Canceled TMNT MOD by BeasTie

[aL BeasTie]

Working Title: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

aka : TMNT MOD, "New" Tales of the TMNT

I'm taking creative license and sort of creating a new TMNT universe, based on who and what I want in the game.  I'm basically blending the original comic series, archie series, 1987 and 2003 cartoon series. (and some tiny aspects from the movies) The story will be centered around the early parts of each series.

I don't think I will have a detailed story, just cut scenes etc. with minimal dialogue.  The game will not be linear, you will choose where to go next, just like the Manhattan missions game.

Thought it was time I had a proper thread for this project, I hope to release a demo with the next 6months (I'm being realistic, hopefully 2-3months) and get some feedback on the turtles gameplay and moves before I continue further.  A lot is coded already, but a lot of enemies and backgrounds are in the process of being removed and replaced with better ones.


Project Goal(s):

- TMNT MOD in Mirage Comic's style.

- also largely inspired by TMNT: Manhattan Missions (PC-DOS)

- Incorporate characters from other series into the original mirage storyline. (Be-Bop & Rocksteady, Krang, Karai, Hun etc.)

- Sprite editing turtle sprites.  Colour separation, new sprites/anims etc.

- New playable characters:  Casey Jones, Splinter, April O'Neil, Usagi, Mondo Gecko & more

- Backstory Micro-Series style (solo character) game chapters.  Raphael, Leonardo, Shredder, Krang and Slash.

- mix of Linear and 'choose your own path' style gameplay (openbor map system, inspired by manhattan missions and TMNT NES)


Background:  Started a few years back just adding Raphael to another mod... with my brother insisting I make TMNT game, the idea kept growing into it's own mod.  Thou there was no plans for release, it was merely a private mod, a lot of things were done with an eclectic mix of sprites that didn't fit together well..

Eventually I started working a bit more seriously on the mod and decided to remove a lot of dodgy content and focus on quality sprite edits, rather than mix 'n match sprites from others games.  I find sprite editing somewhat relaxing, so this became my second project...  Something relaxing to do when I needed a break from other mods.

Later therain237 announced his own mod in a thread and we got into discussing ideas and sharing our work with each other.  We continued to work on separate mods, but combined our efforts finding rips, doing edits etc.. 

Since then we have a lot of interest in the projects, with a lot of help and input from Lictbringer, thegre8test and others, things are really shaping up.  I should note that thegr8test and therain237 both have their own TMNT projects, which I'm excited to see completed as well.  Hopefully we can encourage more of this type of co-operation.
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[aL BeasTie]

SPRITE EDITS & WIP's

TMNT (BeasTie)

Leatherhead (therain237)

Rat King re-colour (BeasTie)

Splinter (therain327 & BeasTie)

Footclan (BeasTie)

Casey Jones (early stages)

Slash (Lictbringer)

April O'Neil (esn23)

Venus De-Milo (supaman2525)
(image missing)


Shredder (therain237 & BeasTie)
(image missing)


(Please note: palettes are not final and subject to change)


WIP's also scheduled:

(Mutant) Be-Bop & Rocksteady (sprite bases undecided)

'Super' Shredder (undecided)

Usagi Yojimbo - (test edits only)

 

[White Dragon]

Go BeasTie Go!  8)

 

[maxman]

Your TMNT mod remind me of/looks similar to bWWd's cancelled TMNT mod. The colors look very neat for the graphics.

Go BeasTie Go!  8)

Ahahahah! Yeah!!!

 

[darknior]

Woaw, excellent

 

[Uche]

I'll keep watch on this.

 

[aL BeasTie]

Thanks guys!

Sorry for lack of screenshots or a video.  There's some things I was changing, like HUD location, new fonts etc. so it was looking a bit ugly right now to take more screens.
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Continued from original post...

I'm changing things up a bit, I'm focusing again on making it look more like the original 'Mirage' comic books. Which was the original plan, but I had made things in other styles.  The old version was meant to be very violent (lots of blood, fatalities etc) Now the mod is a lot tamer, but there will still be more violence than you'd expect from a TMNT game.  ;D  But over time I felt it just didn't work to have TMNT so violent.  Thou they kill in the comics, it's still pretty rare.  i still love the idea of a hyper violent TMNT game, but there's so much more that can be done.

Originally I had planned a very customized storyline.  But after watching last TMNT movie I don't want to be openbor's answer to michael bay.. So I think I will keep things a bit closer to the original comics. 

The only concern is actually spoiling these original comics for people who haven't read them before.  I will make sure to have a giant warning regarding this.  Also I could get into trouble already from using actual strips from the comics.  But I really want to use them for the nostalgia.  I added some of this stuff ages ago before the mod was ever planned to be released.  It's hard to want to remove it now.

Thou the TMNT folks seem pretty cool regarding fan fiction, fan remakes etc.  TMNT fans don't seem to get into any trouble for stuff like that.  I don't think it's a big deal if I continue.  There is so much awesome fan art of TMNT out there, it would be no problem to replace the original stuff for fan art later on if I had too.  Permission would need to be seeked for every image thou.

Thou I planned to have most of the between level and story scenes in black and white, I thought maybe if I took time to re-colour parts of the comics myself it would be more interesting.  Also I'm redoing the menu etc. so it looks more like the type of TMNT cover art I posted above.


Basic colouring in.... but if you see the quality of the scanned image you can tell a little work is still involved.

This was just an idea to edit an utrom into Krang.  These edits will look nice in game on black backgrounds

I also had in game scenes like this I was making, this is just a rough one thou.  the idea was to animate it like a motion comic. 

But I think I might just try to tell the story taking single drawings or frames from the comics and colouring them, can change the dialogue easily too..

