Working on making it exciting to get a stat point or item, here is what I have for the stat point so far - sounds really help to add another dimension to it as well - how do you feel when you see this?
As an RPG player, I like to min/max. Whenever I make a choice that doesn’t yield the stats that I’m after, I feel like kicking myself. In your design, the player has no way of knowing which stats they’ll get beforehand. But I also understand that presenting the stats along with the choices can take away from the story telling appeal. If stats aren’t very important in the game (especially in the later stages), then the current design looks good (considering how the player can purely focus on making choices based on story alone; stats would just be gravy). If certain stats provide significant advantages later in the game, then you might need a different design… at least to appeal to the hardcore players out there.
Yeah that makes sense - stats help to increase your chances on passing most story choices (like trying to lift a boulder, or trying to track your way to a goblin camp).
Stats will also play a roll in the card game - the chance of the card’s ability activating.
So it is fairly important. For most choices I’m trying to have valid rhyme and reason for the stats you get and the stats that are tested. perhaps I’ll add a symbol or color to help dictate - I also like the fact its sort of hidden though… like after you’ve played through once you’ve uncovered a little of the games mystery to better min/max it next run.
Agree with everything you said there. In the end, how all the elements come together is what matters.
No RPG-like game is complete without an inventory system!
I like your game concept.
Also, I think that your programmer art is quite good for a programmer.
Having said that, It’s good for someone not formally trained, no offense. Often I will make decisions about games to try based on the quality of the art. To that end, it’s my opinion that you would fair better if you partnered with a talented / experienced artist. That or spent considerably more time polishing what is a great visual starting point.
I’m 90% artist so maybe I am not the best test case so take it as you will.
To be honest, I often wonder why more programmers that are not artist by trade choose not to partner with a good artist.
Cheers,
Kenny
Heh, it really comes down to the money. I don’t expect this app to rake in tons of money - so keeping overhead low.
I think mobile is pretty relax and diverse when it comes to the level of art-quality, the key thing being style. But I too judge a book by its cover 
Honestly, I love doing the art stuff. I’m slow at it. And as you said… it still needs lots of work!
Is there any particular tips you could pass my way? Or anything that makes you, as an artist, cringe from the screenshots?
One day I hope to find an artist to partner up with. My dream is that they will be amazing at 2d, 3d, and even does the music / sound fx… those exist? hehe
I guess it all depends on your goal. If you want to make a living out of this, your best shot is to have a polished product. Sure the app store is quite diverse but >95% of the apps making the money are polished, both artistically and experience wise. Simply look at the top games. If you want experience do what you are doing.
Tips… If you want to split the work load find an art forum and post that you are looking for an artist to partner with. Of course partners cost nothing but require you to split your profit… and you have to consider their viewpoints on game play. Which a lot of people don’t want. If you want to go it alone, maybe you should consider a more pixelated / classic look? Sure it’s over done but that is because can be a lot easier / cheaper / less time consuming to realize a good look.
Cringe, nothing…seriously. It doesn’t look bad, and boy, some games do. Yours looks good but it also looks… basic? like it was made in Photoshop with the stock Photoshop tools. I’m not sure the scope of your game but I don’t think it would take an artist much to give these an illustrated look.
I’ve been a professional video game artist for the better part of 20 years so my perspective is heavily biased… IE, take my comments with a grain of salt.
Good luck with your game.
Oh man, it was pretty much made solely with photoshop - well actually gimp (money-thing again). I actually thought that was almost the only tool artists use! What other tools would you recommend I scope out or tools you often use?
I don’t even know what an illustrated look is 
Do you happen to know the techniques that I should look into to take it to the next level? I know My line art is heavy - and I would like to make some of the “real world” objects look more painted (like the book, coins, etc). I don’t really know the artsy words, but it would be like the 3rd image here (I did these as well to practice):
I want to learn this stuff! It’s fun when I produce something decent, heh. Thanks again for your words of wisdom - and I’ll need that luck!
This is the 3rd take at the gold coins. I think I’m getting better at this!
