WIP Paper Mario: Showtime!!

[Zero Kirby]

I've actually been making - gasp - progress on this title, so I figure I might as well make a topic, so that I stop flooding the Discord servers I'm in, as well as have a more centralized location for big-scale development updates and the like.

Paper Mario: Showtime!! is a fangame taking inspiration from everybody's "favourite" Paper Mario games - Sticker Star and Colour Splash. The goal of Showtime is to basically "fix" the issues with the combat of those two games in an arcade-style score attack game. How did I "fix" these games? Well...

While moves work much the same as they did in Sticker Star - only one button is used for all Action Commands, and animations/effects are very similar - the biggest difference is that you don't have to maintain an inventory of Stickers or Cards. Instead, you have infinite Cards - you just spend Coins to buy and use them right out! As long as you have enough Coins for a Card, you can use it again and again.

Cards are split into four categories - Jump Cards, Hammer Cards, Item Cards, and Partner Cards. It's up to you to use them strategically to clear each round. Some of them have been changed up from their original versions to make things a little more balanced - for example, in Sticker Star, the Iron Jump was just the Jump, but it could hit spiked enemies. It was a strictly better Sticker in every possible way, with no downside to using it. In this game, it works a bit differently - it now does bonus damage to spiked enemies, but less to non-spiked enemies. Other Cards have had their effects tweaked in similar ways in order to provide variety and balance.

You may notice you have people watching you battle - the audience! Much like in The Thousand-Year Door, you'll have an audience watching your fights, and impressing them is important.

Different audience members like different things - Yoshis love Jumps, while Goombas despise them. It's important to keep them happy, because they affect how many points you get at the end of each round, and you need points to purchase upgrades between rounds! Upgrade your Cards, your health, or even just buy extra time or Coins to keep you going - the goal is to see how far you can get, how long you can last. Think of it like the Pit of 100 Trials, sort of. You can earn points by performing well on your Action Commands, not getting hit, and adding a bit of... flair to your moves whenever possible.

While the game is still a long way from finished, right now it's already got a decent suite of features, such as a fully functional My Music, just like in Super Smash Bros.! There's even a Badge system in the works, where you can select up to three Badges before you start a game in order to switch up the way you play - make Action Commands more difficult but more rewarding, or have Mario recover a bit of health between rounds, it's up to you. Alongside some planned alternative game modes, I'm hoping to provide plenty of replay value.

So far I've gotten almost half of Mario's moves finished, and sprites for three out of the four Partners you can call upon for help - Goombella, Bobbery, Watt, and Sushie. I've even properly programmed the Timing Tutor Badge, along with the Badge selection menu, and every track for My Music is in the game. I'm hoping to keep this momentum going, but don't be surprised if I go quite a while without updates again because that's what I do

[Mariotroid]

looks like a solid game. i was one of the few not disappointed with sticker star but thats cause i like being brain dead when playing games. keep up the good work, i'd love to see progress and a video.

[VinnyVideo]

This is really cool - I haven't seen a lot of Paper Mario fangames, and this is by far the most polished Paper Mario engine I've seen. I love all the little details you've put into it - like the animations and the gameplay balancing.

Course clear! You got a card.

[Zero Kirby]

I suppose speaking of animations, it might help to see a little bit of in-game footage.



Some parts are still a work-in-progress, of course, but things are moving along rather nicely.

Falcon Punch is the result of the Sun heating fists. It drives the Blue Falcon. Heating causes destruction of water into the pain, where it then hurts, creating rain. Rain creates flowing water in tears, which can then be converted into other forms through more pain.



This fight has only just begun...

[WWpl4y3r]

Looks real promising. I'd love to play this... ^^

[Parakarry]

So this seems to be like a test of how far you can go, and coins in this game sort of function like MP or FP.
Sounds spiffy!

And when you said "Partner Cards"... do you have any idea how much I wanted that in the real Paper Mario games? Being able to summon an ally from a previous game with a special item you could use?
So that's a big plus for me.