Anyhow, hopefully it's a bit more clear what I'm actually working on for my TMNT mod.  I just didn't want to mislead anyone to think this is TMNT cartoon based mod.  If you never read the original comics, but love TMNT, I strongly suggest that you check them out.  I recommend them even if you don't normally read comic books.  TMNT and 2000A.D were like the only comics I ever really read back in the day. 

At least check out #1 issue, or I could seriously ruin the experience for you, just with the opening scenes of my mod.  This MOD is pretty much a giant spoiler, with lots of parts changed and/or omitted. 

If you're a fan of the original movie, you will enjoy the first few comics of TMNT.  Thou the movie does change a few things,  it basically follows the original comics.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) and the Comics
http://www.batman-online.com/forum/index.php?topic=2282.0

 

[Lichtbringer]

Nice the Project has it's own topic now, 6 months sounds maybe a bit long but it is a lot of work you have to do, so it is a realistic goal to finish it in this time.

I see that you plan to have Super Shredder in the mod, are you not sure about the sprites or how do you add him into the story?

 

[Uche]

Beastie, if you want animations, go see White Dragon. He has animated scenes like nobody else has even done or seen.

 

[aL BeasTie]

haha, I meant within the next 6months to get a demo released, not to finish the project.   

But if I can pull my finger out I will have something to share much sooner.  It won't be a proper demo, more of a gameplay test.  I want feedback about turtles combat and possible move tweaks, or combo changes.  I just need to go over these new sprites and add the ones we want.

When I started this mod I expected to work on it for at least 5 years.  It's been about 2 years...  I don't plan to make any more fangames after this I one. 

I just went over the old thread, it's amazing the progress we've actually made.  Really only planned to do TMNT edits, but we kept inspiring each other to try more, and confidence grew.  The project is 80% sprite editing now.

It's not my only OpenBOR project, but it's the only one that's a normal beat em up.  I'm not constantly having to deal with writing scripts or anything like that. So I'm just patiently getting things made, like footclan etc.  Once the core enemies enemies and turtles are in place, I can start moving forward much quicker.

Super shredder is a grey area, because he would be the very end of the game.  So I'm not even thinking about it.  But it probably won't need new sprites.  Just a cool edit of the current shredder.  Like in the begining I want him to appear more like the original comic.  But if I have super shredder I will make him look like 2003 series. Or maybe something original.

@Uche - I think he's plenty busy on his own mod.   

But this isn't cartoon mod, it's comic style.  I have created motion comic style cutscenes.  They even got O Illu's approval, so hopefully you guys like it too. I would post a video, but I'd rather they be seen in context of the game.

 

[dantedevil]

Great work my friend!

 

[malevka1]

Nice the Project ;D

 

[Jetstrange]

Oh yeah this is going to be good

 

[GaBoTiCo]

I love the fact that you have the Utrons from the comic books. Krang was actually based on these characters. There's a character from the comics, from a three part story called "The River" (I think), the character's name was "Bloodsucker", I always loved it.

 

[Bloodbane]

Ah so you started your own TMNT mod

Aside of features you posted in first post, what are the basic abilities of turtles and other playables?

 

[CRxTRDude]

...

I'll be keeping an eye on this mod. This looks promising, especially delving more on the Eastman/Laird original underground comic storyline that has not been that much done before. I've seen in your shots that they're using the red bandanas and the other shots look like they're using the color bandanas. You'll be using the red bandanas to this point?

 

[Lichtbringer]

I've seen in your shots that they're using the red bandanas and the other shots look like they're using the color bandanas. You'll be using the red bandanas to this point?

BeasTie made a Color seperation for the sprites, so players can play with comic style bandanas and elbow/knee pads, but also can chose to play with cartoon/movie colors etc.

 

[aL BeasTie]

Ah so you started your own TMNT mod

Yeah it's been a side project for a few years now, but it's had a lot of design changes.  So it's been a slow evolution to reach it's current state.  A while back I decided it would be more fun to make this a spriting project, and started working on colour separation and sprite edits.

A lot has been scrapped and small sprites are being replaced.

OLD and NEW foot comparisons.

Aside of features you posted in first post, what are the basic abilities of turtles and other playables?

hmm I can try and explain, do you really want to know?

- Two ATTACK buttons, ATTACK1 is weapon attacks, ATTACK2 is kicks

- Pressing DIRECTION+ATTACK changes opening attack. 

- each attack/direction has it's own combo chain

- mixing attack buttons modifies combo or finishing attack.

- DOWN+JUMP performs a Backflip allowing you to dodge attacks. (It's intended that you will have to use this a lot.)
-  UPx2 / DOWNx2 will also flip/dodge with direction.

For combat I'm trying to make this more fighting based, you will need to dodge/block/counter to fight.  There won't really be 'special' moves and stuff like that to spam.

I've seen in your shots that they're using the red bandanas and the other shots look like they're using the color bandanas. You'll be using the red bandanas to this point?

Red will be default, there is a choice of palettes and headband style thou. 

I probably forgot to mention some things about the sprites that were discussed the ideas/suggestions thread.
http://www.chronocrash.com/forum/index.php?topic=1377.0

Been working on the 'smart pal' turtle sheets and cleaning errors in the original sprites...

Now they look weird atm...  but everything is now separated, even the eyes and teeth. 

(just some quick examples, these palettes are rough.  I will eventually make the proper default palettes.)

Here's what we can do with palettes now.

- change armbands colour
- change headband colour
- change skin colour
- change belt colour
- change head colour (to create alternate headband style)
- change shell colours (torso and back seperated)
- change eyes (eg. you could add black dot to eyes by changing palette)
- change weapon colours

 

[iggy11]

Looks AWESOME !
Keep it up !

 

[mersox]

Looks great!