The skull’s progress looks really good. The coins look way better. Obviously, good reference is the key to good art. Don’t skip it.
Photoshop wise, a samurai sword is made with a anvil and hammer… but it sure doesn’t look that way right… In the same way your art should not look like it was produced in Photoshop, even if it is.
If i where the art director I would go this direction… But this is much more about personal choice. Your 4th skull looks quite watercolor esque and actually quite “book” like… and maybe a good match depending on who you ask.
My example, about 5 min more work in Photoshop and illustrator using a wacom tablet.
interesting that you used illustrator - isn’t it for vector graphics (straight lines and gradients)? What role did it play in the 5th image - the outline?
I used it to palatalize the image and clean it up. It’s also good to use as you can be really sloppy and it will still look nice. Here’s is a version you can see the details in. Don’t mind the black outline… that was really quick to show an idea.If the skull was big on screen you would probably want to spend a bit more time with it.
Cheers
So I attempted to use a spinning token to represent a “dice roll” but from showing the game off a few times, folks didn’t really get it. I did this partially because actually creating rolling dice seemed “impossible” in corona. Well… I got more experience and confidence and gave creating some dice a whirl!
So after about 10 hours worth of animation and sprite sheet work, I did it! I think it looks pretty decent and has sort of that hand-drawn feel that the whole game has:
I agree. I’d take a dice roll over tokens in an RPG too. There’s something very satisfying about it. Maybe we’re too used to it.
Awesome work by the way. Everything is just right about that roll - duration, speed, art style.
Corona made you sweat, huh? Now you know why I was so curious earlier about how you were doing your dice animations. I’ve had some ideas for dice-based games, but shelved them since I realized I’d to create static sprite sequences for each number. And if I wanted to have multiple roll animations for each number (just to keep things fresh), the number of sprite sequences would go up drastically. This problem is compounded in a pool (8 ball) game. How can we realistically simulate the 3D roll of a ball in Corona? I’ve given up on that for now.
For the rolling of a ball, I would do something algorithmically. I think there was recently a tutorial on how to do dynamic shadows - might be able to apply something from that.
Other great news: I deployed to both my iPhone and my iPad and things look exactly as expected from the simulator - impressive! I am seeing an odd issue on the dice roll, but I think it may be timing related.
We had talked outside the forum about text positioning being a problem on different iOS / Platform versions, and at first glance I’m not having any issues. This is probably due to the unique way I position and size everything - it’s all percentage based, allowing everything to scale and be positioned relative to each other component. Seems to worked out well so far!
As always, thanks for your feedback!
The dice rolls looks really good… perfectly matching your game.
I think I’d just flashed images of the different die sides to convey the “rolling”
I’m pretty sure dynamic lighting on the balls as well as dynamic shadows of the balls are both achievable in Corona. Not too bothered about that. What I meant was dynamically rendering the textures of the balls as they roll about. You never know what other object(s) they might collide with (and at which angle). The numbers and patterns on each ball must “roll” in a particular direction. I’m not saying it’s impossible in Corona, but rather pointless to put in so much effort. More of a “Use the right tool for the right job” kind of thing. Might be better off with Unity if accurate 3D rendering is desired.
Good to know text placement isn’t an issue for you. The text displacement issue that I’ve noticed only happens to particular fonts at particular font sizes. And the difference is noticeable between iOS6 and later versions (iOS7 and iOS8 have similar behaviors). If you’ve cracked it and if text placement in your game turns out to be perfect across all devices/OS versions, then please write a guest post about it sometime. It’ll definitely help out other developers.
So I did a design iteration on the cards, wanted them minimalized and went for more of a tarot-card like approach. The orbs along the top indicate: damage (red), defense (blue), and healing (green).
The outline of the card indicates what type of ability the card has: strength (red), intelligence (blue), dexterity (green), and charisma (yellow). When the user clicks to inspect the card, it will give details about the ability.
So I got my first android device in for testing! Check this thing out: Nvidia Shield Tablet
Unfortunately I was disappointed that my corona app didn’t just work on first installation. I was really hoping the process was just that easy… so here goes trouble-shooting, yay -_-