u/Strong-Detail-2631

So I recently discovered parallax mapping and it’s amazing! I feel like I can finally make the game the way I envisioned it. Only draw back is the time. My demo has 3 larger maps and a handful of smaller ones…maybe 10-12 overall….and this still took me about 100 hours to rebuild the maps.

I personally love them, I think they are cool, but to the people who do this, how do you optimize? I made a master asset sheet so anytime I touch, rip, or build an asset it goes into that, which paid time dividends on the last maps as I could reuse stuff. I feel like I’m not super efficient at it and I have another 45 maps past the demo to rebuild…then probably another 50-75 to finish the game. I enjoy building them, but thinking I still have ~1k hours in map building alone is a bit insane haha. Let me know any tips or tricks parallax mappers have that can help, thanks!

To the people who don’t parallax map, what do you think of it? I know the style won’t be for everyone, but let me know.

Hello all - I try not to post too often, but some of you will recognize it and I find your input invaluable (most of it). This is a little longer post so thank you for reading it all if you do. I’m working on my dark fantasy RPG (The Cradle of Life), and I’m trying to get some honest feedback on the battle system now that I am almost complete on it (still want to add one more system and clean up the visuals more).

I love turn based games, but I really wanted this to have tactical strategy, not just find the best weapon a bit someone. So, the game uses a tactical grid battle system to facilitate that goal - positioning matters, weapons matter, bad decisions can hurt, but you’re also not sitting there for 45 minutes moving ten units around…kinda like an XCOM or Battle Brothers vibe but less complex.

Quick overview of what’s in right now:

Action Points - Each turn you get AP to move, attack, guard, use items, disengage, etc. Heavier weapons hit harder but cost more, lighter weapons let you act more often - super basic used in most games.

Weapon identity - I really didn’t want weapons to be just stat sticks. Swords, axes, maces, spears, pikes, bows, daggers, greatswords, greataxes, flails, and shields all push the player toward different decisions and hopefully different play styles…like a stunned enemy from a mace attack can take extra dagger damage and such.

Weapon weakness system- this is still in testing to be fair but is included in the demo build. Enemies can be weak or resistant to certain weapon types. So a mace might be better into an opponent with armor, axes might punish enemies with shields, piercing weapons might be better into certain enemies like animals, etc….each enemy also has a pool of different armor types and weapons, so hopefully the player doesn’t always have a solution immediately.

Stamina - AP decides what you can do this turn, but it wasnt tactical enough. Stamina is the longer pressure system underneath it. You can overcommit and send attack after attack, but if you burn yourself out you may be stuck absorbing hits until you can rebuild it.

Poise / stagger - kinda same vein as Elden ring - enemies and the player have poise. Heavy hits, crits, and certain weapons can break poise and stagger a target, creating openings…this was primarily introduced to make the slower, less frequently attacking weapons more viable.

Height system - Fairly basic height system, but was an absolute turd to build, that give you bonuses or debuffs to accuracy, range, and damage.

Tactical states - I really like this one - the system tracks things like being engaged, exposed, braced, outnumbered, guard-cracked, and high ground. I wanted positioning to matter without needing a giant wall of numbers…hoping it’s self explanatory so like when a second enemy engages you, you get exposed, a third and you get outnumbered.

Executions - This one is just for the fun of it. One of my favorite games does this and I loved it lol. Low-health enemies can become executable, so their head goes flying or they get chopped in half, fun stuff.

What I’m trying to figure out now is whether this sounds interesting from the outside, or if it sounds like too many systems stacked on top of each other. The player can still be successful without knowing this and just swinging away, but I hope it’s one of those “learn as you go” where you start getting good at it.

For people who like tactical combat systems - what do you actually enjoy seeing in a system like this? Do you prefer more weapon variety? Do you want environmental hazards (like being able to cut down a tree and having it land on enemies)? Cleaner/simple rules? Bigger tactical boards? Smaller faster fights?

Any feedback is welcome. I’m especially interested in what would make you want to try a demo, and what would make you bounce off immediately.

If you stuck around this long I appreciate it!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4580240/The_Cradle_of_Life/

So I’ve been working my battle system for probably the last 7 months and it’s close to being done - I need to add two more systems, but one of the last ones I wanted was an execution system. So an enemy has a small chance of triggering an execution if they are low on health. It turned out pretty much how I wanted and I tried to make a video for gifs for my Steam page…and started dicking off and made this lol pretty dumb but yall might enjoy it.

Hello all,

I’ve spent about 12-15 hours rebuilding some art assets and would like your opinion on if you’d be intrigued on seeing these? I’m hoping they better hook people on Steam.

I posted my Game demo and did some low quality posts (idk how to social media) for about 3 weeks, and saw a steady rise in wishlists, but it’s going kinda stagnant now no matter what I do.

I was hoping someone would check my Steam page and give me some advice on their how to retain folks.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4580240/The\_Cradle\_of\_Life/

Hello all,

I’ve spent about 12-15 hours rebuilding some art assets and would like your opinion on if you’d be intrigued on seeing these? I’m not much an artist, but I enjoyed working on them.

