Post by MottZilla »

I liked the music. Good luck with this next project.
Denine
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Re: New Project: The Legends of Owlia

Post by Denine »

Hehe, Guess I'm weirdo, then.
BTW: is this game gonna be released on carts, or free to play?
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GradualGames
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Re: New Project: The Legends of Owlia

Post by GradualGames »

Thanks for the positive feedback guys. I haven't spent a ton of time on the demo song, no, but that song will probably appear in the game in some form (and possibly be more fleshed out), probably after the "idyllic starting village" area. It'll be on a cart just like Nomolos was. Strat: The hitbox system will be pretty simple, I have no intention of differentiating between ground and flying enemies at this time unless feedback from beta testing suggests it would be a dramatic improvement.
WhatULive4: you mean the ones on my non-gradual games channel? hehe, I like to keep these two "lives" kinda separate...but they will collide as I create this game :D
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blargg
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Re: New Project: The Legends of Owlia

Post by blargg »

Regarding the music, I think the less-than-stellar aspect is due to the percussion having the same rhythm as the notes, which creates a kind of quiet-loud-quiet dynamic that isn't as pleasing as it could be. The percussion track is also seems too simple, mostly a regular interval, so it gets a little tiresome. That's the best I can do to put my finger on what about it wasn't that enjoyable.
3gengames
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Re: New Project: The Legends of Owlia

Post by 3gengames »

Agreed. Listen to a track from Mega Man 2 to listen to see better percussion backing to music. Plus a little less volume probably won't work. IMO put the melody on the squares and play music/rhythm through that, and just use noise as a backing percussion channel, not a main music source. Otherwise it looks okay. It'd be nice IMO to see sprites disabled over the text box too.
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Dwedit
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Re: New Project: The Legends of Owlia

Post by Dwedit »

I think the character animation for walking looks a little weak. I think it might look better if the character bobs up and down by a pixel on some frames when walking. Look at Mario, or the professor from Gyromite, or even the Battletoads. For a non-sideways example, Gizmo from Gremlins 2 bobs around a lot, or Willow, or even the guy from Startropics.

Attacking with the falcon owl looks really cool, I love that part.
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cak
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Re: New Project: The Legends of Owlia

Post by cak »

This project looks really promising!

How is the music being done? Famitone, or original sound driver?
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Banshaku
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Re: New Project: The Legends of Owlia

Post by Banshaku »

Good to see you are making another game! Good luck with this new project.
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GradualGames
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Re: New Project: The Legends of Owlia

Post by GradualGames »

Banshaku: thanks man!
cak:
The music is my own custom sound driver. It is similar to famitone and I think a little easier to use (direct export of the music and all envelopes from famitracker, no manual tweaking of data required). Not too many people know about it but it actually exists in the famitracker repository. Since so few people have adopted it I haven't been maintaining the original version so only I have the latest updates to it at the moment. The most recent thing I added was the ability to load a separate set of envelopes for sound effects. In Nomolos, I had to do a bit of massaging of data to make sure all sound effects could be used over different songs each with their own sets of vol/pitch/duty envelopes. I still don't support DPCM, though.

others: thanks for the feedback, I will keep it all in mind. Sometimes we have to choose trade-offs to get everything we want such as: size of character, having a familiar, and leaving enough space for enemies so we don't just have a single tiny enemy in the currently loaded area.
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Re: The Legends of Owlia (updated 12-30-13)

Post by GradualGames »

OP also updated with the following videos of our progress. Please note all footage is pre-alpha.

Intro and pre-alpha gameplay videos 12-30-13:


Intro
Dungeon gameplay
Boss fight
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