Art Pass 3: Customisation and Death


It's time for another progress update on the new premium version of First Cut, still in the works.

I've been working on remaking the menu, starting with the player customisation screen. The UI visuals are still bare-bones and I'm going to add a proper menu background soon and do another pass to fix overlapping text elements.


Since the player sprite is now divided into layers there are now more options to build characters with, and each option can be independently coloured.
The results can be rather garish when pushed to the extremes so I'm still tweaking the limits to stay within the bounds of the artstyle and keep the shading balanced.

This includes not just clothes, but also the scabbard, shoes, hat, hair and skin.

I'm still working on adding more options to allow for a variety of period-appropriate characters, such as samurai, ronin, bandits, monks, young students, and old masters.


There is now a system for rebinding your own inputs and choosing from control devices. The system supports the original control options and should be customisable to everyone's tastes, and will allow for more comfortable shared-keyboard play for some.




Lately I've been working to remake the gore system.

Each death now draws from one of two base animations to allow for more variety in the way the character will fall. Wounds are now layered on top and can be combined, although this system is still a work-in-progress.
I now have a proper system for keeping track of the neck and torso positions, allowing for spraying blood and stains to accurately stay mapped to the character as they fall. I'm still tweaking the blood emitters so the stains in the gifs might not be as impressive as the original game yet.

I still don't yet have an exact release date for this new version, but the bulk of the game has now been remade and improved and I intend to ship it before the end of the year.

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Comments

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When is your planned release?

Still shooting for the end of this year, though I'm not ready to commit to a specific date yet. I should hopefully have a Steam page soon with more info in one place.

this looks amazing

Deleted 1 year ago

yro'ue*

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you should 100% make a discord

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Not for the first time I have already written that your game is definitely cool, especially the update teasers, I would love to read and watch even the smallest changes. One thing I want to notice is that dashing attacks against bots are too unbalanced and strong.

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Mate, this is just incredible, me and my friends play the original game really often and the second it releases we're gonna buy it.


Only recomendations I would like to see in a further update also i'll edit this comment every now and then if I think of something cool but here goes:

- Don't change the name, it's already perfect but if you do try not too stray to much

- Make more blood maps, the only one's i remember being blood maps at the moment are water fall, field,  and outskirts(I think). but don't make them more frequent, if not, it'll lose it's special feeling when finding it

- (more of a question) What are you planning on doing with the custom map, it's pretty much blank, or is that the point?

- Try not to make the fighting system too complicated, of course I'd like more features but not something super complicated like a mortal combat style, maybe something a tad bit less complex than brawlhalla

- Thinking of brawlhalla, you could add a light attack and heavy attack but thinking of it now, it might stray away too much from what the game originally was so maybe not a great idea, idk, think about it

- Could you add a stamina bar, or at least the option in the setting for it to appear, sometimes me and my friends find ourselves doing is getting slower because we're blocking to much or hitting air(Didn't know it was a feature till a few months back when I read you're game description).

- On the subject of settings, more options would be nice(if i think of anything else i'll edit the comment):

Disabling gore completly, meaning, no blood nad when you kill someone they just fall instead of getting dimembered(for those players you don't really like the gory stuff)

- Maybe a little message when you cut someone in 4 sections, I find it enjoyable when I get to cut off a players arms, then cut him in half and then slice off his head so it'd be nice if something like shish kabob, or sushi appear(names are still in the works) cause it's not really that easy to do, so it would be kinda cool

- On very rare occasions, could a special animatian apear like:

when you slice someone from above maybe it'll split them in half

(something that happens quite often) When you've just done a nuetral attack and the katana is still in the outright position, sometimes, my oponent might run into it so i'd be cool if the head just spearate from the body but stayed on the sword

when you do an attack from above and it connects, the katana could get imbeded into the skull, like 1/3 through and then the character removes the katana and the body just falls

- I believe the option to pick multiple weapons so the player would have to be proficiant with all of them so they can know the attacks. Also, please make them balanced cause for one player to just be super proficiant with only one weapon that's OP would suck, we want the players to actually play and explore the game and all of it's possiblities, with that being said, I'd like the addition of a greatsword with the option to thrust with a foward dash so it'll be like piercing the opponent in the stomach or chest.