[Zero Kirby]

So this seems to be like a test of how far you can go, and coins in this game sort of function like MP or FP.
Sounds spiffy!

And when you said "Partner Cards"... do you have any idea how much I wanted that in the real Paper Mario games? Being able to summon an ally from a previous game with a special item you could use?
So that's a big plus for me.

Yup, basically.

Also, the Partner Cards almost weren't Partner Cards for the longest time, but just Special Cards. Then I realized they could all be given to partners from the other Paper Mario games that had the same abilities, and figured that'd be much more fun. As it stands, there's four - Goombella uses Tattle, Sushie uses Water Block, Watt uses Turbo Charge, and Bobbery uses Bob-Ombast.

Falcon Punch is the result of the Sun heating fists. It drives the Blue Falcon. Heating causes destruction of water into the pain, where it then hurts, creating rain. Rain creates flowing water in tears, which can then be converted into other forms through more pain.



This fight has only just begun...

[MegaTailzChao]

This is really cool. Pit of 100 Trials is honestly kind of the highlight of TTYD so making an entire game around it is a pretty good idea. Most of all though, I love the presentation. The UI is sleek as all hell.

[Zero Kirby]

Long time no see, and thanks very much! I've spent an inordinate amount of time on making sure the UI is high-quality, ha ha ha. (And I'm still tweaking it every now and again.)

The Pit of 100 Trials is also my favourite part of The Thousand-Year Door. It's such a neat idea, and I feel like the combat systems of Sticker Star and Colour Splash would've worked perfectly with something similar, since they were so focused on inventory management. Granted, there's no inventory management in my game at all, but I guess coin management is close enough.

I've also been working on improving the particle effects - the Hammer especially I wanted to improve on. Here's what it looks like now:

Falcon Punch is the result of the Sun heating fists. It drives the Blue Falcon. Heating causes destruction of water into the pain, where it then hurts, creating rain. Rain creates flowing water in tears, which can then be converted into other forms through more pain.



This fight has only just begun...

[Myte]

Man, this looks so good! Looking forward to this

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[Zero Kirby]

I've set up a Twitter account, @PaperShowtime, if you want to follow along with development more closely, and so that I don't spam the hell out of the Dev Discussion here.

The most recent update is a complete overhaul of how the Eekhammer works, for example - in Sticker Star and Colour Splash it works fine, but it's *way* too slow-paced for the kind of game I'm making here. So I totally retooled it, and I think this is going to be a much better fit for Showtime. Now, you mash the button to whack the enemy over and over. If you whack 'em enough times, you'll perform a strong finishing strike!

Falcon Punch is the result of the Sun heating fists. It drives the Blue Falcon. Heating causes destruction of water into the pain, where it then hurts, creating rain. Rain creates flowing water in tears, which can then be converted into other forms through more pain.



This fight has only just begun...

[Zero Kirby]

I've got a booth at the NCFC if anyone wants to try a basic, somewhat unpolished, concept demo!

https://nintendocfc.com/booth.html?id=68

Falcon Punch is the result of the Sun heating fists. It drives the Blue Falcon. Heating causes destruction of water into the pain, where it then hurts, creating rain. Rain creates flowing water in tears, which can then be converted into other forms through more pain.



This fight has only just begun...

[VinnyVideo]

Good stuff! I enjoyed checking out the latest demo - I've been looking forward to playing this, even if it's just an engine test.

I'd suggest speeding up Goombella's Tattle move - it takes a long time for her to appear when you first summon her. That's the only complaint I have right now.

Course clear! You got a card.

[Zero Kirby]

Yep, I was meaning to get around to that and it just... never happened, oops. Not so great in a time-based game, is it?

Falcon Punch is the result of the Sun heating fists. It drives the Blue Falcon. Heating causes destruction of water into the pain, where it then hurts, creating rain. Rain creates flowing water in tears, which can then be converted into other forms through more pain.



This fight has only just begun...