Let me know your honest thoughts so I can get better.

If you’re so inclined, check out my Steam Page and let me know what you’d change to improve.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4580240/The\_Cradle\_of\_Life/

Hello all,

I’ve spent about 12-15 hours rebuilding some art assets and would like your opinion on if you’d be intrigued on seeing these? I’m not much an artist, but I enjoyed working on them.

Let me know your honest thoughts so I can get better.

If you’re so inclined, check out my Steam Page and let me know what you’d change to improve.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4580240/The\_Cradle\_of\_Life/

This has been a big emotional week for me working only on my art assets. It’s fun to make, but I feel like I’m falling behind on my actual game. I found a lot of things that work, and a lot of things that don’t, but will y’all look at my art assets and give me some opinions?

The first pic was kinda my placeholder image I used, the follow on is the rebuilds. I kept the gods and other assets as layers and saved them as their own images so I can move them easier.

These took about 12-15 hours but I think it’s worth it to update all my Steam Capsules. If you saw this, would you be intrigued?

If you’re so inclined, you could also give me opinions on the Steam Page itself. - thank you!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4580240/The_Cradle_of_Life/

I always intended the AI pics to just be placeholders to change as development went on. I’ve been really getting the itch to try, but I am a terrible artists. I feel dumb even saying artist and me in the same sentence. I’ve watching a handful of videos and practiced, and finally made my first portrait…so…here it is. What do y’all think? Making the picture on the right, bad as it is, still took me about 5 hours…but it is assembled in a paper sprite doll manner (going to be building a character creator) so it can be used elsewhere…

I know this sub is largely anti-AI, and I support that, but I’m kinda afraid my art is too ugly….but I’m oddly proud of it as well haha. Please, give me some honest opinions…to be honest with you idk if I’m good enough to take action on fixing anything, but I can try.

Edit - shameless plug - check out my Steam page if you want to follow along -

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4580240/The\_Cradle\_of\_Life/

Hey y’all,

Now that my demo is live, I’m trying to do more frequent updates on my game.

Big focus lately has been combat, followed by map building, followed by lore.

I added a new Poise system along with weapon-specific impact mechanics because I realized I didn’t want every weapon to just feel like “same attack, different numbers.” Heavy weapons now cause stagger, lighter weapons feel faster and more reliable, and positioning/elevation are starting to matter a lot more during fights with custom states that impact accuracy, evasion, and damage.
Basically, I’m trying to make combat feel dangerous instead of just turning into “walk forward and spam attack until somebody falls over.” So far, it’s mostly working I think.

I’ve also been reworking the Steam page and replacing older assets now that the game finally has a more consistent visual style. Looking back at some of the original screenshots honestly feels like opening a cursed museum exhibit of bad UI decisions and placeholder art I swore I’d replace later, but finally took the steps to do so. I also have a new drawing tool coming so hopefully that helps the process go a bit faster.

Another major thing that started recently is production on The Ash Dunes map and eventing.
This area sits between civilizations and the southern kingdom of Kaelor, and crossing it is basically considered a death sentence, unless you have a key. Endless ash storms, ruined landmarks, hallucinations, wandering structures, and enough bad decisions waiting for the player that I’m fully expecting people to ignore every warning immediately and march straight into disaster...still need to build some interesting enemy types here...excited about that part - but yeah, the player will ignore the initial warnings.

Which is fair - I’d do the same thing honestly...I jumped in the toilet in Fear and Hunger so I understand.

I also officially released the Mac build, which somehow became its own boss fight during development...just so everyone knows transferring from Windows to Mac has alot of issues. Turns out packaging builds is a lot less fun when you learn entirely through trial and error at one in the morning while questioning your life choices haha but my little brother plays on a Mac and I wanted him to have the option.

Overall though, the game is finally starting to feel bigger. The world feels more connected. Combat feels more brutal. The systems are finally starting to interact the way I originally pictured them in my head months ago.

There’s still a ridiculous amount left to build:
more enemy behaviors, more boss mechanics, more consequences, more story content, and probably several more systems that will completely break the game before they finally work correctly...but I have all the bones!

But that’s part of the fun, I guess.

Thanks again to everyone following the project so far. It’s genuinely surreal watching people engage with something that only existed in my head for so long.

Anyway! Thanks for the support and I will be back in a week or two with another update. If this is interesting to you, please check out my profile and subreddit to follow along!

P.S. the sand dunes are supposed to be impassible, so that’s why the map is so blurred in a sandstorm.

Hello all,

Just released my first demo build of my game on Steam. I also posted my first Devlog as well, if a Dark RPG with deep lore and tactical combat interests you, please give it a shot! It’s crazy - I feel really nervous to let people see it now that it’s here.

Here is the Devlog I wrote up this evening, feel free to skip it, it’s a bit long winded, but I wanted to get my story out there -

Nine months ago this game didn’t exist in any form, except for in my head. Not in RPG Maker, or on paper and definitely not in some massive design document made by a guy who actually knew what he was doing. It was just an idea stuck in my head while I was at work, driving home, sitting outside with my kids, or trying to steal an hour at night after everybody else went to sleep.