- A little animation if you almost hit the player but didn't quite get there so their hair wooshes a lot or you take off their helmet

-Make it compatable with multiple devices like xbox controlers, dualshock 4 & 5, nintendo joy cons, random controler, stuff like that(I know that in steam you can actually configure your controlers inputs to match the keyboards bindings put it would be much simpler if you implemented it from the get go, also just started playing with controller cause I never tried it on this game and SUPER comfortable, in a way I never thought possible)

- I don't know why or how but I'd like you to include an Oni mask, specifically this one if possible https://www.shutterstock.com/es/image-vector/red-oni-mask-vector-illustration-is... (found it online and thought it looked nice)

Maybe you could implement an achievment/Trophie or badge system(kinda like how clash royale uses their's), like idk, at 100 wins you could get a skin for your sword hat has a flame effect or an achievment for have 50 near misses(like the enemy doesn't hit you cause you dodged perfectly) or an achievment for for 25 perfect parry's/parries/parrys(I don't know the plural of parry)

- I've been thinking of possible skins and one were the player is pretty much undead would be cool, like, ribs showing, half the skin from the face missing, an arm where only the bone is visible, stuff like that.

- A possible map could be a dojo with katanas, shurikens, nunchucks, sais, stuff like that, and maybe a spining fan on the roof

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Obviously, if any of these were implemented it could back track the program weeks(depending on which one) so maybe you could upload the game and do an update every few months with anything you see fit to add.


PS: I just read my comment and I don't won't to sound like I'm trying to obligate you to change your scheduale or sound like I'm entitled to anything, it may have been how I frased it, I'm just throwing out suggestions so take care and so hyped up for the premium version.

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Hi, thanks for playing. I just typed up a slightly longer message only to accidentally hit refresh, so I'll summarise a bit more briefly:

- Right now the plan is to give it an 'edition' title, ie: 'First Cut: Sharpened' (just an example).

- I'll figure out some cool secret maps for sure.

- The Custom stage loads the 'custom' image included in the game folder. You can edit that image to create your own (indoor) background (ie: https://itch.io/post/5001628). I'll try to include a folder in the new version for loading multiple images.

- The fighting system works the same way, just with some improvements to increase depth. Changing stances now takes some extra time and repeating the same attack takes longer than comboing. The old game had a 'fatigue' system to slow down attacks if the player was spamming and missing repeatedly, this is removed in the new version since it was made redundant by the new improvements to combat.

- I'll include more options this time around, including a blood/gore toggle. I've already included a blunt wooden sword that can be selected to avoid drawing blood. There are also more gore effects and variations in this version (you can cut off the head partially, then take the rest off). There's a control-bindings menu now so you can remap your keyboard, mouse, and controller buttons. It should work with any standard usb controller, though I haven't tested it with a nintendo one.

- Currently there aren't any plans for multiple weapons (except reskins). Maybe I'll address the idea post-release, but it's very important to keep players on equal-footing and avoid creating a 'meta' build since each fight can end so quickly.

- I like the near-hit idea, and the oni mask. I've added them to my notes.

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Hey Drasnus, I'm so happy you replied and liked the near miss idea, my friend actually came up with it and thought it should be included. I saw a user by the name Grindologist and he was responding people's questions, do you know him? On that note he said the game will be on steam, is it true?

I'm sorry for the long texts, I'm just so hyped and exited and am trying to keep up with all the incredible stuff you're doing, btw, the water effect on the players robe's was so dope, me and the guys just flipped when we saw that

If you ever feel the need to include something but don't know what, be free to come back to my comment, I edit and update my comment everytime I think of something knew.

Never thought of myself as the type of person to get exited seeing a creator responding to my post but the game really is unique and most definetly going in the right direction so I'm really hyped

Well, thanks for the update and I'm so psyched to see the newest log, doing great stuff man, take care

No problem, I'm glad you're excited. Grindologist is an investor in the new project and you can thank him for its existence. The plan is to sell the game on Itch.io and Steam, at minimum. I'll check out your post again from time to time.

So, hey again, I updated my original comment but thought if I included the vid there, it would just be too big and distracting(like if the 16 paragraphs didn't do that already) so I'll just show it here:

- A possible map could be a dojo with katanas, shurikens, nunchucks, sais and stuff like that on the wall, and maybe an old bamboo spining fan on the cieling, I found an image that goes great with what i was thinking but, I couldn't make the forground work so I just said fck it and deleted it all togethor but that didn't work either so could you consider fixing it or making it easier to implement in the premium version?(consider, I tried making it work for like 40 minutes without any luck so, yeah...)

As you can see, the blood doesn't splatter correctly and there's a little space between the feet and "ground" but I guess that doesn't matter.

Here's the image if you want to use it as a reference or whatever:

Here's the link just in case: https://ar.pinterest.com/pin/336855247111776218/

Dojo background | Anime background, Dojo, Anime scenery

(It actually automatically pixilated when entering the game so that's pretty dope)

In regards to the penalties to players, you said you'll be removing that and implementing a new feature in where depending on the position of the sword it will change how fast the attack is executed, could you expand more on this cause, when you finish an attack your sword pretty much teleports to the position you're holding it in so it wouldn't really matter? Now, if you are saying that it'll take more time for the sword to go into that position, it'll make you completly vulnerabal to attacks since you won't be able to block in sufficient time. I ask you this now because, you've already gone over this in log two, and I thought you weren't going to repeat what you already explained.

(2 edits)

Hey, sorry to hear you're having problems. The original custom map was intended for maps like 'indoors', with a flat perspective and a wall right behind the players. The 'foreground' image is intended for the floor section under them. An image like this dojo would work best with the other style of stage like 'Temple', with blood spreading on the floor instead, but the Custom stage doesn't support that feature in the old build. Right now updates to the old build are very low priority for me since I'm so busy with the new version.

You read that right, when you do a 'high' attack the sword will end up in the low position and it will take some extra frames to bring it back up to the top again for subsequent high attacks, but you can combo it into a low strike for a faster follow-up attack. The less-snappy sword positions do make each player slightly more vulnerable, but it's only by fractions of a second, and you can still easily react to enemy strikes in time to block them because the attack windups take much more time. In practice it's not a huge change and the game feels much the same, but it now allows for more mind-games and tactical depth when reading your opponent.

yuy

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Absolutely excited for this one! Customization and animations look absolutely great with this brand new look imo. I thought you were done with First cut and that'd be fine because you made a good game, but it's mind boggling to see this new version of it. Have a good day man!

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Thanks again!

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ıt looks way better than the original but the characters look a bit bouncy when falling ground.  even so ıt looks sick! that game is gonna be awesome!

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i agree with the bouncy thing

yes it would be more satisfying if instead they just slammed into the ground Id imagine

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Thanks for the feedback, I added some extra variety to the way they fall now. Sometimes they tumble, sometimes they slam.

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Looks sick af man, also love the reference to LetMeSoloHer

PLEASE, PRETTY PLEASE make the game available for Mac OS

I'm so hyped bro

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Will this premium version be on Steam? I'd totally buy the game if it means I can duel it out with my buds.

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Yes, it will be on Steam unless some unforeseen issue appears.

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LFG

Your work is amazing, can't wait for the update! But the question is - how much will the premium version cost?

The exact price has not been decided yet, but it will be very affordable.

cant wait!

wow

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looks fantastic!!