A little about me - I’m active-duty Marine, I’m a husband, I’ve got two kids, and most of this project got built in the leftover time between everything else I am trying to do, as the case with most indie devs.

A little something on how this idea became a game - The weird thing is, the game didn’t really start with combat as most projects do, it started with stories from an absolute legend.

My dad was one of those guys who could make sitting around a fire feel bigger than life. Every time we went camping, we would beg him to tell us a story, and he would take 15-20 minutes to think about it then blow our minds. Half the lore in this game came from stories I still remember from when I was younger - some weird little details here, some warnings. I loved that these stories that made the woods feel wrong after dark even if nobody could explain why precisely. That feeling of being afraid of the forest for no legitimate reason eventually became Thornvale (base area of the Demo).

Originally, I didn’t even care that much about the combat side of things. I figured I could create a great game without that...but I wanted replayability and progression...I wanted the world, the gods, the lore, the choices, and the slow collapse of reality to be what kept people playing. I really wanted players thinking about decisions they made hours ago instead of just mindlessly grinding wolves/bandits for a slightly sharper sword. Then I realized during one of my earlier demos that if the combat sucked, none of the rest of it really mattered. Combat needed to be memorable and compelling, or it needed to be erased. Unfortunately for me (and maybe you), that turned into four straight months of me trying to force RPG Maker MZ to do things it was absolutely never designed to do.

Now the game has elevation combat, AP systems, directional attacks, weapon-specific behavior, armor calculations, reactive enemy AI, survival mechanics, psychological systems, boss phases, custom lighting, and enough odd story beats that I hope you discover that will probably just end up being confusing.

The height system in battle alone almost killed me. There were days where cliffs rendered upside down, enemies floated into the air like they’d achieved enlightenment, actors clipped through tiles, and every fix somehow created three brand new problems immediately afterward in files I didn't even think were connected. At one point I seriously considered deleting the entire elevation system and pretending it was a stupid idea from the beginning because it was causing so many issues. I honestly probably had that thought for most of the systems I have tried to implement. I have to admit thought hat I am glad I didn’t. Because the game finally feels close to what I originally pictured in my head -

A dark tactical RPG where positioning matters, choices matter, and the world feels like it’s slowly coming apart underneath you.

And honestly, this demo is still just the beginning of it. I have so many more ideas...some I think are great, some I think are going to slowly kill me. There’s still a ton I want to add - brutal executions, better enemy tactics, more reactive questlines, more god lore, more irreversible consequences, more areas where the world starts breaking apart in ways that make you question whether you should even be there in the first place - Just like the forest in my dad's stories.

Most importantly, and one of the harder parts I have had to try and pace myself with, I want the story to keep getting weirder. I don’t want the world to feel safe. I don’t want choices to feel reversible. And I definitely don’t want players knowing if they actually made the “right” decision by the end. Life isn't black and white - its morally grey...some "good" choices end up hurting people...some "bad" choices can have beautiful outcomes...I really wanted to catch that feeling.

Anyway, I digress a bit, but this is the first Devlog I have added on Steam, and I plan to continue to update you all on the progress of the game. Some days I will focus on introducing more content to the combat, and some days I will work on expanding the story. End of the day though - the big news is that the demo is finally here.

After nine months of broken plugins, corrupted saves, rewrites, debugging sessions that lasted until stupid hours in the morning, and me repeatedly learning that RPG Maker will absolutely fight you to the death if you let it, I’m genuinely proud of what this thing is turning into. I am also a bit nervous to release something that has so much of me in it - but I am happy to share this with anyone who might enjoy it.

This might be a train wreck....that is on fire...and derailing quickly....but if you want to follow the project while it keeps growing, mutating, and occasionally catching on fire, stick around.

There’s still a lot more coming and I am proud to share it with y'all!

Thanks for reading if you stuck to it this far, I promise future updates will be more concise.

Steam -
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4580240/The\_Cradle\_of\_Life/

Reddit -
https://www.reddit.com/u/Strong-Detail-2631/s/pS83PUobtw

Tried to revamp my lighting system with something new. I love the active shadows and what not, what do you think?

If you’re interested, the game is a dark RPG with a unique combat system and deep lore - please wishlist my game on Steam here - https://store.steampowered.com/app/4580240/The\_Cradle\_of\_Life/

I should be releasing a free demo here soon!

I’m making this game with replayability being one of my main focuses. I currently hit that pretty well through player choices, but about 3 months ago I decided the combat was basic/stale….so I created this tactical grid system with ~30 weapons/40~armor pieces enemies can randomly be equipped with….weapons have pros and cons, classes as well, and I wanted to go deeper so I made height….its kicking my butt.

I wanted to ask all here - would the height be a cool feature you enjoy, or is it meh? You have accuracy, range, and evasion buffs if higher, debuffs if lower. Enemies prioritize the high ground. It’s taken a ton of time and is still pretty buggy.

Continue development? Or shelf it and focus on other stuff? I have like 10 other systems I’d like to build into the combat still lol.

Steam page is here - demo will be released in a few days if you’re interested -
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4580240/The_Cradle_of_Life/